Whether you are single or married, it’s important that your passion has parameters.
I want to talk about Marry or Burn. Marry or Burn.
And I’ll lift these two verses, verses 8 and 9,
where Paul gives specific advice to single
people in the church at Corinth.
He says, “Now to the unmarried and the widows
I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried,
as I do.”
Paul is addressing two different types of
people but with the same life situation.
He says, “Whether you are unmarried and have
never been married or whether you were married
and through some incident are no longer married,
the widows or widowers.”
Paul was one of these two types of people.
He was not married.
He is speaking not from theory but from personal
experience.
I think it’s better sometimes to hear from
somebody from their personal experience than
it is from their theory because if you theorize
about my problem, you’ll tell me what you
think it’s like.
If you can speak from a place of experience,
it tends to be a little bit more compassionate.
He says, “It is good for them…
I’m saying to both groups of people, those
who are either longing for love or have lost
love, and I want to say it is good for them
to stay unmarried, as I do.”
In other words, he’s reaffirming the fact
that singleness is not as strange as culture
makes it out to be.
He’s referring to the fact that you don’t
need another person necessarily to fulfill
your purpose on this earth.
By way of proof, he says, “Look at me.
I’m Paul.
I wrote most of the New Testament, and I don’t
have a wife, so don’t let anybody ever tell
you that until you have another person, you
can’t fulfill your purpose or that your life
or purpose doesn’t begin until another person
enters your life.
It’s just not true.
Paul put on his resume, “wrote the Bible,”
and he did it single, so you can be successfully
single.
Amen.
You can be successfully single.
He talks about that.
He said, “Hey, it’s good if you can stay unmarried.
There will be advantages to that.
It’s fine.
It’s good.
It’s fine.
It’s good.”
Then in verse 9, he says, “But…”
Big but.
How many of you like big buts in the Bible?
They serve as transition points.
He said, “Let’s be real about it.
If they cannot control themselves…”
Big if, big but.
“…they should marry, for…”
Key statement.
“…it is better to marry than to burn with
passion.”
Marry or Burn.
What we’re talking about here is, “What do
I do with the fire inside of me?
Whether I’m single or married, what do I do
with my passions that are hard to control?”
When I proposed to Holly, I kind of had to
call an audible, because I went to go see
her dad and asked his permission to marry
Holly, and he is a very straightforward person,
so he said, “Yeah, sure, whatever.
You can marry her.
I knew this was coming.”
He said, “A couple things.
Firstly, you only have $3,000 to get married
on.
That’s the budget,” which was a great budget
in 1927.
Then he said, “Here are a few other things
about our family that I just want you to know
and be aware of.”
Then he said finally, “When are you doing
it?”
I said, “In a couple of weeks.
I’m going to propose in a couple of weeks.”
I had this big plan.
I was going to take her to Charleston because
there was this certain place where they had
filmed a scene of The Patriot, which is a
movie she really liked.
We were going to go to Charleston, and I had
it all planned out, but then he said, “You’re
going to wait a couple of weeks?
What, do you not have the ring yet?”
I said, “No, man.
I have the ring.
I bought the ring a while back.
I’ve been saving it.
I actually brought it to show it to you.”
I showed him the ring.
He said, “Man, if I was carrying that thing
around, it would be burning a hole in my pocket.
I wouldn’t be able to wait a couple of weeks.”
When he said that, something got in me, and
the ring started burning a hole in my pocket,
so I’m going to tell you what I did.
I’m not real proud of it, but I took her to
Pizza Hut that night.
This is the God’s heaven truth.
I took her to Pizza Hut that night.
Then I took her…
I had written a little song for her.
I sang her the song, and I gave her the ring.
The song is pretty cool though.
Would you like to hear a little bit of it?
I don’t think you would.
The chorus went:
It’s not hard to love you with my heart,
Because you’re amazing.
You’re amazing.
I smile wide each time you’re by my side,
Because you’re amazing.
Your smile turns my world around.
Your tears turn me inside out.
I sang her that song, and then I proposed
to her, and it was great, and it was preceded
by Pizza Hut.
I’ve been taking her all over the world since
then in an effort to make it up to her.
I thought about that phrase.
He said, “That ring would be burning a hole
in my pocket if I were you.”
You know, I think that’s the way certain unfulfilled
passions and unmet desires feel inside of
us, especially in this issue of singleness.
It’s like it’s burning a hole in my heart,
burning a hole in my soul.
It’s like burning.
That’s the illustration Paul uses.
He wants to talk about it, and he says, “It’s
like a fire.
The passion is like a fire that burns in you.
It can be a sexual fire.
It can be an emotional fire.”
He sets out to say, “What do we do about this?”
Let’s talk about it from a couple of angles
in the remainder of our time.
1.
Oversimplified struggles.
Reading Paul, it sounds so straightforward.
He said, “If you have passions that are hard
to control, go ahead and get married, for
it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
It’s as if he’s saying, “If you’re just burning
with sexual passion, and it feels like a fire
you can’t control, get married.
That’ll put it out.”
He makes a case.
He says, “It is better to marry than to burn
with passion.”
If I were single, I would read that and go,
“Yeah, Paul.
It may be better, but…”
Everybody say, “But.” “…that seems to me
to oversimplify the struggle.”
Often, in an attempt to be encouraging to
single people, married people will say some
really stupid things, meaning well.
Preachers like me will say some really stupid
things, and we will oversimplify the struggle.
On the surface, it appears that’s what Paul
is doing.
“Hey, if you’re just burning inside, and you
have to have somebody, it is better to marry
than to be tormented, than to be frustrated.
Go ahead and get married.”
“Oh yeah, Paul.
I’ll just go out to the husband tree and just
get me a husband,” like he’s telling you to
go buy some milk.
“If you’re out of milk, go to the grocery
store and get some milk.
If you’re burning with passion, go ahead and
get married.”
“Yeah, Paul.
I wish it were that easy.
It’s not quite that easy.”
Now I’m like a single person trying to give
somebody advice on how to get married.
“Hey, Paul.
If it’s so easy…”
Paul says, “No, no, no.
I’m called to be single.
If you’re not, it’s okay to be married.
It’s better to marry, in fact, than to burn
with passion.”
But it’s a struggle, isn’t it?
I would want to speak to this if I were speaking
on behalf of somebody I cared about who was
single.
I’d want somebody to say, “Wait a minute.
It’s not quite that simple.”
We tell you in church, “If you’re single,
don’t settle.
Wait for the right one.
Hold out.
Don’t just compromise and just marry anybody.
You have to wait for the right one.
Don’t settle.”
We’ll use all this biblical…
We have all these things we say like, “Wait
for your Boaz.”
Boaz is a character in a book of the Bible
called Ruth.
Ruth was in a crazy life situation, but God
gave her a man.
God gave her a man named Boaz, and Boaz was
very blessed.
I’ve heard a lot of messages to single people
about, “Wait for your Boaz,” and women who
want a Boaz.
I came across this.
I have shared it before in the church, but
it’s worth sharing again, this piece of advice
on that same subject for single people.
I want to read it to you now.
It says:
“Biblical advice: ‘Ruth patiently waited for
her mate Boaz.’
While you are waiting on YOUR Boaz, don’t
settle for any of his relatives; Broke-az,
Po-az, Lyin-az, Cheating-az, Dumb-az, Drunk-az,
Cheap-az, Lockedup-az, Goodfornothing-az,
Lazy-az & especially his third cousin Beatinyou-az.
Wait on your Boaz and make sure he respects
Yoaz!”
If you find this offensive, please send us
an email to [email protected].
That’s the address for you to correspond.
Yeah.
Everybody say, “Don’t settle.”
We teach that, but then we also teach, “Don’t
sin.”
Everybody say, “Don’t sin.”
You be, “Don’t settle.”
Say, “Don’t sin.”
You be, “Don’t sin.”
Say, “Don’t sin.”
The people in the middle are like, “But what
about the struggle?”
Don’t settle, don’t sin, but what about the
struggle?
Paul actually addresses that head-on.
He says, “It’s like a burning.”
In fact, I didn’t share this in any other
worship experiences because they weren’t as
spiritually advanced as you, and they couldn’t
receive it, but Paul says something else in
2 Corinthians.
He wrote them another letter, and he’s listing
in 2 Corinthians 11 all the different difficulties
he has been through in a way of saying, “I
relate to any of you who are going through
hard times.”
I think this is actually 2 Corinthians 11:29.
He says, “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak?
Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly
burn?”
The same image he uses in 1 Corinthians to
talk about, “Some of you are burning,” he
will acknowledge in a later letter saying,
“I burn too.”
He’s not simply speaking to the struggle with
a cold heart and a theoretical, theological
mindset.
He says, “I know it’s a struggle.”
Part of the struggle, I think, is cultural.
We have this teaching out there that there
is “the one” for you.
You will not find this in the Bible, but you
will find it in every chick flick you ever
watch on Netflix.
“I’m waiting for the one.”
Just by a show of hands so I can see how many
of you have never thought this fully through,
how many of you think there is only one person
for everybody they can marry, and if you don’t
marry that person, you married the wrong person?
If you want to go ahead and acknowledge that
you’re wrong, raise your hand.
It wouldn’t make sense.
We don’t have to prove it from the Bible;
we can just prove it with logic, the power
of thinking it through.
If there’s only one person you’re supposed
to marry, and you get with the wrong person,
and the two of you procreate, you’re going
to have the wrong baby.
If you have the wrong baby, there is no chance
that baby is going to marry the right one
because they’re not even the right person
to begin with because they weren’t supposed
to be in existence.
You weren’t supposed to have that baby with
Sally; you were supposed to have that baby
with Tina.
Now you and Sally had a baby named Michael.
The baby was supposed to be Michelle, but
you guys got the X’s and the Y’s mixed up,
and all of the chromosomes are all floating
all over the place now looking for a place
to call home because you didn’t find “the
one.”
It just kind of crumbles.
Most of the emphasis when you talk about dating
and marriage and singleness in culture seems
to be on finding the right one.
Most of the emphasis, when you come to the
Scripture, tends to be on being the right
one.
I think this is so important to point out.
Now, I’m not trying to oversimplify the struggle,
but I just want to let you know that if you’ll
focus on being the right one, God has this
ability to put you in the right place and
develop within you the right passions.
That’s so much more important than this elusive
chase for “the one.”
Yes, it’s better to marry than to burn with
passion, but it’s also better to learn to
control your passion than it is to marry an
idiot.
It’s better to marry than to burn with passion,
but it’s also more important that you develop
a real passion for God than that you find
the right person who you think is going to
stir up a passion inside of you.
Let’s don’t oversimplify the struggle, Paul
would say.
Skipping right past Boaz, we’ll move along
to the next thing I want to talk about.
2.
Mismanaged passions.
He says this desire for relationship, this
sexual desire, is like a fire inside.
The interesting thing about fire as a metaphor
is fire is actually a substance that is purifying
in its nature.
When Paul wants to talk about sexual passion,
I find it interesting that he uses the metaphor
of a fire.
What he’s saying is the desire inside of you
is not dirty in and of itself.
It’s a pure desire.
It was put there by God.
There is nothing wrong with the passion.
When the passion gets misplaced, it can cause
great destruction in your life.
It becomes very dangerous.
Misplaced or mismanaged passions.
As an illustration of this from the Bible,
I thought about Moses who was certainly very
passionate, and God used him to fulfill a
great purpose.
In fact, God showed up and appeared to Moses
in a burning bush in Exodus 3, but 40 years
before that burning bush (which is where many
people think the story of Moses’ life began,
when God called him to be a deliverer of the
Israelites out of Egyptian slavery) Moses
had an incident that was the result of mismanaged
passion.
Watch this.
Exodus 2:11 says, “One day, after Moses had
grown up, he went out to where his own people
were and watched them at their hard labor.”
Moses was conflicted because he grew up as
a Hebrew, but he was being raised as an Egyptian.
He was from the Hebrew people, but he was
raised in an Egyptian society, so he was torn.
He was conflicted by this.
One day, he goes out.
He has grown up a little bit now.
He sees something.
“He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one
of his own people.”
It stirs up a passion in him.
It says, “He looked this way and that way,
and it looked like the coast with clear, so
he didn’t see anybody, and he killed the Egyptian
and hid him in the sand.
The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews
fighting.
He asked the one in the wrong, ‘Hey, man.
Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?’
The man said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge
over us?
Are you thinking of killing me as you killed
the Egyptian?'”
Uh oh.
Just because you hide something in the sand
doesn’t mean it went away.
That merits repeating.
Just because you covered something up in the
sand doesn’t mean it won’t come back up, because
the thing Moses did nobody else saw, so he
thought, but then his past catches up with
him rather quickly.
It says that when he heard this, “Then Moses
was afraid and thought, ‘What I did must have
become known.'”
Now he’s exposed.
“When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill
Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went
to live in Midian, where he sat down by a
well.”
He ends up on the run for 40 years because
of a mismanaged passion.
See, what Moses felt…follow me…was a good
passion.
He saw one of his people being taken advantage
of, and God had put a passion in Moses.
Moses was called to deliver the Hebrew people
out of Egyptian slavery.
He sees this going down, and he thinks, “This
isn’t right,” and it lights a fire inside
of him.
Moses just goes off.
It’s one thing to have the right passion;
it’s another thing to act on it in the right
way.
Did you know you can have the right passion
but have the wrong expression of the right
passion, and it will create a terrible result
in your life?
I can’t get any help in this sermon, man.
Let me ask it another way.
Did you know that the thing God put inside
of you that can make you really great and
can lead you into your purpose can also bring
you great pain if it’s not managed correctly?
I’m teaching this to our oldest son right
now.
He has a gift for being argumentative, and
it’s a gift.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
I’m told he got it from somewhere.
He will verbally assassinate you.
He will take you apart about anything.
I’m teaching him, “This could be your greatest
asset because, boy, I could see you one day
on stage preaching to people, and God is going
to take this gift you have to kind of go through
stuff and just take it apart.
You can take it apart, and I can see how God
could really use that.
You might be 3 times, 10 times, 100 times
the preacher I ever am, but if you don’t learn
how to manage this, and you think that gift
is given to you so you can argue with your
mom about the cleanliness of your room, you’re
not going to live long enough to see whether
or not…
God could really use this.
This is a good thing.
I see it in you, boy.
I think it’s awesome.
I think it’s amazing, but you’d better learn
when to use it and how to use it because you
can win the argument and still lose your video
game time for the next month if you don’t
shut your mouth right now.
It’s a good thing that you can do this, but
you’d better learn to do it.”
You can do a good thing in the wrong way,
and it becomes a bad thing.
Sex is a good thing.
Sex is a good thing.
Sex is a good thing.
You’d think if I could ever get an, “Amen,”
I would get an, “Amen.”
Sex is a good thing.
People don’t teach that in the church.
We teach, “Sex is dirty.
Sex is gross.
Sex is disgusting, so save it for your husband.”
The passion is pure; however, the passion
needs parameters if it is to serve the correct
purpose.
What has gotten a lot of us in trouble in
our lives is we had a good passion but no
parameters, so rather than building purpose,
it destroyed purpose.
That’s what happened to Moses.
He had the right passion, but he put it in
the wrong place and acted on it in the wrong
way.
Right passion, wrong expression.
I was just thinking of a way I could show
you this, a simple way to show you this.
Imagine right now that at this point in my
sermon…
I know this is simple.
Just go with me.
I’m like, “Hey, I have an idea.
Let’s build a fire on the stage.
I just think it would be cool to build a fire
on the stage.”
I’m stacking wood to build a fire on the stage.
I actually thought about, “How far should
I take this sermon illustration?”
I thought about gasoline.
I thought I would see how far I could go before
people started leaving, exiting the building,
but I think it would suffice just to say that
everybody in the room understands the problem
with this proposition.
The problem isn’t building a fire; the problem
is building a fire in a place where there
is nothing to contain the fire.
It’s fine if you want to build a fire, but
building a fire without any parameters would
be to unleash…
See, the same substance that warms your home
when it’s in a fireplace is the same substance
that burns a forest in Colorado in the summer.
The difference is whether it’s contained.
When you release passions that were intended
for marriage outside of marriage, you’re building
a fire with nothing to contain it.
God says, “The fire is a good thing.
Fire purifies.
Fire brings warmth.
Fire is a source of light.
There is nothing wrong with fire.
If you build the fire in the wrong place,
if you put the passion in the wrong place,
it will burn your home to the ground.”
It’s a misplaced passion.
It’s a good thing in a bad place.
I wonder how many of you would have avoided
some serious pain in your lives if somebody
would have shown you that before you build
a fire, you need somewhere to put it.
The only human relationship that can sustain
this force of passion is a covenant relationship
called marriage.
If you go building fires in other relationships
that aren’t built to contain the power of
passion, it’s going to spread to places you
don’t intend for it to spread, and it’s going
to destroy things God gave you as a gift.
Paul is not saying, “Put the fire out.”
He’s saying, “Find the right place to build
the fire.
Make sure you have the right place for the
passion, or you’ll get burned.”
I’m seeing so many people and so many families
get burned because they were trying to get
warm because, “It’s cold out there,” and because,
“I need relationship,” and because, “I need
somebody, so I think I’ll stand up next to
this fire.”
I did a word study this week.
I studied the word intimacy, which is what
we’re all truly longing for.
That’s really what we all want.
That’s what all our sexual expression and
emotional expression is about.
We want intimacy.
That’s what we want.
That’s what we desire from God and from others.
We want to be known.
We want to be accepted.
We want intimacy.
Then I studied the word infatuation, and I
was fascinated to find out that in Latin (this
will make you sound so smart at lunch this
week), infatuation literally means false fire.
It looks like fire but really can’t warm you.
It looks like fire but really can’t empower
you.
It looks like fire.
That’s what the world offers, an infatuation
with images of sexuality, but it won’t really
warm you.
In fact, it can actually run away from you
and burn your house down.
Some preacher needs to get up in front of
you and just have the guts to care two cents
worth of nothing what you think about it and
say, “If you’re building these fires in the
wrong place, it’s going to burn you.”
It’s mismanaged passions.
The passion is pure.
The Enemy wants to pervert it and use what
God wanted to use to develop intimacy in your
life to destroy your capacity for intimacy.
He gets a boy looking at pornography at age
10 so he can begin to rewire his brain and
his standard of beauty so when he’s having
sex with his wife one day, he won’t be able
to do it without conjuring up images he saw
before he even knew what was developing in
his life and in his heart because a fire got
built, but there was nothing to contain it.
I say this not to condemn you.
I say this not to bring all your mistakes
up before you, but there are some of you who
are building fires in bad places right now,
sending text messages to the wrong person
right now, visiting some of the wrong sites
right now, filling your minds with the wrong
kinds of images, indulging in the wrong conversations.
It’s nothing wrong with the fire.
It’s just where you put it.
Let’s close talking about something positive.
3.
Shameless solutions.
When Holly and I were building our home last
year…
There were all these selections you have to
make.
For the most part, I never got involved, but
she would bring certain things to me that
she thought I might want to weigh in on.
One of them was what kind of fireplace we
would have in the house.
I love sitting by a fireplace.
I don’t know why.
I like the gas log fireplace because this
is about as much work as I want to do to start
the fire.
To me, that’s my version of roughing it.
That’s my outdoorsmanship right there.
Just flip that little switch, and the fire
comes on.
She says, “No, no.
For this house, we need to have a real fireplace
with real logs and stuff.”
I’m like, “Oh, God, no.
We’re going to have to go and chop wood.
I’m going to have to go buy a flannel shirt
from Old Navy.
I don’t have one in the closet.”
She’s like, “No, it’ll be great.
It’ll be a gas start fireplace, but it’ll
have real wood.”
I’m thinking like, “I trust you.
Whatever.”
She said, “Trust me.
You’ll love it.”
I said, “Go ahead.
We can do it.”
Nobody showed me how to use it, so the first
time I went to build a fire in the gas start
fireplace…
I’m going to give you the technical explanation
for this.
There is a little thingy you put in the hole.
There is a thing on the side of the fireplace,
and you turn that on.
Then it opens the gas valves.
Then you can light the fire.
At least, that’s what I thought you were supposed
to do, turn on the gas and then light the
fire in the fireplace.
I was so excited to have our first fire of
the year last year, so I turned on the gas
to give it plenty of time, like if you’re
turning on your car in the cold to give it
some time to warm up.
I went to go get my kids because I wanted
them to see the first fire.
I bring them in because it’s getting close
to Christmastime, and there are stockings
up, and I thought this was going to be a picture
perfect scene.
I go and get a drink and get the kids.
I gathered them around.
I went and got the wood, not the wood I chopped
but the man who sold the wood to me on the
side of the road chopped at some point.
I took that wood and stacked it up high because
I wanted it to be a good fire.
I wanted to make sure our first fire was a
good fire.
Now I figure we’re warmed up.
What happened when I put the match…
Now, when I get an invitation for people to
receive Christ, I give it with so much more
passion because I feel like I have seen what
hell is going to be like, because when the
flames came out, it was traumatic.
It was traumatic for Graham.
Graham was crying.
I was calling on Jesus Christ.
I was calling on Smokey the Bear.
I was stopping and dropping and rolling.
It was everything.
I was checking for eyebrows in the mirror.
Lesson learned.
Start the fire in the fireplace and then turn
on the gas, not the other way around.
The difference between a fire that will warm
your house and a fire that will burn off your
face has to do with the order in which you
turn on the gas and light the flame.
That’s what Paul is saying, church.
That’s what God is saying.
He’s saying, “Some of you are running the
gas valve wide open in your thought life,
and you’re running the gas valve wide open
in your conversations, and you’re running
the gas valve wide open, so you’re getting
hit by all these flames that are consuming
you and burning you alive.”
What do you expect when you turn the gas on
and leave it on and let it build up and just
think what you want and say what you want
and you don’t control any of this?
How did you think this was going to end?
When you let the gas build up, and you never
got any help with those issues, and you never
found any place to discuss them, where did
you think this was going to end?
He said, “First marriage, then fire.”
Context is everything.
Some of you…
I’m not trying to be hateful; I’m just trying
to be helpful.
You’re sitting here feeding the fire of lust
and discontentment and wondering why the flames
are burning so high.
You say, “Well I just can’t control myself.”
You know, that’s kind of what Paul says in
the passage.
He says, “For those who can’t control themselves,
you should get married.”
You know, that’s actually a poor interpretation
of the original language in Greek.
He didn’t actually say, “For those who can’t
control themselves…”
He said, “For those who are not controlling
themselves…”
He said the fruit of the Spirit are love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
You have self-control, but when you feed the
wrong fires all the time…
Some of you are just throwing logs on the
fire all the time.
You’re miserable because you’re watching The
Bachelor.
No man will ever be able to live up to your
standard because you’re watching a guy take
girls on dates on a network budget.
Your man might drive a Hyundai.
It may be a good car, but you’re feeding the
fire of all of these ideals.
Some of you men have gotten your standard
of beauty from people who are airbrushed.
No wonder your wife can’t satisfy you.
You’re feeding the wrong fire.
It’s flaming up and blazing up.
You’re running the gas.
You talk how you want to talk and do what
you want to do and say what you want to say,
and now you’re wondering, “Why can’t I control
this?”
Because you didn’t control it.
What do we need?
We need a big ol’ ice bucket.
What the church does and what I used to do
a lot of times when I would preach about these
topics is I would think the solution for sexual
sin is a big ol’ bucket of shame.
We just…
Something like that.
All the sermons are based around shame.
It’s like…
That’s effective for like three days.
Then it flares right back up.
Most of the time in our sexuality, shame is
the source of our problem, so it can’t be
our solution.
Paul doesn’t shame the Corinthian church.
God doesn’t shame you for your struggles,
for your passions.
He simply wants you to get them in the right
place.
See, we talked about Moses, how he misplaced
his passion in Exodus 2, but check this out.
Forty years later, in Exodus 3:1, it says,
“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro
his father-in-law, the priest of Midian…”
He was just doing his basic responsibility.
He had gone on about his life.
“…and he led the flock to the far side of
the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain
of God.”
He was out in a lonely place.
God shows up and appears to Moses, but he
did it in a lonely place while Moses was simply
doing his job.
Would that not be a good word for a single
person in this church today?
You tend the flock God has given you, be faithful
in the place where he has positioned you.
Watch what God did.
He said, “There the angel of the Lord appeared
to him in flames of fire from within a bush.
Moses saw…”
Remember when he looked the first time before
he killed the Egyptian?
He looked and saw nobody was there, so he
thought he got away with it, but he really
didn’t because he tried to fulfill the right
passion in the wrong way, but watch this.
This time, “Moses saw that though the bush
was on fire it did not burn up.
So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see
this strange sight—why the bush does not
burn up.’
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to
look, God called to him from within the bush,
‘Moses!
Moses!’
And Moses said, ‘Here I am.'”
Here is what the Lord spoke to me.
He said, “When I am the center of your passion,
your life will burn, but it won’t burn up.
When I am the center of a relationship, it
will burn, but it won’t burn up.”
Lust can set you on fire, but only God can
set you on fire and keep you on fire.
Anybody can light a bush on fire, but only
God can get in the middle of a bush and light
it on fire, but although it’s on fire…
What we want in this church and what God wants
for your life is a passion that stays on fire,
not this little cheap, imitation infatuation,
false flame garbage that burns you out and
creates new patterns of processing information
in your brain that will cause you trouble
for the rest of your life.
The Enemy wants to burn you out, but God wants
to set passion on fire in your life and put
it in a place where it will burn but not burn
out.
How many of you want a holy passion that doesn’t
burn out, relationships that don’t burn out,
fires and pursuits that don’t burn out, that
burn up, that are alive and lighting but grow
brighter and brighter as the seasons go by?
God’s desire for you isn’t just that you would
have the passing pleasure of sin for a season
but that you would know the pleasure of passion
that comes from his purpose, that it would
burn from within and not burn out.
Some of you have been feeding the wrong fires,
you see.
It’s not enough just to starve the wrong fires.
I said, “God, if shame isn’t the solution
to this, then what is?”
He said, “I want you to tell everybody who
is struggling with their desires that are
burning a hole inside of them today that they
need to fight fire with fire.”
Fight fire with fire, not with shame.
Shame isn’t going to help this.
You’ve tried this.
Shame doesn’t make you any better; it just
drives you deeper into your own dysfunction
and isolates you from people who could help
you.
The Scripture says (watch this), “…our God
is a consuming fire.”
What do you do if you’re consumed with the
wrong passions?
Here’s an idea.
Get more consumed with the right ones.
That’s how you do this.
“I’m single, and I’m lonely.”
I understand.
I don’t want to oversimplify your struggle,
but why don’t you ask God to set you on fire
in this season of your life with a purpose
that will consume you with him so you’re not
so consumed with your desire for somebody
else?
See, when you become consumed with a passion
for God’s purpose, it consumes all of this
other stuff, all of this false desire, all
of this fake fire.
God wants to set somebody on fire today with
his purpose and his plan for your life.
Come on. Shout it out.
Say, “Set me on fire, Lord.”
Shout it out. “Set me on fire, Lord, with your purpose,
with your power, with your plan.”
Hallelujah!