Get Real. The three points of passion, point 2

The second point of passion is love, now I know I go on a lot about love but it is key to our everyday living, love and passion go hand in hand so much so that the dictionary describes love as a form of passion. Now as I have said in previous posts love does make the world go around, the world cannot function without love people would feel hopeless. Anyway love and passion, to love people (not in like a family, relationship or stalker kind of way) is an extension of your heart, you really have to have a passion to love people, you can't really go around saying that you love people and that people are your heart when their really the last thing you care about. It has to come from the heart and I mean from the deepest depths of your heart, you can't just love people a little bit, it's all or nothing. Love is a very strong word, providing you mean it. I've seen so many relationships where one person has said they love the other over and over again but there's been no heart behind it just empty words and those relationships have fallen through and either side has come out the other side in pieces. Words are so powerful, they can make or break you. For example, if you say to someone your going to do something for them and then don't do it, your gonna lose the respect of that person. Love is the most complicated point of the three to talk about as its a never ending subject. I guess what I'm trying to some up in this is that love is probably the most important point of passion, love and passion are tied together they are effectively the same thing. Just remember that you have to truly mean it before you can say it.

Get Real. The three points of passion, point 1

Get real. Alot of people may take that as an insult, an offence those people are probably thinking 'who is this guy telling me to get real?..really who does he think he is?' and others are probably thinking 'I don't need to get real. I'm already sorted, I'm fine, I've got nothing to worry about this doesn't apply to me' well to those people I understand exactly how you feel, you feel slightly angry, upset, you feel like your pride has been tampered with. You know why I know how you feel? It's because I felt the exact same way when I first heard what I'm about to share with you, I felt all those things and probably more. This is from a series of talks/messages from my senior leader at Today's Community Church, Wigan, UK Dave Belfield, it's a series that's still going to this day and probably will continue for a while. The Get Real series was based on observations and realisations that Dave had, he saw something wrong and told us about it. I'm not going to lie, it hurt the first time I heard it, but it started something inside of me, a chain reaction if you would, I began to see things in a different light, realise what the world actually looks like, it inspired me to start this blog. Most of the series so far has been based on passion, or rather the lack of it, and that's where I'm going to talk from, I'll be talking about the lack of passion in everyday life, whether it be in work situations, family situations or even national situations. Being British (sorry to any non-Brits reading this) we're supposed to be passionate, courageous and a force to be reckoned with kind of nation, a nation that if someone stood up to us we'd just growl and they'd sit back down. Now I'm not saying we're the kind of people that let other people walk all over us, we're not. But we have lost that passion, the passion to take on anyone in our way and win. You only have to look back 50-60 years ago to see that passion at it's best, during the second world war towns and cities across the UK were bombed and civilian's were killed night after night but that didn't stop our determination to win, and because of that we won. But enough history lessons, we as a nation have lost that passion, the drive that wants to make us the best we can be, the passion to go out there everyday, do the job at hand and go further than necessary to make Britain great. People today would rather go to work, do the job, come home and watch TV. That's not passion, there's nothing wrong with that believe me I'm the first person who would happily sit down and watch an entire TV series back to back but it's having that drive to come home and instead of switching on the TV going out, going to your neighbours house and connecting with them, getting to know them, becoming part of their life, not just living next door to them. Now your probably thinking here 'has he been hired by the government to promote the Big Society campaign?' no I havn't I'm just telling you what I think.The first point of passion is connection is the basis to any good nieghbourhood/ society/ family/ school/ college/ workplace etc. because for the simple fact of that people cannot function without connection, when was the last time you went to a resteruant, sat down got a menu, chose what you want and when the waitor comes over to take your order you just sit there and expect him to know what you want, of course your not, it requires connection, it requires you telling the waitor what it is you want and how you like it. Connection isn't easy and it isn't hard, it isn't easy because it means stepping out of your comfort zones and making an effort, something that most people hate to do, it requires you to step out against the social normalities and actually go and talk to some one. Facebook announced early last week that it had hit over 30 million active users in the UK alone which ammounts to nearly 50% of the population and Facebook also have 500 million users world wide, and it is all based on connection to other people, finding out stuff you didn't know about someone, finding old friends and new friends. It has become a internet phenomenon and is currently the highest profiting website ever. And it all started from something you can do on a walk to the shops (and by that I don't mean poke random people as you go and get some bread, you can be arrested for that). There is passion through connection, it takes passion to go and deliberatly connect to someone.

Inspired by Dave Belfield (@davebelfield Twitter)

Stand up and be counted

Stand up, do it, actually stand up (providing your sat down, if your not, sit down and stand up again)..done it? Feels good standing up doesn't it, no imagine what it feels like standing up for something, something your passionate about your faith, your beliefs, your family for example. Take me for example I stand for my generation, I stand for my faith.

There is a famous quote ' If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything' I don't want to fall for anything, I want to be able to go to the grave knowing that I stood for something, that I made a difference. I want to know that I was a man of significance and that I actually made a difference to this world. In that I choose to stand for the things that are close to me, for example; my youth group Two Twenty, my church TCC, my friends, my faith, my family. They're the things I want to stand for.

But in standing for something you can't just say you stand for something unless you actually live it, day in day out, it has to run through our veins. I guess what I mean is you have to be passionate about it, and the thing about passion is that no one should ever have to ask you what you're passionate about, they should just be able to see it in you.

This whole post was inspired by a talk from my youth leader and one of my closest friends who I've mentioned before so I won't mention him again. But in his talk about this he summed up what this entire blog is about when he said "I choose to stand for my generation" that's what this blog was set up to do, stand up and be counted.

You look through history's giants and world changers, Dr Martin Luther King Jr for example, he saw an injustice and he stood up and said something and shared his vision, although to this day his vision has not been fully completed as there are people who insist on dragging it down but he changed the way the colour of a persons skin or any other difference was treated, he truly set about equality.


Aaron
(Mr_Aaron_B Twitter)

Where is the love?

We live in a world of the mentality 'look out for number one' a world that would rather beat you down than build you up. There are countless groups and organisations that all about random acts of kindness and being loving people. But it doesn't start with a group or an organisation telling you about it, it doesn't even start with this blog, it starts with you...and only you. To love people and love the world it starts in your heart, it starts with you truly looking at the world and thinking to yourself 'I truly love this world'. The love for the world is in you. If you look at people and look at their lives, there is the love in there, its just become in tangled and hidden by the everyday slog that is life. But the true challenge is bringing out that love, untangle it from everything in your world that is holding it down. In 1 Timothy 1:5 (MSG) (yes I have used this text before but its so freaking good) it says ' The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God.' now I'm not necessarily saying you have to be a christian and open your entire life up to God for this text to apply to you, because you don't all you have to do is do right what it says at the start 'simply love' all I ask of you if you are reading this is that you love, now I know what your thinking 'eeww love, that's well wierd' well yes it is, love is wierd but then again so are alot of things, for example techno trance music from the philipeans is wierd but it makes up what it is to be human and so does love, its apart of us. The media whether it be social or general will always tell you that the world is a dangerous place and it cannot be trusted and you should hate the world, ignore what they tell you 9 times out of 10 its a load of rubbish (now I just want to make a point that although I said ignore what the media says about you not trusting the world, do listen to it abit, don't leave your car unlocked with the keys inside and trust the world that'll be there in the morning because the chances are it won't be, love is trusting but it's not stupid) the media have in a way taken over the way we think about people and even the way we act, we become suspicious of every person we meet, we think that they're somekind of criminal who is going to kill you, when in actual fact they could be someone who is in desperate need of help and in need of someone who loves people (again just to clarify don't go around hugging every person you see because you think they might need it, people have been put in prison for that) but see the world for what it really is. Sure it's got it's problems but problems are there to be solved. Love comes from the heart.

Inspired by the song 'Where is the love by the Black Eyed Peas 2005'
Music video link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYeekQkAdc

Love People

Loving people. To love people doesn't mean you have to be with them 24/7. It simply means to care for them, give your time to them. People are apart of our lives, their our family, our friends, our work colleages, our governments and we are infact people ourselves. We often see people at face value and never really think of what's deeper under the skin than what we see. Matthew 22 it talks about loving god and loving people and keeping them in the fundamentals of your life, keeping them in everything you do. If you walk into a workplace that is entirely profit centred its going to be full of people that are profit centred and only focus on getting ahead, as where if you walk into a workplace that is people centred your going to meet people that are all about people and the moving forward of people. If you truely think about it people make the world go around (now you may be sat there thinking, well obviously they do, without people there would be nothing) but the world can still function with people who are focused on doing the job at hand, as where people who's lives are about people not only get the job done but incorporate people into the job, they bring people in and they build them up, train them, make them about people. All in all people are awesome, random, annoying at times, wierd and wonderful. But thats what makes us human. Thats what makes us people.

Inspired by a series of 121's with Ben Tarbuck (@bentarbuck twitter)

If not us? Who? If not now? When?

If not us? Who? who will if we don't? We are called to be the generation that leaves a mark, makes a difference, inflicts social change. Our generation is made up of the future doctors, politicians, chefs, sporting legends, scientists, astronauts, world leaders so with that, who says we can't make a difference, who says we can't change the world we live in. We are not the future of our nation, we are the nation, already we are impacting the way our nation functions. People won't change themselves, people are always influenced by the next big thing. Media and social media have controlled the way society works for years by telling people what to belive, what to wear, what to eat and how to look. What mark will you leave? What will people remember you for? Do you want to be the person that is remembered for being negative, demeaning or discouraging or do you want to be the person everyone remembers for being positve, passionate, happy, encouraging and loving? Live and love life.

Inspired by a tweet from @JoelWithington "I will not leave this world the same!"

We Are The Love Generation.

We are the generation. The generation called to carry a bigger responsibility than any generation before us, we're called to love and be loved. We are called to change the way society work, to go against social normality's and make a difference in this world. This is what this blog is all about, making a difference, being the change. 1 Timothy 1:5 (MSG) simply says ' The whole point of what we're urging is simply love - love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God'. People are what drives me forward, keeps me going, seeing life for what it really is, not life surrounded by media and negativity but life with passion, love and hope. Life is impossible without these things, we can't thrive without it. If you read this, all i ask of you is that you lead your life full of passion, love and hope.