Leverage: Passion

If the enemy can't kill your faith, he'll do the next best thing - he'll kill your passion.

In this week of our "Leverage" series, we're going to be calling people to leverage their passion. In 2 Timothy 1 Paul challenges Timothy to rekindle the fire of God in his life. This message confronts fear, isolation, compromise, and spiritual forgetfulness while calling us back to wholehearted passion for Jesus and His mission.

Don’t let your fire smolder.
Don’t quit.
Just burn.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Quick question. How often do you think about your passion? How often do you think about passion? This can sometimes even be like an icky word in the church. We don't feel like we're supposed to be able to talk about passion at a at such a holy place like church. This is supposed to be where you're quiet, where you're still, where you're calm, where you where you are you keep sweet, you be quiet, and you obey. But how often do you think about passion? When's the last time you felt passion? When's the last time you actually let your heart get to a place where you where you were exhilarated about something, where you were passionate about something, where you felt overjoyed about something? Where maybe you uh you weren't so mature for just a second and you let yourself be really excited and have some zeal over something? When's the last time you felt that? How often do you take inventory of your passion? What stirs it up? What quiets it? What pushes it down? What kills it? How do you respond when you see someone else operating from a place of passion? Are you cynical? Do you think they need to grow up? Do you think they need to be mature? Do you think they need to calm down and be an adult about things when you see somebody who has passion? Do you remember the last time you were really passionate about something? Do you remember the last time? Like even think back in your mind for a second, just go, man, if someone were to come at you and be like, when was the moment in your life or the season of your life that you can honestly say you were the most excited, you had the most zeal, you had the most passion about the season of life you were in or what you were doing? Maybe you can think back. I asked this question often to people, and it would it would amaze you how many people go back a really long time to answer that question. They go back to college, they go back to high school sports or high school locker room, they go back to college athletics or college ministry, they go back to a place of of their youth, and they go, that's when I was passionate, because passion is a is a thing for young people, right? And they go way back to think about the last time that they were passionate. How long ago was that for you? And then let me ask you this what happened to kill it? What killed your passion? What killed your excitement? What killed your zoy, your joy? What killed your zeal? Yeah, zoy's not a word, thank you. You can giggle, it's okay. It's okay. I just talk for a living, no big deal. What killed it? What crushed it? You got a job one day, got a lot of responsibilities and weights. Became busy. What crushed your passion? What happened and how long has it been? You know, the world, the world wants to do one of two things with your passion. The first thing that the world wants to do is sometimes it wants to limit your passion. Just wants to limit it, wants to push it down. I think a lot of people walk around with a cut off heart and they settle for a life of comfort and ease rather than one that they can actually feel, one that actually excites them and energizes them. You actually feel like the way for you to endure through life or live your life is to shut off your heart. That's the only way that, that's the only option that you have. I think some people maybe they've been through some things and they experience pain and they realize that pain comes at the cost of not shutting off your heart. And so even though it would mean that they never feel joy again or they never feel passion again, it was worth it to never feel pain again, and so they would shut off their heart. I don't know if maybe you're one of these, maybe you've noticed that it didn't keep you from experiencing pain. You still experience it, you still feel it. The world wants to limit your passion, wants to cut off your heart, wants to make sure that you actually wake up and you drudge through this life day by day, by day by day, drifting from one moment into the next until you get to the end of your life. That's what it wants to do. It wants to cut off your heart. Uh, I think about I think about Dead Poet Society, one of my favorite movies of all time. There's a character in there by the name of Walter, and you know, he, Mr. Keating, becomes his new English and literature teacher, and he exposes all of these kids who belong to a lot of these wealthy and astute families, and he teaches them about literature and he teaches them about passion, teaches them about poetry, teaches them about art. And all of a sudden, something that had never been released in their lives or unlocked in their lives was officially released and unlocked in their lives. Passion, beauty. And they begin to experience something they had never experienced before. There was one young man there who got a passion for drama and a passion for theater. He began to realize this is something that made his heart come alive a little bit. And his dad, who was a doctor, refused to allow him to go so low as to be a child who would go through the theater. He said, No, you're gonna be a doctor. You're gonna graduate from here, you're gonna go to a great college, and you're gonna become a doctor. And he kept trying to limit or starve or restrict the heart of his son. And so his son ended up having to sneak away and go through the play, and he did a phenomenal job, and he gets a standing ovation for his performance in the play. And what he's met with by his father is not joy and excitement or congratulation. What he's met with is disappointment and anger and resentment. His father was committed to shutting off his heart. He steals his passion and he ultimately makes Walter's life feel like it's not worth living. The other thing I think the world is willing to do, if it can't limit your passion, is it wants to liberate your passion. And I don't necessarily mean that in a positive way. What I mean by that is it wants you to it wants you to live out of your passion with no restraint, no self-control, no vision, and no concern for others. It wants you to be a person who feels and only feels, and you have no wisdom when it comes to your feeling, and it owns you and it possesses you, and you begin to live out of whatever your body reacts to or responds to in the moment. And you just think, man, I just want to release whatever I'm feeling in the moment and deliberate it. But that doesn't, that doesn't lead to a very good structure, a very well-structured or healthy society. It doesn't lead to a healthy family and it doesn't lead to a healthy life. I think about one example that that I thought about was Freddie Mercury. Freddie Mercury grew up in a home that was that had very strict parents, very strict religious parents, not Christian parents, but religious parents. And they were very strict towards him. And and it led to this son who was constantly, who was constantly restricted, restricted, restricted, restricted. And then when he grew up and he left the home, he decided to what? Completely release everything and live with no restriction at all. And it led to some great art, but it also led to a broken life that was cut too short. To live with liberation and no restraint. You know, and I think I think what's worse, if we've we've actually allowed the world's belief and the world's hope or strategy when it comes to passion to actually enter into the church and wreak havoc on our hearts as well as influence and as well as our influence in the world. What this has led to is we have dry churches, dry churches that have no passion. Have you ever been to a dry church? Some of you are like, yes, and then I didn't go to another church for a long time after that dry church. You walked into that dry church and you realized that yes, they are forming people and they are passionate about making disciples, but what they're making are dead disciples of a lifeless and joyless Jesus. They have a Jesus that's still hanging on a cross, but he's not raised from the dead. And they honor him, but it's lifeless, it's dead, and it's hopeless. And you walk out and you go, man, is there any joy in this place? Is there any life in this place? And you have people who are who are absolutely dry when it comes to spiritual things. And they get more excited about a game on a TV, they get more excited about a drink at a bar, they get more excited about other things in life than they do about coming to worship and be in the presence of God. Can I tell you one of my deepest burdens and greatest concerns? It's this it's the amount of people who are bored, uninspired, and lifeless. It literally aches me. It aches me. And can I tell you something that burdens and concerns me even more is the amount of professing followers of Jesus who are the exact same way. Bored, uninspired, and lifeless. Committed, consistent, bored. Uninspired and lifeless. I recently worked through a project of writing out my life mission and my life vision. Um I've done this a couple of times, but it was the first time I'd done it since launching this church. And I was kind of able to put it down to words, and it's and it's meant to, it's meant to feel large because it's meant to inspire you and give you vision for your life. But I wrote down, I was like, man, man, my mission, I want to focus, inspire, and empower the church to passionately pursue the person and mission of Jesus for the sake of redeeming people, transforming communities, and expanding the kingdom of heaven on earth and into the future. I was like, man, that's something I want to wake up every single day and get after. Every single day. I want to focus, I want to inspire, I want to empower. And the beauty of today is I get to try to do that in a message. Is I get to talk about something that's all committed to trying to stir that up in us this morning, to focus, to inspire, to empower bored, uninspired, lifeless Christians. And you may, you might not feel that way, you might not be that way, but but but people constantly drift out of one season into the next. So many Christians they didn't start out that way. If you ask them, man, when were you passionate? They go back to youth camp, they go back to student camp, they go back to college ministry, they go back to a moment that was 20 years ago. And you go, man, what about today? What about this moment? What about tomorrow? What about what you're offering to the next generation? What about what you're offering right now? What are you passing on? The last thing we want to pass on is dry and lifeless and bored. So we got dry churches, but we also have drifting churches. We have drifting churches. So you limit your passion in a dry church, and in a drifting church, you just kind of you just kind of liberate it. And you and you you don't you don't stay committed or convicted to the word of God. You just go based on the emotions or the or the push of the culture at the moment. So many churches they're constantly just bowing to whatever culture's saying in the moment, and it's constantly changing. Their vision and mission changes every decade because the culture changes, and so they have to shift to adjust to the culture so that they can make people who don't follow Jesus happy. When the church is for forming people into the way and into the image of Jesus. My question for you this morning is what do you think God wants for you? Because ultimately, though the what you end up doing and how you end up operating out of passion is completely dependent upon how you answer that question. What do you believe God wants for you? What do you believe God wants for you? What do you believe God wants for his church? If your answer is God wants me to cuss less, be nice, and die and go to heaven one day, bored, uninspired, lifeless. If you believe that God, what he wants for you, is for you to have an easy life, comfortable, operating completely out of your emotional highs, making sure that you are constantly just exhilarated in the moment. You will drift. What do you think God wants for you? What do you think God wants for his church? In keeping up with the theme, I don't think he wants to limit our passion. I don't think he wants to liberate our passion. I think he wants to leverage our passion. He wants to leverage it. How often do you think about the passion of God? We talked about our own passion. How often do you think about God's passion? I think something that can happen sometimes is we view God as this robot that's beyond the great unknown, right? And he's kind of operating, he's holding things together, he provides for us, takes care of us, but he's disconnected and he's distant. The beauty of this is you're created in the image of God. You're created in the image of God. Why do you have passion? Because you're created by a God who has passion. Why do you create? Because you're you're created in the image of God who loves to create. Why do you enjoy things? Why do you find beauty in things? Why do you notice things? Why do you feel so deeply that separates you and makes you different than every other creature known to man? Because you're made in the image of God. He created you. And so you're made to have passion. Why? Because God has passion. How often do you think about the passion of God? I heard one great theologian, I didn't hear it because he's been dead a long time, but I read, I read that one great theologian said, God is passionate about your joy. God is passionate about your joy. He said that the cross is proof to the lengths that God is willing to go in order to secure your joy. You'd some of you would probably be surprised at the theologian who said that and wrote that, but his name was John Calvin. And when people think about maybe someone like John Calvin, they may think about a really religious kind of person who wrote a bunch of books and preached really heavy. But John Calvin believed that God was passionate about the joy of his people. God is passionate about your joy. He's passionate about your passion. One of the primary reasons for Jesus' coming was to arrest your affections and vision with the beauty of his love and joy. That Jesus came so that you could see how marvelous and beautiful and wonderful he is, and devote the rest of your life to following him. Not out of drudgery. Have you ever been to a church where people said, Hey, God really doesn't like you? Because you're a sinner and you're pretty awful. But Jesus died, you should give your life to him and live for him forever. And you walked out and you said, I am just exhilarated. Because that's not the gospel. The beauty of the good news of the gospel is that God loves you so much that he was willing to step into human history in order to come and reconcile you to himself, to fill you with his spirit, to give you passion for life, passion for himself, and leverage the rest of your life for the sake of his glorious kingdom and your good, because they're all they all coexist together. And then you could take all of that into eternity and enjoy and have a purpose-filled eternity with him forever and ever and ever. Jesus came to give you that. Jesus, in in in Hebrews, the writer says it was for the joy that was set before Jesus that he endured the cross and despised its shame. For the obligation? No, no, no. For the joy. For the joy. Jesus looked into the future at the agenda and the will of God and said, That's beautiful and that's worth this. It's for my joy that I'm going to endure this. The psalmist says, in his presence is fullness of what? Joy. In his presence, it's fullness of joy in his presence. For you, you go, no, no, no. In his presence is fullness of pressure. No, no, in his presence is fullness of joy. Joy. If when you get in the presence of God, you don't get some joy from the love of a father who cares about you. I don't know whose presence you're in. He says, no, what he wants to give you when you get in his presence is fullness of joy. Does he convict you of sin? Yes. Why does he convict you of sin? And how does he convict you of sin? By what? Giving you a vision for beauty and better. That's how he convicts. He doesn't condemn. Therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why? Because the Spirit of God calls you to what? More in Christ. Convicts you, draws you to beauty. The psalmist also says, at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. How often do you think about God and think about pleasure? Pleasure forevermore. You think, no, no, no. The agenda of my life is I have some obligation to God over here, and then I try to go get some pleasure over here, and then I go ask God to forgive me for going after the pleasure over here. God says, no. This right here, small, small stuff. You want true pleasure? Here. My right hand. Pleasures forevermore. When you aren't convinced that there's a place for your passion in your relationship with Jesus or in the church, then you will take your passion to other things that aren't meant to be the center of your life or worship. This is what happens to people. Because they know I've been made as a deep well meant for something, filled with something. I've got a vision and a passion for something, and there's no place for it in Jesus, and there's no place for it in the church, so now I've got to go take it somewhere else. And that's what you hear from people all the time. God had put something in me and there was no place for it, so I went there for it. And God's going, no, no, no, no. I am the place for your passion. There's got to be a place for passion in our relationship with Jesus and in the church, where people will take their passion to other things that can't hold the weight of their soul or give them the joy that they're longing for. And what I've learned is this if the enemy can't kill your faith, he'll settle for the next best thing, which is killing your passion. If he can't kill your faith, he'll settle for the next best thing, which is killing your passion. There's nothing beautiful or attractive about someone who has a lot of faith and no passion. Faith with no passion ends up being in slavery and obligation. Because you believe that God is who he says he is, yet you don't love the fact that he is who he says he is. And there's nothing attractive about that. But what's beautiful, what's beautiful is when you're passionate about the one that you call Lord. When you say that he is who he says he is, he can do what he promises to do. And I'm passionate about that. I believe that with my full heart, and that brings me joy and desire because I know pleasure, joy is in his presence, in his will for me. And so the enemy knows that he can't kill your faith. If you're secure in Jesus, if you're united in Jesus, Jesus says, whoever's in my hand, the enemy can't pull you out of my hand. Once I have you, I have you. So the enemy can't kill your faith. He can't take you away from the hand of God, but he can kill your passion. He can weigh you down, he can burden you, he can steal the desire, he can squelch the fire. Because passion is the lifeblood that moves us. Passion is what moves people. Like when you see someone who's truly operating out of passion, there's something that goes, that's how that's how people are meant to operate. It's people meant to operate. And the problem with a lot of us, especially in the Western world and in and in America, is everyone connects this to vocation. Everyone. They go, oh, they're doing what they're passionate about. Their job gets to be their passion. Do you know how how small of a number of people in the history of humanity got to have their passion as their vocation? That's actually a very small number of people. Why? Because vocation has to do with all kinds of different things. Your skills, your opportunities, the need of the community that you're around and that you're embedded in. Before a hundred years ago, we couldn't even travel to the links that we traveled with for opportunities. It was whatever the immediate need of the community had around you. And so you just did whatever you needed to do to have a job, make money, and meet the needs of the community. And now today, we believe that if that we have so many people that are wandering from one thing to the next because they believe that their passion is meant to be found in their vocation. And you go, no, no, no. Passion is something that's meant to be in the human heart and operated out of throughout your whole life. If it gets to also coexist with your vocation, amazing. That's amazing. I'll be honest with you. You don't have to shake me awake to do what I do every day. You don't. I get to sit across the table and I have to hear a lot of heavy things that are that are really hard. It's a joy for me. Because my vocation happens to coexist with my passion. Does it coexist with with financial comfort? No. But it coexists with passion. And that's the lifeblood of my life. If your passion also brings financial comfort, well, God bless you. Okay? Praise God for you. But this is what we do. And so we go, well, I guess if I'm going to have a nice job and a nice career, I'm going to have to choose a vocation and now I'm going to never have passion. And God goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

unknown 19:22

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Your passion is something that I give you. It's a gift to you, hardwired in you, meant to be something that stirred up, found in me, and continued to be invested over and over and over again. Because what why does the enemy want to steal your passion? Because what's the enemy's goal? To make you quit. That's his goal. To make you quit. To make you ineffective and irrelevant when it comes to the things of God. That's his goal. Take away your passion in Jesus. Take away your passion for who he is and what he's done. Take away your passion for life and help you be a good person who's comfortable and does nothing significant for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. That's what he wants. And sometimes that looks like a really nice life. That's filled with a lot of stuff, but no eternal ripple effect. That's the enemy's goal. Whatever will make you lukewarm and ineffective for the kingdom, the enemy is game for that strategy. A lot of people think the enemy only works through pain, sickness, death, disease, sin, suffering. I think the enemy loves to give people good stuff to fill their heart up and make them ineffective for the kingdom. Maybe it's a boat. Maybe it's a great job that takes all of your time but gives you really good money. Whatever will make you ineffective for the kingdom, the enemy will use. Scripture tells us, John chapter 10, Jesus said, the enemy comes to steal, to kill, and destroy. And then Jesus says, But I've come that you may have life and life to the full. Does that sound like Jesus wants to make a dry church with dry Christians, with no passion? No, no, no. He says, I want you to have a full life. Full, abundant life. Lived with your whole heart. God wants you to live a full life out of your whole heart. And the problem, the problem for most of us is that God is more concerned about your passion than you are. You don't even pay attention to your passion. That's why I asked at the beginning. When's the last time you even thought about your passion? Because God's more concerned about your passion than you are. The goal of your life should be this: to get the culture of your greatest season and grandest moment with Jesus to become the culture of your whole heart and your whole life. That should be the moment. Like I said before, there's so there's so many people that you ask them, when were you passionate? And they go back way, way, way, way, way back. And it's going, man, how do you get what what was happening then into your heart right now? Into your life right now. How do you get the spirit of Youth Camp 2005 into your day to day life right here, right now? Man, there's nothing worse. You walk you your ministry long enough and you walk with people long enough. You do it enough to have moments where you see people who are brought to tears at the revelation of Jesus five years later desert him and his will for their life. You see it happen. Because something just drifted over time. Because they had passion there and they lost it over the course of that time. And it's going to know how do we get that to carry us through the entirety of our lives? How do we get the culture of student camp, the culture of college ministry, the culture of the mission trip, whatever that moment is, and get it to live in your heart forever. In 2 Timothy 1, to get to the Bible. Long intro. Just kidding. I'm just kidding, guys. Just kidding. I'm kind of kidding. 2 Timothy chapter 1. This is what Paul's intent is. This is what Paul's whole intent is with this text. So to give you some context of the author. So the Apostle Paul, who was once persecutor of the church, encountered Christ on the road to Damascus and became the greatest missionary the world's ever seen. Launched the church into the Greek context in Europe, Turkey, Asia, Asia Minor. Well, he's to the end of his life. This is pretty much the last thing he's ever going to write. Paul has been deserted by everyone close to him. He engages that later on in the chapter and throughout the book, that everyone, everyone has left him. He's imprisoned in Rome and he's about to die by beheading. And Paul is writing to Timothy, who is someone who's he's he's invested in. And his highest priority and greatest passion is the mission of Jesus through the local church. This is Paul in a nutshell when it comes to this text. He's writing to Timothy, who he loves, he's close to the end of his life. And what do you do at the end of your life? Everything you say holds weight and matters, right? You're not wasting words, you're not wasting time, you're not wasting letters while you're sitting in a jail cell waiting to be beheaded. You're sending something with intent. And so he's writing to Timothy with intent. These are his last words that he's gonna be able to speak to this young man that he's invested his life in. And Paul's highest priority and greatest passion is the church. And the question for many at this moment, so many had deserted him, so you have to be thinking, Paul's looking up and he's going, who's gonna keep carrying this thing? Who's gonna keep going? Who's gonna keep moving this into more and more territory so that more and more people can know Jesus? And how or who's gonna let this die? Are we just gonna let this die, or is someone gonna keep carrying this? And so he's writing to Timothy, and what he's trying to do is he's going, Timothy, don't let this die. Don't let this die, Timothy. And so he writes to him, and towards the end of the text, after he after what we just read, he says a few things to Timothy. He says, Look, Timothy, this is what I want you to know. Don't be ashamed of the testimony of the gospel. Share in suffering for the gospel. He's going, Timothy, if you're gonna devote your life to this, you're gonna suffer. And you need to be ready to share in it. Rely on the power of God. Hold on to the power of sound teaching because the pattern of sound teaching because people are gonna try to lead you astray to make things easy so that you don't get persecuted and you can say what the world likes and what they want to hear. And guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit. Guard what's been placed in you because the world wants to take it away, it wants to squelch it, it wants to diminish it. You gotta guard it. And you go, man, what how is Timothy supposed to do all of this? How is this young man hearing from his father in the faith? As far as we know, Timothy had no father. It mentions his mother and his grandmother being influences of his faith. So Paul became ultimately like a surrogate father for him. And he's hearing from his father, who's a father in the faith, who's about to be beheaded, and he's giving him all of these things. You're gonna suffer. Don't be ashamed. Rely on the power, hold on to the pattern of sound teaching, guard the good deposit. You go, how are you supposed to do that, Timothy? How are you supposed to do that? What is the key to Timothy being able to do all of this and to stay faithful to the end, despite this resistant and opposition? Paul tells us in our text to stir, fan into flame the gifts of God. He says, Timothy, I need you to fan into flame the gift of God so that you won't be ashamed of the testimony, so that you'll be willing to share in the suffering of the gospel, rely on the power of God, hold on to the pattern of sound teaching and guard the good deposit of the Holy Spirit. He said, I need you to, I need you to fan into flame, I need you to stir this up. This word, a nazopareo, literally means to rekindle or kindle afresh a fire. That's what he's telling him. To fan into flame, he's saying, I need you to get that fire, and I need you to stir it up and rekindle it. To get it going again, to feed it. The gift, people have, people have kind of argued and debating over what they're talking about when it comes to the gift. It's translated, it's literally where we get the word charismatic from. But it but it's it's where we get charisma or charismatic from. It's and it's this it's this power gift. And a lot of people think that they're talking about maybe a spiritual gift of teaching or whatever it may be. I personally believe that what he's talking about is that Paul laid his hands on him and they gave him the gift of passion for the sake of cur of courage. They laid their hands on him and they prayed passion and courage over young Timothy. And so Paul is saying, Hey, that gift I gave you, that passion and that courage to be faithful to Jesus despite all things, I need you to stir that gift up. Because the end's coming near, and I'm not going to be here much longer. And you've got to carry this forward. So you got to stir this up. When we think about passion, what is passion? Well, passion is an intense driving emotion, zeal or fervor that compels action. Passion is this inner emotion, this fire that compels us to a life of meaning and mattering. What it's like sometimes people see passion, they automatically think it looks, it looks like maybe a joyful expression. No, no, no, no. Passion is a willingness to do whatever it takes to go after the end. To go after whatever is in your focus. Passion is the fuel for that. It's the lifeblood for that. And Paul's writing in Timothy saying, I need you to stir up that passion. I need you to get that lifeblood going. I need you to get that fuel going because there's a lot at stake and you need to move this thing forward. Paul's essentially saying to Timothy, and he's saying to us today, I believe, that God's hand, God's presence, God's power, God's calling, and God's anointing is on you through the Holy Spirit. But if you don't keep it alive and active, it can smolder. That word smolder literally means to burn with smoke, but no flame. I think there's a lot of people in the Christian life that are burning with smoke, but they got no flame. Because it's smoldered. It's smoldered. And you have to realize if you're a follower of Jesus, if you've been filled with the Holy Spirit, that God's hand, God's presence, God's power, God's calling, God's anointing is on you through the Holy Spirit. You don't have to earn that, you don't have to strive for that. Paul writes to the church in Ephesus, he says, it's sealed in you. That it's proof of your inheritance is the gift of the Holy Spirit. And he's saying, but but what happens is you gotta you gotta stir this up. You gotta keep it alive and keep it active. You know, there's so many people I think that that doubt their faith, they doubt their relationship with God, they lose track of their relationship with God, they lose their fire for their relationship with God, and it's simply because they don't stir it. You have this moment of passion, and you believe the lie that that passion is supposed to carry you through the rest of your life, that you have a moment with God, and that's supposed to be the fuel that carries you for the rest of your life. You think your kids can't moment, your youth can't moment, your college ministry moment is gonna give you what it takes to endure the rest of your life and be faithful to Jesus and stay aligned with his calling and mission for your life? Not a shot. He's saying, No, no, you gotta keep this alive and active. You gotta consistently stir this up in you. So, a question for us this morning: how do you lose your passion? How do we lose our passion? How do we how do we squelch this fire? Well, I think the first thing Paul hints on is fear. It's fear. That he constantly tells Timothy over and over and over again, he warns him about fear and calls him to be courageous. Warns him about fear, calls him to be courageous. Over and over and over again. The Spirit of God has not given you a spirit of fear, of timidity, but he's giving you what? A spirit of power. Because when you're enslaved to fear, you're submitted to its lordship. Have you noticed that? That when you're when you're covered in fear or you're living out of a place of anxiety and fear, what's it doing? It's submitting you to its lordship, it's controlling and directing your life. That's what fear does. And so he's warning him against fear because he's saying, look, fear likes to take possession over you and it wants to control your life. And he's saying, No, no, if you can't be submitted to fear and submitted to the Lord at the same time. Timothy's young, and Paul is concerned that he will be afraid of man and it will impact his faithfulness. And Paul's saying, you can't let fear do this. You gotta stir up. Stir up the gift of God. Don't let fear win. Don't let fear steal your heart. Another thing is isolation. Isolation. The scriptures tell us that the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. What does a lion do? It likes to it likes to prowl around seeking after the lone prey who's wandered from the pack so he can go and attack it in isolation. He says the lion is prowling around, he's looking for someone to devour. You know, I've noticed something that I've never seen anyone distance themselves from God or distance themselves from God's people and get more godly. Never happened. Never happened. And the enemy wants to drag you away from God's presence and drag you away from God's people. And often when it comes to God's presence, it's sin and shame that keep you from God's presence. It's that dark inner voice that tells you that that voice of condemnation that keeps you from the Lord's presence. You may go, you may, you may read Bible, you may have Bible app, you may say the right things to the right people around you, but you know you've not been in the Lord's presence and experienced intimacy with the Lord and conviction from a relationship with the Holy Spirit in so long. Because you're living under the under the weight of sin and shame. Some of us it's ungodly busyness. Not just busyness, ungodly busyness. Busyness that keeps you away from the presence of God is ungodly busyness. And it keeps us from the presence of God. So he can't minister to us and give us what we need. And then we distance ourselves from God's people. Sometimes this just looks like inconsistency, sometimes it looks like complete wandering astray. But the reality of the Christian life is that it is interdependent. You cannot follow Jesus in isolation. A majority of Jesus' commands are dependent upon community and relationship. That you need people who love you enough to tell you hard things. And what people love to do is they love to find satisfaction and community in a context where they know it's in a support group that's going to tell them what they want to hear. So people love. They want to find like-minded individuals who will cater to their desires. And you're going to know, man, we need Christian community that pushes back on us. Out of judgment? No, out of love. Out of love. You need people who love you enough to tell you the truth. Because what happens, shout out to moms and parents in the room. What happens is you are raised in a home where someone's telling you how you're meant to live, that instruction. And then you graduate out of that, you move out of that, and then you have no one who's trying to keep you from being stupid. Right? And who do we need? We need people to help us not be stupid. We need that. And so we need people who love us enough to say, hey, let me help you see what you cannot see. And so we need relationship. He gave us the church, his idea as the environment for us to embody the life he was calling us to. And then the last thing is compromise. Compromise. He's consistently telling Timothy to be faithful to God's word, to not compromise, to not give into fear, to not give into the fear of man, to not lose sight of the teaching. And compromise, literally, the definition of compromise is an agreement reached by opposing sides. So you literally have to be an opposing side. So you have an enemy that's on the other side, and you're going, hey, how can we make each other happy? How can we kind of meet in the middle? And that's what happens with followers of Jesus is we're constantly compromising with the other side. We're compromising with the enemy. We're compromising with darkness to say, hey, I still want to be faithful to Jesus, but I'm willing to give up this much in order for me to still get that. And it starts by tolerating what you should be hating. And one inch at a time it takes you over. So there's theological compromise that happens where we lose our conviction on the word of God. And then there's devotional compromise that happens where we let our affections die for the love of out of the love of God. And he's going, no, no, man, you gotta stir up your conviction. You gotta stir up your affection. And you know what happens is we simply forget. We just forget. You forget how much you love Jesus. You forget how much Jesus has done for you. You forget how thankful you are for this life. You forget how much you love your spouse. You forget how much you love your family, you forget, you just forget. It's not like you intentionally woke up one day and said, How can I run away? How can I kill the passion of my life? How can I get away from it? You just forget. You forget one quiet time. One time with the Lord. You oversleep one time for that meeting or for church or whatever it may be. You f you forget to you forget to talk to the Lord throughout the day. You just forget, and then you forget again, and then you forget again, and then you forget again, and then you forget again. And before you know it, you're living your life, you're living a life you didn't mean to live. I think about in 2 Peter, a similar context where Peter, towards the end of his life, is writing to the persecuted church, and he gives the purpose of his letter. He says, He says, I intend to always remind you of these things. He goes on to say, I think it's good to stir you up by way of reminder. And then he finishes and says, so that you remember. Why? Because we forget. We forget. You forget who you are. You forget what you have. You forget why you're here. You forget what he's done. You forget where you're going. You just forget. And you wander. And you drift. So to close, I just simply want to call us to what Paul says to Timothy right here. To fan and to flame the gift of God. The word that he uses is rekindle. Rekindle afresh. There's three things that a fire needs in order to be rekindled. And it's oxygen is to be cleaned, and then it's fuel. And I was thinking about this, like, how do we get how do we compare this kind of in the Christian life? And I'm gonna give three things. You may not think they connect with oxygen, clean, and fuel, but I do my best, okay? So how do we rekindle this gift? How do you get your passion back? How do you get your heart back? And if you're a fire person and this is wrong, don't judge me, just listen, okay? I read an article, I promise. How do we rekindle it? So the first thing is you need to take responsibility for your own zeal. You gotta take responsibility for your own zeal. One of the things I hear all the time is when people are talking about not following Jesus anymore, the all of a sudden they start to talk about churches and other people's names and other things. I mean, I don't want to discredit what's happened in your life. I know that there are people in this room that you had someone that you entrusted things to and then they betrayed that trust. You have people who took advantage, people who hurt you, who harmed you, whatever it may be. But I think what the Lord wants to do is he wants to make this between you and him. And he wants to say, look, you can continue to blame that person, to say that name, to say that place, or whatever else, and you can continue to have a dead heart. Or you can take responsibility for your own zeal and come alive again. And I'm just wondering if maybe there's some people in the room, you're just tired of being dead. And you're ready to be alive again. And you got to take responsibility for your own zeal. You gotta listen to the words of God who's saying, Man, I want you, I want your heart back. I want you to be alive again. I want to breathe some fresh air on this. When you think, when you think about, when you think about oxygen bending down into a fire to blow on it, to get some fresh air, to get some, to get some movement in there. I think the Holy Spirit is going, man, how do I, how do I blow some fresh air on your soul? How do I get some wind in your sails again? Like, how do you get alone in the presence of God and get the Holy Spirit to stir you up again? How do you worship Jesus again? How do you allow your heart to be stirred up with love and affection again? Man, one of the things that I've seen be really, really powerful is is literally allowing worship to flow out of your body. I know for some of us this is like we're here and you're listening to those words, and and and man, I think it's beautiful. You're listening to those words and you mean it with your heart, and you, it's you and the Lord, but you're here. And I'm telling you, what I've noticed is that when you allow your affections for Jesus to actually come out of your body in an expressive way, it does something to you, it stirs you up in a way. Your body can actually speak to your soul. Justin Whitmore early just wrote a great book on how the body teaches the soul. And he said, Man, the church so often when it comes to discipleship and formation, what we say is shut off your body and focus on your soul. And he goes, No, no, no. God made the whole thing. And so sometimes he uses the body to actually speak and reinforce things to your soul. And so sometimes we lift our hands, not because we're believing what we're saying, but because we need to believe what we're singing. The beauty of worship isn't just singing what we already believe, but singing our hearts back into belief. So some of us is like, man, some of you you need to get on your face with the Lord again. Like some of you need to get back into that posture of on your knees, on your face, in the presence of God, crying out for Him again. Not because there's anything wrong with the recliner, but because your soul needs the posture of desperation to breathe some fire, to breathe some wind into the fire again, to stir something up in you again. And you've got to get zeal going back into your life. We're so zealous about so many things that are not Jesus. We're willing to look foolish for so many things that's not Jesus. And it's like, man, be willing, be willing to look foolish for Jesus, to be a kid again in the presence of God, to get some wind back in your sails again, to take responsibility for your own zeal. The reason you're not spending time in the presence of God is because you're not spending time in the presence of God. The reason you're not reading the Bible is because you're not reading the Bible. The reason you're not listening to the Bible is because you're not listening to the Bible. The reason you're not praying to the Lord is because you're not praying to the Lord. The reason you're not in community and relationship is because you're not in community and relationship. And it's just saying, man, how do I take responsibility for my own faith to follow Jesus again? For my own zeal? The second thing is to clean, to get rid of the things that quench your passion. What are the things that steal your passion and your love and your fire for Jesus? What steals it? What takes it away? What kills it? What crushes it? What takes away your passion? And how do you make those things the enemy of your life? What kills your passion? What kills your heart? What kills it? Do they have a name? Have you identified them? Do they have a name? Not necessarily talking about people. Don't kill people. But there's things in your life that are crushing your passion that you need to identify and you need to kill. You need to get rid of them. What are the things that you're replacing? All of your passion is going to sports. All of your passion is going to this thing over here. Maybe it's parenthood, which is a good and beautiful thing. But maybe you need to have a conversation with somebody to say, hey, I need you to give me an hour to get in the presence of God. I need you to give me an hour a week to go hang out with some people that get my heart going. So often our passion goes to good things that ultimately keep us from God's best. You go, man, how do you get those things out of the way and clean all the stuff that's not meant to be there that's keeping you from burning? And then the last thing, man, is fuel. How do you feed this thing? What are the things that stir your affections for Jesus? What stirs your affections for Jesus? There's a lot of people that I think the the the Western Church, for all the good that it's done, I think one of the things that we've that we've struggled is when it comes to the formation of people, and we've we've convinced people that following Jesus has to look a certain way and it has to look the same way for everybody. Everybody has to read the Bible the same way or the same amount. Everybody has to do the same stuff and go to the same courses or whatever it may be. And the reality of the reality of this, my friend, God made you and He knows what you need. Knows what you need. There are some of you you want to kick your shoes off and go put your feet in the grass and connect with nature because that connects you with God. I'm not that guy personally, but you need that. Go do that. Some of you need to go hike up a mountain and look at beauty. I'll look at a picture. But if you need to hike and go look at you, go hike. You get in the presence of God and you talk to him up there looking at that mountain. What do you need? What stirs your affections for Jesus? What breathes new life into you again? Go do more of that. What makes you love Jesus more? What gives you a hunger for his word? What gives you love for his people? What gives you a vision for his kingdom? Do more of that. Feed the fire. What would it look like for you if you woke up every single day and you said, My mission today is to not let this fire smolder, but to feed it and let it burn. What if that was your mission every day? So we're we're gonna move into a time of response. I mean, there's there's a few things that I that God was really placing on my heart that, man, if these connect with you, I really want to encourage you to receive prayer today. I want you to receive prayer anyway, but I think I think that there's some people in this room that that you that God gave a gift to you. And maybe it was a long time ago. Maybe God gave you a calling on your life. Maybe it was a calling to ministry, maybe it was a calling to mission, maybe it was a calling to something. And then something happened to you. Something happened to you and you let it die. And you decided to settle for the next opportunity or whatever life you had. And right now the Spirit of God is going, do you remember that? Do you remember that devotion? Do you remember that passion? Do you remember that that North Star that all of your life was directed towards? You go, man, I want to, I want to breathe that back to life again. And some of you here, there's a passion for Jesus, not just not just a normal, a normal, a normal passion, but an all-encompassing passion that's like, man, this is gonna take over my whole life and the rest of my future. And some of you need to say, I think God's wanting to breathe new life into that again. I think he's wanting to breathe calling on my life. I think others of you, it's your marriage. I think some of you, you have a roommate. And you and you stood across from that woman or that man a while a while back, and you meant every word. And you forgot. And I believe the Spirit of God is wanting to give you new passion in your marriage and in your relationship again, to breathe new life into that, so that your kids don't grow up being parented by nice people who do good things, but they get raised in a home that's passionate about the glory of God and passionate about loving one another. And then I think the I think the last thing, but most importantly, I think some of you you've just let your passion for Jesus die. Some of you, maybe you've never had it and you need a relationship with God, you need it today, you need it right now, and you need to come and surrender your life to Jesus. I think some of you, you've just let your passion, your relationship, your intimacy with the Father die, and you need to get it back again, and we would love to pray for you. And so, whatever the Lord's stirring in your heart, be be faithful with that. Come receive prayer for that. Confess that. Let somebody in on that. Don't let there be another day that something stirs and you go back to Monday and you live another uninspired, bored, and passionate life. This could be the moment for you. This could be the moment that everything shifts and everything changes and your life is filled with passion again. And you live your life for what matters most. So, Holy Spirit, would you come? Would you move in this place? Would you breathe new life in this room today? Would you breathe new life in the hearts of every single person who's sitting here today? God, I reject and resist any posture of anyone in this room who's who's thinking, I'm good, I've got enough of God. None of us have enough of God. All of us need more of you. All of us have room for more passion, more delight, more desire of you. God, some of us we have limited our passion and we've shut off our hearts. Others of us we've we've we've been way too liberal with our passion, and we need you to, we need you to come and focus it again. Whatever it may be, God, would you would you help us respond in this moment so that we don't become just another dry church, we don't become another drifting church, but we become a church that leverages their passion for the sake of Jesus, his mission. Lord, may we not be too uptight, mature, reverent to not surrender to you. Come and wreck our hearts in the best and most beautiful way, Jesus. Holy Spirit, would you move in this place? In your name.