[Steve Myers] Do you have a passion for striving to live God’s way? God calls us to have a passion and an enthusiasm for living like Christ. I looked up this word “passion”, and it’s interesting. If you look up the definition, it says that you have an enthusiasm for something or about doing something. Having an enthusiasm. So now I got a little curious about enthusiasm. What is enthusiasm? Well, come to find out, enthusiasm is a word that from the Greek is two different words. The “en-“ in enthusiasm means “in”. And the “-thusiasm” part is actually from the Greek word “theos”. “In theos”, where “theos” is God. “In God”. So these two Greek words for enthusiasm, which defines passion, comes from being “in God”.

Now, does that start to sound a little familiar? As God’s people, we’re supposed to be in Christ, in God. And so it points to our source of passion     . It’s not something that we generate. It’s not something that we come up with on our own. It’s not just talking about human excitement. When God calls us to be passionate about Him, it says we’re supposed to be in the mindset of Jesus Christ. We’re supposed to be thinking of God. That enthusiasm, that passion, comes from having God in us. And that’s an amazing principle when you really begin to see what God says about it.

There’s a powerful section of scripture that deals with this in Colossians. Colossians chapter 3. Chapter 3, verse 1. Beginning of chapter 3, this is what he says about this concept of enthusiasm and passion. It says, “If you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). So the direction of our life is pointed toward the Father and toward Jesus Christ. Now then, he goes on to say in verse 23, “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” (Colossians 3:23) So we do it heartily. In other words, we do it with enthusiasm. We live God’s way with passion. We have this concept and a mind – we’re going to strive to do our very best, whatever it is, well, like we find in Ecclesiastes. It says whatever our hand finds to do, do it with your might (Ecclesiastes 9:10). You do it with godly passion, do it with godly enthusiasm, so it with a sense of heartily fulfilling God’s purpose in our life. That’s what God’s called us to.

And so maybe we can even ask ourselves, how much of godly enthusiasm do we bring to everything that we do? Well, that’s the goal that Paul told the Colossians that they needed to have, to do things heartily unto the Lord. And so, we can see that ourselves. We’re not doing it on our own. We’re not alone, so that’s a good thing. We’ve got God in us, we’ve got Christ working with us, so that we can have an enthusiasm, we can have a passion for life and living the kind of life that brings honor and glory to God. So be passionate.

That’s BT Daily. We’ll see you next time.