Thoughts for Life: #25 Ablaze with a Passion for Christ

Dr. Wesley L. Duewel: Your deepened passion for Jesus must begin with your passion of love, your deeper dimension of love for Him, your more intensely personal devotion to Him, your more constant delighting in His love and more frequent resting in his love. (Google image, Filling with Holy Spirit and revival).

It is not a mere commitment of orthodoxy or of duty, but rather the whole-souled self-giving of yourself in joyous personal abandonment. The name Jesus must be far more than the official, God-given name of our wonderful Savior. It must be the delightfully sweet and soul-thrilling name of your Beloved.

The goal of Scripture is intensely personal love for Jesus possessing your whole being. The goal of redemption is your love-relationship, your love-life with Jesus.

Christian living is living in love with Jesus. Prayer communion is looking lovingly into Jesus' eyes, thrilling to Jesus' voice, resting in Jesus' arms.

Christ' passionate lovers have bejeweled the history and heritage of the church. No Christian leader is greater than his love. Few today realize the intense devotion to Christ in the early church and in our sainted martyrs. The Holy Spirit can develop in us just as ardent devotion as He did in those days.

[Some flaming-hearted souls as Thomas a Kempis, Madame Guyon, John Fletcher of Medeley, Robert Murray McCheyne, John (praying) Hyde, Fanny Crosby and Amy Carmichael were perfectly normal when compared with the church of the first century.]

The most crucial danger to a leader is to be so busy as to neglect to love Jesus, to fail to live a life of ardent devotion and "in-loveness" to Jesus. Love's expression takes time.

Love must be frequently expressed, unhurriedly expressed. The Holy Spirit is eager to lead you into ever-more-thrilling love to Jesus, to supply you with all the love you are willing to lavish on Jesus.

Love's commitment and expression is a volitional thing. It is far deeper than emotion. You must choose to be whole-souledly His. But whole-souled, passionate commitment to Jesus becomes a deeply emotional reality—too deep for words.

Let's humble ourselves before him. Let's confess how cool and casual we too often have been in our expression of love to Him. Let's ask the Holy Spirit to give us a new baptism of love for Jesus.

We need the Spirit's help to love Jesus as we should. Perhaps we have had too little of the Spirit's fullness to enable us to love with the personal ardor Jesus desires. Paul tells us that it is the Holy Spirit who pours such love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5).

Let's pray with William Cowper:

Lord, it is my chief complaint
That my love is weak and faint;
Yet I love Thee, and adore;
O, for grace to love Thee more!

Jesus' response to us is:

"He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too
will love him and show myself to him" (John 14:21).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Used by permission of the author and Duewel Literature Trust, Inc., Greenwood, Indiana. Creative reading style by Jean.

Ablaze for God
#25 Ablaze with a Passion for Christ
by Dr. Wesley L. Duewel(pp. 100-103) ZondervanPublishingHouse

Find your secret place

Father, help us to constantly delight in Your

love for us, and to find ourselves resting in You.

May we learn that our mere commitment of

duty isn't what You're looking for, but for

our whole-souled self-giving to You

in joyous personal abandonment.

Thank You that Your Spirit is eager to lead

us into an ever-more-thrilling love of Jesus.

We're open for You to supply us with all the love

we need to become effective and on-fire

followers of Jesus.

We ask this in His name. Amen.

Today's Bible verses-

Rom. 5:5 (NIV) "And hope does not disappoint us,
because God has poured out his love into our hearts
by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

Heb. 4:16 (KJV) "Let us therefore come boldly unto
the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and
find grace to help in time of need."

1 Cor. 13:13 (AMP) "And so faith, hope, love abide
[faith—conviction and belief respecting man's relation
to God and divine things; hope—joyful and confident
expectation of eternal salvation; love—true affection
for God and man, growing out of God's love for and in
us], these three; but the greatest of these is love."

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Today's question-

Why did Jesus take time for prayer with His Father?

He was a human like us, though born without sin, and the Spirit of the Father within Him, (see 1 Timothy 2:5), but in order to accomplish the full mission the Father had given Him, He needed to check with Him each day to find out what the Father's plan was for the next day, and what He wanted Him to do. The Bible states that, as a man, He had to learn submission, too.

Sounds like something we should do! We need to be open for the leading of the Holy Spirit the Father has given to us as believers. We can, and should, repent for our sins on a daily basis, and find His forgiveness. But it would be a great help to pray for guidance early in the day, to receive instructions for what the Father's plan is for us, in order to do His will, and to have more successful, rewarding days, like Jesus did.

Doctrine is important, but not proof of relationship with the Father. As we're suppose to effect the culture around us, we need to find out how we're to do it with the grace God's given us. We'll find that this takes private prayer and simple obedience to the Word we read and hear.

As we study the Bible for ourselves, we'll learn the truths there, and begin to see the need to prayerfully ask for God's help to work the necessary changes in our lives through our various challenges. These tend to help grow character and integrity, as well as deeper faith and trust in our Savior. As we all know, we're not perfect, and there should be no doubt that we need all the help we can get to live lives that honor Jesus!

This is the underlying truth of our need to pray: we're humans with tendencies to do things our own way. When we understand we're to pray for ourselves, others and situations we're concerned with, and then patiently trust the Holy Spirit to handle everything, His peace and joy can actually come to our hearts. Wow, now that's enlightenment!