Finally,
7. An undernourished spirit will kill your passion.
Every day you face all kinds of circumstances that conspire to shrink your spirit and shrivel your heart. You’re going to get up tomorrow morning. You’re going to have distractions and disappointments. You’re going to have conflicts and you’re going to have changes and challenges. You’re going to have problems and pressures. You’re going to have frustrations and fears and failures and fatigue. All of these things fall in on you to shrivel your heart and shrink your spirit. So you must intentionally nourish your spirit. If you don’t do it nobody else is going to do it for you. Nobody else is going to nourish your spirit. So if you don’t take the time and trouble to do it, it’s going to shrivel up.
How do you do that? Through the five purposes. You need times of worship with God everyday, where you get to know Him — private worships. You need fellowship with other believers. You need to read God’s word and grow to be more like Christ. You need to have a ministry where you’re using your talents to help other people. And you need a mission in the world where you’re sharing your faith. If you just choose one of those purposes and forget the others you’re going to be imbalanced and you’re going to lose your passion. You need them all.
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’s got going, “Oh, yeah, another one of My creations… next!” No, He 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. You’ve probably heard about communities or towns that have Passion plays. 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.”
Acts 1:3 says this “Jesus showed Himself alive to them [the disciples] after His passion by many demonstrations: for forty days He continued to appear to them and tell them all about the kingdom of God.”
Today we’re going to end this service by remembering the passion of Jesus, reminding ourselves how much God loves us by taking communion. I’m going to ask the servers to begin serving right now. We’ll wait until everybody’s been served then we’ll all eat together.
Tom:
The Bible says in Psalm 107:33 “Whoever is wise will remember these things and will think about the deep love of the Lord.” Let’s do that. Would you pray with me?
As you think about God’s love for you take a moment right now to just go through this checklist of passion killers mentally and renew your commitment to Him. I don’t know what it is that’s been killing your passion. Maybe it’s an unbalanced schedule. You just need to say to God, “God, help me to begin to take in more, quit being so busy for You that I don’t have any time to love You.” Or maybe you need to say to Him, “God, help me to stop just taking in. Help me to do something for others.” Maybe it’s an unused talent and God brought you here this morning to say, “Get in a new place, a new job. Begin a ministry. Start to use the gifts I’ve given you.” Tell Him, “God, give me the strength. Show me how to do that.” Or maybe it’s an unconfessed sin. If you didn’t confess it earlier, confess it now. Jesus died to forgive you of that sin. Say to Him, “Jesus, thank You for forgiving me.” If there’s an unresolved conflict, as best as you can resolve it right now in your heart, and resolve to resolve it with the other person. Maybe the cause of passion dying in your life is an unsupported lifestyle. You’ve been trying to go it alone. You need today, “God bring some other people into my life. Help me to make that decision.” Maybe it’s an unclear purpose. You’ve been living for yourself. Or you’ve been living for nothing. God reminded you today of His purpose for your life. Thank Him. Maybe the cause of passion dying is an under nourished spirit. Focus your heart on the strength that only God can give. Draw up nourishment from Him.
Our Father, we thank You for the passionate love You have for us. You couldn’t have said it more clearly in Your word. You couldn’t have shown it more clearly than by sending Jesus to die on the cross. Help us to learn to love You back. Take if it’s one of these seven things, and be serious about it. Lord, You love us more than we can imagine. In that love You want to change our hearts. We pray that You would this morning. Reignite the passion in our lives and find the way only You can the passion and love that we have for You in our hearts. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Rick:
I’d like to read Psalm 107 again, the verse Tom read. “Whoever is wise will remember these things and will think about the deep love of the Lord.” It is foolish to not think about how much God loves you. It is wise to remember the passion of Jesus Christ and what He did for us on the cross and how much He showed His love for us. 1 John 4 says “God showed us how much He loved us by sending His only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him. This is real love. It’s not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”
Sacrifice — even before Jesus Christ went to the cross He suffered enormous pain for you and for me. Before He went to the cross, first they took Him through six trials — three Jewish, three Roman. They kept Him up all night which meant all six of those trials were illegal because it was against both Roman and Jewish law to have a trial at night. So He went the entire night without sleep. Then the Bible says that they gave Him over to the Roman soldiers just to make fun of Him. So the Roman soldiers blindfolded Jesus and they began to beat Him and beat Him. They used Him as a punching bag. They’d take sticks and hit Him on the head. And as He was blindfolded they’d say, “Who hit You, Jesus? Who hit You? If You’re God, tell us who hit You.” Jesus could have given their name, their father’s name, their grandfather’s name. He could have traced their family tree back to Adam. But He remained quiet.
Then it says that the soldiers just decided to mock him and ridicule Him. So they made a crown of thorns and they took those thorns and they pushed them into His skull. Of course He began to bleed as those thorns were pushed into His brain. It says they began to mock Him and make fun of Him. It says they plucked His beard out — just for fun, just to be mean. You can imagine how painful it would be to have your beard pulled out of your face.
Then it says that they went and they had Him scourged. A scourging was no mere whipping. A scourge is a whip with nine leather straps at the end of it. And at the end of each of those nine leather straps they would tie either a piece of bone to tear the flesh out, or lead to bruise the body. So every time a person was whipped with a scourge it would leave nine marks on the back. It was such a terrible punishment that men often died because of the loss of blood on their back. And it was Jewish law that said you could never give more than forty stripes. That would normally kill a man. So there was another law that said that if you ever gave more than forty lashes with a scourging whip that the person who gave it would be given the same punishment. So they always only gave 39. Just in case they miscounted.
Think about this — 39 times nine is the number of marks on Jesus’ back before He went to the cross. His back was one bloody pulp before He went to the cross. That’s passion.
Then they gave Him the heavy cross to climb up the mountain with. As He climbed up the mountain suffering from loss of blood and lack of sleep He stumbled and fell under the cross. They grabbed a man out of the crowd, an African named Simon. He was given the privilege of carrying the cross of Jesus the rest of the way. They get Him to the top of the hill. They stretch His arms out and they nail Him to the cross. They weren’t these little-bitty galvanized nails. They were a spike that they would nail into His hands. Then they would take that cross and they would lift it up and they would set it into the group, into the hole. Of course, it would pull and tear at the man’s hands.
I doubt you’ve ever been held in this position for any length of time. But if you’re held in this position eventually the muscles around your chest cavity begin to tire and begin to paralyze. Eventually you can breathe in in this position but the muscles give out and you can’t breathe out. You can breathe in but you can’t breathe out.
So death on the cross would have been a simple death by suffocation. Except the Romans didn’t want to make it that easy. So what they would do is they would take a man’s legs and bend his knees and they would nail his feet to the cross. Why would they do that? So He could stand up on them. What would happen is a man hanging on the cross would hang there and breathe in but he couldn’t breathe out until the pain in his lungs began to be unbearable — the pins and needles and his lungs were about to explode. He couldn’t breathe any more so he would stand up on his feet that were nailed on the cross. He’d get relief and he’d begin to breathe air until the pain in his feet was unbearable and he’d let himself down again. He’d hold that position until the pain in his lungs was unbearable and He’d stand up again. Until the pain in his feet was unbearable and he’d let himself down again. Death on the cross was a very cruel torture. It took days to kill a man. It was up and down and up and down and up and down, often for days. Extremely cruel death.
It says at one point the soldiers came to Jesus and they were going to break His legs. Why would they do that? Because if you break your legs you can’t stand up any more and He’d suffocate and die. But Jesus had already died by that time. So the soldiers to make sure He was dead took a spear and jabbed it into His side. The Bible says that water comingled with blood came out of that cavity. I’m no doctor but I’ve read dozens of medical explanations of death on the cross. Experts say that the only way that blood and water would co mingle in that cavity would be if that heart would tear, were to rip, were to explode. The stress that Jesus was carrying of all the sin in the world and the weight of the world on His shoulder, you can call it symbolic or whatever you want to call it, but Jesus’ heart literally exploded He died of a broken heart. He said, “I love you this much.”
Do you know what the worst sin is for Christians? It is not adultery. It is not murder. It is not some sort of sexual perversion. God tells us in Revelation 3. He says it’s lukewarmness. No passion. “God is just one of the things in my life. I have my social life and my career life and my sexual life and my family life and over here is a little piece of the pie called church.” God says, “How dare you! I love you this much. I love you passionately. I made you, created you, planned you, purposed you, saved you, have a place for you in heaven, and you would treat that with half-hearted indifference saying, ‘Excuse me but there’s a good TV show on tonight.'”
Jesus says “I’d rather have you hot or cold. Lukewarmness makes Me sick to my stomach.”
C. S. Lewis said it like this, “The only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important.” Moderately important! If Jesus is God and He died and loved you that much, you owe Him the rest of your life, every spare minute of it. If He didn’t then go home and live a self-centered life. The only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important. It either deserves your entire life or nothing.
So how are you in your passion for God? Are you lukewarm? Are you just going through the motions? Or are you red hot for God because He loves you that much? Has there ever been a time in your life when you were closer to God than you are right now? If so why? Nobody’s holding you back. The truth is you’re as close to God as you choose to be. You can have as much of God as you want. You can be as passionate about God as you want. And if you’re not it’s your fault.
Before we take communion I want us to pray a prayer together. Would you bow your heads?
Thank You, God. In your heart just say, “Thank You for being passionate about me even when I was distracted by other things. Jesus, thank You so much for enduring all that suffering for me so I could be forgiven. I’ve never been loved by anybody that much. Thank You for creating me. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for You. Thank You for having a purpose for my life. Forgive me for my lukewarm attitude toward You. Jesus, I want to have a passion for You. I want to get up in the morning looking forward to the day that You’ve planned for me and I want to love You passionately. I want to love others passionately. I want to use the talents that You’ve given to me for Your sake. Help me to take time to nourish my spirit and grow every day. Through worship, fellowship with other believers, using my talents for You, sharing the good news with others.”
If you’ve never opened your life to Jesus Christ say, “Lord, today I realize what You did for me. I want to say thank You. I want to accept what You did for me. And I want to follow You. I want to accept Your forgiveness.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.
On the night Jesus was betrayed He took bread and He broke it and He said, “This is My body which is broken for you.” He hadn’t even gone to the cross and He said it so obviously it’s a symbol. He said, “This is to symbolize and help you to remember how passionate I am about you. When you eat it do it to remember that I gave My life for you.”
That same night as He met with those He loved the most — His disciples — He took a cup of wine and He said, “This cup represents the blood that I’m going to shed for you. I want you to keep this tradition, keep this symbol to remember that I gave My life for you. That’s how passionate I am about loving you. I want you to never forget it.” As you drink this say in your mind, “Jesus, thank You for dying for me.”
I once nearly drowned in an undertow in Hawaii which is pretty unusual since as a young man I was a lifeguard. So I’m a pretty good swimmer. But I was in this undertow that pulled me under the water for what seemed to me like minutes. I was holding my breath. It wouldn’t let me up to the surface but when I finally forced my way to the surface, I gasped for breath like I’d never had a breath in my life. You might say I was passionate for air. If you, all of a sudden, stopped breathing, you’d get pretty passionate about air.
That’s what God wants us to do. He wants us to see Him as our daily bread and as the air that we breathe. And have that kind of passion for Him.
