The cycle of defeat.

A few days ago I was chatting to a friend on the phone. I have noticed a pattern in my friend's life, she seems to go through a massive amount of the roller coaster of defeat, a lot. She prays for something, she's challenged by something and then she's defeated before victory has even had the chance to arrive.

It's a cycle. Over and Over and Over.

But, I've also noticed that this seems to be true in many women's lives...including my own.

Last night I was in the midst of preparing for a speaking event coming up. While I am very excited about this event, I have to be totally honest for a second. I prayed for opportunities to come, the opportunity came and I haven't even fulfilled the opportunity and I feel...defeated.

How can you even feel defeated without even attempting something?

The desire to serve God is definitely there but the passion for this particular situation has not come. And sometimes I think if there's no passion...then how can we fulfill the desire of God's heart in this situation.

Perhaps I should explain that this event is something that is a way stretch for me. Something that makes me shake in my pants because I am so terrified. Not because it's some huge opportunity or anything that brings me any kind of glory...hear me say that. But because it's such a raw place in my soul that sometimes I cry just thinking about going back to that place. There's no desire to uproot those painful experiences that I went through.

So I posed a question to God last night and my facebook friends. {wink} I asked this question: Can He fill us with a passion for something we have no desire for? Or does God make us passionate about the things we desire?

I received a lot of great comments and appreciated every one's insight. One of which I'd like to share with you:

I think God's desire for us is much more about personal holiness instead of really specific "to-do's." He is far less worried about the job we do for Him and much more worried about who we become by getting to know Him. The rest seems to fall in place. I have stopped saying, "God,I want to do this" or "God, let me do this" and have started saying, "God I will serve you no matter where I land or where circumstances take me." Then we release the control over just where that might be. Our ideas would pale in comparison to what He has in mind, anyway.

This morning I crawled into the Father's arms and opened up the living word. And He spoke those very same words from my friend who wrote them in a modern day way. I was reading in the book of Luke through a passage of scripture I've read a million times. Luke 13, The Narrow Door.

Typically we use this passage of scripture to share with an un-believer how hard it is to know and accept the truth of God. But today it spoke to me in a whole new way.

"Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you will try to enter and not be able to." (v24)

Loyalty. What will we do with the narrow doors that come our way in this life of ours?

My footnotes said something that really struck me: There were only a few followers that were loyal.

It would be super easy to write this event off as just something I'm not passionate about. I think a lot of Christians use that line. In fact, with my phone call with my friend that day I heard that same tone, "I'm just over this."

But God doesn't call us to be "over" anything that He challenges us in this life with. He doesn't call us to be quitters, He calls us to be perseveres. So take heart today and know that thing that makes you and I shake in your pants and you have no desire for, is probably the area that God needs to use us the most in right now.

Be one of the few. The loyal. The passion to be obedient will see us through to the desire of what door He has set before us.