What do you Love?  What do you Hate?

Orginally published on Monday, May 09, 2005 at 8:57 AM
by Todd Rhoades

David D. Ireland has a new book coming next week entitled Perfecting Your Purpose. In it, he discusses one way to begin to discover the exact purpose God has for you in your ministry. David writes…

"Google is one of the most powerful search engines on the web. If you surf to the website http://www.google.com and type in a word, this search engine looks through almost five billion web pages of information in moments to locate all of the sites that reference your subject.

Similarly, if you went to God's search engine to gather a greater understanding about His purpose for your life, I would encouarge you to perform two different searches back to back. First, you would type in the word love, and second, you would key in the word hate. These two powerful human emotions embody the keys to unlocking your purpose. Ezekiel discovered this principle because his hate for the moral bankruptcy of his people along with his undying love for the Lord moved him to lie on his left and right sides as a prophetic sign.

Ask yourself two vital questions: What do I love most? And what do I hate most? I am referring to your love or hate of items, processes, vocations, and the like, not people. Jesus made it quite clear that if we intend to follow His leadership and submit to His behavioral requirements, we have only one option of behavior toward people -- to love them.

1. What Do You Love the Most?
Have you given any thought to what you love to do? I love explaining things to people, and this love has manifested itself as a teaching gift. I enjoy debating about controversial or philosophical subjects that demand logical thinking and sharp communication skills. Hence, part of my life's purpose is to empower people who need a ready defense against intellectual bullies and false teachers bent on misleading people.

What do you love the most? Don't overlook the significance of your answer because it may contain the direction that you have been waiting for. Use this question as a self-discovery tool to guide you to your purpose.

2. What Do You Have the Most?
It often seems much easier to see the value of love than the value of hate. I suspect the reason is that people seek love and run from hate. In fact, in its most general form the word love occurs 310 times in the King James Version of the Bible. The word hate, on the other hand appears 87 times. Despite its fewer times mentioned in the Scriptures, hate offers a service that you should not underestimate or ignore. Human beings, particularly Christians, just hate to think that there could be any value in hating something. Nevertheless, hate has its benefits.

Ask yourself: What do I hate most? Then zero in on hate from two perspectives. First, think of the things that trouble you -- the things that you avoid. For example, I just hate wasting time, so I keep my distance from and minimize my involvement with people who like to waste time. This aspect of hate is not an indicator of purpose. Second, think of the things that you hate so much that you're always thinking of ways to fix or solve the problems that they present.

I hate chaos and confusion in people's lifes. Seeing projects or organizational systems of any size in disarray irritates me. But over the years I noticed that I was constantly being drawn into situations involving these areas. After a time of introspection and after receiving positive feedback following many of my restructuring tasks, I discovered that I have a gift of administration and organization. The very antithesis of the things I hate -- chaos and disorder -- is the area where one of my strongest gifts lies."

Do an analysis this morning... what is it that you really love to do and the things you really hate doing? It could help you define exactly where and how God wants you to serve in the future!"

FOR DISCUSSION: What do you love the most? What do you hate the most? Which of these things recharge your emotions? Which ones drain you? Does determining the things you hate help you at all in discovering your life's purpose?

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.

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