Zeal, Passion & Fervor for Love.

What lights your fire? I’m not asking what makes you angry, but I am asking what is your passion? These nouns denote powerful, intense emotion. Passion is a deep, overwhelming emotion. Zeal is strong, enthusiastic devotion to a cause, ideal, or goal and tireless diligence in its furtherance. Fervor is great warmth and intensity of feeling.

Yesterday I was told by two seminarians classmates that my passion and zeal for God intimidated them. What? I was in a group with six people sharing my faith journey. You see, 20 years ago I encountered a gentleman who shared the good news of Jesus Christ with me. I had no idea that God was real and that God actually loved me. I was the outsider, the broken one, the outcast at church. I had no idea that the Mystery that we call God could be so real and close. I opened my life and soul to God and I found that my heart burned within when I was in the presence of the Stranger. I sailed into the Mystery; I let myself go.
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The flame has never been extinguished and it only grows warmer and brighter. I grew up unchurched and the few Christians I knew were really judgmental and very legalistic. All I can remember from my youth about Christianity was what I learned from Christians. I learned from church-people that God was a judgmental God who disliked and hated "sinners" and that I needed to change; God would love me if I would only change.

So when I encountered a God of love who comes to touch people like me. A God who restores, renews, and returns me to who I created to be I cannot be anything but passionate. I’ve been to hell. I walked with the devil. God did for me what I was unable to do for myself. So yea, I am zealous for the cause of Christ and the reign of God.
Yea, I have fervor or a great warmth and intensity of feelings for the God of love found in Jesus Christ. I’ve studied theology. So I am not interested in intellectual masturbation or fundamentalist fear. I’ve studied what all the "masters" think about God but I encountered the Stranger on the road; the Stranger who calls me friend. I met the One. I broke bread with God and I feast on his Body every week as a remembrance of his present reality. Yes, I am passionate; yes, I am zealous; yes, I have fervor for I have been touched by the Mystery of Love and I have forever been changed. Like Kayne says, "So whenver I open my heart, my soul or my mouth a touch of God reigns out!"