Okay, this is Beth. Listen, what we live for at Living Proof is to serve people the Word

of God. We base our ministry on Hebrews 4-12 that tells us that the Word is alive and

active. We pray this message is going to serve you in some way today and that God is

going to speak through it. Thank you so much for giving us this privilege.

It says now, verse 5, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature,

sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed which is idolatry because of these

things the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived,

but now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these. Listen carefully, anger, rage,

malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. What do all of those have in common?

In Colossians chapter 3, the whole theme of the teaching under the inspiration through the

Apostle Paul is on passion. It's on desire. And so he is saying, you set your hearts on things above,

set your affections on things of Christ. And so he begins to then talk about the kind of

passions that are of the flesh that displace our holy passion. You cannot deny the fact that

anger is a really big motivator. It's a big passion and some of us have such a lack of passion

in our lives that we'd rather be mad than feel dead. Can we be that honest with one another?

It's a passion. Lust is a passion. People who are addicted to pornography are looking for passion.

Is this making sense? Malice is passion. Greed is passion. Bad language is passion. It's the

ability to just speak something passionate over a situation. Is this making sense? So what happens

is this, you and I were created for holy passion. But if we're not careful, we'll substitute.

We'll substitute. And listen, if we would get ourselves in such a posture before God that he would

fill us with holy passion, we would not have to have anger, malice and greed and all sorts of

forms of unholy passion. Because your thing is, at the heart of your desire, you just want to

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