Thank you for clicking through to find out more about why your crazy friend has advertised what they’re going to do because Jesus loves them. This was as a response to the message shared this week at Pip n Jay’s fortnightly Saturday evening worship time, appropriately called… Saturday Night Worship (SNW).

This week at SNW we continued our series on Passion for Jesus with looking at how we express our passion for Him. Taking the example of Noah we focused on the central theme of how God’s love inspires our passion for Him which is expressed through our hard work.

Noah knew God loved Him and walked faithfully with Him, working hard at his living relationship with a living God. Noah knew that God loved Him and when he was commanded to build the Ark he obeyed and worked diligently over years and years and finished the Ark, gathered all the animals from all the Earth and gathered and stored all the food he would need for the duration of the flood. Through Noah humanity was saved and God’s covenant with Noah never again to destroy the world with flood leads inextricably to the need for God to intervene himself through sending his son to live and die for our salvation, Jesus was a man of hard work too.

In the same way that Noah knew that God loved him, so we, before we do anything else, must be blown away by the enormity of God’s love for us. Indeed the whole Bible screams out “I love you” our message directly from God to us personally for that love to change our lives. The most extravagant expression of God’s love being: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

This love must be the inspiration for our passion for Jesus. As we understand more of God’s love for us so our passion for him grows. But just as Noah expressed his passion for God in hard work and Jesus showed his love and passion for us and The Father through hard work, so must we, by working hard on our relationship with Him through the spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, devouring the Word and intentional praise and worship to name but a few. Our relationship with God cannot be built upon a weekly one-night-stand at church but a serious, committed, sacrificial relationship that looks more like a marriage than a series of flings.

Noah’s Ark was the vehicle of salvation for humanity at the time. Today’s Ark is the church, Christ’s body on earth together working to further His kingdom through praise, fellowship and mission. So we must work hard on building the church, making it big, strong and watertight like the ark so that come the day of Judgement it is ship shape and full to bursting with the saved. new each have an individual role to play committing to fellowship and the membership of a church and body of people such as a small group. We must be committed and work hard at encouraging and making peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ and most importantly fulfilling the role of the Church in furthering God’s Kingdom, ministering his word to those who have not heard it, do not understand it, or have not accepted it yet and making disciples.

Therefore the call to respond was in two areas, knowing God’s love and hard work.

We'll post the talk from Saturday night here for you to listen to soon.

Whether you have never known God’s love or feel you need it to overwhelm you afresh I encourage you to seek God to reveal His love in all its fullness to you first. Let this inspire you and your passion for Him. Then ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you where you need to work hard; either on your relationship with the living God or in building the Church. Ask Him to reveal to you how you should do this then do the same as your crazy friend.

Be a little crazy. Noah’s display of passion and hard work was the Ark, huge and visible for all to see. Let yours be too. In the same way as your friend write what you’re going to work hard on as your facebook status (or maybe tweet it or even e-mail it to everyone in your address book) and don’t forget to write why you’re going to do it – “Because Jesus love me!” For example “I’m going to read one more chapter of the Bible every day because Jesus loves me!” or “I’m going to tell one person a day who doesn’t know Jesus all about Him because Jesus loves me!” or maybe “I’m going to commit to going to my small group every week even if I have something else on because Jesus loves me!” Whatever it is share it and do it and don’t forget to link it to this webpage so that the call to hard work spreads.