Many youth groups have been infected with a fatal lethargy that any event centered on entertainment cannot cure. Planning a mission project is the best thing you can do to arouse the passion for Christ and His cause that your group members may lack.
My tendency is to assume the countenance of a drill sergeant and scream: “Okay, you idiots! We’ve obviously lost our passion! We’ve got to get it back!” But that isn’t going to help me convince you, and it surely won’t help you convince your kids, because passion is better caught than taught.
Passion is inherently visceral. It resides in the gut, not the mind. It needs to be properly modeled. When someone is passionate in his or her relationship with Jesus, we are more inclined to think of John the Baptist than we are of a seminary student.
Passion has focus. One of the great enemies of passion, therefore, is the cloud of distractions that befuddles our minds. We tend to compartmentalize instead of focus our lives. Our lives underscore the saying, “Some men die in battle, some men die in flames, but most men die inch by inch playing silly little games.”
The flames of the enemy’s strategy are leaping up all around us, yet many of us stand numbly before it – mesmerized by its intensity and destructive force, unable to save ourselves from its heat. We’ve become spectators to our own demise. Dizzy from distraction, we are living examples of the credo: “We never do anything well unless we know for sure what our aim is.”
Several years ago my former church in south Florida was hiring a youth pastor. More than anything, the decision boiled down to “the compensation package” being offered. I have been a part of more conversations like that than I care to admit. Jesus didn’t discuss salary and benefits with His disciples. Instead, He described a path that would be difficult to follow. Instead of looking at credentials, He looked at the heart: the seat of our passions.
Here are ten ways you can begin to become the zealot that God created you to be.
• Schedule a mission trip that stresses evangelism. This will instill more passion for God’s kingdom in a student than any programmed lock-in or video game extravaganza you could plan.
• Analyze those activities and subjects that excite you. Are they praiseworthy? How do you spend your leisure time? Rate your own level of passion on a scale of one to ten.
• Hang around people who have a godly passion.
• Invest in an activity that challenges your own personal comfort and satisfies some of Jesus’ bold statements such as, “Blessed are the poor…”
• Kill timidity. Make a bold declaration, particularly if it’s out of character for you.
• Make each day count. Learn the lesson understood by those who have recovered from cancer.
• Do things commonly associated with emotions (yes, even you’re a man!) – express your feelings, read poetry, listen to music.
• Worship God. Do something in your worship that is new for you.
• Cancel the next entertainment-oriented event for your youth group and instead do something that in some way models passionate behavior for your youth group.
• Resolve to endure in doing right. Find someone to hold you accountable for what you know to be right. Discover your life principles and stick to them.
Jesus’ passion drove the moneychangers out of the temple. His great love for Lazarus caused Him grief. And His passion for the lost placed Him on the cross.
How will you show your passion?