The bible is full of weirdos; take some of the prophets, for example: Ezekiel cooked his food over human dung, laid on his right side for 390 days, and then his left for 40 days, as a God-ordained symbol of atonement for Israel's and Judah's sins; Isaiah walked around naked for three years as a warning of future calamity coming for Egypt and Cush; God ordered Hosea to marry a sleazy, unfaithful prostitute, AND forgive her and accept her back every time she cheated on him. Hosea's assignment served to paint a graphic picture of God's love for His unfaithful people; Joshua and his people marched around the walls of Jerico, shouting until it collapsed, much to the amusement and derision of the Jerico inhabitants; and John the Baptist lived in the wilderness, wore camel hair clothes, ate bugs, and forcefully preached an unpopular repentance message. But the icing on the cake: Jesus constantly behaved inappropriately as defined by social and/or religious customs. He boldly declared himself to be the Christ; he touched and healed a (gynecologically) unclean woman; he verbally trashed the Pharisees, the highest religious rulers of the day; he ate at a dishonest tax collector's house; he protected an adulterous woman from a lawful (and deserved) death; he defended the disciples accused of breaking sabbath rules and gathering grain, again in the face of established religious protocol; AND He healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons and turned the world upside down! To further explore biblical weirdness, the book of Acts records numerous accounts of magnificent miracles, all performed by ordinary men, full of passion. Don't tell me that stuff was only for then and not today! Now go read Revelation and get your mind blown :)
'I tell you,” [Jesus] replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. WHAT? Jesus PROCLAIMED that either they must SHOUT, or the very stones would! My grandma, whom I loved dearly and was a wonderful woman, used to say about the churches I preferred, "I don't go for that whoopin' and hollerin' nonsense." Well her church was an Evangelical Lutheran church, and not only is pro-choice and pro-gay, but ignores the issue of a real hell. Give me whoopin' and hollerin' and the unadulterated truth!
Passion includes the following definitions: "a powerful emotion; an abandoned display of emotion." We are to express emotion just as Jesus expressed emotion. Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus (THEN raised him from the dead!) and over Jerusalem's unbelief. He cursed the fig tree (and it died), and he violently cleared out the temple. That's passion, Baby!
The opposite of passion is apathy, defined as "1. absence of interest in or enthusiasm for things generally considered interesting or moving; 2. absence of emotion." I submit to you that the majority of our gatherings of worship and praise show just that, a poverty of enthusiasm and joy. We are more concerned with propriety than we are with the over-the-top joy that is our strength. Be over the top; be a freak! Ignore the snide remarks to chill out and settle down. DON'T settle down, don't settle for lukewarm, period. Revelation 3:15-16 says, "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." We are called to be a people of passion and exuberance! 2 Samuel 6:14 declares, "David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might." And his wife, Michal, watching from a window, saw his antics, and "depised him in her heart" (v. 16). Hmmm? Are we Davids or are we Michals?
The JOY of the Lord is our Strength! (Nehemiah 8:10) Joy is defined as: a. Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness; and b. The EXPRESSION or MANIFESTATION of such feeling (emphasis mine). So when we say that our joy is just on the inside and not visible, we are only half rejoicing!
Lou Engle tells of a time the Lord gave him an embarrassing assignment. The Lord called him to stand up in the middle of a showing of the blasphemous "O God" movie (starring George Burns), and shout out that Jesus was the true God. Lou initially disobeyed, totally unwilling to make a fool of himself, but the Lord "burned in his belly" so strongly, that Lou felt he had no choice, finally obeyed, shouted like a maniac the message the Lord gave him, and then ran out of the theater. We WILL be called to be weird. We will offend people as we preach the gospel and stand for righteousness. We will hurt our friends when we tell them the truth ("But the wounds of a friend can be trusted," Prov. 27:6) We may even lose everything: job, position, reputation, even family respect, but the treasure of God is FAR more important. He is a pearl of great price and we MUST start acting like it. We must also act like Hell is real, and real people (including friends and loved ones) are going there, unless they repent and turn to Him, period. There are not many ways to heaven. There is one Way, and we must proclaim it from the mountain tops! "Let your light SO shine before men that they may see your good works and PRAISE your Father in heaven (Matt 5:16)."
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