How do you evaluate or measure potential? To be clear, I am referring to the potential of circumstances, opportunities, and experiences - specifically the experiences we may tend to run from in our lives within the arena of thought concerning how to discern when it is time to quit or persist in seasons of adversity. In this video, we are going to discuss two perspectives in addressing the question of measuring potential. Let’s get started.

Welcome back to The Passion With Purpose Show where I empower you to take your life and leadership to the next level by exploring the intersections of life, leadership, and organizational behavior with applied philosophy, psychology, and theology. I’m your host Steven Mezzacappa, an author, and the founder and owner of The Passion With Purpose Organization which provides leadership coaching and consulting services. I am delighted to have you with me today. I appreciate your time and I hope this content proves encouraging to you! To further thank you for being here, I would like to give you several chapters from my book for free. Just go to passionwithpurpose.org/fulfillment to get access or click the link below in the description or comments. If you are listening on apple podcast or spotify, don’t forget to hit follow. And if you are watching right here on YouTube, don’t forget to subscribe! 

It is Holy Week here in 2024 at the publication of this episode and I have been reflecting on the passion of Christ. This is a solemn week for Christians as we reflect on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. A focus by many believers and unbelievers is especially on the suffering Christ endured during His crucifixion. Because we can visually imagine Christ’s suffering, we may be quick to understand the physical suffering He endured, but slow to recognize or contemplate the suffering He endured within His soul - the suffering within his thoughts, emotions, and will. To better comprehend the anguish Christ endured, we need to turn a few pages back in the passion narrative that details the Eve before Christ’s crucifixion.

Reflecting on what lied ahead, Jesus went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane and the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, & Luke account for Jesus feeling greatly sorrowful, troubled, and distressed to “the point of death” (Matt. 26:37-38; Mark 14:33-34) and Jesus Himself said, “Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Matt. 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42) The Gospel of Luke goes on to say, “being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Luke 22:44; note: many early manuscripts do not have this verse.)

Take a step back from these readings for a moment and I want you to ask yourself if you have ever felt similar to how Jesus felt in the moments leading up to his crucifixion? 

Have you ever felt betrayed? Have you ever felt completely alone in your struggles and misunderstood? Have you ever felt isolated, abandoned, and forsaken? Have you ever felt anxiety and depression to the point of despair?

I know I have… Life can be absolutely brutal and unfair and I’ve had to learn this the hard way in my own life. I’ve never really talked vocally or publicly about this, other than in my book, and even in my book, I don’t go into every detail. To elaborate more, and while quickly summarizing, I did all the right things growing up. I worked extremely hard academically and in sports, earning scholar-athlete status. I avoided peer pressure throughout high school and college, and did not engage in the party culture for the majority of college, as I waited until I was 21 to drink. Throughout all of this though, I still battled through anxiety throughout my adolescent, teenage, and young adult years, and this all came to a complete head during my final 5th year of college.

I was in a specialized 5-year engineering program in Architectural Engineering and throughout college I always envisioned that my 5th year would be a “victory lap”, especially as I experienced success throughout college and had the opportunity to experience life-changing experiences. And by the time my 5th year of college rolled around, I truly had everything I could have wanted. A full-time job lined up with my dream company upon graduation, I was just recently recognized as the country’s New Face of Civil Engineering, and I had a wonderful network of friends and peers. I was ready to soak it all in during my last year of college, but unfortunately the only thing I soaked in during that year was grief, anguish, and confusion… fueled by a volcanic eruption of anxiety and depression. At that point, I didn’t think I deserved it. I always thought to myself, “I did all the right things. I lived virtuously and with character. I always sought to love people and help others… How could I be dealing with this right now? Why am I struggling? Why am I absolutely lost, confused, and hurting like this? Why me? 

Have you ever felt that way? Look, there are going to come times in our lives, and in some cases, many times maybe in fact, where we experience sorrow or loss in life that we think we do not deserve. It took me a long long time to reconcile with what I perceived at the time as a loss of a year and the few years that followed. Whenever we find ourselves in these circumstances however, we need to put on a different pair of glasses and evaluate the circumstances differently. 

There’s two sets of glasses you can put on in these situations. The glasses of pleasure or the glasses of purpose. The glasses of pleasure will urge us to cry out, “why me? I don’t deserve this?” After all, this is only a human response and it’s a warranted response. Perhaps this reflects the humanity of Jesus when He too cried out, feeling forsaken, and asking the Lord that the cup of His looming suffering be taken from Him, so that He may be spared from the emotional and physical suffering of the crucifixion. Look, I am in no way trying to guilt anyone currently experiencing a situation similar to the one I expressed earlier. You have every right to be angry, hurt, and confused. You have every right to grieve it, to experience the adversity of your situation. What you do next; however… This is what’s important. Do you keep on the glasses of pleasure, making life all about you and your circumstances, and stay stuck in despair, taking on the role of victimhood? Or do you cast off these glasses of pleasure, and put on the glasses of purpose and see your situation through a different lens that empowers you to lean into the divinity and divine purpose of your situation?

When Jesus predicted His death earlier in the Passion Narrative, He is recounted in the Gospel of John as saying, “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27-28)

Reflect on the conviction and fearlessness expressed by Christ here. “It was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”

Now compare these words of Jesus to His words mentioned earlier, “Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me…”

In one quote we see Christ’s humanity and in the other quote we see His divinity. In other words, in one quote we see the temptation of Christ being drawn into a pleasure temptation to flee from suffering while in another quote we see Christ’s boldness, fearlessness, and ability to recognize the divine purpose of his situation. 

Look… it is normal to encounter divinely appointed pain with limited human perspective. Our human nature and biology requires it to process pain… but what we do next with it matters! Do we lean further into our humanity or do we seek out the Lord? Look at what Christ said after he expressed, “Take this cup from me.” His very next words were, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” In these words, Christ set a model for us on how we can divinely look at our circumstances through a lens of faith… a lens of hope… a lens of love… in an appeal to divinity. To be clear, I am not saying we are a god in our own right - absolutely not. But what I will say is that the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is the same Spirit dwelling within you, Christian (Romans 8:11).

Dear friend, I am not going to attempt to claim that I understand suffering you have endured before, or are presently enduring. I can only say that I myself have been in several seasons where hope was a dim glimmer, but by God’s goodness and divine mercy, He made it clear that my suffering had a purpose… That my passion had a purpose now and will continue to have a purpose.

You see, God knows your suffering better than anyone else. Seek him in your struggles and let Him reveal to you the divine purpose of your struggles. There is so much potential for the passion within you. 

While embracing your struggles, put yourself in the passion narrative, relate to Christ, and reflect further on the humanity of Christ - not just His physical suffering, but the suffering He endured within His soul to provide us with a path to liberate our own souls from this broken and painful world. 

Each day our soul wages a war between pleasure and purpose. By willfully choosing purpose over pleasure, Christ ushered in grace, mercy and salvation for all. 

Dear friend, even when the path of purpose before you is filled with pain, take up your cross and remember that all pain has a purpose - for you and for the countless others that you touch. The world needs you. The world needs your passion. And wherever this video finds you, be empowered by the fact that God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be bold and be fearless on your journey of purpose. (2 Timothy 1:7)

If this video resonated with you then I highly encourage you to go grab Part One of my book right now for free by visiting passionwithpurpose.org/fulfillment. I have a whole chapter dedicated to the question of Why do we Struggle and much much more. Go check it out! And God bless you my friend!

References: Bible Verses in Order of Usage

Matt. 26:37-38; Mark 14:33-34

Matt. 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42

Luke 22:44; note: many early manuscripts do not have this verse.

John 12:27-28

Romans 8:11

2 Timothy 1:7