It is 1:14 a.m. in a hostel room at the University of Ibadan, and Teni is still awake.
She is nineteen, in her second year of pharmacy, and she came to university on fire. In secondary school she was the girl who read the leaflet inside every medicine box. She told anyone who would listen that she would own a chain of pharmacies one day, clean ones, honest ones, where nobody would ever be sold a fake drug. Her mother sold pepper and tomatoes at Bodija market to pay her fees, and Teni carried that knowledge like a coal in her chest.
Tonight the coal is cold. Her pharmacology notes lie open beside her, untouched for two hours. Her thumb has been moving the whole time. A course mate is posting from a summer internship in Lagos. Another is announcing a scholarship to Canada. A girl from her secondary school, who never once read a medicine leaflet, is standing beside a new car with the caption “God did.” Each post is a small stone dropped into Teni’s spirit. By the time she puts the phone down she does not feel like a future pharmacist. She feels late, small and ordinary.
Nothing about Teni’s ability changed between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Her brain is the same brain that topped her class. What changed was her passion, and without passion, expectation cannot move.
What Passion Is
Passion is what creates the drive to pursue any expectation. The German philosopher Georg Hegel put it this way: “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” (The first edition of this book credited that line to Heidegger. Hegel said it, and I am glad to set the record straight.)
Passion is a powerful and compelling emotion. In the first edition I wrote that passion cannot be lost, because you cannot lose your feelings. I would put it more carefully now. Passion can be buried, starved, drowned out or stolen for a night, as Teni’s was. But it is rarely gone. It is usually lying under something, waiting to be uncovered.
Every expectation needs two kinds of power before it can be fulfilled: intentional power and potential power.
Intentional power is the will. It is the decision that you want this thing and mean to have it. When you set an expectation, you set it with the intention of seeing it fulfilled.
Potential power is the capacity. It is the ability, the gifts, the resources, the strength and the opportunity to carry the expectation through.
When intention meets potential, passion is born. It becomes the engine that turns an expectation into a result.
Intentional Power + Potential Power = Passion
Scripture puts both powers in God’s hands. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). To will is intention. To do is potential. God works in us to create the desire, and He releases the power to act on it. The good pleasure that results is a fulfilled expectation.
This is why a lack of passion always has one of two causes. Either the intention is missing, or the potential is missing. Some people have enormous ability and no real intention; they drift through gifts they never use. Others have fierce intention and no realistic potential yet; they burn hot and quickly burn out. Teni has both. Her intention is clear and her potential is proven. What she has lost, at 1 a.m., is her connection to them.
There is one more distinction worth making. Being passive is not the same as lacking passion. Some expectations require you to be still. A farmer who has planted and watered must wait for the harvest; standing in the field shouting at the seed will not speed it up. A patient recovering from surgery must rest. A believer who has prayed must sometimes simply trust. Stillness that comes from faith is full of passion. Stillness that comes from giving up is empty. The two can look the same from outside. Only you know which one you are in.
The Earnest Expectation
Paul wrote from a prison cell: “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death” (Philippians 1:20).
Notice the word earnest. Paul’s expectation was not casual. He did not hope that things might work out. He was serious, fully committed and unembarrassed about what he wanted. That is passion.
What has changed since the first edition
When I wrote the first edition, the main thieves of passion were the old ones: fatigue, disappointment, discouraging people and sin. All of those are still with us. But this season has added a new one, and it lives in your pocket.
The phone has made comparison constant. In earlier generations you compared yourself with the people in your street, your church and your class. Now you compare yourself with the best moments of thousands of people, chosen and filtered and posted at the exact hour you are most tired. Nobody posts the night they cried over a failed test. Nobody posts the overdraft. You are measuring your ordinary Tuesday against everybody else’s highlight.
Keeping the Fire Lit
Here are ways to keep your passion alive, revised from the first edition for this season.
- Dare to be yourself. When you try to become a copy of someone you saw online, you take on a shape that does not fit you. Be original. God did not make a spare of anyone.
- Do something daring and rewarding. Take a class you are afraid of. Speak at the meeting. Plan the trip. Make a list of the good things that happened to you in the last six months and read it aloud.
- Invest in your closest relationships. If you are married, keep romance alive with your husband or wife. Passion in one area of life feeds passion in the others.
- Pray first. Where everything else fails, prayer works. Begin the day by giving your intentions back to God.
- Fast often. Fasting is not only from food. Try a fast from the apps that drain you, for a day or a week, and see what returns.
- Read the Word of God and other uplifting books. What you feed your mind becomes what you expect.
- Listen to uplifting music. Worship changes the atmosphere of a room and of a heart.
- Care for your mental health. Sleep, move your body, talk to people who love you, and get professional help when you need it.
- Dwell on the positive. This is not denial. It is choosing which true things you will think about longest.
Dig this week
- Write three sentences on why your expectation matters to you, and put them where you will see them first thing each morning.
- If I reach for my phone after 10 p.m., then I will put it in another room and read my three sentences instead.
- Make room as if it is coming: do one thing your future self will need when the expectation is fulfilled. Buy the folder, register the name, clear the shelf.
Questions to ponder
- What first made you want the thing you are expecting? Write the story in a few sentences.
- Which is weaker in you right now, your intention or your potential? How do you know?
- Whose online life do you compare yourself with most? What does that comparison cost you?
- List two things that frustrated you in the last six months, and how you coped with each.
- Are you in a season of faithful stillness or a season of giving up? Be honest.
More questions for small groups are in the book.
Lord, You work in me both to will and to do. Rekindle the fire You placed in me, and give me the strength to carry what You have asked me to expect.
How ready are you for what you are expecting?
Score yourself on all eleven elements in about two minutes. You will see where to dig first.