If you are not married, don’t demand for sexual gratification. If there is respect, you won’t want his/her virtue compromised to satisfy your own lust. Real love and respect is waiting.
2. Communication
Don’t discuss your past, inadequacies and failures in great detail at the inception of the relationship. Some details are better left until there is acceptance, trust and understanding between the two parties.
However, basic issues like health status, genotype, family history and some other crucial issues need to be discussed as early as possible. If he/she finds out years later, mistrust can easily rear up its heads.
3. Chastity
Don’t start kissing someone you met two hours ago. Don’t end up in a car or in corner in a sexual encounter with a total stranger. That is gross irresponsibility and indiscipline. Moreover, you will be offending God.
4. Emotional Needs
Do not depend on one another for the fulfillment and satisfaction of every emotional need. Your partner is not the Holy Spirit. Participate in activities outside your romantic relationship. Don’t be parochial. Be creative and be open to ideas that will further move your relationship forward. Learn, read books, attend seminars together.
5. Selflessness
Guard against selfishness. Both sides should be involved in giving. Love should be reciprocal. It is not a one way affair, it is a song done by a duet. In marriage, there are no spectators; both are actors striving to get better and sowing energies and time into the marriage to make it work.
Stop quarreling everyday of your courtship. Follow the principles of God and stop every compromise. Make sure your foundation for marriage is rightly laid.
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY Our love is rekindled daily. I love my spouse and I am committed to our marriage.
PRAYERS FOR THE DAY Lord, open my eyes and show me what I know not.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Gal 6:7 GNB Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. You will reap exactly what you plant.
ACTION PLAN FOR THE DAY Talk to God. Pour your heart to Him now
Still talking about pressure. If you missed it, read it HERE
Matchmaking Comments and Prophecies
Comments from friends, family and those you respect and look up to should not be allowed to constitute pressure in your relationship, especially when they are contrary to your personal convictions.
Your decisions should always be influenced by what God says; follow His directions alone!
People may tease you on how good you and someone could be together; they may say you’d make a perfect couple. Do not be influenced against your personal convictions. Pastoral, parental and friendly match-making should serve only as confirmations.
Do not yield to prophetic manipulations or some prophecies. The Bible says woe unto prophets that say that God said something He didn’t say.
No prophet or man of God has any business choosing a spouse for you. It is your responsibility to do that. God may use them to guide, confirm, instruct and advise, but not to choose or impose anybody on you. That is not the purpose of anointing. The anointing is to break yokes and lift burdens, not to add it into people’s lives!
As singles, you should stop taking names all over the place; you will get more confused at the end of the day.
In the first place, you are not supposed to have more than one name! What you should also know is the at most of these prophets are hungry, so they will always have something to say!
Stop looking for directions and wasting your money all over the place. God’s order in the New Testament is not to start seeking direction but to develop a good relationship with God, His word and His Spirit wherein you can hear God clearly and by yourself.
Men of God are to teach, instruct, correct and confirm!
Some of these things border on manipulation and witchcraft where specific directions are being sought all the time. You almost would have to take permission on when to sleep with your spouse in marriage! That is not in the Bible!
Everyone has a responsibility to learn to hear God. It is the greatest blessing you have in life.
I pray over your relationship that God will open your ears and hearts to hear Him clearly and explicitly. He will do a new thing and He will make all things new in Jesus name!
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY I am filled with God’s wisdom.
PRAYERS FOR THE DAY Lord, strengthen me against any pressure in Jesus name.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Eph 5:23 MSG The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing.
You should not only call the disciples (other friends) into your marriage, but you need to call Jesus as well. Both Jesus and his disciples were called. When they needed a miracle, it wasn’t the disciples that turned water into wine, they were busy drinking wine, but it was Jesus. There are times when the wine of the marriage dries up, and it is Jesus you need at such times.
In marriage, you need the person of Jesus and the principles of Jesus to make it. But you know, a marriage full of sexual compromise and lack of self-control is not giving space for Jesus at all. When you start having adultery, you are doing things worthy of self-rustication from the school. You are kicking at your teacher and you are trying to say you want things done your own way.
A marriage where the husband, wife or both of them are cheating are disenfranchising themselves from the very help and wisdom they need in their marriage! The scripture advises that you drink water from your own cistern!
Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? – Proverbs 5:15 – 20
When you drink water from your own cistern (talking about making love with your wife), it is like water turned into wine. How sweet it is!
But, when you drink water from strange women and cisterns, you are taking poison! It tastes sweet in your mouth but it will hurt you!
Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. – Proverbs 20:17
The teacher is compassionate! He stands at the door of the class, in your heart, and simply wants you to extend an invitation to him to enter the class! In your marriage, the wine will always be insufficient.
Your own wisdom will fail you. But he is there to help you out, if you invite him!
Will you invite him today? It is the best thing to do. He will save you from shame and keep the wine of your marriage, life and destiny flowing beautifully. He will teach you how to make your marriage a bliss and not full of blisters, how to make it a haven and not an oven!
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY In my marriage, I will not be cut off in the midst of my days. I will last in the marriage institution.
PRAYERS FOR THE DAY Lord, open the eyes of my understanding as regards my marriage
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Mal 2:15 MSG GOD, not you, made marriage. His Spirit inhabits even the smallest details of marriage. And what does he want from marriage? Children of God, that’s what. So guard the spirit of marriage within you. Don’t cheat on your spouse.
Dear child, you must understand the Father’s love for you. Is there anything or anyone that can separate you from the love of God? Your mom or dad? Siblings or friends? Your face or clothes? An angel? What else can you think of?
News flash! There’s nothing or no one that can remove God’s love for you from Your heavenly father’s heart.
He loves you so much. Remember that He sent His most precious son, Jesus, to come to die for you. How could He now allow something or someone to make Him stop loving you? Not even His angels. You are very precious to Him.
Look at the verse below
“Yes, I am sure that nothing can separate us from the love God has for us. Not death, not life, not angels, not ruling spirits, nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us, nothing below us, or anything else in the whole world will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Romans 8:38 – 39 ICB
This was apostle Paul writing about the impossibility of God to stop loving us. He wrote that no power here on earth, no situation, nothing will make God stop loving us.
When you sin and feel that God will stop loving you or has stopped doing so, read these verses and know that He can never do so.
Ask for forgiveness and receive it with joy. Do not let the devil or anyone tell you otherwise. Your great Father in heaven wants nothing to separate you from Him.
Today I will like to do a father-to-child conversation with you. There are lots of things missing in this generation’s relationship life. As much as I wouldn’t be able to capture everything, I believe that you can get something from what I am about to tell you.
Be sincere, as singles in courtship, are you really in the relationship for the long haul or you are just looking for temporary pleasure? Are you being sincere with him or her? Are you sure you are not just leading her on?
Are you confident to say your motive is not the money you can get? Do you really love him or her? Are you protecting her or exploiting her emotions? Do you have some self-control? Can you delay gratification?
That is what separates the boys from the men and the sisters from ‘sistos!’ Are you sure you are not double-dating? Do you realize that when you are double-dating, you are already given to lying and deceptive spirits?
As a single brother or sister who is not in any relationship, are you preparing yourself? How many books have you read to prepare you? Who is your mentor? Who are you accountable to? Are you serving God with your time? Have you dealt with negative self-esteem issues? Are you really single and complete?
These things are the foundation of a good relationship, but it seems old fashion in today’s relationships.
To my dear singles, who are courting, who are you accountable to? Are you really open and truthful to your mentor?
While a lot of people might get to know that you are in a relationship; it’s ok for them to know about who you are going out with, you are only obligated to the person that you consider as a spiritual authority who you can confide in. He is the person you must see whenever you have issues beyond you. It is wrong to report your fiancée or fiancé all over the place. Be accountable to only one person, two at the most, that both of you respect.
Imagine reporting your partner to one of your friends who is not yet in any relationship. What kind of advice do you think he/she will give you?
As singles in courtship, it is wrong to stay over the night in your fiancé’s house. There is no dignity in that. You went to greet him in another city and then he comes up with the card that he doesn’t know any other person you can stay within the whole city?
That is the more reason you should be cautious of such a person because that is an obvious relationship dysfunction. Do not shoot yourself in the leg.
Avoid compromise because every compromise is a legal invitation to the devil to come and wreck that relationship. When you give the devil an inch, he will take a mile!
Stay clean. Stay chaste! Stay with God and you will laugh last!
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY My marriage will be a blessing
PRAYERS FOR THE DAY Oh Lord, do a miracle in my life today.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. – Heb 13:4 (KJV)
ACTION PLAN FOR THE DAY Put the above points to use.
