There are places you cannot go without passion. You can hear about those places, describe them, discuss them…but you really have no hope of access without an insatiable appetite to get there. Deep hunger and thirst drive you to do things you would never dream of doing otherwise. There is no self-consciousness there, no sense of limitation; there is an emotional abandonment pointed directly at getting what you crave, what you’ve got to have.

If this is to be the generation that will seek God’s face, it’s time we see hunger and thirst for righteousness as an open door into all the highest heights and deepest depths in God. It’s time we enter into a passionate chase after God’s kingdom and his righteousness as the all-consuming focus of our entire existence.

Moses begged God to see his glory. Joshua could not tear himself away from the temporary prayer tent in the wilderness. David told God he was like a deer panting after water, like a man in a dry and thirsty land where there is NO water - he had to see God’s power and glory as he had seen in the sanctuary (God’s tabernacle), or he would die.

There is no pretense in true hunger. There is no ritual in desperate thirst. A passion that springs out of glimpsing something real in God will get over or around or literally tear through any obstacle to seeing the fullness of that reality. This is the violence that the kingdom of God allows, and this is why only the violent take it by force.

When teenage David ran headlong at Goliath with only a slingshot and five stones, he awoke something in the entire army of Israel that would not die out. They got a glimpse of something they had to have in God. It caused Jonathan to run up sheer cliffs and singlehandedly take out entire Philistine garrisons, and later to swear eternal allegiance to David. The Israelite army described in 1 Chronicles 11 and 12 is nothing like the same army described a decade earlier at the beginning of 1 Samuel 17. They had a vision and they had gone after it.

Jesus has run through all hell for us. The door to the all the fullness of God and his kingdom and his righteousness is wide open.