When your spirit leaves….
“When your spirit leaves, take your body with it!”—How do you know when it is time to go, to leave, to transition, to find a new place of passion? Simple…when your passion leaves, examine why and if you can’t replenish it, leave, and go somewhere that you can be passionate again. We all go through seasons in life and like seasons in nature—all seasons end, and new seasons begin. This happens in our spiritual lives, our careers, our……. Most of the time our spirit leaves, and we hang on trying to resuscitate it and only end up more defeated, more frustrated, and emptier! This affects everything we touch, only sucking the spirit out of those around us. Realize, YOU ARE A LEADER! So those that you lead might know before you do or maybe you are like me and can hide stuff pretty well (at least for a while). People can still see and feel it even though they may not be able to put their finger on it. A passionate spirit can’t be faked for long.
They may not know, but they KNOW. And even worse—you do! Life is too short to work and live without passion. “When your spirit leaves, take your body with it!” I know you are just like me and have excuses in your mind right now. “Well, my passion has just changed!” Really? “You can’t be as passionate in your 40s as you can in your 20s”. Really? “But I have served my time and been here 10 years, 20 years, etc.! I have other people who are passionate for me!” (We don’t say that, but it’s how we are operating). What happened? Your spirit and your passion are left!
When your spirit and passion leave, we move to being managers or bosses, not leaders. Manages and bosses prod from behind to motivate people. Get going! Hurry up! Leaders are in front pulling people forward cutting the path for everyone to follow in. Let’s go! You can’t believe what is up here, come on! That takes passion and spirit. Managers manage! Bosses boss! Leaders lead! But where there is no passion, there is no purpose! “When your spirit leaves, take your body with it!”
Do yourself and the company you have worked for over the past 15 years a favor and leave if your spirit and passion is gone. I know you show up and even work hard, but it’s not your passion. You are reliable, but it’s not where you want to be. “You don’t understand, we are a sanitation company! What is there to be passionate about?” If your company didn’t exist, imagine how much trash or filth might exist in your area, driving down property values. What you do matters!
Maybe the church you have been at for over a decade has changed, has grown, and it feels different. You are frustrated but you attend, but you no longer LOVE IT! What if I told you that you might be the reason the church is not growing? (at least one of them) You are not actively and passionately engaged (which is contagious to those you influence and lead), but reluctantly just taking up a seat and hoping it miraculously will be something you want it to be. Oh, sure you sing and stand and sit when told, but you are longing for something else. Don’t feel guilty to leave. I know it’s personal, but so is your misery and a defeated spirit. Chase that passion and find where God is moving and join Him there! It’s Ok!
The bottom line is life is too short to stay in places you don’t have a passion for because you don’t have anywhere better to go, or this is what you have always done! Please hear me. Examine your passion and your purpose and if it is just a season of drought then do the things you need to do to get the passion to grow again. But if it is dead then you can try to resuscitate it as much as you want, but eventually, you are just going to get more tired, run out of air, and look stupid trying to bring a corpse to life.