Be The Church: Be A Passionate Church

Passion! Passion is a great word.  Sitting there in a sea of red at Levi Stadium for the 49er/Seahawks game a few weeks ago I could literally feel passion poor out of that sea of red every time the 49’s made a first down or a big play.  People leapt to their feet, screamed at the top of their lungs, high-fived and knuckled one another.  You could say at times they went crazy.  And no one thought this was abnormal. But when the least athletic guy on the field kicked the game winning field goal for the Seahawks, all that passion just evaporated.  And in its place came this brooding silence of disappointment and grief.  And yet that grief was absolutely connected to passion.

Passion, think about it.  Passion is a big deal in America.  Passion is a big deal in our lives. We are passionate about our teams, we are passionate about our families, our hobbies and even our politics.  In fact, you can have a passion for just about anything.  There are all kinds of books that can help you find your passion:

A Passion for Bread           A Passion for Chocolate

A Passion for Elephants   A Passion for Fashion

A Passion for Flowers       A Passion for Fly Fishing

A Passion for Gardening A Passion for Horses

A Passion for Knitting       A Passion for Potatoes

And my personal favorite:  A Passion For Golf

It’s almost as if we think it’s appropriate to get excited, be enthusiastic and have a passion for anything in life – as long as it’s not God.  And we often are passionate about everything – except God.

And yet, Jesus was quite clear about living with passion.  In fact, there was one time in the Bible where a man walked up to Jesus and said, in essence, “I’m busy. I don’t have time to read the book and missed the movie, so can you give me the Cliffnotes version of the Bible? Is there a point to the whole thing?  So Jesus responded by giving a summary.  And he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31

You can feel the passion in Jesus’ words. The repeated word is all.  Jesus’ is saying we are to love God, serve God, love people, and serve people with passion.  We are to give it all we have.  God wants us to be enthusiastic in our love of Him and each other.

In other words, as we are discovering what God is looking for in His Church, what God is looking for is a people who are wholeheartedly devoted to Him and one another.  God wants us to be a Passionate Church.  God doesn’t want us to be indifferent.  God doesn’t want our faith to be lukewarm.  God wants us to be enthusiastic servants who love Him and people with all we’ve got!

So as we come to God’s Word this morning, God knows that we live in a world that offers us counterfeit passions, that we live with a flesh that often frustrates our passions, and that we have an enemy who wants to destroy our passions for God and His people.  He wants you to go through life “mailing it in” or just getting by as a Christian so that when people look at your life you wont’ appear to be any different than them. But that’s not what God rescued us to be. When He gave you Jesus, He gave you a new life, and a new passion for life found in a relationship with Him. He’s created you in Christ to be fully alive with a passion that surpasses anything this world offers.  But He also knows that we can loose our passion for living this new life He’s given us.  He knows that people and circumstances and just the hardness of life can drain God’s passion in you. And if that’s you, then what we’re going to look at today, is meant to reignite God’s passion in you. For what we’re going to look at today from God’s Word is God’s Remedy for Rekindling Our Passion.  And God’s remedy for rekindling your passion is found in  Romans 12:11, which reads: “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”  Here is God’s remedy for rekindling your ability to give your all in loving God and loving God’s people.

And it starts with Rekindling your Spiritual Fervor  God’s Word says: “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor  When God’s Word says, Never be lacking in zeal, we immediately understand the potential is there for us to grow weary, lose heart or become complacent in loving God and serving others. We can lose our fire for God.

How does that happen? For some this happens when we start serving others out of our own strength or emotional resources.  When we do that, we start coming to worship out of a sense of duty, not privilege.  When we do that, our serving becomes a burden to bear not an opportunity to love.  And the more we serve out of a sense of duty or burden, the quicker we grow weary, lose heart, or burn out.

But God doesn’t want us to grow weary, lose heart or burn out.  He wants us to burn brightly for Him. That’s why we are called to keep our spiritual fervor.  What’s he’s doing here is giving us a picture of the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  And the picture of God’s Spirit burning bright in us is literally a picture of boiling water.  It’s bubbling and spewing and ready to overflow. This picture contrasts with the picture of the lukewarm Christian described in Revelation 3.  What does God’s Word say about being lukewarm: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.  Revelation 3:14-16  The lukewarm Christian is an indifferent Christian – someone who’s just going through the motions, someone who’s lost the passion of God’s Spirit in them. Someone who’s lost the passion of their first love, someone who has lost the joy of being set free… someone who’s lost the joy of knowing the Father’s smile.

As we go through life this can happen to any of us. I still remember when I first followed Jesus.  Shortly afterwards I got to go on my first retreat.  We were at a retreat center on the Oregon coast.  After our first dinner someone asked me if I would like to help serve by washing dishes.  I jumped at the opportunity.  What a privilege. It was fun and I was filled with joy help out this way.  Now, some 38 years later, I have to ask myself, do I have the same enthusiasm for washing dishes as I did then? Do you?

Now, if you are lacking this kind of passion today, please do not feel guilty.  God never motivates His children by guilt.  He knows you are in a battle for your heart.  He knows that if the evil one can’t destroy you, he will try to weaken you by getting you to settle for lesser passions.  He knows God created you to be fully alive to Him.  So one of his schemes is to constantly bombard you with counterfeit passions, in order to divert our passions to lesser things.  They may even be great things that give you much joy.  But in getting you to run after lesser things, he wins by keeping your heart from the One who can give you true joy.  C. S Lewis said it perfectly when he penned these words:  “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, page 26)

Counterfeit passions can quench God’s Spirit in us.  They don’t give our hearts the satisfaction it desires.  So what must we do?  We must allow our hearts to be rekindled by God’s indwelling Holy Spirit.  That’s what Paul means when he writes, “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor.” And so we ask, how do we do that? The answer is simple: We need to turn up the heat of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives.  Remember the picture of the pot of boiling water that describes the Spirit in us? We are to literally turn up the heat of the Spirit of God in our lives, so that God’s Spirit in us will overflow in love for God and His people.

This is similar to the promise Jesus made in the Gospel of John when He said, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.  John 7:38-39

So then, as the Spirit of God begins to percolate within us we will not be able to contain His love.  So the point God is making for us today is that He wants His Church to keep His Spirit running hot.  And if we can do that, then we will serve one another out of the overflow of the Spirit, not out of our own strength, not out of our reserves, and not out of a sense of duty.  And no one will burn out or run out of love. Instead, we will refresh one another with the living water of the Spirit.

Theologian Marva Dawn describes this process like this:  “Checking my woodstove gave me a new insight: to keep warm, the fire required a regular addition of logs. Similarly, our spirits require continuous input to keep boiling.  What a strong motivation to have a daily devotional time and to participate in a mature community of believers.  We need both the fuel of the Scriptures and the hilarity of the community so that our spirits can remain fervent.”

So here’s how we can help to turn up the heat of God’s Spirit in our lives:

By regularly fueling His Spirit in us with the Word of God Paul commands us in Ephesians: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” Ephesians 5:18  To be filled by the Spirit is to be saturated by the Spirit, like water saturates a sponge.  And the way we saturate our inner being with God’s Spirit is by saturating our hearts with His Word.  So the more our hearts are saturated with His Word, the more the Spirit can move us to love with the love of Jesus.  God’s Word is the fuel that ignites the fire of the Spirit in us. That’s one way to turn up the heat of the Spirit in us.  Here’s another:

By regularly connecting with the Family of God  Fueling our hearts with God’s Word is not to be done in isolation, but in community with other believers.  Look how Paul follows up the command to be filled with the Spirit: Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Ephesians 5:18-19  If you want to rekindle the fire of the Spirit in your life, then connecting with others is not an option, it’s a necessity.  This is God’s remedy for apathy. Christianity is not a lone ranger religion.  God’s Spirit burns brightest when it can overflow and touch the lives of God’s people.  And that happens in community.   When God ignites the fire of His Spirit in your life, His Spirit will overflow from your life to encourage, build up and bless others in God’s family.  God’s family is the natural outlet for a life set on fire by God.

So this is part of the process God has put in place for us to rekindle God’s Spirit in us.  This is how we can participate in rekindling our spiritual passion.  But even if we turn the heat up on the Spirit’s passion in our lives, we need a proper focus for our renewed passion.  That’s why Paul concludes God’s remedy for rekindling your spiritual passion by reminding us of who it is we serve when we allow God’s Spirit to flow through us – it’s all about serving Jesus. It’s all about…

Renewing your Serving Focus  “serving the Lord”  One of the biggest reasons we lose our spiritual passion in the first place is that we take our eyes off of Jesus.  When that happens we start serving to please others rather than to please Him.  And when we serve to please others we just don’t have the strength to carry their burdens, endure their sufferings, or bear with their short-comings.  Instead, we grow annoyed with their immaturity, or we grow weary of their brokenness, and we lack the patience or lose heart in helping them.  The reality of serving others out of our own strength is this:  we just don’t have the graciousness of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, or the patience of Jesus to keep at it.  So what we need is a change of perspective. We need to renew our focus: to see that whenever we are serving someone we are actually serving Jesus.

Remember what Jesus said to his disciples near the end of His ministry:  “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”  Matthew 25:40

That’s the perspective that will keep us from growing weary or loosing heart. That’s why Paul writes: Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. Ephesians 6:7-8

So the next time, you feel frustrated or feel like throwing in the towel while serving someone, ask yourself: “Who am I really serving?”  Am I serving this person to please them? or am I serving this person because Jesus is in them?  If you can see them as an opportunity to serve Jesus, then it won’t matter if the person is an extra grace required person, it won’t matter if the person tests your patience, and it won’t matter if how you feel about the person, because the only thing that will matter is that you get to serve Jesus.

You see, this is what sets God’s people apart.  This is why God wants us to be a passionate Church…not a people who serve to please ourselves, nor a people who serve to please others, but a people who serve with all that we have, because we are a people who get to love the One who loved us.  We get to serve Jesus!

So if your in need of rekindling your passion today, the good news is this:  God has already given us what we need to be a passionate people. He’s given us His power to serve with His passion, by giving us His Spirit. And He’s given us His Son as the One we are to serve.  Therefore we have all that we need to give our all.  So let us never be lacking in enthusiasm, but let’s keep the Spirit boiling over in our lives, serving the Lord – and we will be the passionate people God is calling us to be.