Today’s post continues our In Search of “Higher” Education series, and if you missed the last two editions, we invite you to go back and check out Part 1 and Part 2. But there’s much ground to cover here in our third segment, so I’ll bypass a review of our earlier posts and endeavor to get right into it.
The issue I want to address is one of those incredibly powerful capacities that God built into every one of us. It’s a gift that was designed to enhance our lives by improving our performance, focusing our energies, and helping us to overcome our self-defeating human tendencies. But like the arch enemy of God does with every good thing our Creator built into us, the devil works ceaselessly to pervert its intended role and turn it into a destructive weapon for inflicting pain and misery.
A Noticeable Absence ~
The unique capacity I’m referring to, which I’ll identify in a moment, is experienced at various times in some form by all of us. Its influence is manifested in a wide variety of ways, but what
captivates my attention at the moment is not the many ways it makes its presence known. It’s the impact of its absence among the followers of Jesus that concerns me. We’ve allowed the devil to seduce us into willingly handing over control of this incredible gift, and he has used it masterfully. In the hands of God’s arch enemy, instead of motivating us toward goals that improve our lives, enhance our joy, glorify God, and alleviate suffering, this gift God intended for good will only multiply our failures and intensify our misery.
So, what is this incredible human characteristic? To answer that, rather than just quote some dictionary definition, let’s look at it in action. In order to do that, we need to turn on that movie screen in our heads and review some of the videos of “protesters” we’ve seen on news reports or social media platforms recently. Take another look at the screaming mobs taking over college campuses, desecrating public parks, blocking city streets, and making bridges and public venues inaccessible. Listen to them vehemently spew out their condemnation of peoples, policies, parties, and religious affiliation. Watch them vandalize property, threaten innocent people, and throw rocks, bottles, and human waste at police officers. Consider the time, energy, and personal comforts they’re sacrificing to engage in waving flags of foreign nations and terrorist organizations while burning and stomping on our own. What we’re seeing in those videos is what the release of unbridled ‘passion’ can look like. But passion itself is not the problem, because it shows up in other ways as well.
God Wants Ownership ~
For instance, if you’ve seen newsreels of D-Day, you saw passion at work there, too. When those amphibious landing craft dropped their doors under heavy enemy fire, thousands of 
young men plunged into the surf not knowing whether they would live or die. Whatever they may have been thinking or feeling, we can be assured that not one of them was nonchalant about what they were doing, why they were there, or who they represented. Wherever passion shows up, its impact is active and powerful – and that makes it visible and contagious. And because passion is all those things and more, God wants to own and direct it, but He didn’t lay claim to it in a way we might expect.
Instead, God wove the concept of passion into a proclamation He delivered to His people through Moses at Sinai. Moses’ words have been repeated by Jews, including Jesus, as a daily prayer for thousands of years. That prayer, referred to as the Shema, also has a special place in the hearts of Christians around the world because Jesus quoted it when asked which of God’s commandments was the greatest. Those simple, but profoundly significant words are preserved in our English Bibles like this:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. …and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Leviticus 19:18b NKJV)
An All-Inclusive Objective ~
“But where and how,” you might ask, “do we find passion included in this passage anywhere?” That’s a good question. I see it infused in two ways. First, this passage is clearly a divine
command to love God, and He didn’t mean that we’re just to think of Him in warm and affectionate ways. He made it clear that loving Him isn’t something to be engaged in whenever it’s convenient or we happen to be in the mood. God dismissed that notion by directly addressing the parts of us that He expects to be primary participants in carrying out this command …
Moses mentions our heart, which in this prayer, means our entire emotional apparatus, our soul, and it refers to our life as a whole. Jesus’ rendition, according to Matthew and Mark, includes the mind, or our intellectual capacity (Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30). That covers a lot of territory, but there’s one more element that we didn’t get to yet, and the unique language unveils a fascinating repository for ‘passion’.
A Different Way to Say It ~
Moses’ account includes a word that is often translated as strength, but the Hebrew word is me’od (meh-ODE). It’s commonly used in other places as an adverb, like our word, ‘very’. It’s virtually never used as a noun, except in the Shema. God is actually calling on us to love Him with all of our very! Some commentators call it all of our ‘oomph’. I think that includes our capacity for passion. God is calling us to devote to Him everything that defines who and what we are, our mental, emotional, and physical capacities, and to do it with all the very, all of the oomph we are capable of producing! The question is who’s getting the benefit of this incredible force God made us capable of?
When we see young people joining mobs, engaging in anarchy, and inciting violence, we don’t have to wonder where they learned to do such things. We can be sure that they were exposed 
to academic professionals, entertainment icons, internet influencers, and other teachers who prepared them to do that. Trusted instructors ignited a fire in their hearts and then directed the flame in ways that scorch societies, consume businesses, and reduce communities to rubble. But we have a Teacher, too. Where is the passion He desires to arouse? Where’s the fire that He wants to ignite? The problem is that the students of anarchy choose to spend a lot more time in the presence of their teachers and reading their books than the followers of Jesus tend to do. So, we’re left having our passion drained away by everything from Instagram to pickleball.
The point is simple. God wants unchallenged ownership of our very. He wants loving Him to be the very first item on our priority list. He wants to enable us to do our very best, become our very strongest, and achieve the very highest. He wants to be our very first consideration in all our plans and the very last One we would betray, ignore, or abandon. And the reason He wants all that … He’s committed to making us into the very image of creative perfection. May a fresh commitment yield our passions to Him as the very first thing we do – with all of our ‘very’, all of our ‘oomph’ .
“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to tweet and share from the pull quotes below. Each one links directly back to this article through Twitter . . .
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- “Jesus made it clear. Loving God isn’t something to engage in whenever it’s convenient or we happen to be in the mood. God dismissed that notion by directly addressing the parts of us He expects to be primary in carrying out this command.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- “God is calling us to devote to Him everything that defines who and what we are, our mental, emotional and physical capacities, and to do it with all the ‘very’, all the ‘oomph’, we’re capable of producing!” GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- “Students of anarchy choose to spend a lot more time in the presence of their teachers and reading their books than the followers of Jesus tend to do. So, we’re left having our passion drained away by everything from Instagram to pickleball.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
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- “God wants unchallenged ownership of our ‘very’. He wants loving Him to be the very first item on our priority list. He wants to enable us to do our very best, become our very strongest and achieve the very highest.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
Gallagher's Pen ~ 
For me, passion comes down to, “How much am I willing to pay for what I believe in?” In those terms, I don’t see much passion in these lost generations that want to proclaim their right to protest and voice their opinion as a cover up for wanton chaos and destruction of every institution given to them on the backs of those who (as you exampled with D-Day, June 6, 1944) who fought to preserve that right for them. What I see is, as you so wonderfully explained, is generations of entitled, pampered, spoiled, immature people who never grew up because they never had to. They didn’t have to work to earn money for school. They didn’t have to provide for themselves or their loved ones. Why? Because the government did it for them. It took over the role of educator, provider, teacher, and in a great many cases, parent.
Your words made me take a hard look at myself, and ask myself the question that too few people have the capability to ask themselves. Interestingly enough, I found myself having a conversation with my Ms. Diane a few weeks back on this very subject. Many people have probably said, “I love you so much, I would die for you.” Oh, those are wonderful sentiments, ones that I’ve shared with my bride more than once through the years. But would we really? Do we love another more than we love ourself? Are we willing to lay down our life to protect theirs? I thought about that one morning while I was feeding and watering the livestock. I told myself, or at least I thought I was talking internally to myself, that I would die to protect these animals. And as God often does, that quiet voice within said, “Really, are you prepared to die for an animal?” My response was, “Yes, Lord, I am.” About then I felt a twinge to prove it. I wasn’t sure how, but I thought, “I hope I’m up for this test.”
About that time, another quiet whisper said, “What if you were diagnosed with terminal cancer? No cure, six weeks to live. What will you do?” My response was, “Exactly what I’m doing, Lord. Caring for and stewarding your blessings. That’s my wife and family, and yes, Lord, these silly animals You’ve entrusted to me.” With that, I felt one of God’s unique and special “Heart Hugs” as if to say, “right answer, child.”
I went about my morning and later shared with Ms. Diane. As I explained to her, the day will come when God tells me that I’m done here at the Cross-Dubya, and He will release me to whatever the next thing He has in store for me. Until that time, know that I’m willing to give my life in serving Him. That, my friend, is the passion we need to live our lives with.
I fear that a great many of the young people who are “protesting” (er, destroying) everything that has been given them, will learn the hard way that real passion extracts a heavy cost. We’ll see how passionate they are about their “flavor of the week” cause when it costs them their comfy government-subsidized college dorm room, when their Soros-funded tents are replaced with a cardboard box, and when the soup kitchens that would have once fed them are non-existent because they burned them down and the people that cared enough to make them soup and volunteer their time have left.
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Wow, Brother–what a heart stirring, thought provoking, dose of spiritual adrenaline you unloaded with this response. As usual, you stroked the highlighter exactly where it needed to be applied, and triggered the irrepressible “Amens” precisely where they needed to be. We are so grateful for the way you always manage to further illuminate issues I try to point out. It’s like delivering a mediocre punch to your opponent’s midsection and then getting an unexpected boost of divine energy that drives an uppercut that put’s his lights out.
I was freshly challenged with your candid reflections on the matter of what, and who, we’re willing to die for. As you mentioned, those commitments are easy to verbalize, but when we face what they mean in real terms, it’s often a different story altogether. If any of these self-proclaimed “freedom fighters” shouting slogans they don’t understand and waving terrorist flags while they stomp Old Glory on the ground had to live a single day, or maybe even an hour, under the mandates and policies of the violent religious bigots they claim to represent, they’d be on their knees begging to return to the freedom they call “oppressive.” But as you pointed out, we need to turn the cameras back toward us and ask whether we’re willing to be half as open and active about the truth we claim to believe as they are about the lies they’ve swallowed. My job is not just to condemn the evil, violence, and hatred confronting us. It’s to counter.it like you and your precious Diane do, by consistently showing the folks around you and even the livestock you take care of, that your faith lives and your love is active and visible.
God bless you, my friend. Your insightful and inspiring thoughts have once again added extra punch to the post and extra encouragement to Mrs. Diane and me. And speaking of my better half, she’d want me to admonish you not to overdo it as these awful summer heat waves descend on the Cross-Dubya. You do have a tendency to push the envelope, and we’re praying that you ease off wherever possible when the conditions get too challenging. We’ve gotten addicted to you, so please don’t take unnecessary risks. 🙂
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I do not have words to express how much your writing moved and inspired me today, Ron, but I will try my very best. Truly, you have made me sit up and take notice of what any passion we might have should be about, and how loving our God is an absolute priority from beginning until the end. Passion is misdirected when people get worked up about things other than God, thinking it’s up to mere mortals to change the world, never stopping to ponder if those changes are relevant, healthy or justified in the eyes of our Lord. They are misguided and confused, but I have to remind myself that God loves them, and it’s not my place to judge, but pray.
May Diane and you have a blessed week!
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When it comes to lacking words, Martha, I think my inability to convey how much your encouragement means to us could run you a tight race. I’m sure you’re quite aware of how tough it is for writers like us sometimes. We sit down and stare at a blank page above our keyboard and wonder how we can even begin to translate the immense concepts God has poured into our heart into mere words. I’m sure you know, as well, what it feels like to get a positive and inspirational note from a treasured long distance friend. So, thank you for blessing Diane and me again today. I love the way you insightfully reinforced the point I was trying to make, what a dose of very welcome encouragement you’ve sent along again. Diane and I are always blessed by reading the accounts you share about trips and get-togethers with your family. Seeing how you and Danny make your passion for the living God and His Truth unmistakable is so encouraging. You’re actively teaching lessons that have eternal benefits and real life rewards. You’re helping to mold the kind of character that we must renew or our country is lost. You guys hug one another for us and God bless you for bringing a bright spot in our cloudy day.
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