One Pure and Holy Passion

Where are the men and women with one pure and holy passion? Where are the Christians with one magnificent obsession? Where are the souls that can sing about their one glorious ambition for life — not to live for earthly pleasures or dreams, but to know and follow hard after God? Oh how the world would be shaken and turned upside down again if this song found its prayer upon every Christian’s heart:

Give me one pure and holy passion

Give me one magnificent obsession

Give me one glorious ambition for my life

To know and follow hard after You.

This is the prayer of those who make it plain that their citizenship is in heaven, who make it plain they seek a better country, a heavenly one whose founder and builder is God. The world may be ashamed of such flaming souls, their friends and family may dismiss them as fanatic and narrow, but “God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Hebrews 11:16).

I ask again, where is the holy tenacity, the sacred violence, the total consecration to King Jesus? Where is the seriousness, the abandon, the laying down of one’s life, trusting that heaven will more than repay every sacrifice? We read about it in the Scriptures: “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). Is such a person also staring back in your reflection?

Christ Our Glorious All

To attain this singlemindedness, every rival must be decrowned and deposed. To have Christ as our Groom, we must, like those at the altar, vow to forsake all others. Realize what we are singing when we say, “This world is empty, pale, and poor, / Compared to knowing you, my Lord.” Or in the words of John Owen as he contemplated the glory of Jesus Christ,

Herein would I live; herein would I die; hereon would I dwell in my thoughts and affections; to the withering and consumption of all the painted beauties of this world, unto the crucifying all things here below, until they become unto me a dead and deformed thing, no way [fit] for affectionate embraces.

Have you and I, my reader, seen a Christ whose glory exposes the painted beauties of this world? Do our lives make any sense apart from this God become man and soon to return? Or have we settled for half-measures? Do we live as if we really only had hope in this life? It is so easy to get distracted and dull, isn’t it? We stumble, we sag, we sink. John Bunyan portrayed the minister as a man who has the world behind his back — how often does that describe us?

Wonderful, Dangerous Prayer

These are hard questions that require honest answers. Songs must not be sung heartlessly or mindlessly or casually. God actually hears them, and he knows when they are sung with our lips while our hearts remain far from him. But singer, beware. Although this is a wonderful prayer, a scriptural prayer, a needed prayer, it is a dangerous prayer.

God may answer it in ways we did not intend. He may bring persecution, suffering, trials. He may bring loss, heartache, disease. He may sweep us beyond our capacity, beyond our comfort. But as long as he brings himself, his comfort, his help, we ought to be more than willing to cry to heaven,

Give me one pure and holy passion

Give me one magnificent obsession

Give me one glorious ambition for my life

To know and follow hard after You.

Give it to us, Lord. This obsession, this one ambition, this pure and holy passion, this total abandon, seeking you until we bow before you face-to-face. Lead us on, and we will follow after you.