passion on Apathy

Gracious God, you have called us to be a unified body, working together that which you have willed for the world. In our apathy, we fail to participate in the work you have called us to do. In our div...

God of justice, you repeatedly call us to action, but we so often fail to respond. Your word convicts us, demonstrating that inaction is just as sinful as the wrong actions. Lord of mercy, forgive us ...

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spiri...

Lord God, forgive us for how we have let our faith atrophy. We grow complacent, stagnant, and we fail to strive to follow you. Give us passion, give us courage, and give us motivation to excel for you...

Loving, good, and kind God, you sent your Son to endure the cross so that we might know you. You desire a relationship with us, and you are interested in the condition of our hearts. Too often our hea...

Almighty God, we settle for false peace. We see no need to rock the boat, so we allow injustice to rule and reign. God, give us the conviction to take on the work of peacemaking. Give us the courage, ...

Lack of interest in mission is not fundamentally caused by an absence of compassion or commitment, nor by lack of information or exhortation. And lack of interest in mission is not remedied by more sh...

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”

Ministers run the awful risk . . . of ceasing to be witnesses to the presence in their own lives — let alone in the lives of the people they are trying to minister to — of a living God who transcends ...

One of the real problems in modern life is that people who are good at being civil lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions lack civility.

Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God,...

How quickly our loyalties fade, oh God. We proclaim you are our Lord, but lives do not reflect that truth. We pay you homage when it’s easy, but live our own way when we feel like it. We praise you to...

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion ...

I recently had lunch with a former British boarding school chaplain. He remembers being with the boys in his school the morning thirty years ago that the very first pictures of widespread starvation i...

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...

Passion creates, addiction consumes.”

To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins— is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?

Hope is passion for what is possible.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

The problem with making your passion the thing that guides you is that passion can trick you into avoiding tasks that maybe aren’t fun but that are absolutely vital to get you to where you need to be....

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

Amazed, bewildered, they are gathered around him, whose pondered resolution comes to rest, withdrawing him from all the ties that bound him--a stranger gliding by with thoughts unguessed. He feels tha...

Reflection The television series Alone follows ten individuals who are left to fend for themselves and by themselves in the wilderness. Now, these aren’t everyday individuals plucked from Main St...

Suffering is nothing by itself. But suffering shared with the passion of Christ is a wonderful gift, the most beautiful gift, a token of love.

It was this…intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you ...

As any parent of small children will tell you, children have an amazingly acute sense of justice. Even the most fractional disparity in the distribution of the most trivial family good will be met wit...

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us. O Christ, in your humility, your lonely struggle and your agony, you share our suffering. Give us faith to trust your grace....

The missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote in his memoir, “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should...