Romans 12:11-13 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. (NIV)
The first verse, Romans 12:11, is my life verse. “Never be lacking in zeal, (or passion) but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” It has been a motivator of mine for decades. I don’t want to be a “sometimes” servant of the Lord, but I also don’t want to serve Him out of a sense of duty. I don’t want to view serving the Lord as drudgery, as something I HAVE to do. Rather, I want to serve God out of a sense of destiny and delight. I want my passion for Him to be the fuel that I run on. I want my passion for the expansion of His Kingdom to be the reason I stay joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. I want my love for Jesus to overflow to people who need help. I want to be hospitable and welcoming and generous with people. I want God’s love to ooze out of me. The Law repels people. God’s love draws people. I want people to be drawn to Him, and I want it to be part of my life’s goal to work toward that end.
Without zeal, without passion, how long will we stay in this, and how effective will we be in our assignment to advance the Kingdom? I mean, after a while, if passion dies, what are the chances of our commitment dwindling, and how far behind that will compromise be? Casual Christianity leads to complacency which leads to compromise. I know our passion for our walk with Christ will have an ebb and flow to it. There are hills and there are valleys, but how do we keep the fire for Christ stoked in our hearts? A fire can spread, burn out, or be put out. What do you think should be the goal of a believer? I’d say we ought to be spiritual arsonists! I think we need to be spreading some spiritual fire. I think we need to live so passionately that people come here just to watch us burn with zeal for the house of the Lord.
Passion is a matter of the heart. Passion for God is addressed in Revelation 2. Feel free to turn there in your Bibles or on your apps. You’ve heard the common phrase, “His heart just wasn’t in it.” “Her heart just wasn’t in it.” That’s what we say of a person who lacks passion for something. A lack of passion isn’t something we can really hide. In time, it is easy to see if someone is passionate about something or not. And passion is critical for the success of any pursuit.
Someone I read after this week said, passion is important because:
- It is the first step to any conquest. You won’t grow as a Christ-follower without it.
- It activates potential. There is more to experience with and for God, but you limit those experiences if you aren’t passionate about growing as a Christian.
- It influences the life of others and changes them. Passion is a spark, a catalyst for other people to engage with God. It is contagious.
- It establishes and maintains our priorities. Passion is what drives what we do on a daily basis.
- It makes the impossible happen. Passion gives us courage to take steps of faith. If you aren’t seeing God at work on a regular basis, check your passion for Him. Without passion, we will play it safe and limit our experience to what we can do in our own strength.
- It is a spiritual protection. God will fiercely protect the person who is passionately pursuing Him and His will. His name is on the line, and those who boldly identify that they belong to Jesus are guarded, kept safe, and held onto in this journey through life.
(https://christianleadershipuniversity.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/the-power-of-passion/)
The ancient city of Ephesus was located in what we know today as the country of Turkey. In Revelation 2 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.
What we read here in Revelation 2 is a warning. I personally love that there are warnings in the Bible. I need to know when I am in danger of going in the wrong direction. I have blind spots. I appreciate someone having my back. God isn’t heavy-handed here. He doesn’t kick them to the curb because their love for Him is waning. He 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. Church, 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? Some of us may have to reach back to our childhood to remember that time! Maybe we have been in the driver’s seat for a long time and have just tried to do churchy things to keep up appearances. I guarantee that life was less complicated when we had a heart that was fully devoted in love with Him and His ways. God is just inviting us to remember the times when we weren’t ashamed to talk about Him with other people because our love was so genuine, so authentic, and added such joy to our lives. We just had to show Him off!
Say, “Remember.” When you remember good moments, like when you could fit into a size 8 jeans, it is a motivator, right? When you remember the honeymoon phase of your marriage, doesn’t a smile come to your heart and isn’t there a longing to return to that kind of focus and simplicity? Memory is a great motivator. How many of you remember when you were baptized? Wasn’t it an amazing day? You were so proud to let everyone know you had joined your life with Jesus.
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”
Picture Jesus on the cross, and you will see the highest demonstration of love that has ever been displayed. God’s love is generous, extravagant, and sacrificial. It is compassionate and forgiving. On the cross, Jesus was all of that and more.
Love is compassionate and forgiving. Do you know where Jesus’ mind and heart were while He was hanging on the cross? It was on other people. It’s almost incomprehensible. He was worried about His mother and how she would cope in His absence. Oh, He knew He was going to rise from the dead, but she didn’t know that. He knew she needed comfort right away, and so from the cross, bloodied and bruised, and gasping for breath, He told John to take care of His mom. (John 19:26-27)
His concern was for those who had beaten Him, stripped Him, mocked Him, and driven nails through His hands and feet. He was worried about them. He was worried about their status with God and their eternal destiny. He prayed for them. He asked God to forgive them, saying they didn’t know what they were doing, Luke 23:34.
His heart, although it was under great stress and distress, probably beating way too fast or perhaps not nearly enough, His heart went out to the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember Him when He would enter the eternal Kingdom. It wasn’t exactly a moment conducive to a spiritual conversation, but Jesus didn’t shut him down. The intensity of His love gave Him the ability to focus on someone’s spiritual, eternal need, even as life was draining out of Him.
These three examples of His care and concern for others even while He was on the cross reveal the extravagance, depth, and remarkable strength of the love of God. The mercy in His love, the grace in His love, it’s almost too much to take in. The Bible says in Romans 5:8 that God demonstrates His own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He demonstrated a love we didn’t even deserve to receive, a love we certainly aren’t even capable of reciprocating even if we spend each day trying our hardest.
These are images we need to remember because when someone loves you like that, and you realize it, how can you keep from responding in passionate love in return? 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.
In a discussion about the end times, Jesus said this in Matthew 24:12-13 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. I believe Jesus is trustworthy. He said the love of MOST would grow cold. He is talking about the condition of people’s hearts. That is concerning to me. To think that most people will “fall out of love with God” is worrisome. God’s love for us will never grow cold, but it is obvious that our love for Him can, and here, there is a correlation between our passion for Him and our ability to cross that finish line with Him. If you have come to believe that once you were saved, you would always be saved, regardless of the condition of your heart, I need to tell you Scripture doesn’t support that idea.
I trust in Christ’s perfection and not my own for salvation, so that isn’t what I’m talking about, here. I also believe He can protect and keep me all the days of my life. I’m simply saying, 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.
The Apostle Paul said this in II Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” II Corinthians 13:5 Can we examine ourselves this morning and test ourselves? Could we be honest about our spiritual condition? Is Christ in us or have we failed the test?
Jesus really wanted the Ephesians to evaluate what went wrong. Why did their love for Him start to shrink? He had given them some grades at the beginning, 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 have to confess where things went wrong and ask for forgiveness from God as we turn toward Him. “I’m sorry, God, that I have let things get in the way of my relationship with You. I’m sorry I haven’t made You the priority in my heart that maybe even my actions have indicated I want You to be. I am sorry for choosing sin and self over You, and I want to put sin away,” or “I am to repent of complacency,” or “I want to put busyness to rest in my life so that I can focus on You. Please forgive me and fan the flame in my heart. Revive my love for You, God.”
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? This morning, let’s activate our passion for God and start some fires in our region and beyond!
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