Today's Devotional

August 12, 2005

Subject:  What Is Your Passion?

Acts 1:3 - "To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:"

An amazing discovery.  I'm still in awe of this.  Did you know that if you go to the dictionary and look up the word "passion," this is what you'll see: 

Passion: 1 often capitalized a : the sufferings of Christ between the night of the Last Supper and his death b : an oratorio based on a gospel narrative of the Passion
2 obsolete : SUFFERING

Well sometimes this world just shocks me.  Can you believe that?  I say if you asked 10 Christians for a definition of "passion" none of them would even bring up the sufferings of Christ.  However based on what we see in the dictionary and the scriptures, the definition of passion is something totally different than was originally meant.  I guess it is in fact "obsolete" as the second meaning of the definition above says.  Originally, passion was defined as Christ's suffering.  That's why the scripture above says "His" Passion.  

So if His passion was to suffer as He did, what is your passion?  I would say that it must be the same.  That's why the scripture goes to extraordinary lengths to tell us to "...know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death."   We must join in the sufferings of Christ and like the disciples of Acts 5:41, we must rejoice that we have been counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.  That's not a popular message today, but it must be preached in our lives.  

If we truly want to be like Christ, His passion must become our passion and that means that as 2 Timothy 3:12 says “...all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” Mel Gibson might not come to your house to film it, but in heaven, it's a box-office smash.  

Carlen