watch the video on passion here.
When I was a teenager, Billy Graham came to town, and I and my church friends went down to the stadium to work at the crusade. My friends volunteered for the mass choir, but considering my singing ability, I chose to work instead as a counselor. They trained me how to share my faith using a little blue book called “Peace with God”.
When I was a teenager, Billy Graham came to town, and I and my church friends went down to the stadium to work at the crusade. My friends volunteered for the mass choir, but considering my singing ability, I chose to work instead as a counselor. They trained me how to share my faith using a little blue book called “Peace with God”.
Page one showed a man standing on
one side of two cliffs. Between the two
was a valley that represented the gap between us and God. Page two showed half-built bridges called
“religion,” “philosophy,” and “good works.” Because we are incapable of
reaching God through our own effort. On
page three, a cross lay between the cliffs. God had done what we could not do,
offering his Son on the Cross for our sins.
We could find our way to God, by confessing Christ and praying a prayer,
which was included in that little blue book.
At first, I expected that when
someone prayed the prayer there would be some dramatic change. Usually there
was not. Sometimes a new convert would
complain that they felt no difference. There was an answer for that right in
the little blue book. There was an illustration showing a train with three
cars--an engine, a coal car, and a caboose.
The engine was “Fact,” the coal car “Faith” and the caboose
“Feeling.” The fact was God’s promise;
our faith connected to it, and the feelings weren’t important. The engine can still run with or without the
caboose.[1]
It was a tidy presentation--accept the facts
and you accept the faith. Don’t worry about feelings.
The older I get, the more
inadequate that answer is. No one accepts
Christ for purely rational reasons.
Blaise Pascal wrote that “We know truth, not only by the
reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first
principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them.”[2]
Passions—emotions—are critical to
us for many reasons. First, because God speaks to us through our feelings.
In a previous blog, we talked
about two realms of understanding—the objective and subjective. The objective
is the material universe. The subjective is our reaction to the material
universe. It exists only within our
mind. To the atheist or deist, the
subjective is just an echo of the material world. But to the theist, who
believes in an active, personal God, subjective impressions are one more way
God speaks to us. Human feelings can be influenced by God just as human
intellect.
God in the Bible speaks though
the prophets through dreams, visions, parables and impressions in the
mind. These are products of imaginations
guided by God, and emotions infused with His Spirit. He did not give us the Bible by dictation,
nor did He simply give us natural principles that we can discern. He used the
passion and imagination of men to convey His message to the earth.
Whenever we talk of a “call” to
the ministry, pray to God to give us peace or courage, or look to God for
guidance through a sign, we are acknowledging that God still speaks through the
subjective. None of this makes sense to the purely practical minded. It is only by acknowledging God’s sovereignty
and power over the heart that we begin to understand the power of God-directed
passion.
Second, passions motivate us to
action. Reason describes and understands, but
emotions are necessary for motivating and making decisions. Knowledge, no matter how complete, is
not enough to provoke actions unless it is accompanied by feeling.
If objective truth was the only
thing necessary for change, then alcoholism, smoking, overeating, drug
addiction and speeding would disappear. We all know they are wrong, yet many do
them anyway. Our bad habits and misdeeds spring from the dark recesses of the soul;
from the same mysterious places that produce love, joy, and happiness.
Shane Hipps writes:
“The exaltation of reason is the greatest legacy of
the print age. Printing helped fund the
rapid acceleration of higher-order thinking and intellectual development. What an extraordinary gift that was to us. However, when it reverses, the emotions are
seen as pesky little distractions that get in the way of good reasoning. The consequence is that people are reduced
to merely cognitive, rational beings.
The problem is, we are not just rational beings. The Psalms reveal a very different
picture. These are the poems of the
heart. And they show us that the
emotional life is integral to our very being and life with God.”[3]
Third, passions are probably the
most Godlike thing about us. We share our passions with God. God gets joyous, angry, jealous, and loving to
the highest degree. All the feelings
that motivate us are also present in Him.
It only stands to reason that God would use this link with humanity to
communicate with us.
God’s passion is modeled for us
in Christ. He took a whip to
moneychangers in His Father’s house, wept over Lazarus, and sweat drops of
blood in agony on the night before His death. Such a Lord cannot be reconciled
with a passionless, cerebral approach to the Father. Intellectual belief must
be accompanied by desire.
If there is one word which
describes the way Jesus related to the people around Him, it would be empathy-- the ability to feel what other
people are feeling. Our ability to empathize with others gives us an advantage
over those who do not, enabling us to feel what they feel. We understand others
by putting ourselves in their places, reaching them in emotional ways.
Jesus tailored his reactions to
each person He met to their moods. He
played with children, argued with Pharisees, wept with widows, and rebuked
disciples. He never had a “typical”
response to anyone. His reaction to each
person was unique.
Passionate living comes naturally
to some. For others, it must be cultivated.
In the next blog, we will talk about how to cultivate a greater sense of
passion.
Do you see yourself as being more passionate, or more reasonable? What stimulates your passion for God?
Write below and let us know.
[1]
This is a point also made by Peter Scazzero in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.
[3]
Shane Hipps, Flickering
Pixels
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