Last week we identified one of the great needs of mankind, passion. We could see that the Enemy of our soul would want us to be apathetic, because this is the one thing God can’t stand, as we learned last week. A life that is passionately worldly will find the emptiness and meaninglessness of that kind of existence and be challenged to find real meaning. It is the apathetic life that does nothing and goes nowhere that is most disastrous for any culture. It silently draws multitudes who march towards oblivion without God. How do we find passion that will motivate our life to rise above this mediocrity to make a difference for the Kingdom of God? How do we find a vision of what God really intends for our life? First you have to have the desire to rise above mediocrity. It’s like an athlete that has great natural ability, but does not have the passion for the game and thereby falls into being just so-so. It takes a continuous effort and intense desire on your part rise out of apathy. We see passion in the life of Jesus. He resolutely set out to go to the cross because of His passionate love for you. Jesus’ whole ministry was focused on the time in which He would pay the price for our sins. Though He did not have a sin nature, He was tempted in every way that you and I are. We would readily point to the fact that He is God and therefore excuse the indifference in our lives. But the fact is, He was all man, even though He is all God. He woke up tired and sore just like you and I do. He had to find passion to live only for His Father just like you and I do. So where did He get it? The Scripture doesn’t tell us specifically, but it draws some strong inferences. Allow me to speculate just a bit on where the LORD found His intense passion to live only in obedience to the Father. He knew the Word. As a boy he must have studied with all the other children at the local synagogue. He memorized passages from the Scriptures in Hebrew. Most of the children would memorize the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses, and many of the psalms. We can assume that Jesus did also because He often quotes from them. Though Jesus memorized those verses, that alone did not make the difference. The difference was Jesus’ application of what He memorized to His life. It wasn’t just letters and rules in a book. To Jesus, the Law was a light for His path. It showed Him what to say, how to act, and how to interpret His circumstances. He allowed it to be such a guide to His life that when Satan came to tempt Him, He immediately turns to Scripture to answer. It wasn’t a rulebook but a guide for Spirit filled living, revealing the heart of God.
Is that how you see Scripture? We must be honest about our attitudes toward the Word or they will never change for the better. Is the Word really the final say, the authority that reveals the will of a loving God? If the answer is yes, then we should turn to it every moment of our life. If we aren’t doing so, we need to consider what our real attitude is. Sadly, many of us see it as the back-up manual for when things go wrong, or worse yet, a resource to back their opinion. It should be the source of your opinion. If you will give it the place of authority it should have, it will speak to your daily circumstances. The Word was alive to Jesus. He interacted with it continually. That interaction will help kindle the flame. As we read the Gospels we find that this was not the only thing that stoked Jesus’ fire. He would rise every morning before dawn and spend time with His Father. (Mark 1:35) says “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Prayer was the place where Jesus communed with God, hearing His instructions for the day or the decisions that lay before Him. Before He chose the disciples he spent all night in prayer. (Luke 6:12) says “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.” When faced with His betrayal and the cross, He spent His last free hours in prayer with His Father. To Jesus, prayer was the source of direction and comfort. It was where He connected with all wisdom and strength. His Father kindled a fire of purpose and vision there in that secret place. No threat in this life could extinguish it. He did what the Apostle Paul instructs us to do in (Colossians 4:2). Devote yourselves to prayer… There is at least one more thing that stoked His fire. As He walked in obedience to the Father, He exercised the gifts the Father had given Him. The Apostle Paul told Timothy in (2 Timothy 1:6-7) “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” That takes some work. The picture in these words is to use (what is that thing called) bellows. God will put the spark in us through prayer and His word. Then we have to do something about it. We have to make the effort to stoke it, force air over it, until it ignites into a flame. If it should die down, we need to throw on more fuel of the Word, either written or spoken to us in prayer. Then we stoke it some more. Passionate people make the effort to fan into a flame the gift that God has given them. Is this what is happening to you?
When Jesus had taught His disciples how to evangelize and they returned with testimonies of victory, it sure sounds like His fire was stoked. “I saw Satan falling like lightening from heaven.” Says (Luke 10:18). When the sick were healed and the dead raised, when a man’s sins were forgiven and people saw the light, you know the fire burned in Jesus. In Jesus’ life we see the Word in His mind and heart, prayer that kept Him in communion with God, and the exercise of His gifts kept His fire burning. It will do the same for you! Jesus’ glorified appearance is like fire. Consider this vision Ezekiel had of the Lord. (Ezek 1:27) says “I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him”. The burning bush that Moses saw was a picture of Christ, the physical on fire but not consumed. Get close to Him and you’ll catch on fire too! Let Him change you into His image – full of passion! I think there is a spiritual picture of doing God’s work man’s way. We can get a natural kind of emotion and excitement that is very similar to this strange fire. You see men that rant and yell, parade around the pulpit or stage and yet you a sense very little of the anointing of God. They have fire, just not the fire of God. Two days later you’ve forgotten what all the hype was about. Passion is not about volume or gestures or expressions. It’s about a passionate heart for God. Jonathan Edward’s (whom you know I am related to) was one of the pastors of the Great Awakening. History tells us He was nearsighted and had to keep his face about ten inches away from his sermon to read it (that’s why I use big print) . But He had a holy fire. People clung white-knuckled to the pews for fear of falling into hell. It is not about an outward expression but it often manifests itself outwardly. The issue is really what is happening in the heart. God’s fire is a work of God, not of man, though man must cooperate and work with Him. Let me tell you a few stories of some men that made the effort to fan the fire of passion into a flame. John Welsh (the Scottish 17th century preacher) kept a coat by his bedside at night. When the Lord would awaken him he’d drop to his knees, throwing his coat around him, and begin praying. His wife would often say to him, “Honey, you better get your rest. You’ve got work a full day of work to do tomorrow.” He’d answer, “Dear, I have many souls in my charge and I do not know how it is with them.” While on his knees before God the fire burned within him. John Wesley was a passionate man. Several times he told his secret. “I just set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.” What fueled the flames in John Wesley? He spent 2 hours every morning with His God. Benjamin Franklin confessed that he often went to hear his close friend, George Whitefield (founder of Methodism) preach just to watch him burn before his very eyes. Listen to one of his written prayers and feel the fire. “Oh, that I might be a flaming fire in the service of the Lord. Here I am, Lord, send me; send me to the ends of the earth… send me from all that is called earthly comfort; send me even to death itself if it be but in Thy service and to promote Thy kingdom.” These are men who were enthusiastic. The very word means in (en) God (theos). When God gets the fire of His Holy Spirit in us we have a supernatural enthusiasm. The passion and power of heaven come with the Holy Spirit. Was it passion that drove them to prayer or was it prayer that fired their passion? They got close to Jesus and He caught them on fire! One thing you can say for sure, they refused to leave their first love. When Paul wrote to the Ephesians he mentioned their love several times. Just a short 30 years later Jesus wrote the same church a letter through John the Beloved. He warned them that they had abandoned their first love. It seemed like they had everything else right, but without that first love, everything else meant little. Jesus warned them that they had fallen from a great height.
Everyone that I mentioned had an intimacy with God that kept their first love a flame of fire. You need a flame from God first and foremost. John the Baptist said that Jesus had come to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The flame must be allowed to burn up all that supersedes Him, and only then it can set your very soul ablaze. Then you need to fan the flame and care for it with communion with God as Jesus and these men demonstrated with their lives. The results are quite visible. The founder of the Salvation Army, General Booth, warned his ranks, “The tendency of the fire is to go out; watch the fire on the altar of your heart.” One of the jobs of the Old Testament Levites was to be sure that the altar fire never went out. We must always guard our old nature from going the way of the Ephesians. We are in constant need of recommitment and renewed consecration. We all need revival again and again. We are warned in (1Thessalonians 5:19) to not put out the Spirit’s fire. But please don’t misunderstand. As Wesley Duewel, the great revivalist and prayer warrior said, “No one is more zealous than a deceived fanatic. There is a vast difference between the zeal of the sinful nature and the passion born of the Holy Spirit. Self-born zeal is self-conscious. Passion for Christ and for souls is a consuming fire that so possesses the Spirit-filled Christian that they are almost unaware of it.” Strange fire brings death to you and to other with whom you share it. The fire of God brings death to self but life to those it comes in contact with. I find my passion in looking afresh at the passion Christ had for me to go to the cross. There has never been a greater display of passion. While I was still a rebel against Him, He displayed the ultimate expression of love; He laid down His life for me. Taking on the sins of the world and the onslaught of hell was so horrific; we will never understand the utter darkness of it. He knew how horrible it would be and asked if there was some other way to make you and me right with God. Simply there was no other way that could satisfy the justice and righteousness of God. When He saw that was the only way, as horrible as it was, He looked at an eternity with us redeemed and forever seated at the right hand of God in Him, and He said, “Yes! I will do it. To please the Father and to save them from destruction, I will pay the price, endure the horror.”
Love begets love. When we see His love that was displayed on the cross, when you are willing to not turn your head but to stare there and drink in all you can perceive, how can your heart not overflow with love in return? The love of God has been made visible to us, right there. Love that doesn’t cost anything isn’t worth much. Love that costs everything is priceless. That’s where I find my worth, my meaning, my purpose, my life, my passion, and my all. What does our little squabbling about the trivial things mean in the light of the cross? It makes me want to throw everything else aside and just live in the shadow of it. That is passion! But go on a little further. He redeemed you, to live through you. You have a divine purpose in life. Once you get the vision that your life has purpose that affects all eternity, you marvel that God would be willing to use the little insignificant rebel, you. Who but God could turn a traitor into a hero? But He does that so that He gets all the glory, and yet, He will share that glory with you, if you are willing to suffer with Him. What an honor and blessing and wonder that the God of all creation would want to include us in what He does, but that is what co-laboring is all about. He delights in working with us. That just makes my head spin. It just shows how mighty He is. And it fans my flame of passion! As you see Jesus’ passion for you in the Word, in prayer and in the use of your gifts, your passion should increase. Do you really desire passion? If not, you need the fire of God. Ask Him for it! If you do, you probably have that ember of fire from the Holy Spirit. Now you just need to fan and fuel it! If you really want passion, you will take the time to fuel it by drawing near to Jesus in His Word and in prayer. You will exercise your gifts at the leading of the Holy Spirit. You’ll pump the bellows by taking time to have intimate communion with God. You are going to leave here this morning in continued apathy, or with a decision to fan into the flame the gift of God in you. It will probably take a reprioritizing of your time. How strongly do you want to be a passionate person? You will leave here this morning quenching the fire or determined to fan it into a flame. It is your decision, and it will affect the outcome of your life.
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