Reigniting Your Passion for God Essay

The creative force behind totally undischarged art, all great drama, all great music, all great architecture and all great writing is passion. Nothing great is ever accomplished in flavor without passion. Nothing great is ever sustained in life without passion. petulance is what energizes life. fad makes the impossible possible. Passion gives you a reason to rule up in the morning and go and say, Im dismissal to do something with my life today. Without passion life becomes boring. It becomes monotonous. It becomes routine. It becomes dull. God created you with the emotions to prepare passion in your life and He wants you to pull through a torrid life for Him. Passion is what mobilizes armies into action. Passion is what causes explorers to boldly go where no mans gone before. Passion is what causes scientists to spend late night hours trying to find the cure to a dreaded disease. Passion is what takes a good athlete and turns him or her into a great athlete where theyre bre aking records. Youve got to have passion in your life. cardinal day a man walks up to Jesus and he says, Lord, whats the most important thing in the Bible? And you k at one time what the Great educational activity is. Weve talked more or less it many times. Jesus said, I want you to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Nothing matters more than that. Thats the recite one thing in life. I want you to love Me ardently. Nothing else matters in life if you founding fathert love God with passion. God doesnt 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.I love the paraphrase of that verse, musical score 1130, from The Message Jesus said, Love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy. Circle the denomination passion. That word, in Greek, is the word heart. God is saying I want you to put some muscle into it, put some energy, put some emotion into your relationship with Me. Dont be a wimp about your relationship with Me. Dont be namby-pamby. Dont be half-hearted. Give it all youve got. Jesus is saying, If youre going to follow Me, youve got to go it with passion. Youve got to give it some oomph, some spark, some zip, some enthusiasm, some zest. In other words I want you to live your life with me passionately.In fact, this truth is all through the Bible. The Bible tells us that were to seek God passionately. Were to love God passionately. The Bible says that were to serve and obey God passionately. Were to trust God passionately. Then as if you didnt get the message, in Colossians 323 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. presents the amazing thing. In America its ok to be passionate about anything except God. That is not governmentally correct to be passiona te 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 restaurants. But I cannot be passionate about God. Thats a no-no.I typed in the phrase a passion for into Amazon.com and found a couple hundred books with that title. Theres a book call A Passion for Birds, A Passion for Books, A Passion for Cactus, A Passion for Chocolate (thats understandable), A Passion for Fashion, for fishing for Flying, for Gardening, Golf, Hunting. Theres even a book called A Passion For Mushrooms. A Passion for Needlepoint, Pasta, Ponies. Theres a book called, A Passion for Potatoes, for Roses, for Shoes. Theres even a book called A Passion for Steam. I cant figure out what that ones all about I dont know why youd get passionate about steam.But in our culture today its ok to be passionate about anything except your religion, except your faith, except your relationsh ip with God. I can go to a 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. When my team loses I could cry. Nobody thinks thats a big deal. When my team wins I can jump up and trip the light winnowtastic around and wave my hands in the air. If I do that at a game people go, Hes a real fan But if I do that in church people say, Hes a fanatic Hes a nut case. You dont want to get too emotional about your faith. Its ok about anything else but not that.Romans 121 Never be missing in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor. Keep the fires going in your life. Circle the word keep. Notice, its not automatic. Its a choice. Its a discipline. Its something you must maintain. You are not by nature passionate about God. Its something that you must choose to do. You 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 goi ng. Its a discipline. Its not just automatic.This descriptor of thing being passionate about God has nothing to do with either your personality or your age. Our churches are filled with hundreds if not thousands of senior worshippers who have walked with God a long, long time and are still passionate.But everything in life conspires to keep you from being passionate. And it dissipates your energy. When you first become a believer and you really understand what a good deal youve got you get excited about it, This is quite a big deal All my sins were forgiven. I now have a purpose for living, and I now have a future home in heaven. What a deal And you get excited about that when you give your life to Christ and youre pretty passionate. But as time goes by you begin to lose your steam. You begin to lose your zip, your zest, your enthusiasm. What give-up the ghosted? Why does that happen?Thats what were going to look at today. As we go through Gods word were going to look at seven p assion killers, things that rob the joy out of your life. I thought this would be a very appropriate message, right in the middle of winter, when cipher feels very passionate about much of anything. You want the warmth of summer back. So this morning were going to look at these passion killers together. I want you to use it as a checklist. Because God says, I want you to love Me with all of your heart.