STOP! Evaluate Your Impulses

Passion is defined as a strong fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for something special. You can see how passion can center on either righteous or evil objectives. Passion has the ability to create emotions for motivating a person to possess what is thought to be absolutely essential for happiness.

Passion eventually reveals strengths and weaknesses, which define character and beliefs. In the book of Judges, Samson had trouble distinguishing between following what God approved of and satisfying his own desires. When an impulse or desire became conscious, he acted with little thought of healthy boundaries.

  

The Lord God cautions us to evaluate an impulse before acting on it. “Do not be as children tossed about by every wind and doctrine,” and “Add goodness and knowledge to your faith. To these add self-control and endurance.” Evaluating impulses requires patience, but God through the power of the Holy Spirit will give self-control and patience to those who earnestly seek these boundary markers.  

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Make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge; and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with [Christian] affection, and [Christian] affection with love for everyone.

~2 Peter 1:5-7 New Living Translation