One Passion

If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. - Luke 14:26


Nechayev, a 19th-century disciple of Karl Marx who had a role in the assassination of Czar Alexander II, wrote: "The revolutionary man... has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution." Although his motives and goals were wrong, Nechayev's statement shows the singlemindedness of commitment.

Jesus wanted true commitment from His disciples. In Luke 14, we read that large crowds joined Him as He traveled toward Jerusalem (v.25). Perhaps these casual followers considered themselves to be His true disciples, but Jesus taught that following Him was more than just knowing facts about Him. He explained what it really meant to be His disciple when He defined the cost of discipleship: Nothing, not love for father or mother or even one's own life, was to take precedence over loyalty to Jesus (w. 26-33). His disciples (then and now) must acknowledge that if God is to be primary in their lives, possessions and even social relationships have to be secondary.

Jesus calls His followers to be absorbed in a single, exclusive thought and passion - Him. - Marvin Williams


Set us afire, Lord, stir us we pray!
While the world perishes, we go our way
Purposeless, passionless, day after day;
Set us afire, Lord, stir us we pray! - Cushman

Our love for Jesus is the key to spiritual passion.

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Luke 14:25-35

Now great multiude were going with him. He turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to me, and doesn't hate his own father, mother, wife, chidren, brothers, and sisers, yes, and his own life also, he can't be my disciple.

Whoever doesn't bear his own cross, and come after me, can't be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn't first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, everyoen who sees begins to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build, and wasn't able to finish.'

Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in was, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy, and asks for conditions of peace.

So therefore whoever of you who doesn't renounce all that he has, he can't be my disciple. Salt is good, but if the salt flat and tasteless, with what do you season it? It is fit neither for the soil not for the manure pile. It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

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Let go everything to follow Him... and be salt and light of the world... :P