You can discern the difference between God’s passionate love and your own. God is not anointing your love with His; He is displacing your love through your surrender of your love to Him. When you love the Lord your God with all, the surrender of that worship and obedience sets you up for a greater love.
Love is the strongest motivation. Instead of trying to “juice your love” up to some higher standard of nobility, surrender your love to God through worship and obedient submission. Your surrender will set you free! Your passions will create demanding desires, or lusts, of your soul. His passions will motivate your entire life by beliefs, attitudes, and habits more consistent with the Spirit!
You don’t overcome the soul’s demands by destroying yourself. You overcome by walking in Spirit. “Live the lifestyle of SpiritFirst, and you will not fulfill the demanding desires of sourish nature.”
The entry point of life and love from God is the place of fire. Fire purifies. Fire makes holy. Fire destroys death. So, when holy fire comes into your life, love, and motivations, you can build godly living with God’s life, love, and motivations. [God’s motivations reveal what God wants, or the will of God as we commonly speak of what God wants.]
It is faulty to judge. You fall into the sad of state of thinking you know other people’s motivations. You must, rather, discern the spiritual condition behind these motivations, even when the motivations are noble. You can do the right thing for the wrong reason because your motives are not sourced in God’s life and love.
All this goes back to what God wants. If you bring God what you want God to have, you are still functioning in your own passion, breathing your own breath blown back into your face. Loving God with all is a surrender decision, and that surrender will grow deeper uprooting and displacing deeper motivations of the soul until all is surrendered.
What God wants is “the will of God.” What I want is “my own will.” I often attempt to “lead the Lord” by convincing myself that God wants what I want. I get frustrated with this condition because God won’t empower me to get what I want.
A People of Divine Passion
The most powerful and authoritative kingdom leaders must be so burned out of self that their fuel tank of “what I want” is sucking air. The more burned up my own passion, the more I am consumed by His burning passion, the more of His power and authority will be invested in my life, love, and motivations.
The powerlessness and futility of religion reveals the emptiness of substituting human passion for Divine passion. Again, God is not anointing your passion but replacing it with His passion. “greater love has no man…” A man can be noble and deserve a medal of honor without knowing God at all; such noble motivations are possible and measurable outside the motivations of the kingdom.
Jesus was referring to a higher love when He made this declaration. “God has a passion for His enemies that motivates Him to lay down His life for His enemies.” Here is the deep well of spiritual power and authority available to get God what He wants. He wants His enemies: He doesn’t want their heads; He wants their hearts!
That is why our passion for spiritual warfare is not focused upon flesh and blood. God isn’t passionate about salvaging demons! We are warring to break open men’s hearts cast in darkness. Great and awesome spiritual power and authority is available to people who can see people as God sees them! In other words, God’s passion for people will burn with hearty aggression against spiritual enemies of darkness, rulers and princes holding these people captive in darkness.
Fire in His Eyes
In 2003 I had a life-changing spiritual experience in which I saw the fire in Jesus’ eyes and then experienced a small portion of that passion! I have never been the same since! When I experienced a bit of what motivates Him, I realized that conjuring up a higher motivation, a strong sense of sacrifice, a more sophisticated anointing was never gonna get the kingdom job done!
The fire in Jesus’ eyes comes from His burning heart. His heart burns with what His Father wants – the will of the Father consumes Jesus! The fire gets into His eyes as it is focused upon what God wants. I have seen that fire in His eyes, but more importantly I have experienced it.
What you do with God’s burning passion motivating your ministry will be infinitely more powerful and authoritative than what you do motivated by the highest and most noble of human passions!
This Changes Everything!
So, think of intercession from this point of view. Your prayer list becomes kindling. Your “God anoint this we are doing for You” prayer becomes broken sticks cast into the flames. Your professionalism chokes on its own smoke. Your life and love becomes a sacrifice that can only get into God’s nostrils by being burned up!
Think of worship as a lifestyle so intensely personal and intimate that public worship becomes an opportunity to flame out. Worship requires you to build up a sweat, use your body as a sacrifice, and yield all your members as instruments and weapons! Your voice, hands, feet, and face become a prophetic expression of His on-fire face. You step into a new expectation in worship that includes gazing upon His Glory.
Think of ministry as a release of His passion more than yours. You stop attempting to prove yourself a loving person by reaching for the noblest of the soul’s heroic motivations. Ministry no longer meets some need within you. You aren’t releasing your passionate love since that passionate love won’t save, heal, or deliver anyone!
You can discern Divine Passion because it turns the heads of angels, releases the flow of heavenly power, and fills the atmosphere with a higher authority! Surrender your life, love, and motivations today!
