Friday, November 12, 2010

Fulfilling Passion

" I have one desire now - to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it." Elizabeth Elliot

I've had this quote up above my desk on my wall for a little while now, it's something I look at each day and pray for each moment, that I would always remember my goal and purpose while the Lord has me here. That I would remember the relative short amount of time I have on earth to serve Him with. Eternity is something I don't think we can ever really grasp, we are finite and so the infinite is completely beyond our comprehension.

The desire to serve with all of me is a difficult one to live up to. It shouldn't be, just giving a moments consideration to everything that God has done me and me being so completely undeserving should be enough to make me want to do everything in my power to serve and love him in the way that he has loved me. But it is very difficult, very few Christian's have a deep passion for Christ.

The other day I was talking with a friend about hunting, it's really tough to get away from that topic at this time of year, not that I have anything against hunting, actually I rather like it. but talking about it so much gets old pretty quickly, and it starts to sound like the same story over and over just from different mouths. Anyway, as I was with this friend, he was talking some about how hunting is such a big thing for so many people, they have a passion for it, they want to talk about it all the time, there's a certain thrill in going out and being on the chase, shooting a buck, and then dragging it out of the woods(that part isn't quite so exciting). So much effort is put into making the time to go out and do it, having the right tools and exacting your own skills to be able to be the best that you can at it.

But how often do people put that same drive and passion into their walk with the Lord. It seems that we will focus on anything other than that, maybe not hunting in particular, but we all have things we love and get excited about. Most of them being things that in the long run will matter very little. But we fear to lose them, we want God to give us a desire for Him and focus on His Word, but we won't rid ourselves of the things that distract us from Him.

When we do finally put those things aside we find that He more than fills up any void that they might have left behind. We're talking about the Creator of the universe here, how could anything be more important to us than our relationship with Him?

"How sweet all at once it was for me to rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose!... You drove them from me and took their place... O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation." Augustine

No comments: