Praise the Lord for this Holy Week in the life of the Church. We had a service of death and resurrection for Dennis Lee yesterday. Dennis died on the 13th of April at the age of 68. It was a service of celebration of his life. In the face of death we proclaim the sure and the certain hope of Resurrection. Last evening I attended an Evening of worship as part of the Holy Week services at the Cornerstone Community Church in Endicott. Our daughter Laureen played for the worship. The theme for the week of service is "Pursuing the Passion". I am studying in the Book of Mark the events of the Holy Week in the life of our Lord. According to Mark, the event for Tuesday is recorded in Mark ch 11: 20 ff and ch 13 : 1-37. Tuesday was a day of discourses .The creative force behind all great art, all great drama, all great music, all great architecture, all great writing is passion. Nothing great is ever accomplished in life without passion. Nothing great is ever sustained in life without passion. Passion is what energizes life. Passion makes the impossible possible. Passion gives you a reason to get up in the morning and go, "I'm going to do something with my life today." Without passion, life becomes boring. It becomes monotonous. It becomes routine. It becomes dull. God created us with the emotions to have passion in our lives and He wants us to live a passionate life. Passion is what mobilizes armies into action. Passion is what causes explorers to boldly go where no man’s gone before. Passion is what causes scientists to spend late night hours trying to find the cure to a dreaded disease. Passion is what takes a good athlete and turns him or her into a great athlete where they're breaking records. You've got to have passion in your life.
One day a man walks up to Jesus and he says, "Lord, what’s the most important thing in the Bible?" And you know what the Great Commandment is. Jesus said, "I want you to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Nothing matters more than that. That’s the number one thing in life. I want you to love Me passionately." Nothing else matters in life if you don't love God passionately. God doesn’t want you to love Him half-heartedly. He wants you to love Him with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.
I love the paraphrase of that verse, Mark 11:30, from The Message "Jesus said, ’Love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy." Let us make a note of the word "passion". That word, in Greek, is the word "heart." God is saying I want you to put some muscle into it, put some energy, put some emotion into your relationship with Me. Don't be a wimp about your relationship with Me. Don't be namby-pamby. Don't be half-hearted. Give it all you've got. Jesus is saying, "If you're going to follow Me, you've got to do it with passion. You've got to give it some oomph, some spark, some zip, some enthusiasm, some zest. I want you to live passionately."
In fact, this truth is all through the Bible. The Bible tells us that we're to seek God passionately. We're to love God passionately. The Bible says that we're to serve and obey God passionately. We're to trust God passionately. Then as if you didn't get the message, in Colossians 3:23 He says, "Whatever you do, do it with all of your heart as unto the Lord and not unto men." He says I want you to do everything passionately when it comes to loving Me, serving Me, living for Me.
In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/qaHmiFaX_pk
Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenue
Endicott
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott
Saturday, April 23, 2011
6 PM Coffee Fellowship
6:30 PM Worship Service
Worship Music: Winnie Miller, Dave Berry, Al Smith
Speaker: Rev Brown Naik
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