Igniting Your Passion For God

This morning we are completing our week of prayer and fasting. For me this week has been tremendous. While it is been a time of challenge, no doubt, and it has also been a time of refreshing. Not only for me, but for many of you that have participated with me this past week. It is such a blessing to dedicate a special time of prayer and fasting to the Lord. Really it is setting the table for seeing God move in a greater way in our lives.

One thing that this past week has done is to reignite my passion for God. This passion has energized my life. When you have little to no passion it seems like everything can become boring or monotonous. Passion is what takes an ordinary Christian and turns him or her into a powerful witness for the Lord! A believer, that blazes trails, a believer that moves mountains!

You may have never heard of the runner, Roger Bannister. He was from Great Brittan. Roger was able to accomplish something that no runner was able to do prior to him. It was popular opinion back in the 1940’s that it was humanly impossible to run a marathon and break the 4 minute mile average barrier. They said the body could not do it. Roger set out to break this barrier. Roger worked to intensify his training by doing hard intervals. After several years of training, on May 6th, 1954, Roger Bannister broke the sub 4 mile average for a marathon. Part of Roger’s training was to visualize this achievement.

While it is amazing what Roger Bannister was able to achieve because of his passion for running and breaking a sub 4 mile average for a marathon, it is one that faded. Six weeks later a runner by the name of John Landy beat Roger’s record by two tenths of a second.

As I look at the status of our culture, it is evident to me that the passion for God has become almost obsolete. People seem to be passionate about everything but God. They are passionate about sports, clothing, food, and politics more than they are about God. So how did we get here? And how can we change? We are going to answer these two important questions this morning.

I. How did I get here?

A. Priorities

a. To answer our first question, of how or why we lose our passion for God.

b. We do not have to look any further than our daily schedule.

c. Where are we spending our time?

i. We all have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 52 weeks a year. Where we spend our time, is a good indicator on what is important to us.

d. Well intentioned believers, lose their passion for God because the busyness of life takes over, and they begin whether intentionally or not to place other things ahead of their relationship with God.

e. The bible says in Matthew 6:33(NKJV) 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

f. If we have fallen into the enemies trap, we need to recalibrate our lives. Let’s move forward and make God our priority in 2020 and beyond.

B. Unresolved conflict with people

a. Another way we lose our passion for God, is to have unresolved conflict with others.

b. Everyone encounters conflict. Whether that conflict is with a spouse, a co-worker, a family member or a friend.

c. How do we handle this conflict? Do we take the high road? Do we work to quickly resolve this conflict?

i. It may be that in order to resolve this conflict that you may need to go and apologize to someone.

d. Let me say this, unresolved conflict has the ability to drain our passion and excitement for God.

e. Really there are three emotions that can kill our passion for God. They are: resentment, jealousy and unresolved conflict.

f. Unresolved conflict just seems to linger and linger. If left unchecked, this unresolved conflict will lead to bitterness towards the other person and also toward God.

g. One sure fire way to resolve this conflict is to humble yourself. The bible says in James 4:10 (NKJV)10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

C. Not using the gifts that God has given you

a. While unresolved conflict is a passion stealer, so is not using the gifts that God has given to you for the kingdom.

b. We all have talents and gifts that vary in degree and size. While those talents may seem small in our eyes they are not in God’s eyes. Even if we use just the little that we have, God can multiply it.