Loving others like Jesus is not automatic or natural, but it is vital to a satisfying home life, productive work environment, and a positive community. "The Power To Love" is a concise overview of the personal, communication, and relational skills needed to develop and maintain loving relationships. The personal skills include cognitive restructuring, emotional management, behavioral redirection, and spiritual enlightenment. The communication skills include understanding the miracle of communication, knowing what to talk about, and being able to speak the truth in love. The relational skills involve confrontation without condemnation, comforting without enabling, and supporting without hidden strings. Together these skills provide the relational empowerment needed to actually fulfill the new commandment of Jesus to love others the way he does. Those who experience "The Power To Love" described in these pages enjoy the personal benefits and genuine freedom of loving others regardless of their circumstances of life.

The Power to Love

By John C. Glenn

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 John C. Glenn
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-3758-5

Contents

1. Foundations: The Critical Event........................................132. Cognitive Restructuring................................................253. Emotional Management...................................................374. Behavioral Redirection.................................................475. Spiritual Enlightenment................................................616. Spirituality Not Religiosity...........................................777. Communication Skills: The Miracle of Communication.....................958. Communication Skills: Speaking the Truth in Love.......................1039. Communication Skills: What to Talk About...............................11710 Relational Ministry....................................................12911 Confrontation without Condemnation.....................................13912 Encouragement without Enabling.........................................15113 Support without Strings................................................16514 Conclusion.............................................................179About the Author..........................................................187About the Book............................................................188

Chapter One

Foundations: The Critical Event

After thirty-plus years of counseling, I've noticed that people have a tough time relating well to each other. Regardless of the context (family, work, school, church, etc.) relationships are hard to build and easy to loose. Family relationships can be especially painful. The heartbreaking effect of divorce not only hurt the married couple struggling with their own frustrations, but also causes a great deal of pain for their children and their extended family members. The misery of job dissatisfaction can, in many cases, be traced back to relational difficulties between employees and their co-workers or boss. Often we find ourselves trying to cope with an obnoxious neighbor or even embroiled in a nasty church split. These and similar problems have, at their core, the personal inability to relate to others in a healthy way.

This is true even among those people who are religious, including those who are called Christians. That's because religious people spend most all their energy trying to appease God by what they do and don't do and are too self-absorbed to really care about others. In fact, some of the meanest people I've known have been self-righteous Christians who are frustrated with themselves and others. They are either too busy judging and criticizing others or trying too hard to gain their approval to really love them. Like the original disciples of Jesus, we often find ourselves asking, "Which one of us is the greatest in the kingdom?" rather than "How can I love the people around me?"

What is desperately needed in today's world is what I call the "critical event" ... loving one another just like Jesus loves us. I call it the "critical" event because no matter what else must be done in the context of the home, the job, the church, or the community loving others is absolutely critical to healthy relationships and a satisfying life. When married couples learn to love each other in the same way Jesus loves them they can endure the natural periods of disenchantment when the romance wears off their marriage. When parents learn to practice this critical event with their kids we will have a new generation of well adjusted and powerful youth entering our society. As workers are motivated with the love of God in the workplace, there is not only a dramatic change in production and efficiency, but also a new level of creativity and innovation. When community groups celebrate and practice the "critical event" we can experience a true culture of life.

But what is needed to actually practice this "critical event? Obviously, it doesn't just happen naturally. The power to love others in the same way God loves us is what true Christianity is all about. While faith may be viewed as the very foundation of true Christianity, love is the final product. Our faith in the gospel of God's grace works itself out in our everyday lives as genuine love for others. So much so that James insists that our faith is demonstrated by our acts of compassion without which it is "dead" (James 2). The power to love others like Christ is what I call relational empowerment. It's not a result of our own efforts or choice alone, but comes from the quality of our relationship with God.

Biblical Christianity is not so much a religion, as it is a two-fold love relationship ... a vertical relationship between you and God, and a horizontal relationship between you and others. In addition, the quality of our relationship to others is directly determined by our relationship to God. In a very real sense you could say that our relationship to others reflects the quality of our relationship to God. The ability to love others in the same way God loves us is determined by our willingness to receive God's love ourselves.

In today's secular culture many sincere, but misguided people are trying to develop a loving relationship with others apart from a relationship to God. Recognizing the need for loving relationships is not enough, we must also have the power to develop and maintain them. Unfortunately, being able to build and maintain healthy and satisfying relationships in the home or community does not just happen automatically. As a matter of fact, our natural disposition as human beings coupled with the conditioning of our society often makes our relationships to others a very troublesome if not painful experience. Much of our suffering on a personal level is the direct result of the difficulties we encounter when trying to build or maintain relationships.

In this study we want to recognize and receive the power to love others like Christ. Our method will be to focus on the personal, communication, and relational skills needed to empower us to practice the critical event in every aspect of our lives. Since both the power to love and the love itself originates with God, we begin with our relationship to him.

Turning the Relational Corner

The primary relationship we must consider is that vertical relationship between them and God. It's primary because apart from our relationship to God we cannot hope to have a healthy relationship with others. This is illustrated throughout the Bible, but clearly stated in John's first general letter (1 John 4:7,8). The apostle writes, "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."

The best biblical term for relational empowerment may simply be "love". The most healthy and satisfying relationships we can experience with others is summarized by the biblical phrase, "love one another". Not only did Jesus leave us with the "new" command to love one another (John 13:34,35), but the same idea is presented over and over throughout the writings of the New Testament. It is for this reason that I refer to loving others as the "critical event". No matter what else we may do in the course of our daily lives, what God is concerned with the most is that we love others the way he does. Note that this takes supernatural empowerment since Jesus qualified the manner in which we are to love others by the phrase "as I have loved you". This means that the love we...