Candlelight, wine and roses, chocolate, good health, white teeth, kindness, knowledge, muscles. If you listen to the media, you’ll come up with plenty of ideas for what it is you need in order to kindle passion.

But what is it that calls forth the best you have to offer, and in having it, makes you the best you there is? Well, it’s not these things. Not really. It’s not even sex, good as sex is.

I’m talking about what speaks to your deepest desires to be wanted, to be connected, to be vital. Because when these desires are met, you find yourself doing without sleep, serving in a job where you get little notice, staying in a marriage when the flame is gone, volunteering for the task no one wants. Once passion is stirred, it enables you to do the impossible thing.

To deeply belong, to be deeply known, to be deeply valued. These are the things that woo us and bring out our best. These are what today’s passages are about.

Zechariah 1

God wants them home. The exiles have returned to Judah because Darius, king of Persia, has sent them. And while they’re rebuilding God’s temple, they’re not necessarily connecting with him.

So God gives Zechariah eight visions to get the message across that he’s longing for them. Now that they’re back in Judah, God wants them to come home to him.

The first vision is of four horses and riders conferring in a birch grove, who ride all over the earth, checking on things and reporting back. “All is well, everything’s under control,” they tell the angel when they meet up. When he gives their report, he asks God the question on everybody’s mind: now that they’re safe and sound, how long before God stops being angry with them? Ze 1:8-12 MSG.

What God says next are “good words, comforting words” about his love for them. He loves them so deeply, he’s even jealous for their affection. His present anger is with the godless nations who’ve mistreated them. His people, however, get his softer side—his presence, his compassion, his help to rebuild, his comfort, his favor, his outpouring of prosperity, Ze 1:13-17 MSG.

The second vision is of four horns and four blacksmiths. It shows what God’s got planned for the nations who’ve oppressed them. Even though God sent those nations in the first place to get Judah’s attention about sin, it’s payback time for the brutality they’ve suffered. God doesn’t let anybody get away with hurting his kids, Ze 1:18-21 MSG.

I love how God communicates. He doesn’t just say he wants a relationship again, he shows them. He pursues their good by sending out horses and riders to check on them. He handles their abusers and shows them the blacksmiths who’ll topple them. God’s actions match his words of deep and abiding love, even after generations of their spurning him.

I’m guessing he had them at the birch grove.

God is personal, intimate, and he doesn’t just want them back to business-as-usual. Worship without their hearts engaged is how the whole falling away thing got started in the first place. He wants them to return wholeheartedly, not just geographically or religiously. Making sacrifices and offerings from cold hearts never did anybody any good: God wants their passion kindled again.

I’ve been writing here a lot lately. It’s my joy to read my Bible and write about it in the morning. But I haven’t had a lot of readers since I’ve been writing more, and the reason I started writing more was to increase my readership, not see it slack off. I don’t like to read blogs daily myself, so if you don’t either, I get it. However, daily writing is what the blogging experts recommend in order to increase your audience. And it’s just not happening.

In my flurry of words, I got sucked into checking my blog stats a lot to see if there was a bump up in readers. Finding lower numbers sapped my joy in it. I’ve been tempted to think I’m wasting my time reading and writing about the Bible. My passion was fading.

Last week, I prayed that God would help me write for him alone. Checking stats was a downer, and I wanted to be free of them. I thought if I just had a sign that he was reading and liking what I posted, then whether or not anybody else did wouldn’t matter.

On Saturday, my post was about God using the hard places we live in to bring us closer to him. I wrote this personal note, “I’ve been in a hard place for a number of years, and what Micah says, I’ve found to be true. The wasteland, the dungeon, the desert, these are the best places to find him. God turns our ruins into an oasis and draws near. We find he’s all we really need, and we had no idea,” (click here for that post).

Later that same day, I was reading over the scripture I’d volunteered to read for worship the next day. The words wasteland, dungeon, desert and ruins from Isaiah 51 jumped out as I read them—these were the very same words I’d used in my post about Micah.

It felt as if God had read my post over my shoulder and lifted my words and used them. But that couldn’t be right. His words were written way before mine. But in the sequence of events—my obsessive blog checking, my prayer, my post, my reading his words in Isaiah and finding some of the same key words I’d used that same day—well, it sure felt like he saw me and knew what I was doing, and dare I say—liked it? This was just what I’d asked for.

Wanting intimacy with God like this is what he wants with me. I can’t want more from him than he already wants. If I could, I’d be wanting a closer relationship than he does, and I can’t out-love God.

At its core, his creation of earth, making himself known to us through his words to Moses and others, the coming of Jesus, and his church building God’s kingdom on earth, all of it is about connecting and being intimate with each of us—like a marriage, like a lover.

This is why he puts those sleek horses in a grove of trees. Can you hear their snorting and their stamping feet, see their vibrant colors of red, brown and white popping among the bleached-white birch trees? It’s a stunning scene. Maybe it’s a cold morning, a little mist has settled in the leaves. And what are his horses and riders doing? They’re reconnoitering after galloping across the earth to find out if it’s safe for the people God loves, Ze 1:8-11.

This is why he sets those axe-wielding blacksmiths in a field, slicing off the power horns of charging rams. Can you see the action? The muscled arms of these men, the ferocity of the rams, the sound of the axes as they hit their mark and lay these beasts flat. Why the confrontation? Because these horns have gone too far brutalizing the people God loves, and it’s time to cut them down, Ze 1:18-21.

God paints word pictures to show us his lover’s heart. It’s the same heart that pens love notes to us. And if you trust him, you can put your name in this one, “The Lord will surely comfort [you] and look with compassion on all [your] ruins; he will make [your] deserts like Eden, [your] wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in [you], thanksgiving and the sound of singing…[You] will soon be set free; [you] will not die in [your] dungeon, nor will [you] lack bread. For I am the Lord your God…,” Is 51:3, 14-15 NIV.

Love like this is stirring. I can feel the spark, the flaming. And the melting.

Gotta love a God who knows you and wants you and romances you like this.

Revelation 12

It’s a nativity scene you won’t find at Hobby Lobby. In Revelation, we get a peek behind-the-scenes at what happened in heaven when Mary gave birth to Jesus. Satan-as-dragon tried to eat him (remember Herod?), but Jesus and Mary were kept safe and sound in the desert (Egypt). God’s purpose to bring the Messiah to earth couldn’t be thwarted, even by a conniving devil and his hordes of angel-demons, Re 12:1-6.

Half way through the action, a “strong voice” comes out of heaven and interrupts the drama—he can’t help himself—and says all is well because God’s Kingdom and its Messiah are victorious. Satan, the Accuser, has been thrown out. Let’s celebrate! Re 12:10-14 MSG.

What’s good news for heaven, isn’t so good for earth, because now Satan is “wild and raging with anger.” He consoles himself by “mak[ing] war with the rest of her children,” who keep God’s commands and believe in Jesus, Re 12:12,15-17 MSG.

It’s helpful to see what’s really going on in this story that’s become so familiar, it’s losing our interest, let alone our participation. So here it is, peeled back to the bare bones: God’s plan is to save people. Satan’s plan is to thwart him. Satan’s angry that God is God and he’s not. If he can’t be God, then he can at least pester the heck out of the rest of us.

The baby in the manger tempts us to say “awww…” or to fall asleep at the Christmas Eve service. We’ve heard it all before. But we’re in a war, John Eldredge says, not in a stable with lowly shepherds and livestock. Part of our fight is just to wake up and join up, to stop living as if life is mostly about paying bills or finding something on Netflix, (Waking the Dead, Thomas Nelson, 2003.)

Suddenly, the babe in the manger becomes the Lamb who was slain. Herod and Pilate become men moved by the dragon. In the saga that began with the first sunrise on earth, our role is to decide which side we’re fighting on. I don’t know about you, but feeling needed and wanted certainly wake up my passion and gets my purpose juices flowing.

Gotta love a God who says you are vital in his story.

Prayer 

God, the epic fantasy you’ve written is real and you want me to take my place in it. Forgive me for ho-humming my way through my days and missing you in them. Shake me awake to the war that’s raging. Thank you for your passion for me that kindles mine for you.

Proverbs 30:17

A disrespectful eye towards one’s parents gets pulled out and swallowed. God watches.

Passages in Zechariah, Revelation, Psalms and Proverbs are selected for today in The One Year Bible.