The Love Challenge
Love has lost its luster in the twenty-first century. Honestly, I hear people use love so much that it concerns me that the word has lost all of its meaning. We love our favorite song. We love our favorite restaurant. Then we love our tablets and our smart phones. I mean with the word being used so much it is no wonder that we do not have a clue what love is all about. Love is not what society and culture has made it. Also, love is not the definitions we have tried to attach to it. Love is the greatest gift you can ever give. My hope is that the world will get back to a place of authentic love. That we will heal our hearts of all the hurts and exemplify unconditional love to a world that desperately needs it. I’m talking about a love that goes beyond all biases and barriers. I want to live in such a way that I love without boundaries!
1. We have to properly define love. One of the things that disturbs me in the world today is how little we know about love. We have produced a culture that loves with conditions. We think love is about what we can get or what someone can do for us. While love is giving that is not the totality of love. We have defined love the wrong way. Love is not about how you can benefit. Love is about how you can build and benefit others. Love is selfless and relentless. When we understand the depth of real love we will stop using the world so loosely. Love is not a cliche that we should adopt. Love is a commitment to remain faithful, loyal and true in everything that we do. Ultimately, love gives without the expectation of anything being gained in return.
2. We must understand that every human being was designed to love. The world is full of hurting people. More importantly, the world is filled with broken people. When you are broken you cannot truly love. Deep seeded emotions and pain make it almost impossible to have meaningful relationships in our lives. One of the most powerful truths that I have discovered in my life is that we were designed to love. It is in the DNA of every human being on this planet. We all have a space in our hearts and a longing in our souls for love. Pain that lingers will always hinder our ability to be perfected in love. When love is perfected within us we will heal our hearts and ultimately heal the world.
3. We must not allow hopelessness to devour our hearts. Through my work, I get to speak with people all around the world. One of the things that disturbs me today is the profound hopelessness and distress that fills the world. It is one of the reasons that I have devoted my life to empowerment and making a difference all around the world. I believe that when we reach out in love we can revolutionize the world. I have seen hearts that were broken and filled with hopelessness totally healed and filled with hope. Hopelessness is not incurable. Hopelessness is an opportunity to influence a heart and restore it back to hope. Everyday of your life you have the opportunity to heal hearts and restore hope to the world. One seed of hope can obliterate the hopelessness of humanity.
4. You must unleash the power of love. The reason the pulse of humanity is weak is because we have not discovered the power of the heart. I have seen walls of separation, bigotry and oppression removed by one simple act. The walls did not come down through diplomacy or political strategy. The walls came down through a simple act of love. When people ask me how I have been able to have such an impact in the world I always say because of love. I cannot think of a more motivating factor for service than love. In fact, service without love produces a society without liberation. If the world would ever stop fighting we could realize the true force for real change. We would realize that the greatest demonstration the world needs is a display of authentic love. Let us not relegate love to a day or to the superficial ideologies of culture. Let love become a decision that you demonstrate every day of your life. It is the power of love that propels liberty!