The Power of Love
“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”
1Jn 4:16 NIV
When Dr. E. Stanley Jones preached a sermon on love in India, a church leader told him how a layman whom he loved and had helped was making trouble and threatening to split the church. The frustrated clergyman asked Dr. Jones what to do because in this case love didn’t seem to be working. “Increase the dosage!” retorted Jones. Our self-centered nature would have us believe that happiness comes when we get what we want and all of our needs are met. Yet when we do get a better job, or a bigger house, or a bit of fame, we find ourselves empty because these things don’t bring us lasting joy and fulfillment. They actually whet our appetite for more—and around and around it goes. Peter Gillquist said, “Every time we have a chance in any way to flesh out the love of God to others, our joy cycle gets fulfilled all over again.” St. Francis of Assisi may have expressed it best in his famous prayer: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
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