Burn the Ships: The Elements of Passion

If I I could have preached another 20 minutes last Sunday, I might have thrown in the following:

In Philippians 2, considered by many to be merely a “travelogue,” Paul tells the Philippians that he’s going to hang on to Timothy for a while, but Epaphroditus he’s sending back to them to be an encouragement to them. But I believe it’s a window into three lives that were lived with wild, burning, take-no-prisoners passion!

Here’s how he described Timothy: “For I have no one like him… For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.” (v. 20-22)

Here’s how he described Epaphroditus: “…my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier…” (v. 25). He went on to say that he “nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking…” (v. 30)

It seems to me these men were living in what can only be described as a constant state of “faith on the run.” You’ve got one guy being held as a religious prisoner and two other guys who are courageously committed to him, even though one of them almost died because of it.

There is a word that comes to mind when I imagine how these guys lived: passion.

Passion is that primal, gut-level, semi-irrational life force that comes from the inside out. While knowledge and experience move from the outside-in, passion begins on the inside; from that deep part of your soul and bursts out of your heart with an undeniable force that says, “I MUST do this!!”

Passion tramples that other word that has doused the dreams of countless millions: prudence. Prudence is the name of that old, crusty lady in the corner of your mind who wags her bony finger at you, shakes her head, and says, “Come on, let’s put away these silly thoughts in your head and get back to reality.” In other words, “Play it safe. After all, you don’t really think this is worth your life, do you? We’ve got to have some balance, some rationality here.”

Don’t get me wrong: Passion without wise planning and consideration is foolish and potentially destructive. But too often the valid concept of “prudence” extinguishes the God-passion in our hearts that rightly takes risks for the cause of the Kingdom.

Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus were not called to map everything out - they were called to lay everything down. They were passionate men who were fighting for the Kingdom to the death. They burned the ships, because sometimes faith requires you to burn them, and burn them all.

A wise man once told me to make decisions that would leave me with multiple options in the end. In other words, hopelessness only comes when one realizes there are no more options. In many aspects of life this is true. The decision to go to college creates more options than if you don’t. The decision to open a savings account creates more options than if you don’t.

But after dwelling on that statement for a number of years I’ve come to the conclusion that the decisions that define us are not the ones that leave us with the most options in the end. Rather the opposite is true: the decisions that truly define us are the ones that cut off every other option.

Next to becoming a Christian, the most defining moment of my life was the day I married Judi. On that day I cut off about 132,943,503 (or something like that) other options – that is, all the other women I could have married.

When you became a Christian, you threw off every other “religious” option available to you. You said, in the lyrics of the old hymn, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”

Contrast that to the idea of “moral relativism,” the idea that there is no objective truth outside of what the individual wants there to be. The stench of this belief is not merely that it’s wrong – it is that it demands nothing of you. Its very premise is based on “options” that allow you to morph into whatever belief is most convenient at the time. It’s the philosophy of posers. Very few people have died for moral relativism. (Many have died because of it, but not for it.)

What does all this mean? Godly, effective, lasting passion comes from faith that ditched the “options” a long time ago. It was Esther who said, “If I perish, then I perish.” (Esther 4:16). Paraphrased for today: “If this goes bad for me, then it goes bad for me.”

This attitude is evident in the life of a single mom who commits to raising her children in faith, without malice for the husband who bailed, not dwelling on the years of love lost because of his selfishness. She fights to the death because she made a decision a long time ago that cut off all of her options: to follow Jesus without turning back.

It is evident in the father who doesn’t chase the fantasy of all he thought would have had by now back when he was twenty-one. Rather, he steps up and faces the challenges of being a husband and a father to people who were entrusted gracefully to his care. He doesn’t enter a second childhood at forty. Instead, channels his energy toward what gains the most ground for the Kingdom: godly leadership, gospel-driven risks, fidelity at all costs, and integrity to the end.

The examples could go on and on, but faith that ditched the options a long time ago is what Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus had. They lived on the run; every second counted. Life was not mapped out; it was laid down. Where you’ll end up in 20 years is not so important when you’re not sure where you’ll end up tomorrow.

When I die, I’m not interested in people remembering all the things I did or said. I only want them to say with confidence, based on the way I lived, that I really believed.