Humility is simply believing and accepting what God says about us, and God says that we are anything but worthless.- Myles Munroe

God is love. Love is the divine connection that links all of us together. Love is an attitude of the heart, not just an emotion. The English language extremely limits the vast power that love has to offer. Therefore, in our understanding of it, we use it to describe our feelings and attitude towards a wide range of objects. However, love actually falls into four major different types of love in Egyptian Hieroglythics as well as the Hebrew and Greek languages. These types of love are phileo, storge, eros, and agape. Each type identifies a separate and distinct type of love.

Phileo represents the love of friendship, the most generic of all the love types. We being social creatures by nature are very familiar with this type of love. Most relationships whether professional, social, emotional, or marital, start with this type of love. It creates friendships in our outer circle down to friendships in our inner circle.

Storge represents the love of family. This includes the affection developed between parents and their children and vice versa. It also represents the close feelings that exist between siblings and one’s extended family such as grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. However, this love is not necessarily guaranteed, yet we often take it for granted because everyone is family. Yet there is extreme power built in this type of love that brings everyone together or it can be very destructive if this love is betrayed. So beware of exercising storge due to obligation as opposed to desire.

Eros is the most popular of the love types as it represents sexual love. However, this can be misleading because sex has nothing to do with love and they are not codependent on each other. Eros then becomes a warm, intimate expression of love, but not love itself. Sensuality or lust is the center of focus and a person who only focus on this type of love has no regard for the feelings or desires of the other person. They are only interested in personal gratification and cares less of human dignity.

Agape is the deepest of the love types as it represents divine or unconditional love. This is the highest type of love that we as human beings can strive for. This is the love God has for THEE’s people as well as the love THEE’s people give back to THEE. We are also supposed to have this type of love for one another unconditionally. When we accomplish this type of love, then and only then does God become one with us. Agape is oneness in heart and spirit. The power here is that it is a choice (tomorrow’s power topic). Love is not a feeling, but a decision. Agape is constant, yet we often want to change our terms with it due to certain conditions. Yet, what we fail to realize is that those conditions can often be mitigated by maintaining agape love.

There is massive power in love as each type allows us to synergize our powers with other people to maximize the potential to create something awesome and grand. Replace the love of power with the power of love!

When the Power of Love conquers the Love of Power, the world will then find peace. – Jimi Hendrix

This week’s critical thinking will focus on the essence of power. Power according to Webster’s Dictionary is defined as “the ability to control or influence someone or something.” This definition is very misleading and I consider it one of the major causes of the ills the world is having today. So according to Webster, if I want to be powerful, then I can only prove it by having control or influence over someone else. That is what I consider to be “offensive power.” The only problem is this type of power is limited as what goes around comes around. Sooner or later, somebody else will assume that same power over me. So allow me to redefine that definition for you. I define power as “the ability to put yourself in a state so that no one can have control or influence over you.” This eliminate the proof of being powerful, you just are. This is a form of divine power, which is eternal. If people were to embrace this definition into their psyche, the need to have control can easily be replaced by the need to connect. Connecting with other people will bring into alignment an ultimate power that includes everyone in taking part. This opens up for the different types of power to occur which will all be covered this week: The Power of Love, The Power of Choice, The Power of Presence, The Power of Questioning, and The Power of Faith w/ Action.

In order to have a testimony, you must first be put through a test!

For the longest time, I always wondered why people reacted so emotionally when they stood before an audience and gave a personal testimony. I could empathize with them in what they had gone through, but I couldn’t quite relate directly with it. It wasn’t until I found myself in the middle of something that wasn’t just for a day, but a two year plus period that I finally got it. That is why the derivative in the word testimony is the word test. In order to appreciate something out of life, you have to sacrifice a little bit of yourself in the midst of it. Put me through the test!

There is an inverse relationship between control and growth. The more you have control over something, the less it will be able to grow.

If two people are in constant struggle to gain control over their relationships, whether they are professional, social, marital, or intimate, the relationship itself will become stymied. As the evolution of life continues, the people will continue to grow and sooner or later, they will eventually grow out of the relationship. Unfortunately, when this happens, the relationship can even get to the point that it dissolves violently. So if we desire our relationships to grow and be a benefit to us, we must learn to relinquish control over the relationship. What things can we do to ensure that we are letting go of the control wheel with the relationship?

If you did go out and vote this past Tuesday, please let everyone else

Complaining and justifying will get you no where. It will only aggravate the people around you to where they will not want to be
bothered. And it will only deepen your situation.

We should all take the vow, ” I will not attempt to blame, complain, or justify my situation to anybody.” By continuing to complain in negative connotations, we produce results that will allow for more complaining to be done. If we continue to justify why things are the way they are, we will be absolutely correct. If we continue to blame others as the reason why we are in the predicament that we are in, we will never take the steps to change our situation that we are blaming them for. Besides, everyone has issues that they are dealing with. As a result, people are looking for someone that they can vicariously live through until they can change their situation. If you are sending out your negative issues, they will not want to be involved with you unless they are enjoying misery as well. What things have you found yourself complaining about that if you were to just take it for what it is, you could concentrate on the good things in life? Take a day and observe your behavior relative to this theme. How many times a day do you find yourself blaming, complaining, or justifying something?

There are two key elements to life and success: Timing and
positioning. It won’t happen in the right place at the wrong time or
vice versa.

God is responsible for the timing, you are responsible for
the positioning.I am an avid believer that everything happens for a reason. The
timing is critical and the positioning is just as critical. The
difference is timing belongs to the universe and positioning belongs
to you. By positioning yourself correctly, and what you are
positioning for is within your heart and purpose, all you have to do
is wait for the timing to come. You will not have the will to win unless you have the will
to prepare. Positioning is all about preparation. People often get caught up on the how.
We only need to be concerned with the what. What are we preparing for and set out to do
it. The how will come automatically and will be in sync with the timing. Just keep in mind
that focusing on the what requires us to step outside of our comfort zone. Are you willing
to step away from what you consider to be comfortable?

Love is the ability to tolerate the other person’s imperfections. If they have too many imperfections or you have a low tolerance, the love dwindles.

We all know that God is love. If you take the interpolation between
the shortfalls of man and the omnipotence of God, we can come to rest
where this statement applies. If we can accept all of the shortcomings
of that special person to be who they are as opposed to being
negatives, we will start to highlight and magnify the positives they
have. Love is defined by the worst moments of your relationship. Society has
a cliche that opposites attract. But my experience states that there is a part II
to that cliche that says “… but they do not stay together long.” This Chu Effect quote is
the reason why. If the two of you do not have anything in common or you are on the
opposite ends of everything you encounter, your spirits will not be able to grow and
definitely not in harmony. You must have a lot in common in order to connect. If you don’t
have much in common, the relationship changes to one of a battle of control. Would you
rather have a relationship that chooses connection or one that chooses control? How do
you dictate which one prevails?

From the book, “The Long Hot Marriage” by Todd Creager

“Realistically, we should remember that [our partner] will not always be thinking about us or physically there for us. They have needs, fears, and desires of their own. After about six months into the relationship ill feeling emerge and the illusion of [our partner] being an ideal parent collapses. We become disappointed and disillusioned with our partner. If it hasn’t dawned upon you before, it’s time to realize that we cannot always have our own way and we are probably not going to be perfectly loved. This is reality.”

Happiness is having low or no expectations of other people. That
way, no matter what they say or do, you will be happy about it.

There is a lot of merit that is associated with this statement. At
first, someone may take this statement as being directed at them and
become offended. However, I see it as a coming from within vs
directing outward. The problem that people have regarding being
satisfied with their situation is that they build a high expectation
of it and things fall short. Whether it is the wedding day, putting on
an event, or accomplishments during the day, we expect more than will
actually come as a result. If we oliviate the expectations of others
and only reserve high expectations for ourselves, then we can find
happiness pretty easily. What woman has had a wedding day that completely met
all of their expectations, nothing went wrong, and they were totally satisfied with
the services they were provided? Were you completely happy? Or were your expectations so
high, you found it difficult to enjoy the moment? Do we have very high expectations in our relationships?
Are putting too much pressure on our partners or spouses? What do you think?