Life seems to dry up our energy leaving little left for God or the church sometimes. Sometimes life gets so crazy that little can be done for the drained state we find ourselves in daily. How would you like to be totally reinvigorated from the inside out? How would you like to rekindle the passion you once had for God? Today I want to tell you about three ways the Master Builder can bring passion back into your life.
Read Scripture & Pray!
The men and women who do that show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition show great passion for what they do. There are several shows out there like this. If you aren’t familiar with the show, these people go to a person’s home who has been chosen to receive a renovation of their home. The person agrees to let them renovate their home with the hope of seeing it changed into something incredibly beautiful. These men and women have four days to completely renovate the house. The house gets absolutely demolished during the project as they rip out walls, ceilings, and entire kitchens and bathrooms. Yet, when they are all done, the place they have designed looks absolutely magnificent.
I read online about a very specific episode where they built a new house for a single mom with somewhere around 7 children living with her. She had adopted many of the children because they had severe health related issues and wanted to give them a loving caring home. They had so many volunteers willing to help that they actually had to turn them away. They demolished a 3,000 square foot home so that they could build one over 1 ½ times that size. They only seem to pick the most worthy people to do renovations. This is where the passionate man and these people aren’t the same.
Let me tell you about another builder with a passion like no other. His passion changed the world from the inside out. That passionate man I am referring to is none other than Jesus Christ. He doesn’t just pick the worthy or deserving but actually picks the “undeserving” and those who have a “good” life. He wants to do an extreme makeover on your life. He wants to absolutely change your very existence into something beautiful and better than it was yesterday or today. He is absolutely passionate about God the Father and He wants to bring that passion into your life. Turn to Matthew 21:12 and follow along with me and you will see how passionate Christ is for Godliness. If you accept Him as your Savior, You will be changed. He will change you from the inside out in three specific ways: He will break down the walls of pride and sin, he will reinforce the weak areas in your life, and he will leave you with a reason to rejoice.
Before any great work project, you must begin by removing the old to place the new.
Bringing Down the Walls – Matt. 21:12-13
“Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And He said to them, “It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a robber’s den.””
This is one of the very few instances when Jesus’ actually exhibited any form of anger whatsoever. The common view that Jesus was a happy-go-lucky guy who made everyone’s lives better isn’t even close to showing all of his attributes. He was deeply and sincerely passionate about God and God’s precepts. The temple of the Old Testament was an institution by God for worship. So, why was Jesus so upset? People were in the temple courts. The real problem comes when we realize that these money changers were ripping their customers off. They said that if you didn’t have the right type of currency, you couldn’t give to God. The animal sellers would examine people’s sacrifices, tell them that they were faulty, and would then go to sell them a better animal. They bought the animal for half of its value and then sold it for double. They were literally robbing the people! Jesus runs through flipping tables over and kicking these men and women out of God’s temple.
1 Corinthians 6:19 tells us that the Old Testament temple has been replaced by a better, newer, and more portable temple: the follower of Christ! Yet, in us resides a continual desire for sin. When we lived in Moberly, MO, I worked for my landlord helping him fix up houses. In the middle of the summer, right before college was to resume the next fall, he told me that he needed help fixing up a house. I said, “Sure, why not, I could use the money.” I told you about this house a little ways back but it had to be the nastiest place on the planet. Animal feces covered the walls, floor, refrigerator, etc. I used hospital grade chemicals to keep myself and the floor sanitary. Let’s just say I scrubbed like mad to clean everything up. I was there cleaning for probably four hours in just one room. The people who lived there always looked as though they were clean and healthy and yet this is how they lived on the inside of their home.
Just as those money changers had desecrated God’s holy temple, so you and I have desecrated God’s temple with the same sins of greed, anger, lying, and every other sin known to man. Yet, when we accept Christ as our Savior, He comes into our life much the same way he came into the temple that day. He is a man on a mission. He wants to clean out all the filth and gunk we have built up inside us. He wants to tear down the walls of pride, hurt, hate, defeat, and even victimization. He wants to tear out all that stuff that hurts us on a daily basis. He wants to scrub you clean from the inside out and get rid of all the anger and bitterness. The Master Builder wants to give you His passion but first he must begin by removing all the sin in your heart!
Reinforcing the Weak Spots – Matt. 21:14
“And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.”
Jesus was a non-stop, action packed show or so it seems from Matthew’s description of events. First, Jesus comes in and destroys all the evil in the place and runs out the money changers and animal sellers. Then, He continues in the temple, once he has already made His way inside, to heal every person with an infirmity. People knew the power and wisdom of this man called Jesus. He had time and again been able to do the impossible: miracles. Jesus always took the time, regardless of circumstances, to heal and care for those who had serious weak spots in their lives. Some of them had sins, such as the woman in John 8 while others had physical illnesses such as being blind or unable to walk. Even though the Pharisees were literally ticked-off at Jesus’ actions, He stayed in the middle of God’s temple and healed people.
How many of us take medicine on a daily basis for some sickness? Headaches anyone? With the arthritis I deal with, I take ibuprofen on a regular basis to help with the pain and make it easier to sit and work. Medicine makes some of our infirmities a little bit easier to deal with right. Tylenol, Excedrin, and Ibuprofen are household names. Some of you may even be familiar with Amoxicillin, Pepto Bismol, ear drops, Oragel, and a hundred other common medicines. Yet, they can do nothing for emotional or mental pain and struggles. Depression, in most cases, is not something that should be medicated. Headache medicines can only help the headache and not the source which is probably stress from work and family life. Those medicines can’t help with your over busy schedule either. No, the kind of healing we need is something much more powerful and useful. We need a healing of our hearts and a mending of the scars we have felt.
This is one of the many reasons God gives us a helper: the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus Christ came into the temple and cleaned it up, He also stayed around and healed the many infirmities and “weak spots” of the peoples lives. Everyone carries baggage and it becomes evident in relationships. You and your spouse don’t always see eye to eye and some of that is because of how you were raised. How many times have you said, “But my mom did it this way.” You see, we carry around baggage and most of it is emotional. If someone has scarred us, we refuse to get involved with other people. If we have wronged someone or someone has wronged us, we choose to become skeptical of everyone. Jesus didn’t just come into your life to clean out everything in it. He came to heal some of those wounds and scars on your heart. He came to mop up the pain and give you a hope and joy that can never be taken from you! He came to reinforce your life with positive values and a better outlook. Just as He passionately desired to heal and care for the sick and the weak, so He also wants to care for your weaknesses and struggles.
Rejoicing for the Change – Matt. 21:15-17
Christ passionately cleans out the sin and evil dwelling in God’s temple (i.e. – every Christian) and then he begins to heal the infirmities and weak spots. He starts to take care of the baggage that you have carried around in your life! Lastly, He brings you to a point of rejoicing and peace! Look at this exchange between the Pharisees and Jesus.
“But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became indignant and said to Him, “Do You hear what these children are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise for Yourself’?” And He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.”
After Jesus had begun cleaning up peoples lives and healing their infirmities, He began taking flack from the Pharisees. Even the children in the temple had begun praising the one person they had been told was coming to save them. These kids weren’t just singing quietly. They were shouting at the top of their lungs in praise and adoration of Jesus Christ and all that He came to do. The Pharisees became noticeably upset and began telling Jesus to quiet those children down because they were praising Jesus as if He were God! Yes, obviously Jesus heard them, they were screaming after all. Yet, Jesus never stops them from their joyous singing but instead defends them by quoting scripture. True joy and love flow from a grateful heart and that is exactly what these children were doing and Jesus encouraged that action. He had cleaned up the mess and healed the sick and now the children rejoiced.
As a third-century man was anticipating death, he penned these last words to a friend: "It’s a bad world, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They have found a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people are the Christians--and I am one of them." Christians have overcome the world; all of its trials, struggles, pain, baggage, hate, and resentment. Christians have a faith founded on Christ: the most passionate man in history. “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” What could make faith so incredibly powerful that it could help men and women face the most horrible events without fear? When John, in 1 John 5, said this phrase, he would have remembered the persecution of Nero in 64-68 A.D. He would have remembered the stories of men and women watching their families burned until they gave up their faith or they themselves were killed. What kind of faith could face such evil and still cling to Christ?
A faith based on a man passionate enough about saving you and me that he would sacrifice His own life to do so! After doing all the work to help you clean out your life, all you should have left is gratitude. That gratitude to the person who helped you overcome the toughest situations should push you to actually rejoice about the God who loved you so much! The one people group who should have actual happiness and peace should be Christians just as that third century man said. The one group that truly can rejoice in the face of anything is the Christian. We have something to rejoice about; not just that we have been cleaned and healed but that we have an eternal home in heaven. The children were so willing to rejoice and sing about the wonderous Christ they had seen and heard. You too are a child of God; how do you express your admiration? That passionate man who came into your life came to bring you joy, hope, peace, and most of all salvation.
He sacrificed His life so that He could help you rebuild yours. He gave everything he had so that he could change your life forever. Those people who build those houses do so to help change someone’s life for the better yet they don’t have to give up much. They have to give up their time but they don’t die in their service. Christ had to die to make it possible to clean out your sins, heal up your wounds, and put a song in your heart. He loves you so much that He gave His own life: if that isn’t passion, then I don’t know what is. Jesus wants nothing more than to help you rebuild your life just as those men and women help tear down and rebuild people’s homes. Let His passion in your life and find the joy that you have been missing!
