Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · October 8, 2006

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Bountiful God, who gathers your Church and feeds it through words and sacrament, fill us, we pray, with the joy of your presence.  Turn us from lessons of war to lessons of peace.  Feed our hunger for that which satisfies forever.  Help us this hour to grasp the life you want us to have.  Amen.

Scripture

John 10:10

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Message

The Life God Wants You to Have

Rick Frost

You hear this question all the time.  It’s a buzzword today.  People ask, “What’s your passion?”  “What do you feel strongly about?”  “What do you believe deeply?”  “What really gets your juices moving?”  “What is your passion?”

Now, as everybody in this room knows, the creative force behind all great art, all great music, all great literature, all great drama, all great efforts, all great anything, is passion – what you believe strongly about.  Passion is what creates greatness.  It creates a great school, a great community, a great work environment.  Passion: it creates a great family, a great event (whatever that event might be).  It creates a great church.  It mobilizes large numbers of people to do great things.  It drives scientists to find new cures for all kinds of diseases and maladies.  It motivates very ordinary people to do some rather extraordinary things.  Passion!

What is your passion?  Passion: it energizes life.  It makes you interesting.  In fact, my guess is, if your passion tank is a little depleted, you’re probably a pretty boring person.  In short, you’re dull.  You life is sort of routine, monotonous.  You’ve lost the passion.

Now, it might not even be too much of an overstatement to say that if you are a person who has lost your passion, you’re a person who is probably not living.  You’re existing.  You’re breathing.  You’re getting up, moving, but not really living.  Where is your passion? 

The point today: I believe this, and this is the case I’d like to make today.  I believe God made you to live a passionate life.  I believe God wants you to live vibrantly and vitally with enthusiasm and energy, in short, to live a life of passion.

In today’s text, Jesus said, “I have come.  This is the reason I came.  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly, in all of its abundance and in all of its fullness.”

Passion!  Isn’t that incredible?  Marvelous!  God wants you… God wants me… God wants all humanity… to live a full, a meaningful, a fulfilling, a significant life that makes a difference.  Passion!  If that’s so, then why is it that so many people you and I know are persons who don’t really live with much passion in their lives?  Why are so many doing the same old thing, in the same old way, in the same old places?

Maybe you’ve heard this conversation.  “How you doing?”

“Oh, I’m getting by.”

“How you doing?” 

“Oh, I’m making it.”

“How you doing?”

“I’m OK.  Just trying to stay sane.”

“How you doing?”

“I’m making it under the circumstances.”

What are you doing under the circumstances?  You’re supposed to be on top of the circumstances.

Folks, there are a whole lot of things God wants you to have in your life.  Lots of adventures and a whole lot of things God wants to do in you and through you in your life.  But for many, somewhere along the line, for some reason, you sort of lost it.  The zip sort of went out of your “do-dah.”  You know what I’m talking about?  Dreams sort of shrunk.  Ambitions took a dive.  Drive dropped off the charts.  Yes, you know what I’m talking about.  Where did it go?  What happened to it?

I’ve talked to a lot of people in 37 years of ministry.  Over the years, I’ve discovered something.  I’ve discovered that a lot of people die before they die.

Did you get that?  A lot of people die before they die.  Somewhere, somehow, something gets lost.  They find themselves drifting, just getting by.  Do you know anybody in that situation?

Folks, that is not the kind of life God wants for you, and for me, and for others.  God meant for you and for me to live a life of passion, a life of energy, a life of adventures.  So, where is the zip?  Why is it that I don’t have the passion for life that I used to have? 

There are a lot of things that can kill passion for this life.  For instance, as all of you know and some of you are experiencing right now in your own life, there are physical causes – things that happen to us physically.  Sometimes the root cause of the lack of energy and passion is physical.  If that’s so, obviously that’s not anything we can deal with today.  You need to see your doctor.  You need to see a medical team.  See what they can do to help you.  Get a check up. 

If it’s physical, that’s one thing.  I have found, however, in listening to, and watching, and experiencing it with others, there are all kinds of passion killers out there, and I think their root cause is spiritual, not physical.  Spiritual root causes.  So, we’re going to be taking a look at three of those today with the time we have left.  We’ll look at several others next Sunday, because there are more than just three.  The three things I want to talk about today are the things that take adventure out of life, that take energy out of your life and mine.  What can be done to put that energy back in?

Number 1:

The first thing that kills passion in people’s lives today is an unclear purpose. 

Folks, it’s no fluke that Rick Warren’s book, A Purpose-Driven Life has been on the New York Times best-seller list for a long, long time, because with that idea, he struck a nerve in the hearts and souls of millions of people.  He nailed it.  He said, “No purpose: no passion.  No purpose; why bother?” 

When you forget, or heaven knows if by chance you’ve never known God’s purpose for your life, you just tend to drift.  You go into apathy.  Life has no purpose.  Life with no purpose is a life that doesn’t have a design.  It sort of works on default.  It just sort of happens.  It ends up like Isaiah said in Chapter 40 of his piece, “I labored for no purpose at all.  I spent my time and my strength in vain – for nothing.”  Do you ever run into anybody like that around here?

Folks, passion and purpose go together.  We Christians believe – I believe most of us believe – that God put us on this planet for a reason.  Do you know what that reason is?  Can you name that reason?  Can you name it?  Can you claim it?  Are you clear about what it is?  If you think the reason you’re alive is just to have fun, or to be happy, or to be comfortable, or to live just for yourself, that’s a pretty puny purpose.  Isn’t it?  No wonder passion has drained itself away. 

You need something bigger than you to give your life energy and vitality.  The more you understand, the more you embrace God’s purposes for your life, the very reason you’re here on this earth, the more passionate you’re going to be about living.

Brett Hobbs defined passion this way: “Passion is waking up in the morning, wherever you are, getting out of bed because you know there’s something out there that you love to do, that you really believe in, and on top of that, you’re pretty good at.  It’s something bigger than you are.  It’s something you’d rather do than anything else, and you wouldn’t give away any of it for money, because it means more to you than money does.”

That is passion.  That’s what it is.  That’s when you get up in the morning and say, “Good morning, Lord,” instead of saying, “Good Lord, it’s morning.”

First of all, seek, find, know, claim God’s purpose for your life.  What on earth are you here to do, because without it, life is just going through the motions.  It’s activity without direction.  It’s trivial.  It’s petty.  It’s pointless.  But, whenever you start to get those kinds of things straight, what I want you to hear today is that you’ll be amazed at the return of that energy, that vitality, that passion.

Number 2:

Another passion killer out there is an unbalanced life.  If you’re tired… If you’re exhausted… If you’re overworked… If you’re fatigued… You are going to lose the passion for life.  Vince Lombardi, the great football coach said it this way: “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”  And he ought to know.  Fatigue drains energy.  It doesn’t build energy.  It doesn’t create energy.  It drains energy. 

I have a dear friend who is trying to work a demanding, full-time professional job, who is trying, at the same time, to be the caregiver for his wife, who is suffering from the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  It is an admirable quest, but something’s going to have to give.  It’s not going to work.  He can’t do both of those things.  This guy is drained.  His zip is gone.  That’s not the way God wants us to live.

Folks, we need balance in our lives.  Rest and work.  Input and output.  The Bible says there’s a rhythm to life.  There’s a time to work and a time to play.  There’s a time to strive and do well and accomplish.  There’s a time to have fun.  If you are not having some fun in your life, you are going to lose your passion for life. 

Now, there are people in this room, some of whom by their nature are always givers.  They are always people who are serving.  They are always sharing.  They are always care-giving.  They are always thinking of others, and they never take time to recharge.  That is a huge mistake!  It is a wonderful thing to be interested, caring, loving of other people, but you have to recharge.

I know there are so many problems that people are dealing with.  I know that folks are dealing with very difficult things.  There is so much that needs to be done.  There is so much to worry about, and be concerned about, but that is a bottomless pit, folks.  That is never going to go away this side of the kingdom.  But if you don’t have some down time… If you don’t do some things that renew, restore, and restock you… You’re going to experience something that all of you know about.  It’s called compassion fatigue.  That simply means you’re going to stop caring, because you cared too much.  That’s a problem.  Pretty soon, you don’t care.  You don’t care about God.  You don’t care about others.  You don’t even care about you.  You’re out of balance.

Psalm 127 says it is senseless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night for God wants God’s people, his loved ones, to get their proper rest.  We need to get our schedules in balance, folks, and watch the passion come back into our lives.

Number 3:

Finally, for today, another passion killer out there is unresolved conflict.  Do you know what I’m talking about?  Have you ever had one of those days when you know when you get up that you feel like it’s going to be a great day?  It looks like it’s going to be a great day.  You’re looking forward to it, and just about the time you are going out the door, you get into it about something with your spouse.  Does that ever happen to anybody but me?  Sunday morning is the best time.  That’s really good.  Bam!  It’s like a flat tire.  The air just goes out of you.  You can feel it.

I know there are some people here who are dealing with, living with conflict that has not been resolved.  It might be in your home.  It might be where you work, where you go to school.  It might be in your community, or even beyond your community.  I’ll tell you what it is, folks.  It’s draining.  It drains you.  You can just feel the energy, the passion leaking out of your life. 

I was on staff at a church, years and years ago, in another place that was so unhealthy, I can actually remember feeling the energy leave me as I got in my car to drive.  The closer I got to my office, the more I felt drained, and the day hadn’t even started yet. 

Jesus said, “The greatest commandment is this: You have to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, and spirit, and to love your neighbor as yourself.”

Those are the big three.  They’re all tied together.  Our lives are energized when our relationships with God, and our relationships with other people, and our relationships with ourselves are healthy.  When those are healthy, energy and passion come back.

Job 5:2 says: “Resentment destroys, and jealousy kills.”

Resentment and jealousy will drain you.  I looked up the word “resentment.”  It means this: when you allow somebody to continue to hurt you over something that happened a long, long time ago.  Now, what’s amazing is these folks may be out of the picture today.  They may live a thousand miles from where you live today.  They may not even be living on this earth any more.  But you still let them hurt you.  Somehow, they still have a negative impact on you, because you still resent them.  The amazing thing is that they don’t even know that you resent them – that you’re angry with them.  They don’t even know that you really feel negatively about them.  Yet, you go over that same old scenario in your head.

What do you do?  You have to go to that person, and you have to resolve that conflict.  It’s what you have to do.  It’s the first step.  You have to take the initiative.  They’re not going to come to you.  You have to take the step.  But what if you go, and you try to interact, and you try to resolve the conflict, and it doesn’t happen?  What if they won’t let you resolve the conflict?  What if they are not even around anymore?  What if they are not even alive?  What do you do?

The Bible makes it clear.  What we’re to do is to go to God, and we are to forgive.  I want to make sure you understand this.  Forgiveness does not in any way say that what they did was right.  Forgiving another person is not saying that God will not hold that person accountable for what they did wrong to you.  What it is saying is, “God, please give me the strength that I need to let that thing go that I resent.  I need to let it go.  I don’t have the strength to do that by myself.  Lord, I know that if I don’t let it go, that anger is going to eat me up.  It’s going to destroy me.  So, Lord, please, please give me the strength to forgive.”

Folks, if you can forgive, you can actually feel the energy, the vitality, the passion come back into your life.

That’s all we have time for this particular Sunday.  Next Sunday we’re going to deal with four or five other passion killers.  We are going to try to identify those things that take the adventure and the energy out of life.  Most importantly, we’re going to talk about what puts that energy back in.

Jesus said, “I have come that my people might have life and have it in abundance – have it in all of its fullness.”

What a great gift he gives us!

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

God of Abundant Life, you shepherd us into a life designed to be full, refreshing, and restoring.  Let us take in this abundance.  Let no one or any preoccupation steal these intentions.  Let us be your people, living joyfully in your design!  Amen.