By Brandon Goff
The World Cup is currently in session! If you don't know much about soccer or the World Cup, different teams (countries) from around the world come together once every 4 years to compete for the best in the world, and to obtain the World Cup title! I don't keep up with soccer very strongly throughout the year, but during this time I keep up with teams, especially the USA. And it doesn't seem like I'm the only one. People from all over the US start buying team USA jerseys, hats, and tune in to watch the World Cup, all to cheer on their team. And they do it with passion!
Each Fall football stadiums across the nation are packed to the gills with screaming, painted up, passionate fans. The NBA Finals just ended and both arenas were packed full of fans passionate about cheering the San Antonio Spurs or the Miami Heat to victory. Passion is something that humans aren't void of, but are very misdirected in giving. What does Lebron James give you when you display passion? Tiger Woods? Lionel Messi? An escape from stress, sure, but what have they REALLY given you?
We've been looking at a series of blogs that discuss how to make HIM known. We've looked a lot of good, practical ways to do so (if you haven't read the past blogs, go back after this one and read them). But, there's something in 1 Corinthians 13 that breaks it all down in a real way for us:
"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
The keys in all of these verses are this... LOVE! We can be as creative as we want to be in our outreach and making HIM known as we want to be, but if we don't show passion to Jesus what's the point? 1 Timothy even says that the SCRIPTURES point to Jesus... why do we often think that exempts us? The number 1, most important way we can make HIM known is to be passionate about our Savior. I mean crazy, fanatically, insanely passionate about Him.
I'm talking about the kind of passion that we can't hide, fake, or deny. The kind of passion that only comes when we realize that which we are passionate about adds a value to our life that is hard to grasp. The kind of passion that people's lives literally depends on. And you know what I'm learning? The world, every single person in it... WANTS THAT KIND OF PASSION!
Passion... it's what will change your life, and theirs...and it will bless His!
