Updated Monday, March 10, 2008

Bible Studies for Life lesson for March 30: With Passion for Jesus

By John Pond

Focal Passage: Revelation 1:9-13, 17-18; 3:14-22

Passion. This much-used term describes an intense, driving devotion for something or someone. It is used in the same way that love is. We can have a passion for certain types of music or foods or styles of cinematic writing. We can be passionate about individual ideals or political positions. We are passionate until something else entices us.

The question arises as to whether we are impassioned enough to suffer and possibly die for that object of passion.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, "Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedience and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God - the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are those responsible people?"

We begin in the middle of events. John experienced the revelatory presence of Christ on the island Patmos after a full kingdom life of tribulation and patient endurance. Many believe that John's presence on that island was due to exile and imprisonment. He stood between what was a life of incredible activity and what will be a forgotten, harsh end on a Roman penal island. "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day" and I saw the Lord. John's passion brought him to an ignoble end (in worldly terms). Yet, he was invited to be a witness to He, who is Lord over life and death, the Living One, the first and the last.

Every congregation is invited to be impassioned; every congregation is in fact called to be the people of God, His faithful and true witness to a world impassioned by the temporary and hollow. Seven letters to seven churches at different points of faithfulness and spirited passion are challenged to full kingdom fervor. Of the seven, one Laodicea, is impassioned by another spirit, the spirit of compromise. Sadly, this spirit of compromise has thrust the church into a wilderness of irrelevance. They are neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm.

Jesus once asked His disciples concerning the last days, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" While it is easy to embrace a spirit of self-sufficiency and apathy when confronted by radical changes and insecurity, the community of faith can enjoy victory and intimacy with Christ who stands at the door and knocks ready to forgive and restore their former passion.