loveisgreaterthan[dot]com

So, if you haven’t noticed in recent postings, my heart has been wrecked lately by all these questions I’m wrestling with. Thoughts about my own selfishness, greed, passion, and impact. Reading C.S. Lewis‘ “Mere Christianity” has only served to thrust these things even more into sight, so much so that I have no choice but to address them now.

I feel like making some radical and dramatic changes. I feel God telling me to make some pretty crazy moves in my life, things that a lot of people probably won’t understand.

I’ve already blogged about selfishness and greed, so lets get to passion. Last week at the Leadership Summit, Marcus Buckingham spoke about utilizing our strengths. In his talk, he mentioned that “strengths are not what you’re good at, but rather what makes you feel good, or ‘filled up.’” Ever since then I have been analyzing my life and thinking long and hard about those things which I am passionate about, and I have it narrowed down to five things that really invigorate me, the things that I could do for the rest of my life and nobody would have to pay me for.

1. My wife and family.
2. Video Production
3. Photography
4. Writing
5. Being a leader

The next question I get to then is; what in my life is keeping me from doing these things? What is it in my life that I am spending time on and getting very little joy out of? Obviously the daily things that must be done (house work comes to mind) don’t count… but what are the non-essential things I’m spending my time on that could be better spent somewhere else? These questions, along with a post I made yesterday about being more “me for you” has led me to a few radical conclusions;

1. The HDTV is moving to a closet
2. Cable is getting lowered to the lowest version that still provides Discovery
3. The PS3 is moving to a closet
4. The home theater system is moving to a closet.

Call me what you will, but I’m not ready yet to commit to getting rid of these things for good. I don’t want to look back a month from now and say “wow, what I thought was God moving in my heart was just some bad seafood.” Instead, I’m going to take Mark’s advice, and just put them out of sight and mind for a month, and see if it is still something I’m feeling called to get rid of.

In the future, I plan on basing most, if not all decisions I make on a number of criteria…

1. Will this create more space between me and God, or bring us closer together, or neither?
2. Will this create more space between me and my wife, or bring us closer together, or neither?
3. Will this contribute to what I am passionate about, or take away from it?
4. Is this a “me for me” decision, or a “me for you” decision?

These qualifiers I think have every right to be thought of before a big purchase, or any major decision. For example, lets say a month from now I decide to sell all the things I’ve moved to the closet, and for this stories sake, make $1,200. I decide that I want to purchase that Nikon D80 I’ve been salivating over… well, now I apply above-mentioned criteria:

1. A nice DSLR (should) bring me closer to God, if utilized properly and not idolized.
2. A nice DSLR should NOT come between Ryanne and I… but it probably won’t bring us closer together either.
3. A nice DSLR will DEFINITELY contribute to what I am passionate about
4. A nice DSLR is probably somewhere in the middle of living “me for me” or “me for you.” Of course I’m not completely altruistic about photography, but I’d love to be able to show some of God’s glory through it.

Based on this, I would say that a Nikon D80 would be a good purchase.

Believe me, I’m not trying to justify anything. More than anything I just want to live a more simple and passion-driven life. I want to subtract all the things that are keeping me away from what I am most passionate about. I think we as a humanity could probably all benefit from spending more time on our strengths.

What are you passionate about?