This is not about easy recipes, it is about the biblical way. On the one hand, this way is a way of joy, because God wants to ignite our heart and make us useful for his plans, but it is also a way which is often uncomfortable and makes us look deep into our inner being.
A. Personal (Peter Blaser)
Introduction
I don't know how you feel about spiritual passion. How many times have you struggled with it, how many times have you wanted to, how many times have you not been able to, how many times have you been disappointed, resigned? Or maybe this has never even been a concern to you and now you are very excited, expectant?
Well, spiritual passion is often dealt with like a recipe book. You have to do this and that and then you have spiritual passion. Let's be very clear about one thing: Spiritual passion is not activism! Spiritual passion is not commitment until your tongue wipes the floor! Spiritual passion is relationship! Spiritual passion has a lot to do with love - but not love as we humans often understand it. Spiritual passion can take us to the limits of our endurance. Spiritual passion can appear outwardly very calm. Spiritual passion can manifest itself emotionally. The way spiritual passion manifests itself is also related to our type.
Gordon MacDonald said, "I remember my attitude when other people came to me with certain ideas about spiritual passion. I was just supposed to emulate what had worked for them. As a young man, I must have tried a dozen techniques. I eagerly did whatever I was told to do. But the results, to the extent there were any, were short-lived and I discovered that there are no shortcuts, no gimmicks, no easy ways to cultivate an intimate walk with God and maintain passion that will carry us through the journey of our lives.
This is not about easy recipes, it is about the biblical way. On the one hand, this way is one of joy because God wants to ignite our hearts and make us useful for His purposes, but it is also a way that is often uncomfortable and makes us look deep inside ourselves.
Vocation is only the beginning
In our biography of life with Jesus there is, after all, a clearly defined beginning: the rebirth, respectively the conversion and the acceptance of Jesus as personal Lord. With this act the Holy Spirit has entered our life. That is, we are:
- God's work
- God's temple
- Salt and light
- Infinitely valuable, loved, cherished, valued
- God's co-workers, ambassadors
- Saints
- Loved
- Housemates and fellow citizens
- Called
- God's counterpart, his friend
- Redemed
- Miterates
- Ambassador
- Elect
- Children of God
- Righteous
- written in the book of life
- perfect in Christ
- a member of the body of Jesus
- sealed with God's Spirit
We have:
- access to God
- living hope - perspective
- eternal life
- an advocate with God
What do these biblical facts trigger in you? Be authorized by the One who created you you the whole cosmos.From this first step and awareness of God's filiation, comes the first love- resp. also a burning passion. Therefore, it is important to keep this in mind. In true, deep adoration, our heart also becomes warm and this love is nourished - because every love needs nourishment! In order to get passion, to regain it, or to get it for the first time, a growth process is necessary - or God can also suddenly take hold of someone totally - but there the growth processes follow as well. God wants to shape us more and more according to His ideas - and these ideas are always the best for us. (Rom. 8:28) The story of Jacob in Pnuel gives us some important insights into God's principles Gen. 32:25-32
- Jacob's deceit and trickery for the firstborn blessing is the beginning of a long learning process that God walks with Jacob.
- Jacob is on his way to get his life in order
- At the river Jabbok, a figure rushes up to him. Jacob must feel that his life is at stake
- A fierce battle ensues - they give each other nothing
- Jacob meets God and gets a new identity
Spiritual passion has to do with my image of God!
Does this fit into our image of God, that God meets us like this? In such a way that we think he is killing us? The idea that God comes to us, puts us through the wringer, and oppresses and endangers us is not very close to us
- A common but one-sided and not very deep image is: a God of love - that is, insanely nice. We quickly associate love with "nice", "kind" and very deep down "ultimately harmless" along the lines of. Guter Opa, Total Taub. The image of a harmless God has never been true.
- The love of God in Jesus on the cross is not nice, harmless love. It is deepest, dramatic, "brutal" love! Jesus, his son had to die in agony! God plunges his son and thus his own heart into the deepest depth. That is love- so that we become free!
(W. Kopfermann) - The image of the nice, dear God, of the good buddy is not true from the Bible and on the other hand it does not correspond to the nature and heart of God.
- God is and remains the good shepherd who gives his all to lead his sheep in good ways. The shepherd does this with shouting, with curling, he leads the way, but also with the stick and with his dog, depending on the situation and the sheep. In the same way, loving, good parents sometimes have to take hard measures to be a real help to their own child in the long run
Real, deep love sometimes has to be painful too - But God is also the God who says, "Go and rest a little!" (Mark 6:31)
God is not a God who demands non-stop commitment - God wants relationship, and from that, our doing according to His will. - God is the good Father who laid it all down for you, He is the Father who gives good gifts. It is the God who has adopted you as his child and who wants to give you all his riches. He does not want to withhold it from you. The problem is that we often have different ideas about wealth, about abundance, about a good life worth living than the good Father!
Our images of God are very much shaped by our images of society. In our western world, wealth, recognition, health, consumption, freedom - are symbols of a fulfilled, good and worthwhile life.
You can have lack, accept deprivation, you can do without, you can live in suffering and hardship, internal and external, and still have a fulfilling, grateful, meaningful, rich life! These are not contradictions! (Phil. 4, 12)
What images of God determine your relationship with God?
When God leads us into a life of greater fullness (and spiritual passion springs from that) - and He wants to (John 10:10; Col. 2:10) - it doesn't go in a straight line, gently uphill, but it goes through fractures, through breakages. He brings us into emergency situations, he plunges us into crises and he meets us in them. Job's confession after his difficult time of suffering was, "I had heard God only by hearsay, but now my eye has seen you!" (Job 42:5) But he also meets us on the "Mount of Transfiguration" where we can see his glory. God has many possibilities, he will not be constricted!
All ambassadors truly used by God have gone through such times so that they can become fruitful and be led by God. Some examples:
- Petrus - denial - humiliation - knowing yourself - you used to gird yourself - another will gird you and lead you where you do not want to go
- Elia - depression - wants to die under the bush
Jeremiah - cursed the day of his birth
- Pauls - sickness and infirmity, stoning, scourging, etc.
- Hudson Taylor, downcast, discouraged
- John Wesley, a hindering wife, resistances
- Spurgeon, ridicule, hostility
- Wilhelm Pahls - death of his wife
- Personal crises???
- etc.
God loves us (at the risk of sounding cynical and harsh) perhaps never so practically as in these times when He reaches into our lives and makes us live through the most difficult things. Situations where we reach our limits and do not know what to do - where the going gets tough - where we have the impression that an overpowering figure is coming down on us! - like it must have happened to Jacob at the river
Whoever longs for a life of greater fullness will be led through fractures and breakage. (W. Kopfermann)
Before God gives us his fullness, he leads us into poverty. Before he lets us experience the day, he leads us into the night. (W. Kopfermann)
Spiritual passion does not mean swimming on a wave of success and euphoria, but it means remaining faithful even in brokenness, it means making God's interest my interest, it means believing God to deeply satisfy and fill us it means entrusting your life to God, This takes courage! Making God's interests my interests leads only through the breaking of my self.
Ps. 51:19; Ps. 34:19; Ps. 147:3; Ezek. 6:9
Before God brings us to the mountains of faith, He leads us into the deepest valleys of temptation - so that we may remain dependent on God!
What do these remarks trigger in you? Fear? Rejection?
That's normal - but an expression of distrust of God to make your life truly rich.
- Biblical rationale(see PDF file)
- The Crucial Insight of Jacob (see PDF file)
- The Crucial Question (or Consequence) (see PDF file)
- To be spiritually passionate is to be dependent on God! (see PDF file)
- God blesses! (see PDF file)
- The joy - the feeling - the love - the passion (see PDF file)
Developing a Passion for Jesus
- Knowing God
- Order relationships
- ask God for passion
- Patience
- End or begin
Short and sweet and actually very simple:
Sincere prayer in which we give Jesus dominion over our lives, trust that He will put all His fullness into our lives no matter what, when what comes, and asking for a passionate love for Jesus, God will definitely hear - and spiritual passion will become the result!
Literature:
Breathe Again 1/96; Wolfram Kopfermann; Fracture and Fullness, Meeting God in Depth
Breathe Again 1/96; Jack Deere: Head and Heart, Gaining New Passion
Back to First Love; Gordon MacDonald, Projection J
Source reference:
Content/Author: Regional Leaders' Weekend Nov. 4-5, 2000, Peter Blaser, Federation of Evangelical Swiss Youth Groups, BESJ
copyright: www.besj.ch
image: www.Juropa.net
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