Although I unknowingly declared this statement which I had attributed to a particular preacher, upon research I discovered my oft-quoted phrase “You cannot explain passion to a passionless person” originates (although debated) from existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre or had been linked to Friedrich Nietzsche. Regardless of who coined the phrase first, the truism remains the same. To a passerby, one could look at a painting and have an interpretive view toward a positive experience while another passerby would see paint on a canvas and nothing more. Passion is what motivates two people to embrace (or further). Passion is what motivates a person to give all their heart to an occupation, calling, or service/duty. Passion emboldens a person to action against the current or to remain resolute as a statue pointing the way for others to go while the bullets and bombs are going off around them. It was passion to restore that loving relationship between Heaven and Earth (God and mankind) that drove Jesus to the cross and to remain until the full price was paid. And it was passion which propelled our early Church leaders to do what they continued to do. After a list of perils stated by the Apostle Paul, he concludes it with these passionate words, “besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28). While vocation can change and cheers and support from people can wane, Paul held in inward passion that emboldened him to continue to take another step forward each day through the will of God.
And this—albeit not unique only to the present time period—seems to be at odds with historical Christians or Christianity. Paul recounts in 1 Corinthians 15 how Jesus was seen by hundreds of people after His resurrection and before His ascension into Heaven during that forty-day period. In Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4 Jesus challenged all of these followers to tarry in Jerusalem. And yet ten days later we only see 120 gathered together in the upper room. We applaud those who remained and we declare with passion the emboldened Holy Spirit-filled words of the Apostle Peter when he preached his sermon and thousands were cut to the heart and committed their lives to Jesus Christ. And yet within less than 50 years, a staunch challenge and warning is declared by the writer of Hebrews (as I have said before, I believe it was Barnabas who wrote it), “…let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:22-25). I will step away from the End Time attention the last verse receives to look upon this with another lens. Why hundreds who saw, perhaps spoke to, but certainly heard Jesus after His ascension and yet only 120? Why has there been an ever-growing departure of people attending church? Why has there been an ever-growing departure for the sacredness and holiness of attending church which was a solemn occasion (or for Pentecostals a time a celebration) is a time for TikTok sized tidbits of phrases by celebrity preachers who are truly only interested to build their kingdom rather than seeing the conversion of the lost. Along with these guilty leaders are worship leaders who have watered down music from their once-passionate claims for victory of Christ and defeat of Satan to now emotional fuzzies that hype up our narcissistic desires. Righteousness from Christ is replaced by relativism and pacifism. To this latter end, shirts with ties and dresses are replaced with skinny jeans and gym clothes. Outside of revival services, we often lived from Sunday to Sunday with personal consecration, personal hunger for His Word, and living out Jesus in our communities. Now we fill our heads with so many sermons and yet we neglect to truly live out the lives of the messages preached to us. We have more access to the scriptures by ways of the Internet, apps, voices reading the Bible, sermons provided in virtually every way imagined, and yet we have become more ignorant of the scriptures. There was something said when I was younger and wanted to know about something that the dictionary or encyclopedia or books were the sources. Now we want the summary…in the shortest form possible so we can move onto what we would rather do. No sacrifice of time. No need for effort. A mind totally converted (Romans 12:2) gives way to distracted or lazy mind coupled with a heart filled with emotion and carnality.
Concerning the Calling (upper-case C), where are the men who hear their Great General Call and challenge. Now pulpits are filled with faithless preachers who just hope to get through another service, and the more so as the money keeps flowing in. No longer are the gazes of men set like flint. No longer do we hear God crying out “who will go” with a fire in our hearts and tears of passion in our eyes “send me Lord”. To this end, it is harder for passion to be explained when passion seems to be more difficult to find.
To that I came across this quote from Mark Danielewski, “Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.” It means to suffer. It means to take up our cross daily. It means that Jesus increases and we decrease. It means to endure things—like the dutiful soldiers who race to the front lines or to stand while others are running to the back of the battle or the history of events Paul provided in 2 Corinthians 11—even if our lives are cut shorter than had we taken the easier road often travelled. We marvel and cherish men like William Borden and Robert Jermaine Thomas but quickly dismiss them as if they accomplished nothing due to their lives cut short but praise Billy Graham and a host of others who lived ripe old ages. I do not diminish, disdain, or discount all those who gave their lives to Christ, even if they do live to an ancient age. Although the narrative grows silent of the three Hebrews who stood against the order by Nebuchadnezzar, but nonetheless, they declared that even if they were to perish in the fires, they would not bow their knees to an idol. By numbers of conversions, yes, we ought to praise Jesus for every person who gave their lives to Jesus Christ by those who lived long for Christ. But longevity cannot be the more valued route than those who truly gave their lives when cut short due to ailment or decapitation or imprisonment or whatever seems to be their painful demise. The Christian life is a marathon, even if for some their marathon is only a half a marathon. But the passion of the passionate doesn’t change.
Tomorrow morning will be available for many of us. What will it be filled with? Does our Bible—in book form—get opened? Do our lips cry out to God for a time? Do we allow our hearts and ears to be awakened for the need of the lost to be saved? Do we exhort one another as that Day is fast approaching not with just head knowledge but to be a people who will suffer long with one another to keep pressing in, keep the fires lit and blazing, and that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing? Where is passion?