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Acquiring Passion
Do
you want to be a lover of God? Do you want to have fiery love for God?
Do you want to see your dedication increase? Understand God's
dedication to you. Do you want your enjoyment of God to increase?
Understand God's enjoyment of you. Do you want to pursue God more?
Study how God pursues you.
I
wrote a book titled Passion for Jesus. Since then, people regularly ask
me how they can develop passion for Jesus. I give them the same answer
each time: Your passion for Jesus will increase to the measure that you
study and encounter Jesus' passion for you. The key to passion for
Jesus is to know Jesus' passion for you. Sounds simple. It is not a
mystery. The challenge is not in knowing this principle, but rather in
filling your spirit with revelation and knowledge of God's passion and
emotion.
Beholding Is Becoming
You
cannot make this happen by yourself. It takes God to love God. It takes
God's power for you to love God. If you want to become a fiery lover of
God, you must understand God as a fiery lover of you. We see Him as a
lover, and it makes us a lover. We see His emotions of fiery desire for
us, and this is what awakens emotions of fiery desire back to Him.
Whatever you understand about God's heart for you is what changes your
heart for God.
We
behold something in the heart of God and, in time, though it does not
happen immediately, it then opens the pathway for those things to
become a part of our character, nature and our behavior.
Trying vs. Enjoying
Exhortations
to action are very ineffective by themselves. But exhortations to acts
of obedience that flow out of a firm foundation of a revelation of
God's heart become effective and efficient in our lives.
David
was first and foremost a man after God's heart because he cultivated
the revelation of what God's heart was like. It is only when we know
what God's heart looks like or know what God looks like that we can
know what we look like to God. When we know what we look like to God
then we can successfully obey the commands of God in a consistent way.
Many
people want to commit themselves to become lovers of God, to obey the
commands of God's heart. This is a good thing, but they are sure to be
very frustrated and disappointed by this method.
If
your approach to becoming a lover of God is just to try harder, you
will fail every time. I tell the young people in Kansas City "Do not
try harder. Learn to enjoy more." They say, "What?" I say, "Do not try
to love God harder. Learn how to enjoy God more, and you will
automatically love Him."
They
say, "How can we learn how to enjoy God more? If this is the key to
loving God more, then I want to do it." I say, "There is one great
principle to enjoying God more - understanding that God enjoys you in
your weakness."
The Paradox of Grace
This
is a very unusual idea to many traditions in the body of Christ today.
Most of the teaching on holiness and dedication appeals to the people
to try harder.
"Come
down to the altar, cry, tell everybody all of your sins, and make
promises to God like you have never made before." Then the person
leaves, they wipe the tears from their eyes and say, "I will do
anything to love you more!" During the next three months they fail
miserably.
They
go to the next revival meeting, and the preacher tells them to try
harder. They come down to the altar, they cry more, they make more
promises, and they will tell everybody all of their sins to prove how
sincere they are. Three months later, they fail again.
They
go to another revival meeting, and the preacher preaches on holiness.
They come down to the altar, they cry, and this goes on for three or
four years. Then something very, very terrible takes place. They quit.
"I cannot do this any more!" they say, and their hearts get locked.
They have so much pain because of their failure, and they quit.
They
stay in the church and sit on the back row. They watch the young people
come down and cry at the altar. They say, "I remember when I was young
- I used to do that very same thing, too."
You
will never love God more by trying harder. Gritting your teeth and
making promises is not what makes your heart awaken in love. The way
that you become a lover of God is not by trying harder. It is by
learning to enjoy more.
You
may say, "This is opposite of everything I ever heard. Enjoy more,
enjoy what? How do I enjoy God more? How do you make your heart enjoy
God more?"
I
can tell you clearly from the Scripture. You gain understanding that
God enjoys you more. When you understand that He enjoys you, it gives
you the ability to enjoy Him.
David
had more understanding of God's emotions than any other man in his day.
I believe David had more understanding of God's emotions than any man
in the Old Testament. This is why he is called the man after God's own
heart. It is not enough for me to know that David was a person after
God's own heart. I want to be one. I will, by the grace of God, and you
can be, too.
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