Faithful on Fridays Blog

Passion for God

I think there’s a driving, fiery passion in all of us to know God. If you asked an atheist or an agnostic, “if there was a God, would you want to know Him?” I believe their answer would be a resounding “yes!” God has placed an emptiness in man’s soul that can be filled by Him alone and, consequently, we all at some level want to know God. Let’s be clear; I don’t mean knowing ‘about’ God; I’m talking about intimately knowing God.

Those who know Your name trust in You, for You, O Lord, do not abandon those who search for You. (Psalms 9:10 NLT)

In the first covenant the way to know God was through His character and attributes; they knew Him by His names. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and David all knew God by the way He revealed Himself to them. However, we’re living in the New Covenant, if you’re a believer, and our knowledge isn’t restricted to His character and attributes because we have the indwelling Spirit of God residing in us and that’s a better covenant.

And this is the way to have eternal life—to know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the One You sent to earth. (John 17:3 NLT)

Passion. The passion that drove Christ to the cross was His love for us as His Bride. He accepted the assignment from His Father, before the world began, to be the sacrificial Lamb, cleansing the sin of God’s chosen ones. His jealous passion was for you and I to enter into an intimate relationship of love and trust that would guide our lives in this present world and prepare us for the next. There’s no greater love than that. Jesus suffered the penalty of sin and death in our place when He endured the cross; it was the Great Exchange. The driving, fiery passion of that death was His bridal love for the Church (Heb. 12:2) and our relationship with Him that’s eternal; it doesn’t end with physical death but continues forever with Him.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with Him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with Himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with Him, sharing in His death, Philippians 3:8-10 NLT

Allow the passion stirring in your heart to know God better, deeper, drive you to spend time with Him; those emotions were created by Him, for Him. Ignite the flame today with fresh desire to know and experience Him in a deeper, more passionate way.