Rediscovering Our Passionate God

Jun 16, 2015
2 min read

We sing in jubilation, adoration to a joyful king - Laura Hackett

There is a destructive trend in Christianity that undermines the passions and emotions of God. It suggests that God is essentially indifferent towards his creation (including people) and that because God does not need anything, he must not want anything either. Of course, we owe much of this view of God to the Greeks, and not the Scriptures. Although his emotions and passions are completely holy, God's prophets and apostles describe him as experiencing a wide range of feelings such as anger, compassion, grief, and joy (Gen. 6:6, Ex. 22:27, Ps. 45:7, Lk. 10:21, Rev. 14:10). But when we undermine the passions of God, we forget the extent to which God is passionate for us. This has been a major reason for the decline in worship and prayer in the church. Too often we believe that God does not care about our worship and prayers because he does not need them, and in doing so, we forget that he desires our presence, words, and love so much that he was willing to die in order to bring us into his embrace (Ps. 35:27, Jn. 17:27, Eph. 1:18, Heb. 12:2). Our worship would be completely transformed in an instant if the majority of Christians received the truth that Abba delights in the praise of his children. He is immeasurably in love with us, and longs for our nearness. We don't worship and pray solely because it benefits us (even though it does), nor do we do it to simply keep the religious status quo. We worship and pray because it delights our Father in heaven (2 Sam. 22:20, Ps. 41:11, Rom 12:1-2). It's time to rediscover our passionate God who, even now, is singing over us. In joy he has called us to himself, and it is our joy to delight in Him as he delights in us.