Restoring Your Passion for God
Do you feel you are far from God? Do you feel you have become cold spiritually? Are you indifferent to the word of god? Are you tired of going through the motions? Do you want to fall in love with him again? We are told in the book of Hebrews it is possi…
ble to drift from your faith. It may happen slowly over a period of months or years or quickly in a few days. This is a sobering thought. You have moved from your fist love and before you know it, you have wasted your whole life. Where is the present course of your life taking you? What are you doing with your life? Are you being effective? Are you moving toward the Lord or away from Him? If you continued forever on this path, would you wind up in heaven or in hell? The loss of zeal and passion starts when your prayer time and devotional reading of the Word. You stop witnessing, you lose interest in soul winning. You lose interest in the spiritual warfare and fighting against lies and false teaching. You begin to question the reality of who Jesus Christ is. You begin to pamper and feed the flesh. You begin to fall in areas you had once conquered. You may not go to the extremes of committing outward evil sins but you have become addicted to materialism, or You Tube or the I Phone or Television, or music or some other distraction and began to slip away from your faith. Have you lost your joy? Is the presence of the Lord unreal to you? Are you involved in Christian work but far away in your heart?
Personal Revival There is no reason you can’t be revived and enjoy the presence of the Lord again. You r sol can be revived from that lethargic condition. Some find themselves in a kind of hypnotic state thinking things will never change, I am doomed to live my life struggling and wondering if I will ever change. The longer you stay away from God the further you will travel from Him. There are no…
formulas except to follow Gods directions in His word. First you must deal with sin in your life. The believer should always confess sin with godly sorrow and seek after God with the whole heart, pray for the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and implicitly trust Christ every day.
1. ‘Remember’, just look back and remember how it was when the Spirit of God first lit the fire in your heart. Do you remember those love-filed days when your mind flooded with His love and kindness? Spiritual defection, coldness or indifference begins with forgetting the first days. Has the first generation love and zeal gone. The candle went out at Ephesus , the church is not there any more, their right doctrine and living was devoid of a passion for loving Christ. This can happen to any believer, any good sound church, stop now and ‘remember’. Remember when you were first converted and the thrill of what Christ meant to you? Remember, the days of excitement and you were willing to sacrifice all? Remember, the days when you couldn’t get to church fast enough? Remember, the time you reached out in evangelism? Remember, when you discovered your spiritual gift and began to function in the church? Remember, when you loved to come to Bible study? Remember, when you first began to pray and love d the prayer meetings? Remember, when your faith was a thrilling adventure?
2. ‘Repent’ is ‘metanoeo’ to change your mind, purpose or opinion. Change your moral and spiritual thoughts, reflect and change your attitudes and opinion about sin, about your selfish attitudes and concepts. It is a turning away from the wrong thing. It is also necessary to forsake these things. Sorrow and contrition should follow this act of repentance. Coldness is a sin; you need to repent of it. We need to break the shell of the self-life. We need to be honest with ourselves and break the crust of conceit. We need to deal with our sophistications and complications and simply repent. The false life of being a Christian actor, acting out the drama but it is not true. Repentance for the unsaved man is not an emotional thing, it is knowledge that he has broken God’s law and is in need of forgiveness, which only comes through the work of Christ on the Cross. Will you make a conscious not an emotion start today, repent today and be saved? Christian will you repent of your sin, wrong and coldness. ‘Godly sorrow worked repentance’, as you reflect upon your first love for Christ has it gone, do you need to be refired? Yes, today believers need to repent. Before we go tell the unsaved to repent we need to do so ourselves, lets be honest. The church doesn’t want to hear this today, we drift on in our new experiences, our laughter charade, our deceitful user-friendly evangelism, our false prophecies and teachings, our material prosperity doctrines, our hypocritical lives, our love of pleasures, our fake happy marriages. Yes it is time for the church to be honest and real. ‘Or else I will come unto you quickly, and will remove your candlestick out of its place’. Many churches are closing their doors, the Word are no longer being taught and acted upon. Christ is still watching the candlesticks today, he doesn’t mind trimming the wicks or using the snuffer to snuff it out. Let Him relight your candle, your life.
2. ‘Repent’ is ‘metanoeo’ to change your mind, purpose or opinion. Change your moral and spiritual thoughts, reflect and change your attitudes and opinion about sin, about your selfish attitudes and concepts. It is a turning away from the wrong thing. It is also necessary to forsake these things. Sorrow and contrition should follow this act of repentance. Coldness is a sin; you need to repent of it. We need to break the shell of the self-life. We need to be honest with ourselves and break the crust of conceit. We need to deal with our sophistications and complications and simply repent. The false life of being a Christian actor, acting out the drama but it is not true. Repentance for the unsaved man is not an emotional thing, it is knowledge that he has broken God’s law and is in need of forgiveness, which only comes through the work of Christ on the Cross. Will you make a conscious not an emotion start today, repent today and be saved? Christian will you repent of your sin, wrong and coldness. ‘Godly sorrow worked repentance’, as you reflect upon your first love for Christ has it gone, do you need to be refired? Yes, today believers need to repent. Before we go tell the unsaved to repent we need to do so ourselves, lets be honest. The church doesn’t want to hear this today, we drift on in our new experiences, our laughter charade, our deceitful user-friendly evangelism, our false prophecies and teachings, our material prosperity doctrines, our hypocritical lives, our love of pleasures, our fake happy marriages. Yes it is time for the church to be honest and real. ‘Or else I will come unto you quickly, and will remove your candlestick out of its place’. Many churches are closing their doors, the Word are no longer being taught and acted upon. Christ is still watching the candlesticks today, he doesn’t mind trimming the wicks or using the snuffer to snuff it out. Let Him relight your candle, your life.
3. ‘Do the first works’- recapture the thrill of those early days. Your service of love when nothing was more important than Christ. Those days when you were giving and forgiving and shared your life with others. Now you are selfish. Perhaps you have become withdrawn because some Christian or church hurt you, perhaps you have felt used and abused, but did He ever do you wrong? Why go cold in your love for Him, why let your relationship with Him grow cold it wasn’t His fault. Go back to Him. Get back into harness- do what you used to do. Get right now.