Passion is a matter of the heart. Passion for God is addressed in Revelation 2 where Jesus gave the church at Ephesus several compliments. He said he saw their hard work and perseverance. Both of those are commendable, right? Hard work and the tenacity to not give up are qualities we would admire today, especially as they seem to be becoming rarer and rarer. He also commended them on the fact that they wouldn’t tolerate wicked people. They had drawn a line regarding good and evil, and they weren’t going to accept what God had said was evil as is it was simply cultural preference or somehow good. I fear many believers have adopted a “Live and let live” mentality and that the acceptance of evil has become widespread. The church at Ephesus was clear in their stance regarding evil practices. So, the church at Ephesus has two “A’s” on their report card so far.
Paul gave them an “A” in discernment as well. They knew how to spot a false prophet and wouldn’t receive instruction from them. He also took note that they had gone through some hard stuff and had persevered and endured and still had faith and trust in Jesus. They were still hanging in there. Look at verses 4-5: Revelation 2:4-5 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
In this chapter God is saying, “Hey, I know you are doing stuff for Me, but don’t forget about just being with Me! I want your heart more than I want your works for Me.” If my husband took the trash out, fixed me dinner, did the laundry, paid the bills, and made the bed but never told me he loved me, never put his arms around me, never took me anywhere, never wanted to be seen with me in public (hello?) and never wanted to spend any time with me, I wouldn’t feel loved! He might qualify as a personal assistant, but he wouldn’t qualify as a husband! Listen, God wants our hearts. If He has our hearts, He is also going to have our works, our witness, our worship, our time, but if He doesn’t have our hearts, He will just have a passionless bride who is going through the motions. We weren’t made for the motions, but for a passionate love-relationship with God!
I will also say this, when you go through the motions, you do so in your power, but when you serve God out of the overflow of a heart of love for Him, you get to do what He can do! And, I will also, also say a life of going through religious motions isn’t fulfilling or fun. I want my life to be fulfilling and fun.
Look again at our Revelation 2:4-5 text: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
Can you REMEMBER what life was like when you first accepted Jesus as your Savior? When you weren’t questioning His authority or trying to exert your own will? I guarantee that life was less complicated when we had a heart that was fully devoted in love with Him and His ways. Remember who Jesus is to you. Remember what He has done for you. Go to the cross at Calvary. Stand under the cross. Look up at the Suffering Savior. No one has proven His love for you like He has. John 15:13 offers the definition of true love. Here it is: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”
Is your passion for God weak at the moment? If you can’t remember a time when it was and how different your life was, at least stop and remember what kind of love He poured out for you on the cross.
The Ephesians were told to consider how far they had fallen from that first love experience with Jesus, to remember that moment when He made all things new. If you aren’t passionate in your relationship with Jesus, why did things change? What happened to put out your spiritual fire? Was there a conscious decision to walk away from the closeness of your relationship? Was there a decision or did you just maybe start to drift? Did you have an argument with God? Was it a life happening that caused a disconnect? What was it? Jesus invites us to REFLECT on our own status.
If my love for God has grown cold, if I no longer love Him, that means I have given my heart to something else. If God doesn’t have my heart, my soul is in danger. So many places in Scripture talk about the need to guard our hearts because they can be easily led astray.
I wouldn’t tolerate it if my husband told me he loved me on our wedding day but then started giving his heart to other women or other life experiences and grew cold toward me. That wouldn’t be what I committed to. It wouldn’t be what I opted in to. I suppose I could say we were still married because we had a piece of paper, a legal document that said we were, but I would know that in my heart, we weren’t. We can’t fool ourselves into thinking that our hearts can belong to things other than God, and that in the end, we can claim salvation on some technicality.
Jesus really wanted the Ephesians to evaluate what went wrong. Why did their love for Him start to shrink? He had given them some good grades at the beginning of Revelation 2, but now He wanted them to grade themselves. He wanted them to evaluate what happened that caused them to lose their first love. They were still serving Him, but they weren’t loving Him as they once did. They were going through some religious motions, but their hearts had grown cold. Their love for Jesus had faded, and He didn’t want their fire to burn out completely. It’s a lot harder to get a fire started than it is to rekindle one that has some hot coals underneath, right?
Whatever their reasons for the change of status in their hearts, there was one remedy. The remedy was that they would REPENT and do the things they did in the beginning when they first gave their hearts to Jesus. I’m not talking about jumping through religious hoops, but I’m talking about enjoying Jesus like they did in the beginning, Spending time with Him, prioritizing Him, putting Him first. They needed to turn away from whatever had stolen their affection and set it solely on Jesus.
Repentance involves a turning away from what has captivated your heart and a turning towards Christ. It’s not a step we can take without confessing there is a relationship problem. We can fan the flame of our passion for Christ by remembering what He has done for us on Calvary, by reflecting on the status of our heart, by repenting from anything that has compromised our passion, and by returning to God as our first love as we engage with Him in the ways we did when we first gave our hearts to Him.
In Matthew 22:37 Jesus told His followers what the greatest commandment was. It is the foundation for all of us as we seek to please God. It is the very thing we are discussing this morning. Here it is: Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Matthew 22:37
If God truly has our hearts, we won’t lack passion for Him, for His Word, worship, and prayer, for each other, and for those outside of the faith. We will fulfill our purpose, and we will start and spread His fire in ways that will be seen. You can see the effects of fire. You can feel the effects of fire. When a fire is burning, it is obvious. You don’t drive by a fire and wonder, “What was that?” You know it is a fire.
Do people know you love Jesus? Do they see the effects of your love for Him? Is your passion for Him obvious? What kind of grade would you give yourself in the area of passion? Let’s activate our passion for God and start some fires in our region and beyond!
