DESIRE VS PASSION

The speaker discusses the difference between passion and desire in the context of Christian faith. He emphasizes that while passion may fade over time, desire is what keeps individuals committed to their beliefs and purpose. He uses examples from various fields, such as business and fitness, to illustrate the importance of desire in achieving goals. The speaker encourages listeners to prioritize their desire to know God and seek their purpose, even when faced with challenges and temptations. He emphasizes the need for discipline and sacrifices to maintain a strong connection with God. Hello, and good morning. This is Norman Goodman again on another podcast, episode. I hope everybody is doing well. On this particular podcast, the Lord just put on me this morning. I was just, you know, if you've listened to my podcast before, I don't have a prayer closet or a prayer room. My whole house, the dwelling that the Lord has blessed me with is my prayer space. Wherever it is, whether it's the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, the backyard, the laundry room, it doesn't matter. Wherever I am, he's there, so I don't have a separate space. And he and I would just have a conversation, and he would just put stuff on me that's just overwhelming, and it just causes me to just want to do backflips. And he's always showing out, and I definitely appreciate him for that. But, again, I have to do my part, and I have to seek him out. And if I'm not seeking him out, then he's not going to give me the discernment or give me the message or give me what he wants me to share with the rest of the world. You know, we're talking about the Great Commission here. We're talking about evangelism, and that's what we are called to do as believers. So what this podcast is going to be on, the Lord put it on me. He said, I want you to talk about the difference between passion and desire. Passion and desire. Okay? When someone becomes a Christian for the first time, I find that that new Christian is passionate about God. It's like they just found something brand new. You know, they just found a new fruit that they've never discovered before. And they're passionate. And all of a sudden, that passion, you'll find out if they have a desire if they show up the next Sunday for the new members class. In our church, we have four classes for the new members, a total of 24 weeks, six weeks for each class. And what I find is that there is no desire for a lot of people to make it to that last class, which is evangelism. People just fall by the wayside. Their passion falls off. I used to listen to Ted talk a lot, and there was a gentleman there, I can't remember his name. And he was a restaurateur. He owned a restaurant called the French Laundry that's in California. You may have heard of it before. And he did a Ted talk, and he talked about passion versus desire. And he says, desire trumps passion any day of the week because people are always passionate about something until you've got to put the work in. Right? Once you have to put the work in and they find out that the work isn't passionate, all of a sudden, they stop. What keeps you coming every single day to the restaurant? What keeps you coming to work every single day? It's not passion anymore. It's desire. It's desire to what? A desire to get a paycheck, a desire to keep your bills paid, a desire to maybe learn and get better at your craft to hopefully that you are advanced in a company or someone's company. It's the desire to know your purpose is what keeps people coming because passion fades. Right? Now, forgive me because I'm going to be moving around a little bit because I have the Bible, the dictionary open because I wanted to give some definitions. From a biblical standpoint, first, I wanted to go to 1 Peter, 1 Peter 2. One, desire the sincere milk of the word is in 1 Peter. And it's 1 Peter 2, it says, wherefore, laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and evils and all envies and evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. If so be ye have tasted, the Lord is gracious. The Bible talks about have the desire for the milk of the word. Doesn't talk about the passion, but the desire. Desire takes work. You know, in Sunday school yesterday, we were talking about baptism. When you get baptized, it just gets you to the starting line. Okay, you're not in the race yet. You just took a water bath. That's your sign of repentance. You put on a new raiment of Jesus. Okay, now you're at the starting line. Your faith is what's going to bring grace. All right. Now, do you have a desire to take that step, that first step? Because if you do, then here comes, now you're stepping off on faith and your grace is coming. Knowing that the journey is going to be an arduous one. Knowing it's going to be difficult. Knowing you're going to have landmines in front of you. Knowing that there is going to be a lot of things, a lot of temptations and the enemy is going to come at you even more. Do you have a desire to know God? Do you have a desire to know your purpose? And that's going to be unpleasant a lot of times. It's going to be unpleasant. So when I look at desire, desire to me is who's willing to go through all 24 weeks of the new member's class? Who really has a desire to get better and get closer to God? Knowing that the journey is going to be difficult. Okay. There was a real estate entrepreneur, his name is Grant Cardone, I used to listen to. And he was talking about his journey. And he talked about when he was young, he was a car salesman. He hated being a car salesman. He hated it. But he had a desire to be financially free. So what he did was he threw himself into that job. He learned how to be the best salesman he could be to end up getting to the point he's in today. Now he has people spending gobs of money, $10,000, $20,000 to come to his classes to learn how to have a desire to be financially free. Okay. But he did it by doing, he became who he is today by doing something that he wasn't passionate about. Something he didn't enjoy. But he did it because he was looking at the end result. That's the same thing with your Christian walk. Your desire has to trump your passion because there's an end result you're trying to get to. You're trying to get to the kingdom. Right? You're trying to get to the kingdom. So you have to work past the passion. Once the passion starts to fade, then the real work begins. And a lot of Christians, believe it or not, we have a lot of Christians that have been in Christianity for 40, 50 years still on the starting line. Because why? Because they have no desire to know their purpose. They are not seeking God out. They're not seeking God out. They're not seeking his voice out. They're still living in the world. They're lukewarm. And you have to ask yourself, am I lukewarm? Am I really seeking God out? Am I really seeking my purpose? Am I really, really willing to do the unpleasant thing and to turn the television off and to sit in front of the scripture and desire God every day? You know, okay, I got to be to work at 6 o'clock in the morning. How bad do you desire to be with God? Well, I may not have enough time. You might need to get up 4 o'clock in the morning. You might have to get up 3.30 in the morning just so you can spend time with God so you can know his purpose for you and for his kingdom. Do you have the desire to get up that early to spend time with him? And the way you spend time with him, you spend time in the word, right? Because that's the milk. But what God is trying to do is get you past the milk and get you to the meat. And a lot of Christians are still on the milk. Do you get me? Then once you get that faith, you say, okay, I have the faith, and you start walking the gauntlet, and all of a sudden, you get a little discouraged, and then you backslide. Now you're right back at the starting line again. Desire, desire, desire. I cannot overemphasize that. Let's say this for instance. You got a person that's 5'5", 300 pounds, okay? And they see a guy on television or a woman on television, and they look great, 600 pounds. I mean, they used to be 300 pounds at 5'5". Now they have a six-pack, muscles, everything, and now you're motivated. Now you watch them on YouTube and everything. Oh, that person did it? I can do it. Now you're passionate. Through your sweat zone, everything else, you start working. Now, heck, you might have went and joined the gym, but then after a while, that first week is over. Your muscles are sore, right? Now, here comes the second week. Now the passion is starting to fade because now you got to put in the work. I want to get that six-pack. I want to look like that other person, but am I willing to put the work in like that other person did? Or am I going to go home and eat that cheeseburger and fries? See, you have a road that's going to get narrower as you walk, all right? You got 1,000 people that's 300 pounds, 5'5", and they want to have a slender body. But as that journey starts to go on, a lot of them are going to fall off because they were passionate, but they had no desire. So on one side of the road, you have vegetables and fruit. On the other side of the road, you got Chick-fil-A, McDonald's, Burger King, right? And you got landmines in the middle of the road. Now, do you have a desire to get to that goal that you want to get to physically, or are you going to go over here and grab that hamburger and fries? This is why desire trumps passion. I'm not passionate about Jesus. I'm not passionate about God. I have a desire to be under God and to know His purpose for me. I have a desire to know His Son, Jesus Christ. That means what? I'm willing to make the sacrifices in order to do that. I'm willing to put down the potato chips, to put down the honey bun, to put down the sneakers bar, and eat the salad. And what's the salad? It's the word. You get what I'm saying? I'm going to put the soda down, and I'm going to drink water. I'm going to put the sugar, the cookies down, and I'm going to do what? I'm going to eat an apple. I'm going to eat an orange and a grapefruit. Okay? Why? Because I'm trying to get somewhere. And the only way I can get there, I have to be disciplined. I have the desire. See, passion works off of emotions. You have to understand that. Let me get my dictionary for you. What I had to do was, to be honest with you, I had to go to an old dictionary because I have the dictionary apps on my phone. But I wasn't satisfied with the definitions because as I went to the definition, it kept talking about passion and sex. It kept trying to link sex with passion or passion with sex. You know, so for anybody who's reading it, especially a young person, they would think passion is connected to sex. And I'm like, no, that's not correct. That's not correct. So I had to, you know, I have actually an old, I have old dictionaries. You know, I know a lot of people don't, but I have an old one to get the original definition. And let me read to you what the definition of passion is in this old dictionary. And it says passion, a strong, a strong desire, a, let me see, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It said my phone was ringing. Passion, a strong or intense feeling such as love, hate, or anger. A strong liking, desire, or enthusiasm. Tom has a passion for baseball. My question is, well, Tom has a passion for baseball, but does Tom continue to play baseball? If he does, that means he has a desire to get better at the game. Because maybe he has a desire to play major league baseball. The object of strong feelings, liking, desire again, or enthusiasm. Painting was the artist's only passion. Strong love between a man and a woman. An outburst of fit or of rage. Passion. The suffering of Jesus Christ following the last supper and ending with the crucifixion. The chapter in the gospel that tells of the sufferings. Now, you don't even see that in the dictionary app. They don't even talk about Jesus like that in the dictionary app. This is where you know you're in an old book because it actually puts the suffering as the passion. Suffering. As I read that, they kept putting desire in there. I disagree with it because I'm like, well, people don't desire suffering. They're not passionate for suffering. You have to have a desire for the suffering to get to where you want to. Let's go over desire in the dictionary. Desire to have a strong wish for long for crave to desire success. You have a craving to express a wish for request. He desired information about vacationing in the mountains. A longing wish, a desire for wealth. And express wish, request, something desired. His main desire was to have his own car. Now, when someone has a desire for something, that means they're willing to go through whatever they have to go through in order to get there. Okay? If someone has a desire to get a car, that means they're willing to work two jobs if they have to. That's not passion. That's not pleasurable. That's painful, but they have a desire to get to somewhere. So they know they have to do things that they may not want to do in order to get to that particular goal. You have billionaires and millionaires. They stay up, work 18, 20-hour days. Why? They have a desire to make sure they have enough means financially so they won't have to be dependent on someone when they get old. Right? That's what desire is. Desire is putting the effort into something that's going to be unpleasant and may not be fun. May not be fun. The one thing that kept popping up when it came to passion was feelings, feelings, feelings. Well, if you know anything about your emotions and your feelings, you know they go through ups and downs, ebbs and flows. Today I might be feeling you, but tomorrow I'm not. A desire is constant. Whether you feel good or you don't feel good, you're still going to do it. Why? Because you're trying to get somewhere. Right? It doesn't work off of emotions. Even though there's emotions attached to it still because you have an emotional connection to what you want to get to, but it's not ebbs and flows. It's straight. It's like a straight line. And so you don't deviate from that. You may even have to cut some people loose because you're trying to get somewhere. There's one gentleman, he's a millionaire, and he was like, I don't even own a TV. He hasn't owned a TV in 15 years. Why? Because he had a desire to get somewhere, and he knew the TV would be a distraction to him. You understand what I'm saying? So this is why I'm talking about the difference between desire and passion. Do you as a Christian have a desire to know your purpose and what God wants for you? Do you have a desire for that? Because if you do, you know you're in the scripture every single day. I jump out of my bed and I'm in my scripture. I want to be up under God. Why? Because I have a desire to know what he wants me to do for his kingdom. It's no longer about Norman Goodman. It's about his kingdom. And so that keeps me going. And in that way, it makes me excited emotionally to be next to him. Why? Because now I've made it a habit to get up and be up under him, and I don't take it for granted. You know, it's not habitual to the point that I'm just going through the motions. I'm sitting here like I want to be up under him. And so he'll drop these things in my spirit and say, talk about passion and desire. Right? You had a passion to get baptized. You had a passion to get to the starting line. But do you have a desire to take that first step, which is going to be faith? Right? So I wanted to talk about desire and passion a little bit this morning. And I wanted to just get you to think a little bit and ask yourself two questions. Do I have a desire for God? Or is it just a passion? Okay. Because you will start to fade. And now that's when the real work begins. Being a Christian is not in serving God and his son Jesus Christ is not for the faint of heart. It is work. It is discipline. You are crucifying the flesh every single day for his kingdom and for his purpose. Right? And at the end of the day, you're trying to bring other people to him for his kingdom. Are you willing to do that? You know, my brother Benny yesterday in Sunday school, he said, if we as Christians had the same desire and passion or desire as the enemy, we would be awesome. The enemy doesn't have a passion to destroy God's people. He doesn't have a desire to destroy God's people. If we had that same desire, we would be unstoppable. He wouldn't have anything. Brother Eldridge said we have to take back what the enemy has taken. We have to be bold to take back. We have to walk in environments and own the environment, own the ground that we walk on in the name of Jesus. That's what we have to do. We have to have the desire to take control of every space we enter in the name of Jesus. Okay? So we have to have that desire to do that. And guess what? You're going to run into people that is not going to like you because of that. But you're not looking to be liked. That's not your goal. Don't be afraid that somebody, that the enemy might get offended because people say, well, you offended me. You didn't offend them. You offended the enemy that was what? Influencing them. Ephesians 6.12. We don't fight against flesh and blood. We fight against what? Principalities. Okay? Dark spirits. So keep that in mind. You have to have a desire to make the enemy uncomfortable in your presence. Are you willing to do that as a Christian? So I just wanted to talk on that a little bit. You know, I got to give you a little prayer this morning because it is morning. All right? I will. And this is coming from Psalms 49.14. I will have dominion over the devil in the morning. Okay? That's Psalms 49.14. So I just wanted to share that. The Lord had put that on me this morning. I hope I didn't ramble on too much. But I'm just thinking about when I look at the world and I look at people like Tony Robinson, and he's supposed to be a motivational speaker, and whenever he has a seminar, people will pay gobs of money to sit in front of this man to hear him tell them that, try to give them motivation. I'm like, all you have to do is go to the Bible. If people put their energy and money into God's kingdom, you get what I'm saying? You know, but you got to have a desire to do that, to know what you have to do. So let me end this in a prayer. Okay? Dear Heavenly Father, give us a desire to serve you. Give us a desire to know your purpose for us, for your kingdom. Lord, I ask you to bless each and every one of us and give us the courage to step out on faith so we can get that grace, to step over that starting line, to step out into this world, to learn how to dodge that McDonald's and Burger King and eat the salads and eat the fruit, to be able to step over those mines that the enemy has set for us to keep us from doing your will for your kingdom. Give us the energy and the drive and the discernment. And, Lord, I thank you for the blessing. I thank you for what you are working on the other side for each and every one of us because you don't want to see anybody perish and go to hell. And we thank you for that. And, Lord, we love you and we thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen. I want everybody to have a blessed day. Go touch somebody, evangelize, and go get that milk, which is a word. So you can get to that meat. All right? Have a blessed day. Norman Goodman signing out.