Love is Power

Love is power. Do you realize how much potential power you carry around with you every day? Every time you encounter another person, you have power over them. This power can affect their attitude, their day, their entire life. This is not power to be trifled with. It can transform the world, reshape communities, and change lives. This power rests inside of you, and always has.

Every time you encounter another person, you make a choice. Whether you are conscious of it or not, you have a choice in how to treat that person. The answer to that choice is the power you invoke over that person. There are only two options. Love or hate.

Now you are sitting there thinking, I never choose to hate someone! However, you do not consider this: the absence of love is hate. Every time you choose to treat someone in a way that does not demonstrate love, you show them hate. You show that person that they do not matter. You show that person that you do not care about them. You show that person that they are not worth the small amount of energy it would take to be polite, to be kind, to show love.

The affect of such a choice can be severely damaging. When it happens on a nation-wide scale, we get disasters like World War II. When it happens on a personal level, we get lying, cheating, theft and murder. People who do not feel loved cannot learn to show love. Every time you slight someone, every time you brush them off or push them aside, you push them down a dark path.

Love gives us power over other people, and people empower us through love. Think about all of the reasons you have to do good. I bet you will cite a person as the driving force in your life, friends and family you encouraged you, helped you, loved you. You feel good and do good because you know you are loved.

The opposite is also true. Think about all of the bad things that you have done, the times you acted out, acted on anger, hurt another’s feelings. Why did you do it? Because someone wasn’t giving you the love you needed. Educational psychologists have conducted studies which show that positive reinforcement, reward and encouragement, is far more affective than negative reinforcement, punishment and threats, in teaching children to learn and behave. Love makes us better, lack of love drags us down.

God shows us the magnitude of love’s power. He gives us love without end, and it is the people who have truly, fully known the love of God who have done the most for this world. When we are secure in the love of God, we need nothing else. His love is strong enough, as Paul says, to help us be content in all things. Hardship, poverty, danger, do not matter when the love of God is present. We don’t need anything else, and this gives us the power to live to our fullest potential. This is the power of God. This is the power God gave you.

Love is power. It sounds strange, but it’s true. It is one of the foundations of this world. And we have been entrusted with this power, every single one of us. So remember as you go about your life, work and play, that every action you take is full of power for good, or power for hate. Every time you interact with (or choose to ignore) another person, you help change the face of the world.