Love, Wisdom, and Passion

It occurred to me that it takes three things to make someone great in the kingdom: love, wisdom, and passion. I believe that the problem is these things don't get married often enough within believers. Most believers major on one or two of these but not all three. It takes all three to drive someone to greatness in the kingdom. I will demonstrate how these things need to be merged, and what happens when someone only has one or two of them...

Love. We talk about love, but what is it? Fundamentally, love is about having an active interest in the concerns of others. If you have love, you will act to help those that you love. If you come across a real need, what do you think? Do you think about doing something, or do you stand on the sidelines? Nothing great in the kingdom is ever done without love. I can think of many examples of so-called "Christians" with passion, and maybe even wisdom, but have not love and are therefore hopeless. Love makes you care. Sometimes, love is the difference between inaction and action. Love on it's own can make a world of difference, but it is only the capacity to act that love demonstrates itself- love does not drive you to act necessarily, nor does it give you the sense of knowing the right way to act or the right time to act. That's where wisdom and passion come in.

Wisdom is about the ability to know the precise answer to a situation. If I love my friend, I'm going to share my faith with him. If I have wisdom, I might then choose the proper time and place to share my faith so as to improve the odds that the seed I am trying to plant might take hold. It might even give me the right angle to come from, to get at the heart of the matter most effectively. Without wisdom, Christians are dangerous in a bad way. We might be well-meaning, but if we say the right thing at the wrong time or in the wrong way, we get nowhere. If we don't know how to be shrewd the way God meant us to be shrewd, we will bungle the opportunities granted us to impact the lives around us. We'll mismanage our time and energy. We'll fight battles we should have avoided, and avoid battles we should have engaged. Wisdom is SO critical to right living before God that without it, our love is somewhat meaningless, as we blow opportunities to make a difference by mistakes that could easily have been averted with a little forethought. Wisdom is what guides our love so that the love is not ineffective. Love and wisdom are great, but without an engine to drive it, little will be accomplished. That engine is passion.

Last but not least of these is passion, the fire that really makes things happen. I would argue that faith is the underlying architect of passion, because passion is faith set on fire. There are plenty of people with passion who do not have love or wisdom. Passion alone is a dangerous thing- it's what makes things like suicide bombers possible. While passion alone is a dangerous thing, without it we'll never believe God for anything of significance. We'll never follow through on the dreams we dream. We won't hunger and thirst for righteousness. Without passion, we will be content to be mediocre and nominal. Passion... every believer must be set ablaze by God or will never amount to anything of significance. You know that people who do stuff like suicide bombing and terror attacks and intense, bold things have no lack of passion. My wish was that there was more passion within the church- if you haven't been set on fire by God then you are only standing in the way. To make a difference on this planet, a real difference, you have to care about your cause within the kingdom and your purpose before God as much as anyone in Satan's camp cares about their cause. We need people who have real passion, directed by real love for God and people and channeled by wisdom to be effective. Without passion, nothing of any real significance is ever accomplished.

I have a vision for what Christianity could be. That vision is a church that loves first and foremost, has the wisdom to guide it so that when that love is shown it is received, and has passion so that the visions we have of our world being made right can be turned into reality. Without these things we are hopeless. To cultivate love, you need to know how much you are loved. To cultivate wisdom, you must seek God for it and learn to see what God sees and to hear what God is saying. To cultivate passion, you must believe that God has a plan for your life that is bigger than just existing and you must receive the Holy Spirit's passion for your own life. Ultimately, you must care about whether God's will happens in your life or not. If you cultivate these three things, you are likely to go somewhere. If you don't, you will be just another nominal Christian whose life amounts to little and has nothing significant to speak of when you get to Heaven. Something to think about...