I ran into another aspect of “faith and works” last night at a meeting. It’s having a passion for something and sustaining that passion through the hard work of acting on it. Passion starts out as an emotion. Maybe God speaks to you and you get really fired up about His suggestion. Maybe it’s starting a mission to another country. Maybe it’s feeding people thrown out of work by the recession. But it’s a God call.
God doesn’t expect you to only be fired up about it. As my new best friend James says, faith without works is dead. Or as Bill Cosby once described about his college football team (probably just a funny story) where the coach gave a rousing speech to get them all fired up to go out and win the game in the second half and then the door was locked from the locker room. The passion expired.
So there are stages to the process. You start out on fire with an idea. But then you have to do two things that can be tough. And you’ll lose some of that exuberance. These are planning the details of the work and convincing others that this is an important call from God. At first you’ll notice some fraying of the passion. You begin to doubt just a little in the face of opposition.
That’s when you take the advice of Thomas a Kempis I noted yesterday–just do something. Take the next action. Talk to the next person. That will get you back on track. And you’ll accomplish the work God has placed before you.
Tags: Leadership, Work
Faith Venture 
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