What’s Wrong with Passion?

What are you passionate about?

What do you love? What stirs up strong desires within you?

For me, I love music. I love dancing. And I love laughter. You know what I also love? Really good food. The other day, my friend Rebecca made these magnificent pork-chops. They were perfectly seasoned. I chewed that pork-chop slowly so I could savor the meal. I kept saying, “mm! Mm! Bex! These are good!” She thought they were a bit too salty, but I disagreed. A good meal is a beautiful memory. 

I also love the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I watched it yesterday and my heart swelled at the display of honor, valor, loyalty, friendship, vulnerability, and persistence in spite of great peril. I watched it with my best friend, Eileen, and I turned to her and said, “doesn’t this just make your heart come alive?” I think she chuckled. She probably disagreed too.

Yesterday evening, after having to force myself to wash the dishes, I feel like God nudged me to listen to Aurora. I love some of her songs. They reach a place in my soul that I can’t even express in words. It feels like thunder. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s the same feeling that I get when I listen to “Into the Unknown” by Idina Menzel. While I was listening to these songs, I felt a surge in my body that I just wanted to let out! 

I realized that the feeling was passion and that passionate part of myself is my favorite part of myself. I’m learning that my passion, in its raw form, was given to me by God and I have it in common with Jesus. 

I think I shared elsewhere, more specifically, on my Instagram that I am learning not to be ashamed of being sensitive. In the same way, I’m learning to let my passion out more for the world to see. 

Passion is not a bad thing. The issue comes in when we are passionate about the wrong things. The reason why my heart swells when I watch Lord of the Rings is because I desire to live a life marked by honor, valour, loyalty, friendship, vulnerability, and persistence. God has given us some very good desires/passions. I’m learning from my own experience with Jesus and from my own flawed perspective that we are taught by the world and even by the church that desire is bad. 

My dear friend, I want to tell you that passion/desire is good because God created it. It is when we desire or are passionate about the wrong things (things that harm ourselves and others, i.e. sin) that things get muddled. 

Jesus Had Passionate Desires

Check this scripture out: “And He said to them, With desire I have desired this-Passover to eat with you before-I suffer.” Luke 22:15 

Sounds so nice, Jesus said it twice! “With desire I have desired”. The greek word for the word desired in this passage is epithumia and is defined as,  “passion built on strong feelings (urges).”  Say what?! Jesus had passion built on strong urges?! Jesus felt?! HELPS Word-studies also notes that these passionate desires can be positive or negative, depending on whether the desire is inspired by faith. Now again, I am no bible scholar. What I’m about to say is my opinion, but I believe it is from God. I believe that God gives us passionate desires and that these desires point us to him, if we allow them to.

Imagine what it would have been like if Jesus suppressed or demonized his desire to eat the passover with His disciples, his homies? He dispelled some important, intimate stuff at the last supper. Imagine if he didn’t pay attention to that good desire or if he hid it in cold language? What if he said something like, “I’m hungry–let’s eat, here’s my body, remember me.” How cold is that? How uninspiring and uninviting? 

Jesus wants our passionate desires

I believe God is showing me a new depth to him that I’ve never experienced. For the longest time, I’ve thought being a Christian was boring. That didn’t deter me from my faith, but it has affected the quality of my relationship with God. Now don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some fantastic times together, but then I allow my own understanding and perspective (and honestly, other people’s too) to creep in and I go back to the same Christian routine. 

Before I was a Christian, I sought after thrills. It was the reason why I partied, why I drank, why I tried drugs, why I went out with different guys. And as a Christian, I would privately tell God that I didn’t regret those things because they were fun. Deep down, I think the soul-deep questions that I wanted to ask God were, “Can Christianity be fun? Can Jesus be fun? Can Jesus fulfill me? Is there a place here for my passion?” 

And now, I’m learning that the answer to my question is “yes.” 

There is a place for passion, for fun, for thrill in Christianity because Jesus is life. 

He tells us, “I am the Gateway. To enter through me is to experience life, freedom, and satisfaction. A thief has only one thing in mind–he wants to steal, slaughter, and destroy. But I have come to give you everything in abundance, more than you expect–life in its fullness until you overflow. I am the Good Shepherd who lays down my life as a sacrifice for the sheep.” John 10:9-11

Jesus wants to give you and me–you and I (whatever)–a full life. A life of abundance. Now this doesn’t mean you’ll be rich, popular, beautiful, married with 2 kids, have a big house, blah, blah, blah–no. Those things do not equate life. What I believe Jesus is saying here is that he will fulfill our soul-deep desires in ways that we’ve never imagined. My soul-deep desires are to be desired, accepted, loved-fully, to fulfill a grand purpose. To live a life of significance and impact. I find these things with Jesus, but only if I continue to seek and connect with him. He wants to fulfill my passionate desires, and friend, I’m starting to let him. 

Will you?