Last Tuesday and Thursday the sports world watched while basketballs potential great one -quit. While Lebron in the spectrum of spirituality is fairly insignificant…his actions read like many of our spiritual lives…quitters. We get tired, worn down, don’t get the answer ‘WE’ want and we give up…or at minimum we choose superficial head knowledge relationship with Him that feels safe from failure and let down.
Nothing is more Withering to a Romance, in our case a divine romance, than giving up! So many of us have learned that our spirituality is based solely on the words from a good speaker, or the lyrics to a good song. While is there is a depth, a hunger, a spirituality to our Christ life that is still missing. In times a adversity those things never last…only our personal experience and relationship with Him can sustain us.
Think back to how many times we read Jesus escaped to be alone with the Father? So frequently it is recorded several times in Scripture. Yet most of the time, my self included, we throw up a quick prayer and hope that what we decide to do is actually the right thing. In time that will never last and each of us will crash or wither to a place of hopelessness and failure.
I love what Henri Nouwen says “Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool. The wisdom of the desert (the hard places) is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.” There’s a simplistic brilliance to this…one we already know but often don’t live out…we can never do this on our own…this life isn’t ours to own, it never has been and never should be.
What if it was in the quiet places that Jesus was calling us…In the stillness where the Holy Spirit could rest with us…building anticipation for the next step…the next moment of passionate worship and world change?
I am convinced passionate living cant be sustained, for us passion is a simple emotion, but passion born through the Holy Spirit is a life long love affair with the God of creation, His Son and Spirit that removes catastrophic failure, quitting, and Withered Romance from the equation of each of our spiritual lives. Maybe the passionate life is one born out of stillness?
live//PC
