I watched an American Pickers show on Amazon the other day. This guy had hundreds of motorcycles in over 3 different building, and thousands of spare parts and other items. He wouldn’t hardly part with anything, and he said “Motorcycles have always been my consuming passion in life!” This guy had spent thousands of dollars and countless hours accumulating all this motorcycle stuff, and now it was just all sitting there in piles collecting dust – yet that was his “consuming passion”!
The online dictionary defines consuming passion as, “When something, a passion or a drive, is consuming, it dominates a person’s life like a fire, and in a sense, it devours their energy and attention.” People have all sort of passions that drive them, and they will spend thousands of dollars and millions of hours and energy over their life all wrapped up in that passion, and good luck getting them away from it!
As a Christian, we should have an all-consuming passion for Jesus Christ!
The Apostle Paul wrote, “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:8)
David wrote, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And on earth I desire no one besides You.” (Psalm 73:25)
As I just mentioned, Paul’s consuming passion was to know Christ! “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10)
Charles Spurgeon said, “He who does not long to know more of Christ, knows nothing of Him yet!” And that is SO TRUE! Because the more we get to know Him, and the more we die to self, the more we see how awesome and amazing He is. Yet, so many people who claim to be Christians have tons of other things in their lives that consume them instead of Jesus! What consumes you! What do you spend your time, energy, and efforts in doing? Getting to know more about Jesus, or the entertainments and pleasures of this world? What consumes us says a LOT about our relationship with God!