Can I tell you about my passion? It is really hard to not write about my passion without putting it in all caps. It’s even harder to not put an explanation point after it. 

Recently I got some feedback from a couple friends about my website and quite honestly, straight up about me. The first one is easy to address.

My friend told me he got angry at my website. His complaint was that he wants to be able to search my posts in a list. Valid point. I have been wanting to get that system in place for my site but if anyone might have noticed, as my friend acknowledged, I have been writing up a storm lately. And…I am only one guy. 

So, a quick word to my readers. The list search system will be coming to you soon.  As soon as I can catch a break from my regular job and all this writing. <- I really wanted to put an explanation behind that sentence. This brings me to my second point that I need to talk about today:

 Passion.

Let me first apologize to all my readers. I have apparently been using a forceful method to deliver my message here at Give Your Story. Please allow me to explain.

Sea, I have avoided the social media frenzy for over 20 years.  Personally, I had no use for it.  I wrote about this here: God’s Book. About 9 years ago, I found myself at a blog and that is where my online presence started.  The author of the blog and several others had their pictures linked in with WordPress, and so I decided that in order to be a genuine presence I should show my face also. However, I was still anonymous and still am today. Just Phil.

  Fast forward to just over a year ago, and now I am an official Facebook member. I have a profile and besides a Give Your Story page and a couple posts and some friends who found me, that is the extent of my online Facebook presence. I do have a private Facebook group I am part of. Other than that, I don’t really have experience with online presence and proper social media etiquette. I pretty much made up my own as I went. It is a reflection of myself and as it turns out, apparently it is offensive. Now, I have seen some cra cra stuff along the way with people sending memes and reels and screenshots of twitter feeds and Instagram and so on. I have even picked up on the capital letters meaning anger but ignored that fact in my own writing technique. (I just capitalized the a in the word anger and had to go back and correct..ouch). Phil what are you talking about?  I am talking about my passion. 

Sea, my passion is Jesus. My passion is God. I cannot begin to explain to you how big <- I want to capitalize this…my Faith..ok so I had to capitalize Faith.. I just had too. Faith is my passion.

I love my God. I really do. I love Him with all my heart. I am so grateful. I would give my life for His cause. Are you familiar with the story line about two girls who died in the tragic Columbine High School shooting? The story was, that these two girls were chosen at random and asked if they believed in Jesus. They were shot point blank after they replied yes. There is great debate as to the truth of the story, but the larger point is that it was a story that provided hope at that time. That story rebuked the evil that took place. True or not, people took to the story. Now I am not a martyr nor am I interested in being a martyr, however that is how I feel. I would take the bullet for Him. I love Jesus that much. That is just one example in how I explain the strength of my Faith.

Here is what took place today as another example of my Faith:  After I realized that my all caps stuff can be viewed by others as offensive even though I truly am most of the time just emphasizing my point, I also had to admit that sometimes there is anger and force behind my all caps sentences. As I drove down the road listening to K-Love, Yes I am – Vertical Worship sang out to me from the speakers. After the song was over, out to YouTube I went to play it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Yes, I am compulsive with my God too. The last time it played, I was literally blowing up my ears and killing my voice screaming it and pounding my fist on the center console. Then it stopped.  My phone froze and the display in the car also froze.  Message from God – uh ok Phil um stop.  Once I cleared everything then it was – keep me in the moment – Jeremy Camp – K-Love.

Are you picking up what I am laying down?  I will pour my heart out for Him. I don’t care even when I should. That is how much I love Him.  That is what He will do for me and all He wants us to do is Love Him back. I can do that! <- Couldn’t control myself there…

That’s my passion. 

To my readers: I apologize if my message(s) have come across as blunt force or even angry. I really just want to emphasize my passion. I will make effort to change my tone and deliver my message to you in amore loving way avoiding the cap thing as much as possible. cap meaning capitals cuz I am all about caps for more! (Accept complaints…)

Passion.

   Interruption-this just happened while writing this: I am in a fantasy football league. I have been involved with the same group for 9 years.  They are starting to get organized for this season and every year there is this flurry of guys who want changes (cuz they think they will get some advantage I guess) and then those same guys end up complaining. So, I pick on the complainers. I sent this message as a suggested change for this year:  LiMit complaints to one complaint per team per season.  The raised M was purposeful. I just got a reply. Please raise cap for complaints. This guy does not mean capital letters for complaints. He means cap in the sense of more. Either way it cracked me up. You can’t make this stuff up folks.