Welcome to the very first episode of the With Passion Podcast! I’m so giddy my podcast finally launched – I’m so glad you’re here!
Since this is my first episode, I wanted to thank you by giving you some of my favorite things. When you leave a review and share this episode on social media, I will send you some goodies straight to your front door – think bath bombs with an afternoon latte. I will be selecting one of you each week after the release of each episode, so leave a review and share this episode on social (but you have to tag me so I can see it!).
Okay, are you ready? Let’s dive in.
So passion. An entire podcast about passion. I’ll be honest, when I first got the notion to speak on passion it seemed like a natural topic for me to easily talk about, like of course I would talk about passion. But to devote an entire podcast on it is something else. An episode is doable, or maybe a season, but an entire podcast still seems a little daunting. But it also feels like what I’m supposed to do. You know the feeling, right?
I love the opening line to Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life. He begins the book by stating: It’s not about you. And to quote Rick Warren again, we “were born by his purpose and for his purpose” – our passions, the things that drive us, were given to us by God and they are ultimately for God.
So as we begin to define the word passion, let’s keep those 4 words in mind: It’s not about you. It’s not about us.
I have an English degree, so I take definitions very seriously and I look words up often. So when I began to process and dig into the meaning of the topic and word ‘passion’ I began by asking myself a series of questions. Questions like: Where is passion created? And how do we find it? Where did I personally find it? How do we remain steadfastly passionate? I also began by looking up the word passion.
According to Merriam Webster, “passion” refers to a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement either for something or about doing something.
The history and root of the word is “pati” or “passio” meaning “to suffer” – as in, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross. That was literally written within the search on google!
Now I don’t know about you, but I was veryyyy surprised that the word “passion”, which in our culture today is a big fiery word with positive meaning, is actually rooted in suffering. It means to “suffer, to bear and to endure.” Are you also wondering how we have come so far from the true, biblical and historical meaning of the word “passion”? I began to go down that trail too, but then I had the thought that maybe we haven’t necessarily escaped from the meaning, maybe we simply need to re-visit and re-shape our understanding.
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