Regaining our Passion

[Read: Galatians 4:8-20]

Paul talks about the Galatians, how they were so welcoming and loving while they were caring for him in his illness. He even suggests that they might have torn out their eyes for him. But now he is wondering where their joy went; isn’t that just like religious people! We forsake grace and joy for narrow-minded rules and constraints.

I drove by a church this morning that had signs on the posts at either side of their driveway. The signs read, “For church business only, security cameras activated…”.

You may not find that offensive, but I thought to myself, “how the *&$# (when I am tempted to cuss, I actually picture an asterisk the and sign, a dollar sign and a pound sign in my mind…just in case you were nervous…) are they going to switch their mindset on Sunday morning to welcome people that come to hear the gospel if all through the week they are guarding their property like it’s a military compound?” The unfortunate conclusion I came to is that they probably aren’t interested in welcoming new people on Sunday.

When Jesus first saves us we are willing to cut out our eyes to help people around us, but slowly, as religion creeps in, we tend to forget about the tremendous gift we have been given in Christ and we tend to lose our joy.

DON’T!

Fight against the temptation to give in to the selfish, shortsighted, narrow-minded, inwardly focused, hard-hearted, unforgiving, religious midset that rots so many believers from the inside out.

We have been called to live a life that honors Christ, and Christ in honored when we give a glass of water to someone who is thirsty. When we walk an extra mile with our captor, when we give more to the one who has stolen from us, when we risk that our parking lot will be used during the week by teenagers who want to skateboard in order to avoid scaring away people that may be impacted by the gospel.