Cucumbers, Passion, Panic, and Purpose (1 of 4)

A warning to gardeners. You can kill a cucumber plant with one erroneous act. A cucumber plant has one life-objective and that is to produce cucumber seeds. Its life purpose is reproducing its seed. A master gardener knows that the moment the plant produces a cucumber, and it begins to turn yellow, you must—I repeat—you must! pick that veggie. If that cucumber reaches maturity the plant will begin to die for it believes it has accomplished its purpose. When you pick that first growing cuke, the plant has a panic attack—“I’m going to fail my purpose!”  and will go into production mode—growing as many as possible. The plant’s purpose is in full attempt to reproduce.

I didn’t make that up. A professional gardener told that story with documentation.

Passion and purpose are central to life, physical health, and mental health. To abandon one’s purpose does ill to our deepest core. A mid-life crisis is ignited when a person begins to wonder if it has gotten too late to accomplish dreams or to do what is sensed to be the very reason they were placed on the earth.

I am going to work my way through Romans 12:1-2 with four pieces:

1. Your Body
2. Your Pattern
3. Your Mind
4. Your Self

These articles are not to refute all you’ve heard about Romans 12, but to share with you a teaching that applies to this season of our lives. It seems to me that this paragraph leads to two objectives: We are to do what is taught here that the Follower of Jesus will grow to maturity and that the will of God will be known—the Follower will be convinced and satisfied.

A friend asked a question in response to my last blog:

“Is being transformed an ongoing process towards what we are to become? Do we ever make it or is that the Perfection we will one day achieve?”

Transformation and “renewing your mind” in Romans 12:1-2 is do-able, reachable, and essential to mental health, learning and success. Again, renewal of the mind changes the brain and brings healing and homeostasis to the mind. We do not wait until reaching heaven for this. The resurrected body will have a mind that is always on the same page as God. It is this body of clay/dirt that can drift from eternal and heathy reality. It is not about perfection; it is about thinking from God’s perspective. Using another biblical phrase—We have the mind of Christ. Here. Now.

YOUR BODY—Living Sacrifice

“Give your body to God….” Romans 12:1 TLT

“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does tor you is the best thing you can do for Him” (

(Romans 12:1, Message).

This application of Apostle Paul’s instruction became real to me as I calculated Gen Z’s battle with anxiety and my own. Is paralyzing or tormenting anxiety, depression, burnout an example of a body being offered as a living sacrifice? It indeed could be seen as a contradiction.

Is anxiety, failure, viewing self as a victim or failure the will of God for any of His children? No! Regardless of how we learn the symptoms, whether from self-hatred, lack of sufficient nurturing or sufficient learning of essentials or abuse or abandonment it is not God’s will for us. God desires to heal the wounds or our personal neglect, so the Apostle tells us how to cooperate with The Healer: renew our minds: Build new mental habits, traits, and patterns.

An “offered body” is demonstrative. It shows what heart, mind and will are committed to. How we use our body as worship depends on our personal passion and purpose.

Dan Buettner talked to top scientists around the globe and then visited nations and communities where people live who have lived the longest. Buettner found several common traits, habits, patterns, and practices that connect to their long lives. These healthy regions are now called Blue Zones. Dan Buettner lists five lessons and one of them is…

“Okinawans call it ikigai, and Nicoyans call it plan de vida, but in both cultures the phrase essentially translates to ‘why I wake up in the morning.’ The strong sense of purpose possessed by older Okinawans may act as a buffer against stress and reduce their chances of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, and stroke.”

Dr. Robert Butler and collaborators researched highly functioning people between ages of 55-92 and found that those expressing a “clear goal in life—something to get up for in the morning, something that made a difference”—lived longer and were sharper than those who did not.

A friend has been listening to me preach for 4-5 decades about the value of a “vision” to which we give our commitment and energy. She responded to one of my newsletters to ask, “Is it enough for me to teach my grandchildren and teach them ways of the Lord?” I thought of her when I read this from Dan Buettner’s analysis:

“A sense of purpose may come from something as simple as seeing that children or grandchildren grow up well.” The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner, National Geographic, ©2012).

I’ve been thinking about Caleb who at 85 told Joshua he was as capable at 85 as he was at 40-45. (Joshua 15:12-14). One of my next books should be titled, “Value of a Geezer with a Vision.”

Caleb positively proved his point. The people in the Blue Zones do also. I’ve also been listening to those who teach high school and college. In my study of anxiety, stress, depression and giving up, there are scary studies about the impact of Covid lockdown: “The world is suffering from a trauma—many are afflicted by PTSD.” I believe God heals. To maintain that healing we find His plan to change thinking habits. Somewhere in the healing sequence is adopting of our innate passion and purpose—the passion and purpose residing at our core.

Perhaps a case can be made that “the patterns of this world” is the greatest threat to the health and well-being of the person at mid-life. We become vulnerable at any age when our path to life-fulfillment, therefore satisfaction, is blocked.

Victor Davis Hansen, Professor at Hoover Institute at Stanford, says that the past three years has stripped this culture of wisdom. (Knowledge gives us a grip on data, Wisdom is the gift, skill, ability to know how to effectively apply that knowledge.) With a lack of wisdom, the ability to maintain hope or solve problems at the family or government level is extremely thin. The natural response is depression, anxiety, stress, and burnout, and movement toward giving up.

Dr. Daniel Amen teaches “Change your brain, change your life.” He means it literally. Neuroplasticity describes the ability and the fact that the brain can be changed. In fact, it changes in response to your choices and thinking. To neglect or lose our purpose can lead to fraying of love, joy, peace.

“Having a sense of purpose in life may help you live longer…,” Daniel Amen. He asks, “What is important to you? What do you care deeply about? What makes your brain sing? Answering these questions can help your mood; they can also help you live a longer, fuller life.” (Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Page 131).

He says a person must care for his/her brain to do that. Commitment to God demands that we care for our brain and care for our mind. “It is just reasonable,” Apostle Paul says. Changing our brain—renewing of our mind—benefits us to “Conquer anxiety, depression, obsessiveness, lack of focus, anger and memory problems.”

The first step to renewing the mind is our commitment to God and invitation to Holy Spirit (Paraclete) to walk with us to succeed in renewal and mind transformation. The second step is to define our purpose.

Pastor Rick Warren says, “Write out your major goals and purpose.” He suggests we use the five essentials to guide us: Faith, Food, Fitness, Focus, Friends. Those frame our goals; I think our purpose answers why we are concerned about goals.

One of the most important books I have ever read is In Pursuit of Purpose by Myles Munroe.

“Purpose is the master of motivation and the mother of commitment. It is the source of enthusiasm and the womb of perseverance. Purpose gives birth to hope and instills the passion to act. (Destiny Image ©1992.)

We met a lady in western Texas who had moved there from Boston. She had left all her friends, vocation, and church. She drifted into depression. She was physically weak and psychologically weak. She began to fight back. She recalculated her gifts and rediscovered her passions. She determined to find people to interact with. She scheduled Tuesdays and Thursdays to call on the sick and those needing attention. When she transferred self-concentration to others she began to heal.

When our life-purpose is thwarted, our bodies and mind sense something is out of kilter. At any age, offering your body to God—in this life season—is imperative and reasonable. To grasp what Myles Munroe says is restorative and rejuvenating.

“God created you with a definite purpose in mind. Your existence is evidence that this generation needs something that your life contains. You are the creation that can meet God’s desired result.”

“We must ask the primary question—‘Why am I here?’—and reply with an unqualified answer—‘To be myself and to express myself fully.’” (Page 8)

“Presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice,” for our discussion here, is also agreement that God’s plan is best and one we choose to adopt and engage. Whatever the process.  With the intent of renewing my mind and managing disruptive, destructive negative emotions.

©2022 D. Dean Benton