How to Nurture Your Passion for Christ

Today's episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Fill Me with Your Love"

"Beyond Quiet Time"

"Learning to Pray Fervently"

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Dannah Gresh: Hey, can I ask a personal question? What’s the status of your faith right now? Are you in a spiritually dry season? Maybe you’re feeling a bit complacent, a little numb to the wonder of God, no appetite for your Bible. 

Well, Friend, you’re in the right place! Today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend we’re talking about how to have zeal in our relationship with God and with others. But . . .whoa . . . don’t turn me off. Even if you’re in a place where your heart is on fire for the Lord, because you want to stay that way through the ups and downs of life, right? We’re about to dig into all of that today. 

I’m Dannah Gresh, and I’m so glad you’re here for this episode of Revive Our Hearts Weekend. 

We have a great line up including one of my favorites, Dr. Henry Blackaby. I heard him teach once and it just felt like He’d stepped on stage after having been in the other room with Jesus. The fervency and sincere love of the Savior just dripped off of his words! It was contagious. It ushered me right back into a state of desiring God and my Bible!

But first, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is up, talking about one of the key ingredients of living out a fervent, passionate faith. She starts us off with an interesting question.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I want to ask you today, "How's your love life?" Some of you are looking at me like, "What love life? I wish I had a love life!" No, really, "How's your love life?" First Corinthians tells us that if we have all kinds of amazing gifts and we're sacrificial, we serve the Lord in our lives and we have all kinds of knowledge and faith but we don't have love, then all the rest of that gets canceled out. It's nothing; it's worse than nothing in some cases. It can make a lot of noise; it can make a lot of clatter, but it doesn't have any eternal value if it's not undergirded by love, if love isn't the source of our service.

If the way we use our gifts isn't in love, then it leaves us unfruitful. Love is the key thing Scripture talks about there. God's Word says that we are to pursue love. We're told that in 1 Corinthians 14:1 right after that 1 Corinthians 13 chapter: "Pursue love"—not half-hearted but fervent in love.

Then there are a number of verses that tell us that we're to increase and abound in love. We're not supposed to be stagnant in our love life for God and others. We're not just to be satisfied to stay where we are currently in our love life. Paul says in Philippians 1:9, "It's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment."

"May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you" (1 Thess. 3:12). Increasing love, abounding love . . . this is such a theme, particularly in the New Testament. "Your faith is growing abundantly and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing" (2 Thess. 1:3).

So, let me ask again: "How's your love life?" Do you love more today than you did a year ago? Do I? Am I increasing in love, growing in love, abounding in love? When I think of that, I think of a stream in flood stage that overflows its banks. It doesn't stay within its narrow boundaries; it overflows.

Now, that's not always a good thing when it comes to water, but it's a great thing when it comes to love. Is my love abounding, is it overflowing, is it increasing?

Andrew Murray said, "In the Christian life, love to Christ is everything." And that love for Christ isn't just a happy feeling. It's an inclination of heart that delights to keep His commandments and to do His will. And it's seen in lives that are selfless and self-sacrificing. It's loving others as He has loved us.

What would it look like in our world for us to really love each other? To be praying, "Lord, fill me with Your love"? To put others' needs and interests above our own? To extend compassion and care to those who are different than we are? To forgive, to be generous, to assume the best, to esteem others as better than ourselves? What would it look like to receive and treat others who are unlike us as family, as highly valued guests?

"Pursue love," Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14. Ask God for it! Ask God for love for your mate, for your children, for your friends, for your coworkers, for your neighbors. Ask God for the kind of love that gives and gives and gives and gives to meet the needs of others, without expecting anything in return. That's love.

And then ask God, as I do often, for more love for Jesus . . . more love for God. We have a lot of hymns and choruses that we sing in the contemporary church where we're asking God for a greater measure of Himself—"We want more of You; we want more of Your Spirit." I don't think it's wrong to sing and pray those things, but I love this old hymn that turns it around a little bit and asks God to increase our love for Him. That's a place of humility.

More love, O Christ to Thee, more love to Thee;
Hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee.
This is my earnest plea—more love, O Christ to Thee.
More love to Thee; more love to Thee.¹

Dannah: Yes, if we pray every day for God to give us more love for Him, how that would change our lives. I hope Nancy’s words have been motivating to you to foster your love relationship with Jesus and those around you. Just this morning in my time with the Lord included contemplating that time when Jesus was asked, "What's the greatest commandment?" What did Jesus say? Did He list the Ten Commandments? Or one of them? No! He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength." And the second commandment? "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Love! Do you know what I think? Love takes time. It takes time to love Jesus, to sit with Him, to walk and talk with Him. What would our church look like if we really started to slow down to nurture our relationship with the God of the Universe? I’ll tell you? We’d see people. We’d want to be with people. We’d want to help them. How do I know? Well, because as I sit behind this mic today, I’m burdened to say this to you: Friend, God loves you! He really loves you!

Let me tell you what has really amped up my love for God lately and for you—rising early to read my Bible. I went through a busy season where I didn’t do that and I was withering in my love. But every time I return to the Word, my love returns. I've been feasting on the Word this feast, and so my love is just right there, ready to dispense to you. So how can we fight our feelings of apathy when it comes to reading the truth-filled words of Scripture? Dr. Henry Blackaby speaks to that in a conversation with Nancy. 

Nancy: Have you ever opened the Scripture, begun to read, and found that your heart was not warm toward the Scripture or that the Scripture seemed to be just words on a page, that it was a matter of rote, and it wasn't coming alive? How did you come to just love the Word and find it alive?

Dr. Blackaby: Well, my life—and according to Scripture says it that way—has to go from babyhood to childhood to adolescence to adulthood. I don't come full-blown as a Christian. I have to go through the process, and so there's milk. It's satisfying, and there's meat. That's satisfying, but I have to go through the process.

I would watch others, and they would tell me about how the Word of God is so exciting. It wasn't that way to me, but it wasn't because it couldn't be. It was because of my immaturity, but I always felt that God had me on the front end of my maturity.

That is, I don't try to get my six-year-old to function like a twelve-year-old. I want him to live fully as a six-year-old, and if he can do that, then as a seven-year-old, he's ready to experience all that a seven-year-old can.

I found that God has always kept me, from the beginning, living to the maximum of my spiritual maturity. That prepared me for the next stage in my maturity, but I couldn't jump a stage. I couldn't go from 12 to 20. Now, at 12 or 13, I wanted to drive a car, but I couldn't. I was not at the maturity level that I could, and I found spiritually that was true.

I'll get into a prayer meeting and hear some of the dear saints pray for an hour, and I couldn't do that. I'd say, “I wonder if my spirituality is such that I just couldn't pray for an hour. I wouldn't know what to say,” and God says, “You're praying to the maximum as a twelve-year-old, so enjoy being a twelve-year-old.”

Nancy: But press on to further levels of maturity.

Dr. Blackaby: Yes, always live to the cutting edge of your maturity level, but never get discouraged because you're around people who are much more mature. It has nothing to do with physical age. A person who becomes a Christian at 40 needs to recognize they're a baby Christian. They may be 40 physically, but they're a baby Christian.

Don't feel bad that you're a baby Christian. Don't let anyone intimidate you that you don't know all the Scriptures, and you're not walking in the full doctrines of the Bible.

Nancy: But make sure you're growing.

Dr. Blackaby: Yes, and enjoy every stage. I think the reason my kids grew up well is they enjoyed, and we tried to help them enjoy every age to the fullest. When they hit the next stage, they were able to now go from there, and I tried to do that as a pastor. I never expected the new believer to know everything, and I tried to watch to see where they were spirituality. God can give you that insight.

Now, because a person's a pastor does not mean that they're spiritually mature. They may be academically mature but not necessarily spiritually mature. I was talking with a pastor and his wife. They called last week, and I never met them. They said, “Our church is dying, and we're discouraged. We're disheartened.”

I let them talk, and they pretty well described the mess they were in. Then I turned to him on the phone, and I said, “Tell me where God has you in your time in the Scripture. What portion of the Scripture does God have you at?”

There was a pause, and he said, “I have to confess, the only time I read the Bible is to prepare a sermon.”

I said, “My brother, part of your problem is you're dying spiritually. You have moved from a relationship to God to religious activity.”

Nancy: That can be true of a mom, a layperson. It's not just pastors.

Dr. Blackaby: Oh yes, absolutely! We can do all the activity and lose the relationship, and the activity is not equivalent to the relationship.

By the time I was finished—and I spoke the truth in love—they were both weeping and saying, “This is the best call we've ever had. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

I said, “You know, God may have let you come to this point because it would drive you to Him, and that's the best thing that could ever happen. If He had helped your church to grow successfully, you would never have come to this point, but to miss this point is to miss Him. To miss Him is to miss life.”

Well, the Spirit of God took those words and others and helped them to come to the reality of what's happening in their life. I said, “I am convinced when you return to the intimate relationship to God, you'll see a radical difference in the way your people respond. They're not hearing a word from God. They're hearing a sermon, and people who come to church broken from a heavy week, they don't need a sermon. They want a word from God.”

Nancy: How have you, in your devotional life, your time in the Word with the Lord, dealt with hurry and busyness and kept that unhurried time a priority in your life?

Dr. Blackaby: Well, number one, God told me to love Him with all my mind. It is obvious that my time with God is more important than any other single factor. Even though I have a lot of things that may be on my agenda, there is nothing that compares with what I will have lost if I diminish the time alone with God.

Nancy: So do you have to fight to get that?

Dr. Blackaby: It may have been at one time in my immaturity, but it is not today.

Nancy: You probably have to say no to a lot of things.

Dr. Blackaby: He helps me to know when to say no. He helps me to know how to order the day, when to get rest, and so I know my time with God is the greatest time-saver of any other thing I do. He can direct me around some things during the day. He can alert me to some things that I'm not even aware of, but the time alone with God in the morning is the greatest time-saver in my day.

There's nothing in my life that affects my day-to-day, moment-by-moment time than my walk with God. I keep saying to people, “Does God take up residence within you? Is He with you all the day? Then, is there any time of the day that He could speak to you? Well, why do you limit it to the quiet time? Why do you say, 'I'll give Him 30 minutes in the morning'? What an affront to a holy God!”

The culture, the Evangelical culture, leaves us to believe that if you give God 15 minutes of a quiet time in the morning, God ought to be very pleased with you. I'd say, “No, no, no, He is your life.” Jesus said, “It's like the vine and the branch.” Do you say to the vine, “Well, I'll get juiced up in the morning, but then I'm going to depart from the vine. I'll be alright during the day”?

You can't. He's your life, and He said, “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). When I read that, I just say, “This is absolutely true,” so I have fellowship with God all during the day.

Dannah: I love that practical wisdom from Dr. Henry Blackaby. He’s been helping us remember our need for God. That awareness causes us to seek Him, to go to His Word, because we are dependent on it . . . on Him. 

To quote Dr. Blackaby in what he said earlier, “To miss Him,” to miss God, “is to miss life.” My friend, I sure don’t want to miss God and what He is doing in my life. Do you? 

My friend Leslie Bennett knows how important prayer is in knowing God’s purposes and plan. Do you approach the Lord in passionate prayer, or has your prayer life become more flippant? Leslie’s going to show us the power of fervent prayer and why it matters. 

Leslie Bennett: Prayer is hard work, we have to put our hands to the plow and not give up. 

The first century Christians were taught by Paul for God’s kingdom to advance, they must labor through prayer in the presence of a powerful and holy God.

I believe in the twenty-first century church that we have become a people who give a lot of lip service to the importance of prayer but our lifestyle doesn’t match up. We haven’t gotten this right, ladies. But there is time to get it right, because the Bible says we have not because we ask not. What could be more clear than that?

We have fallen for the lie that prayer isn’t as important as other stuff. 

The Enemy wants us to believe that prayer accomplishes little, and that it’s an add-on to our faith. Just think, what if we had stopped praying for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and quit praying against abortion? Praise God for that answer to prayer! 

So, would you be willing to take one small step to get with other believers to pray? Here is how God has shown me to do this, and I hope it will be helpful to some of you. 

Listen, a year ago I had a real burden for my church. We were going through a challenging time. I just felt like I knew that I was not praying for my church the way I should be. Our leaders, our pastors, and our staff, and frankly as a congregation I wasn’t aware of anyone that was praying for the fire of God to fall on us. 

So, I got together with a couple of friends and shared my burden with them, and they quickly agreed. And my one friend, Shannon, who is super action oriented . . . I just love her. She went straight to the pastor and said, “Pastor, the women want to get together and pray on Sunday morning, what do you think?”

He was thrilled. He was overjoyed. He gave his blessing. None of us had any extra time to add one more thing to our schedule, right? So, we had to come up with a simple plan. What that ended up being for us is that we would meet for thirty minutes in-between the two worship services at our church. That’s all. Thirty minutes. We don’t share any prayer requests, because we’re all reading the church e-news and the worship bulletin. We know what’s going on. We know what’s happening. We can sense how the Spirit is directing our pastor through the way that he is preaching. And so what we do is we take the sermon text, and we pray from the sermon text, and we boldly go before the throne of grace and we intercede fervently and boldly for our church. 

We pray big kingdom prayers, the kind of prayers that bathe our church in God’s priorities. We cry out for Him to revive His Church and to send a spiritual awakening in our lifetime. 

Now, most Sundays, five or six women show up. Some mommas even bring their daughters and I absolutely love that. Even some young ones as well as some teens. But here’s what I know, it doesn’t have to be a big group to yield big results. 

It’s dramatic what God has been doing. So, I could have the mindset of why bother five or six women for only thirty minutes, but friends, God, by His Spirit, what He can do in thirty minutes is not what His followers can do in thirty years!

Have a plan, pursue intimacy with Jesus alone and with other believers. Prayer is costly. It requires sacrifice; it’s inconvenient; it’s hard work. Prayer is strapping on combat boots and going out the door into battle when you would rather stay home because you’re tired. Prayer is admitting we’re helpless without God. Prayer is asking God to do only what He can. 

The times are urgent. I was reading in Joel recently about the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus to judge the world, when the lost will perish, and I came under a spirit of conviction. Would I live differently if I knew that Jesus was coming tomorrow? Would I pray differently if I knew that Jesus was coming back next week or next month? Would I pray with more urgency and fervency? Would you?

Dannah: Challenging and convicting words from Leslie Bennett, from a message she gave at True Woman ’22.

So if you’re not already living fervently, are you ready to make that change? I hope this episode is giving you just the encouragement and inspiration you need to be passionate in your love for God and others. You find that through reading God’s Word and in prayer. 

If you want to hear more of the messages you heard today, you can listen to the full episodes on our website. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. I’ll put links in the show notes.

And hey, while you’re at the website, you’ll notice we’re talking about Advent already—because it’s coming up soon! We want you to be thinking about how you’ll nurture your love for Jesus through this special season. 

Our tabletop Advent card set will help prepare your heart. Each card contains a passage from Scripture along with an inspiring quote from Nancy’s devotional Born a Child and Yet a King: The Gospel in the Carols.

When you donate any amount to Revive Our Hearts this month, you’re helping women everywhere thrive in Christ. We’d love to send you the tabletop card set as our way to thank you for your support. Just request it when you give by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. 

I hope you’ll join me next weekend! We’ll discuss something my friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says a whole lot: “Breathe grace in. Breathe grace out!” What’s that mean? We’ll take a closer look next weekend. Thanks for listening today. 

I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

¹ Rafael Scarfullery. “More Love to Thee.” Sweet Hour of Prayer, ℗ 2006 Rafael Scarfullery.

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