For example, take David: the “man after God’s heart”. Despite everything wrong that David did in his life: murder, adultery, lying, stealing, God still described Him as a man after His heart.

Have you ever stopped to think about what that means?

To me, this doesn’t mean David was someone who HAD God’s heart (where the word after means followed), but it means he was someone who WANTED God’s heart (where the word after means chased). David was a man who chased after the heart of God - someone who wanted the things God wanted, who asked for the things God wanted, in short he was passionate for God and the things of God.

And because of this, God built His redemption plan around David. Get that? David’s passion for God turned God’s heart towards him so much that He built the salvation of the entire cosmos around him.

That is the power of passion.

And if passion can catch God’s attention, isn’t it something we should be asking for? Isn’t it something we should be longing for?

A while ago I tried to make it my conscious prayer to ask for more of God. So that meant every time I caught myself thinking about anything, I would use the chance to ask Him for more of Him. Every time I found myself at a loose end, or in between tasks, I would ask for more of Him. As I started to pray that, I found myself becoming more passionate. The more I asked for God, the more I wanted Him. It didn’t happen overnight, and its still going on, but by simply asking for God I found myself wanting more and more of Him, I found myself becoming more and more passionate about Him.

But passion by itself can be misguided. It needs to be directed to the right place. We need to be passionate for the right things.

A while, ago I sounded out the idea of a mission statement for the church. At the time, it was a way of directing my passion to the right place. Of giving me something to pray towards, of something to expect. I ended up with this: the purpose of the church is:

“To defeat sin and death, and liberate the whole cosmos”.

I’ve found lots of new ways of expressing this in the last few months, but the core of it still remains - I want God to come and liberate the cosmos, starting with the place where I find myself, here in Ireland, in 2011, specifically in Belfast. I want Him to bring life in all its fulness, I want Him to overcome the works of the enemy in our land, I want His love, grace and mercy to flow out and bring a harvest of people into His family. I want the sick to be healed, demons to be cast out, the dead to rise and signs and wonders to happen all around us. I want places of poverty and dejection to become places of joy and hope and belief. I want the fulness of His Kingdom to come here and now.

LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy. - Habakkuk 3:2

My purpose is that God moves here and now. Not in some distant past. Not in some time to come. Here and now. In this day, among this people, using people like you and me to make it happen. And you know what - that is not just my purpose, its our purpose, it is our destiny.

And because of the rising passion inside me, its easy to pray that this purpose will happen. In fact, I need to pray. I want want to see things change, no I need to see things change. I’m no longer satisfied with the status quo. Its not good enough any more.

It seems when our passion aligns itself with God’s purpose, the hope of seeing His Kingdom come to earth grows.

But passion and purpose alone are still not enough, there is one missing ingredient that we need - habit.

Call it rhythm, call it discipline, call it whatever you want, but we need to get in the habit of being in God’s presence. We need to get comfortable being with Him, and we need to get used to hearing Him speak. We need to get past the discomfort of wondering how to respond to Him, and become perfectly at peace being with Him and surrounded by Him.

You see - His presence changes us and changes our circumstances.

God’s like that. Just being around Him makes us better humans. So we need to make a habit out of being around Him, we need to make it a regular milestone in our lives. And I’m not talking about just singing a couple of worship songs and ticking the box, I’m taking about really pressing into Him, really seeking Him and not relenting until we find Him.

We need more of His presence.

We need meeting with Him to become a habit, not a freak occurrence.

The world needs us to meet with Him, so that we can reflect Him better to the world.

We need to petition Him day and night to come and show us His glory, to come and move in His power.

We need to show Him that we are desperate and hopeless without Him.