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Week 5 – Passion
by: todd veleber
We are going to wrap this “Ask Anything” series tonight and I’m taking the liberty of answering a question that I am asking myself so I hope that is OK. There weren’t any new questions and I think I only left two unanswered but it works out that Pastor Bob is talking about eternity and such on Sunday mornings and you could probably get them answered then. Or if you really want me to answer – let me know it was you and I’ll take you out for come coffee and we’ll chat.
We talked last week about purpose. Something I care greatly about. God has designed us all to accomplish the same purpose and that is to advance the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That’s huge task and can seem overwhelming. And chances are, we all knew already that we need to do that. So it would seem that we have an option – accomplish His purpose begrudgingly or with passion.
And I love biographies and reading stories about men and women of God who shook the world attempting to live out God’s purpose… but they did it with passion. So if I had to make this topic a question it would be this: How can I live out God’s purpose with passion? How can I make my mark on this world?
In the year 2000, I was standing in a field called Shelby Farms in Memphis, Tennessee gathered with an estimated 50k college students from all over the world. We had gathered for a day of prayer, fasting, worship and time in the Word called Passion OneDay. A pastor I barely knew at that time, but now have come to love and learn from named John Piper, stepped to the platform to preach. What he said in that sermon burned deeply in my heart and has continued to grow. Let me share with you the beginning of that message he preached. He said…
“You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, and to be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by a few great things. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries into eternity, you don’t have to have a high IQ; you don’t have to have to have good looks or riches; you don’t have to come from a fine family or a fine school. You have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things, and be set on fire by them.”
He continued, “But, I know that not all of you want your life to make a difference. There are many of you, you don’t care whether you make a lasting difference for something great. You just want people to like you or if you could just grow up and have a good job with a good wife or a husband and a couple of good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement and a quick and easy death and no hell; if you could have that, you’d be satisfied.” That’s when he said, “That is a tragedy in the making.”
Then he used two illustrations. He’s a pastor and he said, “Three weeks ago we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon. Ruby was over 80. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: To make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing 80 years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over the cliff, and they were both killed instantly. And I asked my people: was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ – two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico. No”, he said. “That is not a tragedy. That is a glory.”
I’ll tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is. “Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.” The American Dream: come to the end of your life – your one and only life – and let the last great work before you give an account to your Creator, be “I collected shells. See my shells, God?” That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I want to plead with you, don’t buy it.” (John Piper)
I am faced with an incredibly difficult reality in student ministry and that is everyone that I grow to love eventually leaves. Some do that through the process of graduation as many of you will do here in just a few weeks. But I also know the reality that some of you who are in here today won’t hang with us through this summer. And so week after week I feel this burden to preach and to tell you what counts in life.
And so here is how I would answer the question of how you can live out God’s purpose for your life with passion… make much of the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s all about the Gospel! Remember our purpose is to take that Gospel to the ends of the earth and there is no better way to do that then making much of Jesus and the cross. Don’t waste your one and only life with the things of this world. Live for the gospel and demonstrate the Gospel. Give you all to advance the gospel to the very ends of the earth as the Spirit leads you.
But whatever you do, find your passion and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will be like the apostle Paul. Nobody had a more single-minded vision for his life than Paul did. He could say it in different ways. Acts 20:24 One thing mattered: Finish my course, run my race. Philippians 3:7-8
Ever since that moment in that field at OneDay, I began to pray that I would be used by God to live with a single passion for a single purpose. I wanted to be set free from small dreams and with passion, be used to advance the Gospel to the ends of the earth. And then this verse was read. Galatians 6:14
It would be my prayer that every time someone stands in this place to teach you here in our student ministry that you would see the beauty of the Gospel. Paul says that it is the only thing worth boasting about. That word boast, in the original language of the NT, doesn’t really have a comparable English translation. We think, “Well, boast, you mean brag? Or what does that mean?” Well, basically means, if you could put it all into one, you’re boasting, you glory in, you rejoice in, you are consumed by, you’re obsessed with, your life is in. All of that in one word, boast in the cross. And he says, “This is not just one thing I boast in… in fact, I hope and pray that I would never boast in anything else.”
People have tried to take the cross out of Christianity. We’ve taken the cross and made it something that we wear around our neck of have a tattoo of somewhere on our back. We’ve put the cross as a decoration on the walls of our homes for everyone to come and see. I don’t want to be too harsh because I do appreciate the reminders, but you need to know that no one did things like that with the cross in the early church.
The cross was a horrible and terrifying means of execution and torture designed, devised, even refined by the Romans, not just to kill, but to humiliate. To take a man and strip him naked and put him on a tree and put stakes in his hands and his feet and hold him up for everybody to walk by on the streets and spit on him and curse him and mock him was horrendous. The closest comparison we might have when it comes to execution would be like Paul saying, “I boast in the electric chair. That’s what I rejoice in.” Who sells electric chair bracelets and necklaces? Who puts a picture of that up in their house? That is why it is so shocking that Paul would say, “I never want to boast in anything except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We no longer live for the applause of man. Why? Because we now live with the pleasure of God. If the pleasure of God is based on Christ in us and the performance of Christ in us. So, we don’t need or even desire the applause of man, because we have the pleasure of God in us, Christ in us.
Over and over again, Paul shows us that the gospel creates a longing for what is to come. We aren’t storing up our treasure for this earth and we shouldn’t be comfortable here. We don’t think like this world thinks. We don’t live for what this world lives for. This world is not the source of our life, our satisfaction or our joy. And that reality should challenge the way we live – it should challenge us to make our lives count. And so our prayer should become that God would challenge us to make our lives count for the Gospel. To invest in what matters in life. I pray that God will burn in our mind that we will stand before Him one day and give an account for how we have lived our lives – what we have done for the Kingdom. We want to boast in the cross – we want to make much of the cross and not the things of this world.
So the cross reminds us, our safety is not here and the cross challenges us not to waste our lives while we are here. This world has nothing for us because Christ is everything to us. I pray that God would raise up a people – even right here in this high school ministry who are willing to say, “I don’t need the success, I don’t need the savings accounts, and I don’t need the seashells. I want my life to count. Spend it, Lord Jesus. Spend it however you want for your cause to be accomplished in and through me.”
Boast in the cross. Make much of Jesus. It is the only thing worth making much of in this world. It’s the only thing worth giving every ounce of your energy to. Because if the cross didn’t happen, we don’t exist. Without the cross we live under the wrath and condemnation of God. If the cross is not there, a sinner standing before a holy God receives nothing but judgment and condemnation; and now, I begin to realize that it’s only because of the cross that I have the opportunity to live in relationship with God and fulfill His purpose for my life that I would advance the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Don’t waste your life. Don’t collect seashells. Advance the gospel to the ends of the earth with passion and vigor making much of the cross of Jesus Christ!
