I’ve always been partly intrigued and partly alarmed by the words of Revelation 3:15-16,

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

These verses seem to call for a careful evaluation of our lives to discover the answer to the question, “Is my passion for God hot?” It is so easy to drift from God, assume his grace, and lose the passion that should be normal for the Christian life.

What I didn’t notice until today is that verse 17 explain the cause (notice the word for) of this loss of passion:

“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”

The path to lukewarmness is through thinking you are rich and prosperous. This doesn’t necessarily wealth and financial richness, although it might. More important, one of the biggest drains of passion is to think you’ve got spiritual wealth, that you don’t really need God’s help. Any of us could pass a true/false test: of course we need God’s help. But do we live like it? Do we hunger for his word, pray with desperation, pursue fellowship, and worship with abandon as people who are in deep need of God’s intervening grace?

The path to passion is to recognize what we really are: wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. In other words, we are sinners who deserve the wrath of God for our sin. This is the only way to appreciate the good news, and grow in passion: to see the bad news. This is what makes the good news so good and makes passion for God burn white hot. As Paul tells Timothy:

“I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God that is in you…”

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