Yesterday was a very good day at the Women of Faith Conference in Indianapolis:  good speakers and good music. Since I left there, I have Matthew West stuck in my head singing…”I don’t want to go through the motions, I don’t want to go one more day, without your all consuming passion inside of me. I don’t want to go through my life, asking what if  I had given everything, instead of going through the motions…” 

We often do go through the motions on a day to day basis: going to church on Sundays, Bible Study on Wednesdays, pot luck dinners, and committee meetings. None of these activities are bad in themselves but where is our passion for Jesus?  I was conversing with a friend of mine about this very topic this last week. My comment to him was “if only people would truly read the gospels, it would make such a difference.  If only they just read the gospel of Luke, they couldn’t help but fall in love with Jesus!”

This is passion:  when there is a fire burning within that cannot be put out.  It’s like our first love; we can’t help but talk about it with everyone.  They can see it on our face.  It overflows into everything we do.  And then our love becomes like Jesus’ love.  As the apostle Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians 13, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”  This is not romantic love. It is sacrificial love lived out because of our deep passion for Jesus.  Paul didn’t write this in the middle of his letter to the early church in Corinth, Greece as an exhortation on love.  He wrote in response to those Christians “going through the motions” without love. They had numerous spiritual gifts and talents but Paul wanted to show them “a more excellent way” to live.  He basically was saying that we can speak, we can serve and we can move mountains for God but if we don’t do it with the intention of love, it is all worthless.  Going through religious motions without a passionate love for Jesus and each other is all for naught. And it gives us no joy.  This leads to burnt out Christians.  Service is done out of duty or to look good to the rest of the world.  We don’t fool anyone. The world knows authenticity when it sees it. 

Passion is contagious. It attracts others to it like insects are attracted to light.  When a person is passionate about their love of Jesus and lives this out by loving everyone around them, this gets people’s attention.  If this passion doesn’t burn out in a moment but lasts throughout a lifetime, they want to know this person’s secret. 

So what is the secret to sustained passion?  Matthew West tells us in his song.  It’s giving everything we are and everything we have to God.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. Everything. If Jesus is our first love then our passion for him will persist and everything else of importance in life will fall into place. I don’t want to go through the motions and wish at the end of my life that I had not held back but had given my everything to Jesus.

Lord, today revive my heart with a deep, fiery passion for you. Let me speak and write out of an overflow of love for you.  Otherwise I am like the resounding gong or clanging cymbal Paul wrote of in his letter to the Corinthians. Without your love burning in me, I am nothing at all.