Many people wonder what is the difference between passion and desire. The easiest way to find out is to just ask them, “What is your passion?”
You see, I would love to lose some weight. I can hear the gallery saying amen now. I have a desire to lose a few extra pounds. The problem is that when I see a good steak on a grill, that desire to loose some weight changes really fast. For me, it is a steak. For others, it is sweets or desserts or something else. How many times have we desired to stop doing something just to find ourselves doing the very thing we so desired to stop doing? Guilt comes to haunt us as we contemplate if we should have a greater desire, or even try harder to stop at failing even more. So the solution is: try harder next time. I heard this said so many times, and believe me I have tried it so many times. With the determination that this time it will really work, we start all over again desiring to change. Then after a few days, or maybe weeks, we get caught with our hands in the cookie jar again.
We easily exchange one desire for the next big thing that comes around. The bottom line is this: DESIRES CHANGE!
So what about passion? Passion is the force that will channel your desires to conform to what your passion is. An Olympic athlete has a desire to win the gold medal. So what does he or she do? They allow their passion to drive their desires. They change their lifestyle and their diet. They change their routine and their programs. They don’t eat junk food and they don’t become couch potatoes. The passion for the gold drives them to make drastic changes. You can give them a hamburger and they will refuse it. You can give them the option to sleep in late but they will be up early exercising. You see the bottom line is this: PASSION DOES NOT CHANGE BECAUSE OF DESIRES, PASSION CHANGES DESIRES!
Jesus never had a desire to die for us. He even prayed that if it was possible to let it pass Him by. What made Him die for us? JESUS had PASSION. He had passion to see us saved and delivered and restored. For the joy that was set before Him HE endured the cross, that was His passion. You are His passion. When they mocked Him and crucified Him, the desire to stop being beaten and mutilated could not change the passion He had for you. He had this passion to please His Father. Even though HE knew they would question His integrity and question His words, it could not stop Him from preaching the kingdom. Desire wants you to feel popular, passion wants you to be faithful. Did you know that you are God’s desire? Say this to yourself.:
I AM HIS PASSION.
Opinion and Truth
This is the same as passion and desire. Opinions change, Truth can and will never change. Someone once said that opinions are like armpits. Everyone has two. People are scared about what God’s opinion is about them because they started to believe a lie. Jeremiah 29 says that God knows what He thinks about you. Let me make it simple. The devil’s opinion about you is not God’s opinion about you. You might think that if that is true and God knows the truth, then God knows that I fail at a lot of things. That is true but not the truth. You see it is true that we all fail, but the truth is God made provision for our failures. Because the devil cannot know or speak the truth, he can only have an opinion about you, and most probably has two!
So what matters? Truth matters because truth never changes. We all need to develop a passion for the truth and then we will not be swayed by the opinions of men.
What is your passion?
