Jesus: Your Soul’s Sole Passion Sýnishorn

Love. That’s soul passion in a word. For what a man loves, he will follow. What a woman values, she will obey. A person will live for and die for what he or she really loves. For Christians, God is to be our ultimate love, our ultimate passion. But that can be hard to live out. Thankfully, we are not called to do it alone.

God is as concerned about your spiritual life as you are. In fact, He is more enthusiastic about your vitality than you are. Further, He specializes in making the impossible—your eventual perfection—inevitable.

The first and great commandment illuminates passion for God (Mark 12:28-31). There we find Jesus’ own expectation of spiritual passion. He delineates what is most important, and most impossible, in an ongoing relationship with God: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

Love is one of those words that we understand intuitively, but it can have a lot of different meanings. However, love for God is something very specific. It’s a special kind of love to be reserved for God alone. Ask yourself:

• Is God my first love? The passion of my heart?

• Is God my real love? The passion of my soul?

• Is God my true love? The passion of my mind?

• Is God my full love? The passion of my life?

If your answers are discouraging to you at first, take heart! We all live under the enablement of God in loving God. In John 17:17, Jesus prays that God would “sanctify”—or “holy-fy”—His disciples in the truth. The apostle Paul also spoke of this truth: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).