Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
For the past several weeks, the idea of being passionate about God has been on mind. One Sunday after service, someone commented to me that they liked my passion. This caught me off guard because I don't see myself as being passionate; I view myself as more of a laid back person who does not want to draw attention to myself. When I think of passionate people, I think of sports fans: people who buy season tickets and wear jerseys with the names of their favorite players, who wear crazy wigs and paint their faces with color of their favorite team as they cheer them to victory and commiserate with them in defeat.
It is true that passionate people are like sports fans. The dictionary defines passion as a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something. But to you don't have to act like a fanatic to be passionate.
Generally speaking, to be passionate about something includes an experience with the thing that makes you zealous. There are several people recorded in the Bible who came to Jesus because they were at the end of their rope. Each time, the people who sought him became passionate disciples. One particular account is in Luke 8:26-39: the man who was possessed by a legion of demons. This man was tormented for years, and he terrorized the community around him. But when Jesus came and cast the demons out of him, he begged to go with Jesus, because he had been set free from a hellish life. Instead of following Jesus as a disciple, he was sent into the surrounding area to declare what Jesus had done for him. The result? He became passionate for God.
However, there is possibility of confusing being excited for Jesus with being passionate for him. The Bible also records that people came to Jesus in droves. Matthew 4:23-25 states that Jesus' fame spread throughout all of Galilee because of the miraculous things he did as he proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. But the Bible also records that when Jesus began teaching what it meant to be his disciples (John 6:25-66)—that it wouldn’t be all wine and roses, as they say--people began to leave him.
So why should we be concerned about being passionate for Christ? In one word, mercy. Romans 12:1 says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." The word mercy isn't a common word in our vocabulary these days, but it should be. Mercy is compassion, and God has been abundantly compassionate towards us. Some acknowledge it, like the man in Luke 8 who chose to live for God. Still others take advantage of his mercies, and when he asks them to do hard things they balk and walk away. To state it simply, to be passionate about God is to worship him with your life, and when we live for him, we tell the world what matters most.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Jeff
