Jesus said in Luke 22:15, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." Jesus used the same word used all through the New Testament for lust to describe His passionate desire to eat the final Passover with His disciples. He had a passion for the Passover. Paul had this same passionate desire to be with his Lord. He uses the same word in Phil.1:23. "I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far." Paul had a lust for, or a passion for, heaven.
Paul was a man of intense emotion, and he uses the word again to describe how he felt about
getting to see the Thessalonians. He wrote in I Thess. 2:17, "Out of our intense longing we made
every effort to see you." There are other words that describe the strong emotions of Jesus and Paul,
but this is the very word for lust, and so we are forced to see the positive side of passion. All of us are
moving in the direction of our ruling passions. What we most enjoy and desire is the force that
determines how we spend our time and resources. For example:
1. Some have a passion for music, and so they are often at concerts, or before the radio, or listening to CD's.
2. Some have a passion for sports, and so they are often at sporting events, or glued to their TV.
3. Some have a passion for reading, and so they are ever with their nose in a book.
We could go on endlessly, for there are people with passions for everything imaginable. The point
is, passion is a strong desire that may be for what is evil or for what is good. Christians have used the
word so often for evil that it is hard to accept the reality that you can also be passionate for good. It is
Biblical and Christlike to lust for the pleasure of those things that are pleasing to God.
Most everything you find on lust and passion deals with the negatives of sex and anger. Issac
Watts, the author of many of our favorite hymns, wrote one for children that went like this:
But, children you should never let
Such angry passions rise.
Your little hands were never made
To tear each others eyes.
And Moore wrote this warning to adults:
Alas! Too well, too well we know
The pain, the penitence, the woe
That passion brings down on the best
The wisest and the loveliest.
It is true, and only the spiritually blind can be unaware of the dangers of passion ,but for now we
want to focus on the other yolk-the positive reality of the pleasure of passion. It is not just in this
Psalm, but in many of them that we see the passion for worship. In verse 2 we see a man possessed
by passion. "My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for
the living God." This is not the language of the uncommitted. You don't hear these words from those
who say we have nothing better to do, so let's go to church. This is the language of one who longs for
the presence of God like one longs for a lover who has not been seen for a long time.
The Psalmist for some reason is not able to get to the temple of God to worship, and he is filled
with envy for those who do have access to the temple. He even envies the sparrow and the swallow
who build their nest in the temple area, and even more so, those blessed ones who dwell there, and
can praise the Lord continually. He would be greatly rewarded if he could spend one day in the house
of God as a mere door keeper, than if he had a thousand days in the plush tent of some wealthy man
of the world. Here is a man with a passion for worship. It is a source of his greatest pleasure. I
found a similar testimony of one outside the Bible. Leonard Griffith of the St. Paul's church of Toronto,
Canada said this in a sermon on Psa. 84. "Ever since I was a child I loved to be inside a church. I
think it's my favorite place in all the world. A theater comes close second, then a baseball park, but
first the church. I mean the sanctuary, the place where God is worshiped, where the mightily organ
sounds and the congregation rises to sing. I like a church even when it's empty,
though I prefer to see one full."
I can imagine a lot of people envying this pastor when he is at the theater. And plenty would envy
him when he is able to get to the ballpark, but it is hard to imagine many who would envy him for
being able to go to church and worship. This is not a popular passion. Jesus had it when He was just
a boy of 12. You recall when His parents left the city to journey home He was discovered missing.
When they finally found Him He said, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house." From a
youth Jesus had a passion to be in the place of worship. He desired strongly to grow in grace and
knowledge. He followed His dominant passion, and was faithful all His life to be in the temple or
synagogue to worship. He found pleasure in His positive passion.
Think about it! The main reason church is so boring to many people is for the same reason
trigonometry is. There is no passion for it. If a Christian does not feel the strong desire to praise God
and get more light from His Word, going to church is just another obligation to get out of the way, so
you can get on with what you have a passion for. When Christians feel this way they are deprived of
one of the greatest pleasures of time and eternity-the pleasure of worship. This will be one of the
great pleasures of eternity, and we can get a taste of the things to come by developing a passion for
worship in time.
We learn to enjoy many things in life with passion because we get to know the rules of the game,
or the values of the music, or hobby, or whatever it is we get pleasure out of. The point is, it is a
Christian obligation to learn how to get pleasure out of worship and praise. The Christian is not truly
mature until they have the pleasure of passion for worship. When this is the dominant passion of life,
all other passions will fall into place, and not be idols. But as long as we lack the passion for worship,
we will be in danger of idolizing all other passions. They may be legitimate in themselves, but they
become competitors with God when we lack passion for Him.
Passion is the fire that motivates us, and the wind that catches our sails, and propels us toward the
goals we long to reach in life. If we lack enthusiasm for the things of God we will be fired up by other
passions that lead us away from the things of God. So we need to fight fire with fire. We need to
build fires of positive passion to protect us from the fires of negative passion. If we let the fires of
godly passion go out we will soon be burning with some secular passion that will burn us out and lead
to pain rather than pleasure.
Thomas Aquinas, the greatest theologian of the middle ages wrote, "No one can live without delight
and that is why a man deprived of spiritual joy goes over to carnal pleasures." God made us to desire
pleasure, and if we do not find it in what He delights in, we will find it in what is not pleasing to Him.
Stefano, the young husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, had a passion for power boat racing. He
knew it was dangerous, and he told a reporter, "I am traveling at speeds of 110 miles per hour and
more. It is much too fast and I realize it is getting much too dangerous. I am afraid, many times I am
afraid, but it is my passion." Such a passion becomes one's god. A couple of months after he made
this statement he sacrificed his life to this god of racing, leaving his wife and three children under six
years of age. There is power in passion to propel people to pursue a goal at any cost.
When people get a high level of pleasure out of any activity they find the time and the energy to
pursue it. There is an intense interest and desire that produces and inner fire that gives power for
pursuit. In 1958 Van Cliburn won the Chaikousky competition for piano. The man who came in
second was Liu Chi Kung of China. He was later thrown in prison during the cultural revolution in
China. He had seven years with no access to a piano. Yet, when he was set free his skills had
improved. It was because he had a passion for the piano. He explained after his release how it was
possible to improve without a piano. "Everyday I rehearsed every piece I had ever played, note by
note, in my mind." His passion motivated him even in a very negative setting.
When people have a passion they are able to do the unusual. Ida Grovald had a passion to get her
bachelor's degree. What made this unusual was she was 69 years old. She had leukemia and her
husband had Alzheimer's. These handicaps did not stop her because she had a passion. She had an
accident and needed fifty stitches in her face. She fell another time and broke two ribs. But her
passion empowered her to press on, and five years later at the age of 74 she graduated. She had a
passion, and it motivated her to overcome all obstacles to achieve her goal.
If you read the history of anyone who has accomplished something great, you will be reading the
history of a passion, for without passion people do not achieve significant goals. Achievers are not like
the six year old who was asked to name his favorite Bible verse, and he said, "I like the one about the
multitude that loafs and fishes." This was not the spirit of Louis Pasteur who at age 46 suffered a
stroke that left his arm and leg permanently paralyzed. This did not put out the fire of passion he had
to solve medical problems.
He went on to prove the germ theory of disease, and that sterilization and antiseptics can cut the
death rate radically. He proved the value of vaccinations and developed the process of pasteurization.
His passion for fighting disease is probably one of the main reasons many of us are here and alive
right now. He knew God had blessed him with a passion. He described it with the word enthusiasm:
"The Greeks have given us one of the most beautiful words of our language, the word enthusiasm--a
God within. The grandeur of the acts of men are measured by the inspiration by which they spring.
Happy is he who bears a God within."
The Bible describes this fire God within with many different terms, but one that runs through both
Old Testament and New Testament is the phrase "with all your heart."
Serve Him with all your heart.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Seek me with all your heart.
Rejoice with all your heart.
Love Him with all your heart.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.
The point of Psalm 84 is, there is great pleasure in worship for those who have a passion for worship,
and cry out for it with all their heart. The Psalmist does have this passion, and his heart and flesh cry
out for the presence of the Living God. He has a passionate hunger for the courts of the Lord.
Like one dying of thirst in the desert longs for the water of the oasis, so his thirsty soul longs for
the water of life. For him it is a pleasure to get to the house of God.
It is pure pleasure to praise God. It is not a mere custom of the culture with him, it is a solemn duty,
but also a pleasurable privilege to go to the house of God and praise his Creator and Redeemer. Psa.
122:1 says, "I rejoiced with those who said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord." Do you think
such a passion for worship leads to greater pleasure in worship? You can count on it, for there is
already pleasure in the passion. A Swedish song says--
What joy there is in coming to God's own courts so fair,
Where faithful souls are blooming like lilies in His care!
Outside the world outside makes merry, unhappy 'mid its joys;
But in God's sanctuary the soul finds heav'nly joys.
When we let the pleasure of passion fade the fire goes out. This is true in marriage also when
passion fades. If any relationship ceases to be pleasurable, it will cease to be a motivating power.
Friendships fade, marriages decay, and spiritual fervor for Christ burns out. Why? Because there is no
passion. Someone said, "too many Christians worship their work, work at their play, and play at their
worship." This is not what we see in the Psalms. These are songs of passion with intense desire to
worship. Psa. 27:4 says, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: That I may dwell in the
house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His
temple." This is equivalent to a love song. The parallel of the romantic and the religious is not just in
the Song Of Solomon, but in the Psalms as well.
Passion for pleasure is everywhere, and all of us have it. We lust for certain foods. We lust for the
pleasures of sex. We lust for acceptance or recognition. We lust for a higher degree of wealth to
satisfy the lust for other things. Lust or passion is the motivating fire in all of our pleasures, but where
is the lust for worship: The passion to praise God? Jesus said in Matt. 5:6, "Blessed (that is happy-filled with pleasure) are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." Passion
is the key to the happy life. If you can develop the same passion for the things of God as you have for
the things of the flesh you will have the highest level of happiness this life can offer, and you will be
prepared for the ultimate happiness of the life to come. May God help us to develop a passion for
worship that we might more completely enjoy the pleasure of passion.
