The most powerful force in the world, hands down, is love. We know it’s the driving force of the Creation and why God sustains it even unto this day.
It’s the glue that holds relationships together and it’s the power that drives the passions of our movements and organizations.
And yet for all of its power there is the true belief, at least in personal relationships, that loving puts you at a disadvantage. So here are 5 lies that we believe about love.
- If you’re loving, you’re a doormat. This basically means that love makes you passive. It tells you to allow people to treat you shabbily. They think because you’re loving, you somehow can’t be tough and strong, that you can’t stand up for yourself. Nothing can be further from the truth. Love can be tough and tender. And at its best, it is both.
- If you’re loving, you’re gullible. A person who’s loving believes anything. They can be lied to. Somehow we think that loving makes you stupid, because whatever you say, love just believes it. yet one of the most powerful concepts in the world is wisdom. Love plus knowledge plus time, equals wisdom. Loving people know that it’s a dangerous world and things happen, that people hurt people and that they can be betrayed at any moment.
- If you’re loving, you’re soft. Again, the idea that if you’re loving, you can be pushed around. A lot of people mistake being loving as being emotional. Emotions that lack discipline cause you to allow other people to treat you badly. But that’s not love. That’s a need expressing itself as love.
- If you’re loving, you’re a wimp. Not only do loving people allow other people to take advantage of them, they themselves fail to have the backbone to do and say the hard thing. That’s the lie, isn’t it? At the core of what it means to be courageous is love. Courage is the will to defend, protect, and promote the very thing that is the object of love. Loving people can be tough. Loving people can say no. Loving people can call people to an accounting according to the rules. Sometimes the most loving thing is to say “no.”
- If you’re loving, you’re vulnerable. Let’s face it, the world can be a very dangerous place. There are people who have evil and malevolent intent. And somehow we believe that if we go into the marketplace, that we’re at a disadvantage because love has somehow blinded us to the realities of those around us.
The truth is, love knows everything, and it loves anyway. Love understands how treacherous business can be. It thinks and plans of a better way to be, of a better way to respond to the pain and the suffering around us.
Love is tough. Love is strong, but love isn’t lazy. Love pays the price. It gladly sacrifices something it loves for something it loves even more. Love is the thing that will keep you pliable and keep you human. Love will motivate you to read, to learn, and to become more than you are today. Love will draw people in and move movements ahead. The world truly is spinning around today by the power of love.