Losing Your Passion 😪🚶🏾‍♀️

4th-9th April 2020

“I remember when I just got saved, I was on fire for the Lord…” should stop being part of our vocabulary 🙅🏾‍♀️.

“I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”

Revelation 2:2-4 NKJV

->> Why do Christians leave their first love?

From the moment a newly born again Christian begins his/her walk with Christ, the Holy Spirit teaches him/her how to obey the law of God, how to walk in it, how to pray, how to read the Word, what to do and not to do etc.

Now, with all that, Christians end up building in their subconscious an image of “what it is like to please God”. And this is the BIGGEST trap into which many of us have fallen and hence found ourselves less and less passionate about Christ.

Why is that? Because when fixing yourself an image of “what it is like to please God”, you end up falling into a routine.

For example; for some of us, pleasing God is reading the Bible morning and night, praying atleast 3 hours a day, fasting 2 times a week, being part of the worship team, being very active in church and so on and so forth.

The problem with that is that it ends up becoming a list of activities that you tick at the end of the day or as you complete them. Acting this way, we fall into a routine life and become automated like robots, then after we wonder why we lost our passion or, most precisely, “the fire of the first days 🔥”!

Many of us, after getting saved start wanting to fulfill all the different activities that the Holy Spirit wants them to do and this motivation ends up exhausting them and turning off their fire.

We have to know that God calls us to “be”, and not to do. God sacrificed Jesus on the cross so that those who believe in Him “become” children of God (John 1:12), not so that they might “do” what the children of God would do.

_*Your identity influences your actions.*_

For doing what God wants you to do, you have to first “be” who God calls you to be. God called us to be like Jesus (Romans 8:29), and for being like Jesus, we have to set Him before our eyes as our role model, our Master, and accept to walk in His footsteps as *the true and only way of living a life that pleases God*.

“And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, *in whom I am well pleased*.””

Matthew 3:17 NKJV

Jesus is “the way” to please God (John 14:6). The delight of God is not found in the multitude of works or words, but it is found in Jesus Christ.

“Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; And I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him,… Now therefore, listen to me, my children, For blessed are those who keep my ways.”

Proverbs 8:30, 32 NKJV

(Read the whole chapter ~ Proverbs 8)

God doesn’t call us into a routine but into a life of discipline. In the word “discipline”, there is the word “disciple”. Disciples aim at resembling their Master and that’s what we were called to be. Now you can’t be a disciple if you don’t have a master.

Losing your passion or fire for the Lord is nothing else but setting your eyes on the wrong image or wrong Master. The day Christians will understand that pleasing God is not “doing” tones of activities, but rather “being” like Christ, their zeal will not shrink but grow on a daily basis.

You cannot be loving X, but keep your eyes on Y and expect to continue loving X. God wants us to love Him to the point of keeping our eyes on Him in everything. He wants us to love Him to the extent of desiring to be like Him.

For keeping your passion, stirring up your first love for God, you have to have a permanent goal, an eternal objective, a lifelong challenge or target! And that target is to “be” like Jesus. For we’ll all have to work on that until He is manifested.

“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

I John 3:2-3 NKJV

Having this hope in us will push us to purify ourselves as Christ is. It will push us to always seek to be like Him. It will push us to always desire more of Him and less of us. It will stir up our passion, it will kindle our fire for Jesus 🔥 and keep us zealed to death.

Short note 🌸:

Don’t let your mind tell you what pleases God. The mind is limited, it’ll always show you things that have an end. Rather set your eyes on Christ as the way of causing God’s endless delight in you.

Change your prayers from:

“God, I want to please You”

To:

“God, I want to be pleasant to You”

And watch your life change.

God bless, brethren 🌟 !

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