Preparing For Someday, Part 1: Zeal For God

"Zeal in religion is a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way. It is a desire which no man feels by nature-which the Spirit puts in the heart of every believer when he is converted-but which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called 'zealous' men...

  A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed up in one thing; and that one thing is to please God.

Whether he lives, or whether he dies-whether he has health, or whether he has sickness-whether he is rich, or whether he is poor-whether he pleases man, or whether he gives offense-whether he is thought wise, or whether he is thought foolish-whether he gets blame, or whether he gets praise-whether he gets honour, or whether he gets shame-for all this the zealous man cares nothing at all.

He burns for one thing; and that one thing is to please God, and to advance God's glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it-he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him. Such  one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, work, and give money, he will cry, and sigh, and pray...If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work of Moses, Aaron, and Hur, on the hill (Exodus 17:9-13). If he is cut off from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter, and the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of 'zeal' in religion."  (I took this quote from Knowing God by J.I. Packer, page 173. It was originally written by Bishop J.C. Ryle)

Whew. Did you read the whole thing? If you didn't, you go right back up to the top and read it. Read it twice. Maybe three times. I read it through 5 times the first time I ever found it. I've been reading Knowing God ever since December, when a good friend of mine let me borrow it. Since then my friend has moved, but she gave me the book, and I'm still reading through it. When I found the above quote, I knew I wanted to write a blog post about it. It fit in great with the ideas I had for the Preparing for Someday series.

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds." (Titus 2:11-14)

Let me ask myself a question: am I zealous for God?

Let me ask you a question: are you zealous for God?

I'm not sure about any of you, but my answer was no. I'm not zealous for God like  I should be. Yes, I love Jesus, and I love reading the Bible and learning more about Him, and talking about Him with other people...but am I zealous in the way that Bishop J.C. Ryle describes zealousness?

Did you notice when reading the quote that it sounded a lot like wedding vows? Living or dying, sickness or health, wealthy or poor... it sounds a lot like wedding vows to me. And that's what our relationship to Christ should look like. We are Christ's bride.

When you get married, are you going to do everything you can to impress your man? Are you going to stick by him when you 're happy, rich and healthy? Are you going to love him when you're sick, poor and dying?

If you answered with a resounding yes to those questions, will you do those things for Jesus? Will you really be zealous for Him?

You may be wondering how this fits into our series on Preparing for Someday. It does. In fact, this is really the most important way to prepare for someday. If you are not zealous for God now, you won't be when you have a husband and six children! (Or even just one kid! :)

We always want to put things off till tomorrow. We'll love God more tomorrow. We'll read our Bibles' more tomorrow. We'll pray more tomorrow. We'll talk about Him more tomorrow.

Scarlett O'Hara summed our thoughts up when, after Rhett Butler leaves her, she says, "There's always tomorrow." (If you've never read or watched Gone With the Wind, that makes no sense to you...)

Don't think that I don't do those things. I'm guilty. I'm very guilty.

I've been guilty of thinking, "I can fix that once I get married." Why do we think that? Please tell me I'm not the only one! We have this mindset that things will be drastically different once we get married. We think that loving God will somehow be easier, and that praying will be easier and having a consistent quiet time will be easier and that loving our family will be easier, simply because we're married.

My brother added some light to this situation when we were discussing it and said, "People think that marriage will get rid of all of their problems, but really, marriage only adds problems to the ones we already have." That has to be one of the wisest things he has ever said to me.

When we think about getting married, we often just think about staying at home and having nothing to do. We don't think about having a house to take care of, and errands to run, and cooking to do, and eventually, children to take care of...we only think about being married and having all day to do nothing but sit around and read our Bibles.

Just a thought, but how many of us, if we really had all day with nothing to do, would really read our Bibles and pray and read books about Jesus and His goodness? I don't think I would be doing that. I would play piano, or guitar, or work on my novel or work on the blog, and read other peoples blogs...

I admire my sister-in-law so much. She is an amazing, beautiful woman who loves my brother and loves her son. (Although seriously, what's not to love?? ;)
But Heather doesn't have all day to just sit around and read her Bible. She keeps their house running, keeps clean clothes in the drawers, does a lot of cooking and baking, takes care of her baby and husband and sleeps sometimes!

With all that going on, Heather is one of the most godly women I know. You know why? Because she was zealous for Jesus before she married my brother. She was zealous for God before she even moved to South Carolina to be near our family.

This is the most important part of Preparing for Someday...being zealous for God. We can never never never be good girlfriends or wives or mothers if we are not zealous for Christ.

So, whether we are single or in a relationship or married, let's focus on being zealous for God. Let's focus on loving Him, no matter what's going on in life; no matter whether we're sick or healthy, rich or poor, winning or losing...let's focus on being zealous, girls.



Well, this was really long. Hopefully you made it all the way through. If not, come back later and read some more. Take your time. Tomorrow we'll be looking at Waiting:What It Doesn't Accomplish.