Living With Spiritual Passion

Well, again, good morning.

One day a man walked up to Jesus and asked him this question Of all the commandments in the Bible, which one is the most important?

You find Jesus is reply in Mark, chapter 12,.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

Jesus said these words Love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind and with all of your strength.

The second is like it Love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.

Seems relatively straightforward, doesn't it?

What does God expect from us?

Well, two things we're to love him and we're to love one another.

That's what matters most in this life and that's what's going to matter the most in all eternity.

But you'll notice, in Jesus is remarkable answer that he's not asking for some nominal expression of love.

He's not referring to your typical superficial, half-hearted expression of love.

You and I are admonished to love passionately, with all of our heart and with all of our soul, with all of our strength and with all of our mind.

In other words, when it comes to our relationship with God, we're not allowed to be casual, mediocre, laxadaisical.

We've got to give it all, we've got 100%.

God expects a high degree of passion towards him in our relationship with him.

Now, when you think about it, passion is a very important part of life.

Passion is what makes life colorful and exciting, dynamic.

Nothing great is ever accomplished in this world without passion.

The driving force behind all great art, the driving force behind all great architecture, all great music, drama, whatever it is, the driving force is passion.

Passion is what distinguishes that which is good from that which is phenomenal.

Passion is what enables athletes to eke out a few more inches in their efforts or to shave off a few more seconds in order to break world records and win gold medals.

Passion is what motivates scientists to find new cures for deadly diseases.

Passion is what motivates soldiers to give up their lives, to sacrifice everything on the battlefield.

Passion is what provokes you and me to tackle the various personal and professional goals that we set in our own lives.

Nothing great in life is ever accomplished without passion, some level of passion.

Passion turns the impossible into the possible.

It energizes our thoughts, our emotions and, most importantly, our actions.

Without passion, life quickly becomes predictable, dull, boring.

Now people get passionate about a wide variety of things.

Some people are passionate about a particular sport that they watch on TV or a particular sports team, it doesn't matter how many losing seasons they've had in a row.

Now I'm not going to get in trouble here this morning and name any teams, but that's where some people focus their passion on a sports team.

Some people are passionate about the clothes that they wear.

Some people get passionate about computers and cars and hobbies.

If you were to visit the largest online bookstore, amazoncom, and do a search for books that had the word passion in the title, you would be overwhelmed with how many books are written with the word passion.

Let me give you just a few A Passion for Birds, a Passion for Fashion, a Passion for Flying, a Passion for Gardening, a Passion for Golf, a passion for jazz, a passion for needlepoint, a passion for pasta, a passion for shoes.

My all-time favorite, a passion for chocolate.

Yeah, it's funny in today's world we can be passionate about just about anything, except God.

Ever think about that.

It's true.

I mean you and I could go to a football stadium and we could yell and scream and jump up and down.

We could cry if our team loses, dance around like idiots if our team wins and people that around us.

They look at us and think to themselves wow, there's a real fan.

But if you came to church and did any of those types of things conveying your passion for God, people would look at you all right and they would say, wow, there's a weirdo, there's a fanatic.

It's okay to get enthusiastic and passionate about anything in life, as long as it's not God.

But God said if you want to have a relationship with me, you've got to do it with passion, with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength, with all of your mind.

That's what I want to talk about today living with spiritual passion.

So let's open our time with a word of prayer.

Father, I thank you for just this opportunity we have to focus on you, to think about our relationship with you.

We thank you so much for the Lord Jesus Christ, for his forgiveness, for the fact that we can commune with you and have a relationship with you.

And so, father, I pray that your spirit would be at work in all of our lives, quiet our hearts, take away the distractions of the day and help us to focus again on our walk with you.

May we sincerely, truly, deeply love you and serve you.

It's through Jesus we pray amen.

If you're out there with a stopwatch, thinking that the first part was part of my sermon.

No, you can start your stopwatch now.

That doesn't count.

That's all pregame.

You know, this is the real event here.

I think it's fair to say that, deep down, we all want our lives as believers, we all want our lives to count, we all want our lives to make a difference, we all want our lives to matter.

The people who've made and continue to make the greatest impact in our world aren't necessarily the most educated people.

You realize that the people who've made the greatest impact in our world aren't necessarily the smartest people, aren't the wealthiest or most beautiful people.

I mean, those people go to the front of the line a lot of times.

But the people who've made the biggest difference in our world have one thing in common and that is this whole idea of passion.

People of passion, people of passion, change the world.

I think of people who've shaped human history.

I think of people like the Apostle Paul.

Here was a Pharisee of Pharisees, cabean O Jesus, and you know, in his short years left on earth he traversed 13,000 miles by boat, by foot and by donkey and brought the gospel to the known first century world and wrote half our New Testament and plantations everywhere.

I mean, he impacted our world.

I think of Martin Luther and Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa and Billy Graham.

The names could go on and on.

These were people who had passion for God.

These are people who had a fervent desire to invest all of their energy into the things that matter, into the things that count.

So I can assure you, if we expect to leave our mark on this world, if we expect to make a difference in our communities, in our families, in our businesses, in the Christian world, then we are going to have to have a certain level of spiritual passion as we go about our lives.

Which brings us to the question where does it come from?

Okay, you've convinced me.

We need to have passion.

Where do we get it?

Here's the amazing thing Do you realize that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ especially for those of you who've come to faith a little bit later in life, not as a child, but a little bit later in life you'll be able to identify with this.

When you come to faith in Jesus Christ, we know that the Holy Spirit of God takes up residency in our life and enthuses us with an incredible amount of spiritual energy and enthusiasm for God.

It's true.

Think back to when you first learned that every sin that you'd ever committed and every sin you were gonna commit in the future was forgiven, all on account of your faith in Christ, all on account of God's grace and mercy and love.

Did that make you want to just burst at the seams with excitement?

It did me Think about the first time you came to realize that you were created for a purpose, you're not an insignificant rust spot on the chain of life, that there's meaning and there's significance to this crazy world that we find ourselves in.

That once again made your heart probably leap with a sense of zeal and energy towards wanting to live for God, to make your life count.

When you first came to grips with the fact that you're gonna spend all eternity in a perfect place called heaven no more sin, no more pain, no more sorrow it's a perfect place again, all because of Jesus Didn't that make you want to just jump up and shout hallelujah?

It's like the greatest news you've ever heard and you couldn't wait to share it with the people around you.

Now.

I remember talking to my family members, people who had like zero, shown zero spiritual interest up to that point.

I wanted to tell everybody around me what I experienced.

But then life goes on.

Slowly, subtly, we start to take these extraordinary blessings for granted.

The initial excitement tapers off, our spiritual passion and enthusiasm subsides, fades.

It's so easy to take for granted the incredible privilege of having a personal relationship with the God of the universe.

So we have to ask ourselves the question what happened?

Where did all my enthusiasm for God go?

What caused my spiritual passion to dissolve and disappear?

Why aren't we as close to God as we used to be?

Why aren't we as on fire for God as we used to be?

What happened?

Well, there may be any number of things that can contribute to our spiritual slump, but chances are, over time, we've unmoored ourselves from the very things that keep us on fire for God, the core elements of our Christian walk.

We've drifted off course, and so what I wanna do this morning is talk about five components that ought to be built into your daily routine, like breathing, that will keep you tethered closely to God.

First in foremost and I just touched on this briefly we need to understand our purpose.

We need to understand our purpose.

Purposelessness in life is perhaps the number one reason why people end up drifting away and losing their spiritual passion.

I mean, let's face it without purpose for living, why bother, why expend precious energy if there's no sense behind it?

Why put forth the effort, why get out of bed in the morning?

Passion and purpose go hand in hand.

Without a clearly defined purpose, we're not gonna be able to sustain our enthusiasm over the long haul.

We better come to grips with why we're here, what God has for us in his life, what his plan for us is.

The longer we go through our adult lives without clarifying that purpose, the greater we're gonna find ourselves losing our spiritual passion.

Life eventually becomes futile and mundane, and it won't be long before we start moping through life like Solomon of Cleese Yasses, where he said meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.

I've met people like that.

They just sort of they run out of gas, run out of effort, and they just sort of go through life and see it as the futile struggle.

You don't want that.

On the other hand, the moment we commit ourselves to fulfill God's purpose, I believe it will ignite our hearts with a level of spiritual passion that we have to tangle with every single day.

There's no greater cause in this world than to do what Jesus did throughout his earthly ministry, and that was to advance the kingdom of God.

What does that mean?

The reign of God.

It starts here and now and it's gonna go on for all eternity, and that's what Jesus focused on and that's what you and I need to be focused on advancing the kingdom of God, telling others about the love of Christ, the grace of Christ, you know.

Telling others about how they can experience the free gift of eternal life.

Seeing people grow in their walk with God.

All of that's built into the sense of putting God in his rightful place, on his throne, giving him glory and seeing the reign of God expand throughout this world.

Even secular authors recognize the connection between passion and purpose.

I found this quote.

I don't think this guy's a believer, but it's very interesting what he had to say.

He said this passion is waking up in the morning, wherever you are, however old or young, and bounding out of bed because you know there's something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you're good at, something that's bigger than you are, and you can hardly wait to get at it again.

It's something you'd rather be doing more than anything else in the whole world.

You wouldn't give it up for money, because it means more to you than money and hopefully it's something that makes the world a better place for other people and not just yourself.

He gets it.

Passion and purpose go hand in hand.

Second component to living a life with a zest and zeal for God we need to invest our talents.

We need to invest our talents.

You all know the parable of the talents.

I won't have to rehearse that.

God has given to every single one of us certain gifts, certain abilities, and he's bestowed those to us and he's gone back away from us and he's watching us.

He wants to know what we're gonna do with what he's invested in us.

Are we gonna invest it in eternity?

To the extent that you use your God-given abilities, we'll determine the depth of your spiritual passion for God.

Or are you gonna use your gifts or are you gonna dig a hole and bury your gifts?

Some years ago there was an interesting study done in America looking at the different ways people spent their time with their careers and their jobs, and in this study they concluded that up to 70% of working Americans were in the wrong job.

I don't know how they determined that, but they said the conclusion was they labor 40 to 50 hours a week in a career that's not a good fit for them.

They're not really utilizing their individual talents and their individual gifts in the maximum way.

Now you can just imagine the effect this has on their overall enthusiasm for performing their job if it's not a good fit.

But, to be perfectly honest, none of us are going to find a career, job that 100% fits with our talents.

I don't think that's the point.

I don't think God intended for us to find our soul fulfillment in our jobs and in our careers.

That's why, as Christians, we need to find a way to use our time, energy, gifts and abilities, outside of our work and careers, in ministry, in the body of Christ, in Christian efforts that are going to impact the kingdom of God.

That's why Christians need to get involved just for the sheer joy of expending their time and talents in the lives of other people, blessing other people.

First, peter, chapter 4, verse 10,.

Peter said this each one of you use whatever gift he has received to serve others, and that's the challenge we have.

You may be a two-talent kind of person, five-talent kind of person, 10-talent kind of person.

Whatever talents God has given you, god is expecting a return on his investment.

He wants you to use those gifts, those abilities, into his kingdom that's going to advance his glory in this world.

So let me ask you are you bored to death with your life?

Define yourself just going through the motions, day in and day out, weekend, week out, month after month.

Do the words indifference and apathy reflect what's going on inside of you?

Perhaps it's because you're neglecting the talents that God has given you?

On a practical note, if your job or career is zapping you of spiritual passion and you have it within your power to change jobs, fantastic, go ahead, change jobs.

Your spiritual health is far more important than your job.

But realistically, most of us don't have that ability and so we're going to have to realize that we need to pursue ways in which we can use those God-given gifts and abilities in the body of Christ to be a blessing, to serve others, to see them grow in their walk with God.

Get involved is the key concept.

Third component to living passionately for God we must be quick to confess our sins.

Psalm 32, king David said this blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and whose spirit is no deceit.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long, for day and night.

Your hand was heavy upon me.

My strength was sapped as the heat of summer.

Usually, when we look at this passage, we just look at the first couple of verses.

We don't look at verses three and four.

Few things will rob us of our joy and spiritual passion more quickly than unconfessed sin and the guilt that comes with that unconfessed sin.

It's impossible to feel enthusiasm and guilt at the same time.

It doesn't work.

It's kind of like, if you know computers, if a CPU gets sent two contradictory commands, what happens to the computer?

It crashes, it freezes.

Well, some of you this morning, you're experiencing a personal life crash.

You're wanting to serve God, you're wanting to have a zeal and zest for God, you're wanting to be excited and enthusiastic as you live for God.

But there's this guilt thing and you're finding yourself in this state where your joy is being crashed, is freezing up.

How do we resolve the whole problem of guilt?

Well, it's really not all that profound.

Let's just go to the next verse, verse five.

David went on to say then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Isn't that something All we have to do?

You know what confess means?

It's saying the same thing about your sin that God says.

All we have to do is confess our sins and God forgives us and removes our guilt.

First, john 1-9,.

If we confess our sins, god can be trusted to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

He cleans the slate and again, this is a daily routine.

Don't let it build up for days, weeks and months before you finally enter the confessional.

You know no Like breathing.

You take care of issues that need to be dealt with every single day Short accounts with God, rather than letting things go on for many, many days.

As soon as we're aware that we've done something wrong, that's the time to go before the Lord and confess.

Number four if you and I are inspired to live our lives with a spiritual passion, then we need to resolve our conflicts.

Resolve our conflicts.

How many times have we started out today on a high?

You know, we jump out of bed, we're beaming with excitement, we're thinking about the day we jump in the shower and we even start singing zipity-doo-dah, zipity-ay.

I mean we're just excited to hit the day, but before the breakfast dishes are cleared, you have a knock-down, drag-out fight with your spouse or your kids and all of the zip goes out of your doo-dah.

Yeah, it happens Whenever there's unresolved conflict.

It'll lead away at us, it'll drain the passion right out of us.

It's kind of like letting an air out of a tire.

Life just goes flat, unfortunately.

Sometimes you want to be at peace with all men, you want to resolve conflict and no matter how hard you try, you're stuck in the midst of conflict.

Maybe it's at your work situation, could be in your family, it could be in any number of different places.

There's constant conflict.

You do your best to avoid it, you do your best to deal with it.

You want to be at peace with all men, and yet it's there.

You can never get away from it.

So what are we to do?

How do we prevent such a predicament from draining our spiritual joy, our spiritual passion?

I think the most important thing that we can do is to make every effort to keep our hearts free from two things resentment and anger.

Job, chapter 5.

Job 5 · chapter mention

Job said resentment destroys the fool Job 18.4,.

You tear yourself to pieces in your anger.

Those are two deadly emotions resentment and anger.

And that's why we're admonished again and again to forgive each other, to to release each other from whatever wrong has been committed.

Just this crisis forgiven us.

We're to forgive other people.

If we want to maintain our spiritual passion, then we're going to have to learn to go through life, letting go of the offenses committed against us.

You don't want to be like that unmerciful servant who's choking out everybody who owes a few pennies here and a few pennies there.

You don't want that.

Let go Learn to forgive.

Fifth and final component to living passionately for God we need to nourish our souls.

This almost goes without saying because ultimately, at its root passion, it's a spiritual issue.

We have a spiritual dimension to our lives.

We're not just physical beings.

You can't restore your passion with any amount of success or money.

You can't restore passion with a pill.

It's a matter of the heart.

It comes from within your soul.

God has given us the ability to commune with him, to have a relationship with him, a personal, intimate, tender relationship with him.

So we must, just like we take care of our physical nature by physical exercise.

We need to take care of our spiritual dimension with spiritual exercise to be spiritually healthy, because every single day at our doorstep are going to be all kinds of challenges, temptations, pains, tragedies.

Every single one of us go through those trials and difficulties in life.

For some of us, we have impossible.

We're darned if we do and we're darned if we don't.

There's not a real good choice and we live with that every single day.

All of us face disappointment.

The point we need to see here is that we're going to have to make an effort.

We need to take the initiative to nourish our souls.

If we don't, we can kiss spiritual passion goodbye, because without spiritual nourishment, our hearts will shrivel up and grow stone cold.

What's the solution?

If we want to stay spiritually on fire for God, then we've got to make an effort to make sure that every day we plug into God.

If you need a metaphor, plug into God, and it doesn't happen by accident, it's intentional, it's daily, it's vital.

It should be something where you realize that you need to feed your soul by plugging into the Creator.

Practically speaking, it means spending time in God's word, reading God's word, reflecting on God's word, spending more than just 10 seconds before your meal, praying, spending time conversing with God.

It means you have to make worship on Sunday a priority.

On the weekend, it means you have to carve out time during the week to have fellowship with other believers so that not only can they minister to you and encourage you, you can minister to them and encourage them.

That means you make a commitment to use your gifts and talents in some form of ministry where you can invest into the kingdom of God.

That means that you're going to take the initiative to share the love and forgiveness of Christ with the people around who never embraced Jesus.

If we hope to stay passionate for God, those spiritual disciplines are what are going to nourish and strengthen our souls.

Nobody else can do it for us.

We have to do it ourselves.

Let me close with this Revelation, chapter 3, verse 15 and 16.

Revelation 3:15

Jesus said these piercing words to the Christians at Laodicea.

He said I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold.

I wish you were one or the other, but because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Yikes, that's a very sobering passage of Scripture.

I mean, jesus expects us to be passionate toward him.

Why?

Because he's passionate towards us.

He's given everything so that we could enjoy a relationship with God.

The Greek literally says be that you are neither hot nor cold makes me want to vomit.

That's how serious it is.

It makes Jesus sick to his stomach.

You and I are as close to God as we want to be.

If, at this stage in our lives, we're not as close as we used to be, the issue is we have no one to blame but ourselves, because God hasn't moved.

We have, and so we need to begin asking God to power, the Spirit, to moor us back into a solid, tethered relationship with Him on a daily basis, so that we can live out this exciting, dynamic, passionate life with God.

Let's close with a word of prayer Heavenly Father, forgive us for the times that we have been spiritually apathetic and indifferent, where we haven't really pursued you with all of our heart, with all of our soul, all of our mind and all of our strength.

Forgive us, help us return to our first love, the Lord Jesus.

Restore to us the joy of our salvation and grant within us a willing and steadfast Spirit that passionately pursues you with all your heart and soul.

That passionately pursues you every single day.

It's your Jesus we pray, amen.