To Encourage You

Titus 2:13-14 “Our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

What are you passionate about? What trips your trigger, turns you on, fires you up?  Another way of saying this is what are you zealous about?  The word means “to possess great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective.”  Zeal is the opposite of ambivalence or apathy.  If someone is zealous about something it shows in their words and actions.  It’s not something that can be hidden, for it’s a matter of being “all-in.” 

Zeal, if directed in a good way, is a very good thing.  I’m reminded of people such as William Wilberforce, the British politician of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, who became a leading abolitionist of slavery in England.  He would not quit until a law prohibiting slavery had been passed.  He was zealous for the cause.  There are many other examples, e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr. in the cause of civil rights, Rachel Carson in the cause of environmental protection, and Patrick Henry, who expressed his zeal for the cause of American independence with his famous words “give me liberty or give me death.” 

Yet, zeal can be misdirected.  Hitler had zeal in his quest to exterminate the Jews, as did Stalin, as he murdered many of his own countrymen in his quest to further the communist revolution that Lenin had initiated in Russia.   You see, sincerity and passion can be a very good thing if rightly directed, but a very evil thing, if not. 

So, again, what are you zealous about?  Many people are zealous about they’re religion, but again, such zeal is not necessarily a good thing.  Paul, before his conversion, was an example of this.  In describing his life as a religious Jew before he met Christ, he spoke of himself in this way, “as to zeal, a persecutor of the church” (Philippians 3:6).  Paul was zealous. He was very sincere.  But he was very misguided as to where that passion had been directed. Then he met Jesus and everything changed. As he wrote to his protégé, Titus, in the verses above, he talks about the change knowing Christ makes in a believer’s life.  A few verses earlier Paul wrote about how the grace of God that brings salvation teaches us to renounce “worldly passions.” Worldly passions are those things for which people may be zealous, but which are in complete opposition to the will of God.  This is how the Bible describes such misdirected zeal as it speaks about those who lived on the earth in Noah’s day: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). And then the Bible warns us that in the last days, just before Jesus returns, the world will be much like it was in the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37).  People will be passionate at that time, zealous, but passionate and zealous for all the wrong things. 

But as the verses above tell us, Jesus came to redeem us from all this. He came to give us a new heart, one that is “zealous for good works.”  You see, a Christian should have a zeal in his or her relationship to the One Who gave His life for them. They should be eager to glorify their Lord. They should long to spend time in the Bible, eager to pray, passionate about sharing the gospel, longing to spend time in fellowship with other believers in the church, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, and thrilled to help those in need through such things as sacrificial giving of their time and money.  Serving Jesus, whose zealous love for the Father (and us) led Him to the cross, should be something that we, in our gratitude, are zealous for.

So, again, what are you zealous for?  Is it the kind of zeal for which Jesus gave His all for you, or is it something else, somehow misdirected though it be sincere? May God fill us with godly zeal, a passion for living our life for Him. And that’s the very same thing as loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, which is the greatest commandment of all.