In what situations might our passion lead us astray?

Proverbs 19:2Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good; haste makes mistakes.

Romans 10:2I [Paul] know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal.

Philippians 3:6-11I [Paul] was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!

Blind or misdirected enthusiasm can easily be led astray to produce great harm. Devotion to a distorted view of God often leads to evil done in God’s name. The apostle Paul’s life spanned a radical shift from being passionate about a wrong understanding of God, which led to the persecution of Jesus’ followers, to being passionate about God as revealed in Jesus Christ, which led Paul into the passionate service of Jesus and his followers. Paul discovered that his misdirected enthusiasm was not the pathway to a true relationship with God. He was called by God’s grace into a deeper, truer, and more enthusiastic relationship with God through Jesus Christ, his Lord and Savior.