TODAY’S SCRIPTURE Luke 19:10
Are you a passionate person? Passion is defined as “an intense, driving, overmastering feeling.” In other words, passion is an overwhelming, all-consuming emotion, conviction, or drive for something, someone, or some cause. People are passionate about all kinds of things. People are passionate about fashion, politics, books, plants, animals, athletics, education, farming, eating, money––the list is endless. Every person is passionate about something, someone, or a cause that drives them. Without passion, nothing great ever gets done. Passion is what gets you out of bed in the morning to go to school, work, you name it.
Do you know what Jesus’ great passion in life is? To seek and save the lost. It is His passion for the lost that brought Him to our world––a cesspool of sin––to live sinlessly for thirty-three years. It is passion that ever increasingly is the driving force that brought Him to the cross. You see, His passion is for the lost, for you and for me. Jesus, on a number of occasions, tells His disciples they would carry out His passion for the lost. From now on, Jesus says, you will be fishers of men, My witnesses, salt and light, and those who would carry the proclamation of the good news. It is my conviction that as disciples of Christ, His passion must be our passion and what drove Him must drive us as well.
Remember how excited you were after you first became a Christian? I don’t know about you, but I wanted to tell the world the good news about Jesus. But then, for many, life gets busy with school, college, a career, marriage, rearing children, going to church, and a hundred other things each vying for our passion.
Today, I will… renew my passion for the mission and for the lost and allow it to drive me to sacrifice my time, energy, and my pride and reach out to someone who needs to be saved.