"Restoring Your Passion"
Sermon Transcript for September 12, 2004
(Second in 3-part sermon series, “Re-energizing Your Life”)
By Rev. Mike Beck
For those I didn’t get the chance to greet last weekend, it is great to be back with you. The renewal leave exceeded our expectations; did some wonderful things in me. But you know, sometimes you’ve got to be away from something to appreciate just how special it is. And that’s the way we feel of you and even a stronger way and for your prayers of love while we were gone, we give you thanks. You’ll find a Sermon Note insert in your bulletin. I invite you to take it out now. Take out a hymnal or Bible to put it on and a pen so you can take some notes. They’ll be places for you to write in some things. I’m preaching today the second in a series of messages that seemed appropriate upon my return of how we re-energize our lives. Last week’s sermon was simply entitle, “Let Go!” And we talked about six things that we need to let go of in order to live more Christ-centered, re-energized lives.
- We need to let go of the need for control
- We need to let go of past hurts, difficult as that may be.
- We need to let go of the need to always be right.
- We need, at times, to let go of God’s resources so the Kingdom can be advanced.
- We need to let go of the future. And we pointed out that doesn’t mean we don’t plan. But after the best planning that we have done, we then leave the future in God’s hands.
- And we need to let go of the fear of a deeper commitment to Christ. There are some of you hearing my voice that really wants to be a part of one of these study groups this week but you are a little fearful. Let go of that so that God can bring a blessing into your life.
And today we want to talk about restoring our passion. I looked up in the dictionary the word “passion”. Of course it has many definitions, but this one fits what we are talking about this morning. We’re thinking of passion as “a strong enthusiasm or desire.” And then the last part of this I like, “a compelling force that’s driving us in our lives”. Nothing great is ever created or sustained without the ingredient of “passion”. If we are interviewing for a new staff person and I’ve got two persons—one with great gifts, but little passion; and a second with not quite so great of skills but a strong passion—I’ll hire the one with the passion every time because passion is what causes ordinary people to do extraordinary things. What’s happening in our youth at least in some small measure starts with Steve Wakefield’s passion for young people. Passion energizes life. If you don’t have passion in your life, you aren’t living, you’re existing! God made us to live passionate lives.
Our text for this morning is the simple words of Jesus in John 10:10 when He said, “My purpose is to give (he’s talking to you) life in all its fullness.” But so many persons fall short of living that kind of life. Why? So what we are going to do in the sermon today is to do some diagnostic work. I’m going to try to quickly give you a list of eight “passion-killers” that, if they are not dealt with, what they do is take the “zip” out of our lives. Now as we begin we need to acknowledge that there are physical things that can happen to us that definitely drain the energy from our lives. But having acknowledged that, let’s be careful not to use our physical illnesses or what Paul talked about “thorns in the flesh” as excuses for not living passionate lives.
How many of you have seen the movie or read the book, Tuesdays with Morie? Let me see your hands. If you haven’t read that book, you ought to. Morie had Lou Gerhig’s disease, lived a passionate life right up to the very end. I told Richard Hodson he could be nervous for the first thirty minutes because I was going to talk about him…excuse me, he’ll probably be here in the next service. I was talking to John Smith. Life’s pretty rough for John because of the misfortunate illness that he has. But yet all of us who know John, know that he lives a life of passion. Physical ailments may drain our energy by they don’t need to drain our passion.
We’re going to look today at some of the emotional, a couple of the relational, and then four spiritual causes of a lack of passion in our lives. And like a doctor or a good Christian counselor, if we can identify the source of our problems, then we can begin the work of bringing about healing and restoration. So as we begin, let me give you a word of encouragement from God’s Word. It’s found there on the top of your outline; it’s also up on your screen. Let’s read these words together; it’s a wonderful promise. Join me! “God who got you started in this spiritual adventure shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that!”
On your outline there, circle the words “spiritual adventure”. For in an adventure, things don’t always go smoothly. We’re often unsure of what lies around the corner for us. Mickey and I had no idea yesterday morning that we’d be making a trip to the hospital in Kokomo following last evening’s service. But as followers of Jesus Christ, we know two things—whatever takes place, God is going to be with us. And secondly, no matter how much we may be messing up, God is never going to give up on us.
Unclear Purpose: So let’s begin by looking at two emotional passion-killers. The first one is an unclear purpose about our life. If we don’t understand God’s purposes for our lives, we drag ourselves out of bed in the morning and instead of saying, “Good morning, Lord”, our inner thoughts are “Good Lord, it’s morning!” In a difficult time in his life, even the great prophet Isaiah echoed these words. He said, “I’ve labored for no purpose. I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.” You see, passion and purpose go together. Purpose creates passion. And despite what the commercials on TV tell you, God made you for a bigger purpose than just to be comfortable and to have fun. To live only for ourselves is a pretty puny purpose that will end up causing us to echo the words of the popular song of a couple of decades ago, where the songwriter said, “Is that all there is in life?” I like this quote. I don’t know where it came from but it simply says, “We need something bigger than our self to pull us out of our self in order to become the person God intended us to be.” Look down here at Keith and Marilyn Hamilton. Heaven only knows they’ve had their share of physical ailments and struggles to deal with. But marriages have been enriched around the world and it started with the passion that they had because they understood God’s purpose for their lives. Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning. It’s activity but no direction. It’s trivial, it’s petty, and it’s pointless. That’s why if you haven’t read Rick Warren’s book, 40 Days of Purpose, you need to do so.
Unbalanced Schedule: A second reason we lose passion is an unbalanced schedule. Work is a good thing. Work gives meaning to our lives. And there are going to be those periods in life where because of situations in our work, we work long hours. But overwork on a steady basis will kill passion. Vince Lombardi, the great football coach, had this quote. He said, “Fatigue will make cowards out of all of us.” Think about that for a minute. It’s true. Fatigue makes cowards of all of us. I return as your pastor as a result of this leave so much more passionate for my ministry among you because the rest that leave provided. We need a balance between rest and work, between input and output. The Bible teaches there is a rhythm to life or as the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “There is a time and season for every purpose under heaven.” With this matter of overwork, we might ask the question, “Why is it that we work so hard?” The Psalmist said in Psalm 127, he said, “It is senseless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, fearing that you will starve to death; for God wants his loved ones to get their proper rest.” Now I doubt if any of us are worried about starving to death, but we are fearful and we are insecure in other ways that causes us in time to overwork. The other thing that motivates people to overwork is materialism. The writer of Ecclesiastes said, “I’ve learned why people work so hard to succeed: it is because they envy the things their neighbors have.” Rick Warren, I love his quote. In fact the material in this message comes from one of his sermons. Rick says, “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t even like!” And we chuckle, but there is a lot of truth in that. A lot of us, some of those things that we say we own, didn’t bring the satisfaction we thought they would. And some of them end up owning us. Rick goes on to say, “And just about the time we catch up with the Jones’, they refinance!”
So these two things, an unclear purpose and an unbalanced schedule, will sap the passion from your life. Let’s look at two relational passion killers.
Unresolved Conflict: The first of those is an unresolved conflict. When you’ve got a conflict with someone who is close to you that isn’t settled, take it to the bank it’s going to sap the passion out of your life. If we want to keep passion in our life, we’ve got to do everything we can to keep, especially those close relationships healthy. We’ve got to work at resolving the conflict. And ignoring and pretending that those conflicts don’t exist and trying to sweep them under a rug, won’t do any good. It will just eventually stink up the house. Job 5:2 says, “Resentment destroys the fool, and jealousy kills the simple.” And resentment can be something way back in our past, something that happened twenty years ago that we are still constantly thinking about and holding on to. Read with me these words from Job 18:4. He said, join me, “You are only hurting yourself with your anger.” But what do we do if the person that we are in conflict with, we greet them and they won’t let us resolve the conflict? Or what if the person who has deeply wounded you is dead? That’s where forgiveness is so important. That’s where we pray to God, “Lord, I’ve just got to take this out of my hands and put it in your hands. I’m just tired of carrying this heavy burden on my back.”
Unsupported Lifestyle: The other relational passion-killer is number four on your outline is an unsupported lifestyle. We were made to live in relationship with other people. And when we don’t have relationships, the passion starts to ebb slowly out of our lives. Read with me these words from Ecclesiastes 4:-10, “Two are better than one, because if one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!” Now, I’m talking in this point to both married people and single people. No doubt if we’ve had a dear spouse that has died, there is an empty spot there that will never go away. But that doesn’t keep us from having meaningful relationships. As a pastor I have known numerous persons who wanted to have a passion for God, but that passion for God slipped away. Do you know why? In most cases, they stopped being around God’s people! They stopped coming to church. They never made it a priority to be in a small group. And, just like what happens if you take a burning ember and take it out of the fire, it will go out. It will become cold. The same thing happens with us. We need to be connected with the passion of relationships within the body of Christ. Read with me Hebrews 10:24-25, “Let us consider how we can spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, but let us encourage one another.”
And then, I need to move quickly through these, let’s look at four spiritual passion-killers.
Unexamined Life: The first is an unexamined life. That’s point number five. This relates to a sermon I preached recently entitled, “Taking Inventory”. We all need to stop regularly to examine our lives and see how we are doing. John Wesley and his Holy Club at Oxford and then later in the Methodist Societies, that’s what they did. They kept track of each other and upon themselves. Wesley did it to extremes. There was one period in Wesley’s life, and he later recognized that was a little bit of overkill, who would take inventory once every hour of every waking day. Now, that’s a little too much. But sidelight—during October over at the United Methodist Community on Tuesday evening and then here at Grace on Wednesday evenings, I’m going to be sharing a series of programs related to some of the things I learned of interest about our Methodist heritage and Wesley. I hope you will be present for those. Lamentations 3:40 says, “Let us look closely at our ways and examine them and then return to the Lord.” That’s why retreats and accountability groups and weekends like the Walk to Emmaus are so important. Read with me these words from II Corinthians 13:5, “Test yourselves to make sure that you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups.”
Undernourished Soul: Point number six, an undernourished soul is a spiritual passion-killer. Moses in Deuteronomy 8:3 said, “People need more than bread for their life; real life comes by feeding on every word of God.” You might want to circle those words, “feeding on the Word of God”. And as you do that, what would you call a person who eats only once a week or worse yet, only once a month? We would say that they were starving themselves! And yet, how true that is of so many people who call themselves Christians! Every day presents us with challenges and distractions and struggles and decisions. God has given us His Word to help us in the journey of life. As I think back to that Disciple Group I had the privilege of leading last year, the greatest blessing in my life, almost without exception, it was filled with people who were too busy to take time to do that. But they did anyway and they received the abundance of God’s blessing. Proverbs 3:22 tells us, “God’s principles will fill us with living energy.” Not living energy you need, I need.
Unapplied Truth: Point number seven, an unapplied truth destroys our passion for God. Here’s what I’m talking about. We so easily confuse “knowing” with “doing”. Those two things are not the same thing. They are light years apart. We don’t really “know” something until we “do it”! II Peter 1:5 says, “Make every effort to apply the benefits of God’s promises to your life”. Those are nice soft, padded pews that you are sitting on. What you’re doing right now listening to this message, good as it might be, takes very little effort. The hard part is being intentional to take action on whatever God’s Holy Spirit is speaking to you to do as you hear the message. James 1:22, he writes, “Remember, it is a message to obey, not just listen to. If you don’t obey, you are only fooling yourself.” In a sermon series on scripture is this quote, “God’s Word is not primarily for information, but for transformation.”
Unexpressed Faith: And then finally, an unexpressed faith will cause us to lose our passion for God. I’m delighted that Dan has such a large group going to Israel with him. And there is still time for you to be a part of that group. Those who have been to Israel or those who will go with Dan know that there are two bodies of water that are only about fifty miles apart but are drastically different. One of them is the Sea of Galilee. It is a living, vibrant body of water filled with oxygen and fish. Why? Because coming down out of the mountains tributaries, water is flowing in to it. But then on the south end of the Sea of Galilee is the Jordan River and water flows out of it. So it is healthy; it is alive. But then the Jordan River flows in to the Dead Sea; and it is dead. In fact if you can’t swim, you might want to go with Dan because if you go to the Dead Sea, it is so dead and the salt is so thick that you’ll float on top of it even if you can’t swim. But why is it dead? Its got input but there is no output. To be truly alive and passionate for God, it is not just enough to take in, as Cindy put it this morning and what Disciple and Christian Believer teaches, what we take in then we give out as true disciples of Christ. The way we do that, to simply put it, Psalm 96:12, “Each day tell someone that He saves!”
God has a unique message for every single one of you to share with others. And as good as the four spiritual laws are, it is not the four spiritual laws. It’s simply the difference that knowing God has made in your life. How long has it been since you’ve told somebody about that difference? I want to leave you with a little four-letter word that you can remember to help you guard against these last four spiritual passion-killers. It’s the simple word “C-H-A-T”.
C—Check on your progress,
H—Hear the Word;
A—Act on it;
T—Tell others.
And as we close, I want you to be in an attitude of prayer but I don’t want you to close your eyes. I want you to just go back to the first page of that outline and just look at it. And I want you to note that there is a box beside each one. And as I review these points, you check where God needs to do some restoration in your life. Are you unclear about your purpose? Has your schedule become unbalanced? Is there somebody close to you where there is some unresolved conflict? Are you living an unsupported lifestyle? And I tell you, if you are, being a part of one of our ministry teams, coming to Caring Ministry in the morning, being a part of one of the bible study groups this week, will give you support. Have you taken time to examine your life? Are you feeding your soul or is your soul undernourished? Do you know it? That’s not the important thing. Are you doing it? Is there an unapplied truth? And then are you telling somebody else? For an unexpressed faith will destroy your passion!
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