Passion

"You still have passion -- that matters more!"  I love this line from my favorite movie, "Amazing Grace", spoken by Barbara Spooner to her future husband, William Wilberforce.  From 1787 to 1807, William Wilberforce battled to end the slave trade in England.  Though he was voted down eleven times, he kept coming back, kept fighting against the overwhelming odds.  For twenty years, he ate, drank, slept, breathed, lived the abolition of the slave trade.  The cost was immense, but he refused to let anything stand against his vision to change the world.  Now, that's passion.

Passion is a rich word.  Webster's Dictionary has about a dozen definitions, one of which is, "intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction."  Passion is associated with suffering, anger, and romance.  It is "a strong feeling that causes you to act in a dangerous way."  Passion breeds recklessness and disregard for consequences.  A passionate person is unstoppable, destructive to whatever stands in his way . . . bad or good.  True passion consumes a person's entire being.  The greatest heroes and the worst villains have this in common -- it's downright dangerous.

Another definition of passion is, "the sufferings of Christ between the night of the Last Supper and His death."  Today is Good Friday, commemorating the Passion, those agonizing hours when Jesus endured supreme humiliation and appalling death.  It was not easy for Him.  Passion in the form of suffering weighed on Him as no other person has ever known it.  Every muscle and vein of His body rebelled against the torture of the cross, to the point that He sweat blood -- a very rare condition in cases of extreme stress.  His soul pleaded for a way out of the flood of God's wrath.  But there was only one way out, and that was in.  To go into being betrayed and deserted by all His friends, into mocking, lies, rejection, into scourging of the kind that often killed its victims, into being brutally nailed to wooden beams, displayed as the worst of criminals before His people, the people He loved.  And worst of all, God, His own Father, would not even look at Him.  He died there, completely alone.  And why all this?  Passion.

Jesus had a consuming passion: to do His Father's will.  He ate, drank, slept, breathed, lived it.  He said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work (John 4:34)."  He knew that God's will included His death for the sins of the world (John 12:27), and when He cried "It is finished!" He knew that He had fulfilled His mission.  Nothing could stop Him; not ridiculing Pharisees, not confused disciples, not angry mobs, not Roman executioners.  He could have put an end to it all with one call for an angel army.  But He didn't.  He carried through with perfect focus from beginning to end.  And why?  Love . . . passionate love.  He loved His Father, and He loved us.  It was intense, driving, reckless.  It was dangerous and destructive -- the power of sin was crushed forever.  That is Passion.

What about us?  Passion will destroy -- either it will ruin our lives with selfishness, or it will obliterate evil in striving for Jesus.  Do we have the kind of passion that would go to a cross for people who hate us?  Do we have the kind of passion that would persevere for a cause for twenty years?  Most of us don't even have the passion to accomplish an all-day project, let alone hold down a job or have a lasting marriage.  Good passion isn't easy.  It's painful.  But the end is unspeakably worth it.  Think of William Wilberforce's joy when the slave trade finally ended.  Think of Jesus' joy when He sees all His redeemed loved ones praising Him in Heaven.  What really matters more -- the odds against you, the fear of failure, the comfort of avoiding the labor, or the joy at the end of it all?  God does not want half-hearted servants.  Passion matters more!