The Pleasure Of Passion Series

Jesus said in Luke 22:15, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." Jesus used the same word used all through the New Testament for lust to describe His passionate desire to eat the final Passover with His disciples. He had a passion for the Passover. Paul had this same passionate desire to be with his Lord. He uses the same word in Phil.1:23. "I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far." Paul had a lust for, or a passion for, heaven.

Paul was a man of intense emotion, and he uses the word again to describe how he felt about

getting to see the Thessalonians. He wrote in I Thess. 2:17, "Out of our intense longing we made

every effort to see you." There are other words that describe the strong emotions of Jesus and Paul,

but this is the very word for lust, and so we are forced to see the positive side of passion. All of us are

moving in the direction of our ruling passions. What we most enjoy and desire is the force that

determines how we spend our time and resources. For example:

1. Some have a passion for music, and so they are often at concerts, or before the radio, or listening to CD's.

2. Some have a passion for sports, and so they are often at sporting events, or glued to their TV.

3. Some have a passion for reading, and so they are ever with their nose in a book.

We could go on endlessly, for there are people with passions for everything imaginable. The point

is, passion is a strong desire that may be for what is evil or for what is good. Christians have used the

word so often for evil that it is hard to accept the reality that you can also be passionate for good. It is

Biblical and Christlike to lust for the pleasure of those things that are pleasing to God.

Most everything you find on lust and passion deals with the negatives of sex and anger. Issac

Watts, the author of many of our favorite hymns, wrote one for children that went like this:

But, children you should never let

Such angry passions rise.

Your little hands were never made

To tear each others eyes.

And Moore wrote this warning to adults:

Alas! Too well, too well we know

The pain, the penitence, the woe

That passion brings down on the best

The wisest and the loveliest.

It is true, and only the spiritually blind can be unaware of the dangers of passion ,but for now we

want to focus on the other yolk-the positive reality of the pleasure of passion. It is not just in this

Psalm, but in many of them that we see the passion for worship. In verse 2 we see a man possessed

by passion. "My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for

the living God." This is not the language of the uncommitted. You don't hear these words from those

who say we have nothing better to do, so let's go to church. This is the language of one who longs for

the presence of God like one longs for a lover who has not been seen for a long time.

The Psalmist for some reason is not able to get to the temple of God to worship, and he is filled

with envy for those who do have access to the temple. He even envies the sparrow and the swallow

who build their nest in the temple area, and even more so, those blessed ones who dwell there, and

can praise the Lord continually. He would be greatly rewarded if he could spend one day in the house

of God as a mere door keeper, than if he had a thousand days in the plush tent of some wealthy man

of the world. Here is a man with a passion for worship. It is a source of his greatest pleasure. I

found a similar testimony of one outside the Bible. Leonard Griffith of the St. Paul's church of Toronto,

Canada said this in a sermon on Psa. 84. "Ever since I was a child I loved to be inside a church. I

think it's my favorite place in all the world. A theater comes close second, then a baseball park, but

first the church. I mean the sanctuary, the place where God is worshiped, where the mightily organ

sounds and the congregation rises to sing. I like a church even when it's empty,

though I prefer to see one full."

I can imagine a lot of people envying this pastor when he is at the theater. And plenty would envy