Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Psalm 119:97
Where does passion come from? For the first 40 years of my life, I wouldn’t have been able to answer the question. I just knew that I felt guilty because passion was absent. No matter how much I desired it, I couldn’t manufacture it out of a vacuum.
Passion was absent because God’s Word hadn’t been life-saving to me yet. I knew kingdom principles in a cerebral way but my soul was still full of the world’s infection; anxious thoughts, private obsessions, and insecurity. Few could probably tell but that’s only because the church teaches its members to hide their flaws well. Spiritual disease is rampant beneath polished exteriors.
Passion was finally born when I experienced the power of the cross firsthand. With life change, I became a zealot. The good news of the power of our resurrected Lord was on the tip of my tongue just waiting for an outlet. I’m still a bundle of passion waiting to erupt. It may be an email that sparks the flow or a lunch date with a friend that turns surprisingly spiritual.
We all have our favorite subjects. Some of mine are severe weather, World War II, survivor’s stories, and the inner workings of interpersonal relationships. A conversation that includes one or more of the above is most enjoyable to me. But none of those can compare to my love for the ways of the kingdom and how they work. If I put on the coffee, engage with a spiritual partner, I find that the hours are gone in a flash. In heaven, there will be many 1,000-year-cups-of-coffee as fellowship deepens and spiritual thirst is eternally quenched.
How would it look for my passion to equal yours, Jesus? However far I need to go, take me. Amen
