Recently I’ve been dealing with the struggle of passion. Not necessarily passion for youth ministry, but just passion in general. In my eyes, this is something I’ve seen most Christians go through in some way or another. Here’s the cycle I usually see:

• On fire. Your passion is through the roof, you can’t get enough of God, and you do everything you can to get more of Him in your life.
• Dying out. After a while, the passion starts to diminish. Maybe you get busy, don’t put as much time aside for God, or things are just going well so you don’t turn to Him.
• Lack of passion. After a time of dying out, you feel disconnected. You just don’t feel a passion for God. Maybe you even get to the point of doubting your faith. At the very least, you are stagnant in your faith.
• The fire gets re-lit. Somehow you turn things around and start heading in a positive direction. The fire of passion gets re-lit and you return to the “on-fire” stage.

I think the real question that needs to be answered is: how do we get from the “lack of passion” stage back to the “on-fire” stage?

This is a real cycle that we go through. In my life, I just recently got out of a “lack of passion” stage, but it did take work to get the passion back. On Thursday I will give my answer to the question above. How do we get the passion back if we feel like it’s not there anymore?