All of us are passionate in one thing.

Passion is defined as:

any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, a strong desire, an outburst of emotion, being fond about something/someone, a deep desire or interest, a devotion, or as I like to say it a fire that burns with in you.

For me, defining what (or whom ) you are passionate about is very important in life.  As the definition says, it is your compelling force, your motivation that gets you through life.  It some how makes up what we value, who we value, it affects how we do our actions.  True enough it is very hard to do something that you are not passionate about.

I like to view passion as a fire. I would like to compare it with fire, a fire that consumes and affects others.

Burns and consumes.

People right now (especially the youth) are very passionate about things.  They ignite and fan these passion and they let it consume them.

However, there is what I’d like to call a “wrong type” of flame, a passion, that is wrong and it leaves the person burning, consumed and in ashes.  Passion about lust, sex, drugs, vices and the likes.  Along with the list are unquenchable thirst for power, money, popularity and the likes.  People passionate about these things are so ‘ in fire ‘ they do anything to keep the fire burning, even pushing them to the extent to do something wrong and what hurts me is that people with this kind of fire is also influential, dangerously influential.  They burn other people, bringing them to ashes, to destruction.  I believe we have this kind of problem right now, people passionate about the wrong things.

Why not be a different kind of flame?  A person passionate about good things, totally ignited in burning others, only this time, the fire that consumes the person leaves them a better person after ward (A disclaimer: This fire will not promise a problem-free life). Just as silver is refined by intense heat and fire, why not be a flame that refines? A flame that molds, a flame that influences and brings us closer to God.

So what really is passion?

The etymology of passion actually came from  Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin passion-, passio suffering, being acted upon, from Latin pati to suffer — more. (Merriam-Webster)

We tend to forget the real meaning of passion, which is to suffer or suffering.  In a world where people are passionately wrong, we forget the person who started the idea of passion, and that is Christ who “died for us when we were still sinners”. (romans 5:8,NIV)

“We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.” (romans 5:7,8; Msg).

With that in mind, why not burn and suffer in doing good, after all someone already died for us 2000 years ago when we are of no good for him, because we are simply “precious and honored in His sight,  and because He loves us…”(Isaiah 43:4, NIV), that he gave he gave his one and only son for us, and that this son, voluntarily laid down his life for us.  HE does not want to see us be consumed by the devastating effects of the “fires of sin”.

Why not cultivate a fire that honors the God who did this for us, endure the passion we are facing right now knowing that in the end we will be proved stronger and be refined. Remembering that someone has already gone through this passion; this sufferings, and even greater.

“And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined and will test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will hear and answer them. I will say, It is My people; and they will say, The Lord is my God.” (Zechariah 13:9, Amp)

My challenge:

Let us share the passion and burn others with “God’s consuming fire”, not with “fires of hell”.