Revival Hymn

My Team watched this video in Serbia, it's 35 minutes long but well worth the time. It's sort of a wake up call. I just watched it again today and marveled at the complacency of the church. Where is our passion? Why isn't worship more powerful? Why isn't prayer more enthralling? Why isn't speaking the name of Christ the most important thing to us? Why don't we have an INTIMATE relationship with God? I want to have passion, to be enthralled, to have intimacy, and for Christ to be the most important thing to me simply because I truly deeply love him. There are a precious few churches that get this. Why is that? I really want to know. Why is it that Christians today are so satisfied to have a mediocre relationship and not expect God to work miracles?

Can you imagine the impact the Christian community could have if we asked God for more than what we've got? Can you imagine the bigger impact we would have if we not only asked for it, but believed and fully expected God to give it? What if we did ask God to move a mountain and believed he would do it? Expected him to do it? Don't you think he would? I believe one person of sound faith can move a city to Christ through prayer. So what if a Church congregation would take up sound faith and pray for a city, or state, or college, or nation? Would it be moved to Christ? But we are not passionate people.


I'm not going to lie, I hate going to church. I'm sick and tired of going to church. It's not because I think people shouldn't go to church, or I have a problem with sitting still for one or two hours, it's not because I don't like to talk to people. It's because 90% of the churches I have been to are passionless. The people come and "worship"... they sing anyway. The come and "pray"... they at least bow their heads. They come and "fellowship"... well they put on a mask and say that their doing good. COME ON PEOPLE!!! Why is worship dead and Spiritless? Why don't people pray in power? Why don't they speak the truth to each other and help one another through their difficulties and celebrate through their joys? Where is our passion? Now, I understand what I have said if very broad and general, so please do not be offended. There are churches with passion, there are people in passionless churches who have passion. But I find those churches are few and far between, and those people can be as well. All I'm really saying is that I'm not satisfied. I'm disappointed even.


I am not satisfied with a mediocre worship service. I'm not satisfied with powerless, faithless prayer. I'm not satisfied with just sitting in a chair and listening to someone talk to me about the topic of the week. I want more. I want so much more than this thing called church. I want to thrive. I want to go to a thriving church, a living, breathing body of Christ. I want to join in prayer with other believers who believe prayer works and that asking God for more than the mundane is an awesome way to pray. I to praise with people who get excited about praising God. Who stand because they want to, who sing with fire in their hearts, who lift their hands in a genuine effort to praise the Almighty God, and who dance because they simply can't contain the spirit of praise within them. I want to pray for the people around me when they tell me that their lives are on the downside. I want to support them and serve them whole heartedly out of love for my Maker. I want church to be a love affair between Christ and his Bride.


That's a good way to put it, and it's true. I want church to be a love affair between Christ and his Bride. That's the passion I'm looking for in a church. A church that is in the midst of a real, touchable love affair with Christ. We are the Bride, are we not? Then where is our pursuit of our bridegroom? Where is that longing? You see it in some people, in some churches, but it is hard to find. When we think about it we realize, "Oh yeah, that's what I want. I'd forgotten about that part." We get so caught up in life, in going to work and school, doing home work, house work, taking care of our families and children, our friends. And then we go to church and we do more work, we have play with the other musicians on the worship team, we have to fill an hour of prayer with the prayer team and do a ten minute skit during offering. We have to teach the kids in Sunday school, get ready for the yearly bake sale. We have to maintain relationships with people. And in the midst of all that service for the church we have a terrible tendency to lose sight of the most precious thing... our longing, our love affair. We do all the right things, and yet miss the mark and find after a short while that we have lost all our passion. It's at that point, when church becomes work, that we get burnt out and stop expecting God to do miracles. We stop expecting to be passionate for his kingdom. We halt our involvement and start going to church, sitting in pews, listening to sermons, lifting our hands during worship because we know we're supposed to. We're passionless. We've lost our Spirit filled spark and we stop trying to get it back.


As I heave a sigh of sadness over such a loss, I wonder what to do about it. Why are we content to live passionless lives? Truly, a life with out passion is not worth living. What does it take to become passionate again? How to we receive Christ's passion? We can all agree he was a passionate man, I think even people who don't believe in him as a savior can agree with that. So how do we do that? There is a list of things we've all heard and tried before: pray more, read more, praise more, go to church more, stop listening to secular music, stop watching rated R movies, stop going to dance clubs... etc. Quantity, I guarantee you, will not help you get the passion of Christ. Gosh, we always think more is better, no matter what the occasion more is always better! That's bogus. All that "more" stuff might help for a bit, but in the end you'll find you're more drained than you were when you started. It's not quantity, it's quality.


Rather than praying more, try praying, really praying. I mean asking God to give you faith and passion for him. Pray for a few minutes or an hour, but really pray. Seek God's intimacy in your prayers. Leave out all the things you ought to say in a prayer and actually talk to God. Tell him you're sick of being passionless and your tired. He already knows how you feel, so why not just say it for crying out loud! God can take it, he's a big guy. Rather than reading more of your Bible, try reading, just reading it. By this I mean take a chapter out of a book while you're praying and seek an intimacy in reading it. "What do you mean by that?" you might ask. I mean stop reading like you're reading by yourself. Pretend for a moment that God is reading it with you, right there beside you as you turn the page, and ask him questions. "Lord, why did you have Joshua and the Israelites circle Jericho seven times? Cause that just doesn't make sense to me." and then see how he responds when you give him a minute to answer.


Maybe all that isn't helpful. All I know is that the key to a passionate life is intimacy with Christ. I know there are lots of people out there who are passionate and know nothing about Christ... well, that doesn't make sense to me. I can't imagine trying to be passionate with out Christ, he's the only thing worth being passionate about. Anyway, that's my rant, sorry if it was boring, this does happen from time to time when I get fed up with not seeing fire in the eyes of my brothers and sisters in Christ. I've been blessed with friends who are fiery, but my own congregation, though richly blessed by the Lord, seems to me to be richly lacking in that passion and it breaks my heart. I hate that the Body of Christ is not more passionate about him or reaching others for his sake. Anyway, done preaching.