Have you ever been disillusioned? I'm sure you have. We have
all had hopes that of been crushed, or even expectations that didn't come to
pass. The Word of God says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. Many, if not
all of us, have been 'heart sick' with disillusionment.
Disillusionment brings with it lots of other things with it too. One of those
things is a discouragement. Discouragement sometimes then develops into a loss
of passion, and before long that loss of passion slips into complacency.
That's where most Christians seem to live, in passionless complacency. It’s easy to get there for sure, but not so
easy to pull out of. I, for one, am sick
of the status quo. I long for more! I
can't seem to be satisfied with a life of no passion, and it seems that’s all I
see around me. If we do have passion, it’s
often for things other than God or His kingdom. Where is the church’s passion
for Christ? Where is our passion for
lost souls? Why are we settling for
passionless lives and hearts sick with disillusionment?
The other day at a soccer game I heard a group of parents talking passionately
about sports at their children’s schools.
One woman became so enraged that she couldn’t concentrate on the current
game that was taking place, because she was focused on a scenario that had
played out for someone else’s child
at a different school.
Isn’t that like us?
Sitting on the sidelines, no interest in the current game, certainly not
personally involved in the game, and passionately complaining about something that
doesn’t really even concern us? I think
it is. I also think that, in the Christian life, it’s a trick of the enemy to
draw us away from what’s important right now.
So how can we shake this complacent nature we’ve allowed
into our lives and into our church? How
can we once again regain the passion that drives us to accomplish God’s purpose
and God’s vision for us? How can we
shake the disappointments in people, ourselves, or even in unanswered prayers?
Disillusionment most often comes when we feel let down by
someone else or even by our own abilities. It’s a sure sign we are looking to
the wrong things or to the wrong person for fulfillment. I believe the cure for disillusionment,
brings with it the cure for loss of passion. So then, we need to find the cure
for disillusionment.
It happens that we will lose our complacency, and regain our
passion, when our focus is shifted off of everything
else but God. All of our failures, all of our crushed dreams, all of the people
that have let us down, cannot continue to be our focus. God must be our focus, our life! He never fails! He never lets us down.
The cure for passionless complacent Christianity happens
when we allow the Holy Spirit to ‘revive’ us, and animate us for His purpose,
and stop pursuing our own purposes. It
happens when we stop sitting on the sidelines complaining about what someone
else is doing, and get in the game ourselves.
I for one am tired of passionless Christianity. I’m tired of
disillusionment. I’m tired of complacent Christians. And... I’m certainly tired of all of those things in
me.
In this “Year of Pursuit.”
If you’ve let up on seeking God and started looking to other things for
any kind of fulfillment, change that focus back to Him because we need a
revival of passion in the church.
