A Passion for Thee: Reevaluating the Desires of Our Heart in a Passion Driven World -Part 2

Passions...

They permeate the very heart of each of our souls, and yet...

When do we recognize that a passion has gone beyond the will of God?

As previously stated in article one of this series, passion is a reoccurring theme throughout God's Word. We followed Hannah through the excruciating dedication of her deepest desires and the gracious fulfilment of a loving God. We also saw Paul's tremendous transformation to the man no longer persecuting God's people but spreading the Gospel as far as he could in the newfound passion God gave him. However, what happens when these desires and passions start growing more than our passion for God or deviate from His path altogether? Letting go of these passions that have wandered away from God's will can be the most painful experiences you have in your walk with God. In your journey to come closer to Him, bits and pieces of this world must be burned away like chaff. Things that seemed good in their original desire become heavy weights that must be laid aside for there to be any purity within us. What once was good is now an obstacle between myself and my King. How am I to follow Him, with the burden of the world and the desires which follow?

In recent days I have been going through a very personal trial that brought me to a greater understanding of these passages that I had never seen before. I had been agonizing over the application and making a connection when the Lord brought a very painful experience I had been dreading because of its connections with my passions. Ironically, over the past three years of working and praying to understand this issue, I had made no connection with my study of these passages (regarding passion and God's will) with this area in my life. It was not until after I lay in the smouldering ashes of this trial that the meaning of these passages gained a new and vibrant life in my eyes. In the pain, there was hope. In the loss, there was gain even when it was completely outside of my own personal desires.

The first of these passages finds itself in the middle of 2 Samuel. Unlike Hannah's petition before God in 1 Samuel 1, King David (the man after God's own heart) lays a bitter and unanswered request before the Lord. This request is laid before God only as the result of David's unkempt passions and sin with Bathsheba. This seems like such a shocking turn of events from a person named the "man after God's own heart." --David: the same man who spoke passionately against Goliath's defiant words to both Israel and their God (1 Samuel 17:26), David: the man whose passions had been used to their fullest in the service of God as His warrior, David: a man whose heart was passionately poured out before God throughout the entirety of the Psalms, David... a man whose passions became his downfall in a moment and desire of weakness. David's passion in the flesh left him with the bitter petition set before God to preserve the child of his sinful passions (2 Samuel 12). Although the child's life was innocent and the request in itself was not wrong, God saw it fit to bring the child to Himself and answer David's pleading petitions with an all-knowing "no." David wept over the loss but once his time of sorrow came to its appropriate time he put it behind him and moved on. He got up, cleaned his face, put on new clothes, and ate (2 Samuel 12:20). He fully understood the passing of the trial in its pain but recognized the need to move on and continue his service for the Lord. He could not be bound up in the loss of the child but rather he took his peace in the place God had for the child (We can consider the place that God has for our desires whether they are people, positions, or things). David was still dwelling on earth and his responsibilities as God's servant and a king to His people brought David to put aside the sorrows that no longer held merit in his life. This is not to say he did not have days of regret and thought on the death of his precious child, but in his overall approach to life, he was past the trial and event brought on by his unbridled passions. God continued to use him to the end of his days.

Further back in time, the scriptures lay another story of seeking passions that denied God's path, when Abraham went outside of God's will and went ahead and had a child outside of the promise God had laid before him (Genesis 16). He took matters into his own hands and acted on what made sense to him. How many times do we, as God's children, cry out to Him saying "Lord, you have promised me good! Why have you forsaken me in this request?" or "Lord, I have sought out Your face earnestly and diligently throughout the years. Why have you not answered me?" In reality, He is asking us to wait on Him to reveal His good and perfect will. I wonder just how many times Abraham asked God similar questions in the farthest corner of his heart when there seemed to be no answer to the long-awaited promise? Abraham's actions were out of God's season. God had a good and perfect promise that He gave His servant to follow. Abraham took his own wisdom and desires into his own hands and found "another way" to fulfil this good promise God had given him. Instead, he reaped pain and suffering in the future contentions between His promised son and that of the son of Abraham's premature desires. This eventually led to the contention between the two great peoples resulting from both sons: all because of one choice out of God's chosen season. Later we see growth in Abraham's trust in God when it came to the sacrifice of his son later (Genesis 22). Perhaps he even thought back on the fulfilment of this promise God had laid before him so many years ago when obeying this very difficult command regarding the very life of his son: Isaac. There was no doubt that Abraham passionately loved his son of promise, and yet, he willingly went to fulfil God's instructions. His passions were laid in God's hands and his son was delivered from sacrifice.

We need to have this same trust in the unseen plans that God has for each of our lives that these two men had. There will be many failures, but we will grow further as we seek to do God's will day by day just as we see in Abraham's story, David's story, and so many others God intricately wove into His Word for us to see. Our final passion is and must stay in God. There will be other good things that vie for this coveted place in our hearts, but He is the ultimate passion for us as His children. When considering the outlook I want to have on life concerning my passions, I dwell on Paul's words to the Philippians:

Philippians 3:8-11

~Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.~

In love and passion,

Your sister in Christ and nothing more