One Holy Passion Preached at Salem Feb 8, 2009
Mark 12:28-34
A couple of weeks ago my professor at Liberty , Dr. David Earley, asked us, "What is your passion?" Naturally I asked, "what do you mean by passion?" We usually define passion as a feeling very strongly about a subject or person, usually referring to feelings of intense desire and attraction, be very passionate about something. Christians refer to Christ's passion or suffering leading up to when He went to the cross. Actually Christ's passion wasn't the suffering itself but the reason why He suffered in the first place. However you would describe passion, Dr. Rick Warren (you may remember him as the preacher who gave the invocation at President Obama's inauguration last month) says that "The creative force behind all great art, all great drama, all great music, all great architecture, all great writing is passion. Nothing great is ever accomplished in life without passion. Passion is what mobilizes armies into action. Passion is what causes explorers to boldly go where no man's gone before. Passion is what takes a good athlete and turns him or her into a great athlete where they're breaking records. What are you passionate about?
Looking at our text today, One day a man walks up to Jesus and he says, "Lord, what's the most important thing in the Bible?" And you know what the Great Commandment is. Jesus said, in Mark 12:30 And you shall
love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Nothing matters more than that. That's the number one thing in life. God says I want you to love Me passionately." Nothing else matters in life if you don't love God passionately. What do I mean by passion?
Let me tell you what I don't mean first: I'm not talking about just an emotion or a feeling. I'm not talking about something sensual or romantic God doesn't want you to love Him half-heartedly. He wants you to love Him with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. The word heart is not referring to this blood pumping organ that we have in our chests. In the Greek language, this word heart καρδιας – means the center, is actually where we get the word passion from- the center, the very core of your being, is the idea. , "If you're going to follow Me, you've got to go it with passion. You've got to give it some oomph, some spark, some zip, some enthusiasm, some zest. I want you to live passionately."
Then as if you didn't get the message, in Colossians 3:23 He says "Whatever you do, do it with all of your heart as unto the Lord and not unto men." He says I want you to do everything passionately when it comes to loving Me, serving Me, living for Me.
I. One of the reasons why there is so much dissatisfaction is not because we can't find anything to be passionate about- but that we are passionate about anything except God. I guess because we are embarrassed to be passionate about God. I can be passionate about movies. I can be passionate about sports. I can be passionate about politics. I can be passionate about fashions and clothes. I can be passionate about cars. But I cannot be passionate about God.
If you go into Barnes & Noble bookstore you'll find all kinds of books with Passion in the title of it. There's a book call A Passion for Birds, A Passion for Books, A Passion for Cactus, A Passion for Chocolate A Passion for Fashion, ... for Fishing... for Flying, ... for Gardening, ... Golf, Hunting. There's even a book called A Passion For Mushrooms (somebody's smoking them probably is what he's doing. I can't figure out what that one's all about!
But in our culture it's ok to be passionate about anything except your faith, except your relationship with God. I can go to a rock concert, or a political rally or a baseball game and I can shout my head off. I can get excited. I can get hoarse from yelling so loud and really embarrass myself. When my team loses I could cry- really make a fool out of myself. Nobody thinks that's a big deal. When my team wins I can jump up and dance around and wave my hands in the air. If I do that at a game people go, "He's a real fan!" If I do that in church people say, "He's a fanatic! He's a nut case." You don't want to get too emotional about your faith. Its ok about anything else but not that.
Romans 12:21, in the NIV it says, Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord" Keep the fires going in your life. Circle the word "keep." Notice, it's not automatic. It's a choice. It's a discipline. It's something you must maintain. You and I are not by nature passionate about God. It's something that you must choose to do. You and I get distracted and everything in life conspires to keep you from being passionate about God. So He says keep your passion going. Keep the fires going. It's not just automatic. This kind of thing -- being passionate about God has nothing to do with either your personality or your age. Everything in life conspires to keep you from being passionate. And it dissipates your energy. We were at Walmart or somewhere they were selling helium balloons. This lady was looking at them and let a whole bunch of balloons slip out of her hand. The clerk said, "No big deal, they'll probably come down tonight. And the truth is, it wasn't even that long. In just a few hours they began to dissipate, lose their steam and come back down.
A lot of times we're like that. When you first become a believer and you really understand what a good deal you've got you get excited about it, And you get excited about that when you give your life to Christ and you're pretty passionate. But then, BUT THEN, you feel this overwhelming pressure from somebody comes along who just loves to throw cold water on stuff and says, "YES but you won't always feel this way! Why do people do that? They are jealous of what they used to have. Probably because they want everybody to be as miserable as they are. As though we needed any help, Because as time goes by you begin to lose your steam. You begin to lose your zip, your zest, your enthusiasm. What happens? Why does that happen?
One of the things that steals our enthusiasm for God more than anything else is this:
II. Many Do Not Have a Passion Because Their Purpose is Unclear. Its not that they don't know what it is, its just they have become so familiar with it being there that they don't think about it all that much, and when they don't think about it, they just take it for granted- that's what we do with God. They have allowed something precious to become familiar. After a while, things become just common.
Max Lucado: "God Came Near," tells how he almost lost his 2 year old daughter because she fell in the pool one day. He took things for granted and wasn't careful. Here are some of his words, after the almost tragedy. "It was only a matter of minutes, maybe seconds. We almost lost her. The thought was numbing and convicting. He almost lost his daughter to familiarity. His goal is nothing less than to take what is most precious to us and make it appear most common. To say that this agent of familiarity breeds contempt is to let him off easy. Contempt is just one of his offspring. He also sires broken hearts, wasted hours, and an insatiable desire for more. He's an expert in robbing the sparkle and replacing it with the drab. He invented the yawn and put the hum in the humdrum. And his strategy is deceptive. He won't steal your salvation; he'll just make you forget what it was like to be lost. You'll grow accustomed to prayer and thereby not pray. Worship will become commonplace and study optional. With the passing of time he'll infiltrate your heart with boredom
When you forget the purpose of your life that is a sure way to kill your passion for life and for God. If you don't know the purpose for life, why bother? Why get up in the morning? Why put forth the effort? Life without purpose is activity without direction. It's motion without meaning. Life without purpose is trivial, petty, and pointless.
But even still it's easy to forget why we're here on earth. We get distracted by budgets and bills and babies and baseball and all kinds of other things. Whenever you forget why God put you on earth you're going to drift toward apathy and lethargy. Who cares? Maybe you've felt like Isaiah who said in Isaiah 49 "I've labored to no purpose and I've spent my strength in vain and for nothing." (NIV)
There is no reason for we as believers not to know what our purpose is or so familiar with it that we get bored with it. Passion and purpose go together. When you have a clear purpose it's going to give you a lot of passion. But it's got to be God's purposes for your life. If you're only living for yourself, that's a pretty dinky purpose. That isn't going to make you very passionate. In fact it's pathetic. "I'm living for me." That'll give you a lot of energy to get out of bed in the morning! You need a cause greater than yourself. That gives life significance and gives life meaning. The more you understand God's purposes for your life and the more you live those purposes the more passionate you're going to be.
Hobbs wrote this about passion. He said, "Passion is waking up in the morning wherever you are and bounding out of bed because you know there's something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that God made you for and you're good at, something that's bigger than you are and you can hardly wait to get at it again. It's something that you'd rather be doing than anything else and you wouldn't give it up for money because it means more to you than money."
III. A Passion Could Be Described as What You Be Willing To Die For
Paul, writing about his passion in Romans 10:1 , says, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. Paul so passionately desired that his people be saved- to accept the Savior as Messiah that he tells us in Romans 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen[a] according to the flesh. Of course, he knew this would not be possible, but Paul's attitude was unmistakable. There was no way you could read a statement like that and not know what Paul was passionate about. Sometimes being passionate is described not only in terms of what you live your life for, but what you would be willing to die for. I personally feel like if you don't have anything you'd be willing to die for, what kind of passion are you willing to live for.
I want to die the same way Wilson Bentley died. Wilson grew up on a farm in Jericho, Vermont, and as a young boy he developed a fascination with snowflakes. Obsession might be a better word for it. Most people go indoors during snowstorms. Not Wilson. He would run outside when the flakes started falling, catch them on black velvet, look at them under a microscope, and take photographs of them before they melted. His first photomicrograph of a snowflake was taken on January 15, 1885.
Under the microscope, he found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.
The first known photographer of snowflakes, Wilson pursued his passion for more than fifty years. He amassed a collection of 5,381 photographs that was published in his book Snow Crystals. And then he died a fitting death—a death that symbolized and epitomized his life. Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley contracted pneumonia while walking six miles through a severe snowstorm and died on December 23, 1931.
And that is how I figured out how I want to die. No, I don't want to die from pneumonia. But I do want to die doing what I love. I am determined to pursue God-ordained passions until the day I die. Life is too precious to settle for anything less.
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