PASSION 4 GOD

One day a man walks up to Jesus and he says, "LORD, WHAT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE BIBLE?" Jesus said, "I want you to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Nothing matters more than that. That’s the number one thing in life. I want you to love Me passionately." NOTHING ELSE MATTERS IN LIFE IF YOU DON’T LOVE GOD PASSIONATELY. 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. I love the paraphrase of that verse, Mark 12:30, from The Message "Jesus said, ’LOVE THE LORD GOD WITH ALL YOUR PASSION AND PRAYER AND INTELLIGENCE AND ENERGY." The word "passion". in Greek, is the word "heart." God is saying I want you to PUT SOME ENERGY, PUT SOME EMOTION INTO YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ME. Don’t be a wimp about your relationship with Me. Don’t be half-hearted. Give it all you’ve got. Jesus is saying, "If you’re going to follow Me, you’ve got to do it with passion. I want you to live passionately."

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 makes the impossible possible. Passion gives you a reason to get up in the morning and go, "I’m going to do something with my life today." Without passion life becomes boring. It becomes monotonous. God created you with the emotions to have passion in your life and He wants you to live a passionate life.

Here’s the amazing thing. It’s ok to be passionate about anything except God. That is not politically correct -- to be passionate about God. When I jump up and dance around and wave my hands in the air 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.

SO HOW DO I DO IT? HOW DO I PLUG INTO GOD? How do I have this living, vital, daily relationship with God that keeps my spirit nourished? The starting point is to remember how God feels about you. You know it but you forget it. Did you know that God is hopelessly in love with you? The reason that you’re not passionate about God is you have forgotten how passionate God is about you. EXODUS 31:14 "YOU MUST WORSHIP ONLY THE LORD, FOR HE IS A GOD WHO IS PASSIONATE ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU." Did you know that? Did you know that God is passionate about you? He made you to love you. You were created as an object of His love. The more you understand how God is passionate about you, the more passionate you’re going to get about God. When you forget how much God loves you, you start blowing Him off and going, "Forget it! I’ve got other things. There’s a good movie on TV tonight."

How do we know that God is passionate about us? The proof is the cross. Jesus stretched out His hands and they nailed Him to the cross and He was in essence saying, "I’d rather die than live without you. That’s how passionate I am about My creation. I made you. I love you. And I’d rather die than live without you."

In fact, the suffering of Jesus on the cross - His Passion. What is a passion play? It is drama that depicts the suffering of Jesus Christ. Jesus never wanted us to forget what He did for us on the cross. So He gave us the symbol of communion. He said, "When you take communion I want you to remember My passion. I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER HOW PASSIONATE I AM ABOUT YOU."

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