Our generation is beleaguered with so much pressure that believers are even compromising heavily, and yet the truth is that God will not lower or change his standard because of the peculiarity of our generation or the pressures of our environment. God’s word remains forever. Love differs from lust.
Look at the following verse:
Eph 4:17 KJV This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,’
The Spirit of God writing through Paul here says, as children of God, we cannot walk as the unbelievers walk. There has to be a distinguishing. We cannot be lumped together. Our light must shine in the midst of darkness. We must stand out. The life of God in us will not allow us to live carelessly.
Message translation says we cannot move with the crowd!
Eph 4:17 MSG And so I insist–and God backs me up on this–that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd.
You as a child of God cannot flow with the tide. Having done all, you’ve got to stand, unmoved, unshaken and unyielded to the grip of iniquity.
Verse 20 says:
Eph 4:20 KJV But ye have not so learned Christ;
That is not what we learn about Christ when we gave our life to Christ. At what point did we accommodate the devil’s antics into the program of our lives? At what point did we think that as a child of God, you can be dating three people at a time? At what point did we somehow believe that God does not mind us having emotional affairs that our spouses are not aware of?
At what point did we start combining a life of fornication with a life of leading others in worship? At what point did pastors think they can go free with sleeping with naïve church members because they are anointed? That is not how we learned Christ!
Take a look more at the scriptures:
Eph 5:1 MSG Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents.
Amplified version says to be imitators of God. How do we do that when we cannot see Him? We watch what He does by watching what He has done in His word. As we read God’s word, we learn His ways and we understand how we are supposed to live here.
Let’s look at the next verse:
Eph 5:2 MSG Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
You’ve got to learn a life of love and not a life of lust. God did not love in order to get something from us! The moment you say you are in love with a person and then you want something you can get, either money or fun, you have moved from love into lust. People ask me, how can I know whether he or she loves me? That is the answer right there!
Love wants to improve the other person’s life, not deplete it. If you are in a relationship with a person, and your Christian life goes down, watch it. God will not lead you into a relationship where all you have is the anguish of the soul, a life iniquity, and a life full of lust. You cannot tell me you love a lady whom you have impregnated thrice and paid for abortions. That is not love!
Look at the next verse:
Eph 5:3 MSG Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices, or bullying greed.
The moment you get involved in some perversion; that is no longer love. It’s lust. How can two believers who are not married be compromising habitually? That is no longer love! If the guys end up in bullying greed, always having his way, and even quoting scripture to justify a sinful lifestyle, that is no longer love.
Let’s conclude with the next verse:
Eph 5:4 MSG Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, Christians have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.
As children of God, you should have better uses of your mouth than gossip. Don’t join some others to tear apart your leaders after a church service. Something is not quite right with that. Stop tearing apart your Pastor’s wife.
The scripture advises, don’t talk dirty or silly. Why? That is the same mouth you are supposed to use to confess your way into what you want to possess.
Dirty and silly talk doesn’t fit our style. You cannot be using the ‘F” word and tell me God is okay with that! That is not our style. Our style doesn’t permit punctuating every word with the ‘F” word or with words like ‘Shit!’ Why? Thanksgiving is our dialect! You see it right there. All these things matter!
Conclusively, Amplified version puts it this way:
Eph 5:4 AMP Let there be no filthiness (obscenity, indecency) nor foolish and sinful (silly and corrupt) talk, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting or becoming; but instead voice your thankfulness [to God].
Call God to help you and cleanse you if you have the need to, He is always there to bail you out, if you make up your mind.
Selah!
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY I love appropriately. I am not filled with lust
PRAYER FOR THE DAY Pray that God should cleanse you
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Ephesians 4:17 (CSB) “Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their thoughts.”
Who do you fall in love with? I will address that by telling you who not to fall in love with. You see, everybody has a purpose in your life, and when you fail to discern that purpose, it will lead to abuse or you end up being abused.
1. Don’t fall in love with the same sex
Now, forget about all the propaganda and agitation going on around the world, this lifestyle is clearly forbidden in the scripture. It was specifically mentioned in the scriptures as unnatural. How can you fall in love with same-sex and then devise means of sleeping together?
Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either––women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men––all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it––emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches (Romans 1:26-27 Message)
It is a practice you must not dabble into as a child of God and if you are already into it, you must seek help immediately. I minister around in churches and when I make altar calls for people with these issues, I am amazed at how such lies and perversion have crept into churches. I once had to do training for certain denominations on how to handle this kind of scenario when a committed member is suddenly discovered as living the gay lifestyle.
Now listen to me, when you start finding yourself attracted to the same sex and with sexual feelings, don’t ever accept the lie of the devil that you were created that way. God is not an author of confusion. Male and female created he them. There is nothing like Adam and Steve or Eve and Eva!
2. Don’t fall in love with your pastor
A lot of ladies like their pastors. It is understandable because he is anointed and you hear him all the time while he is covered with God’s glory. In fact, the scripture says anointing attracts!
Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee. (Song of Songs 1:3 KJV)
But you need to understand that your pastor is another woman’s husband! You can like him, but when that likeness is bothering on obsession, and you are falling in love, it is time you caution yourself.
You also need to understand that your pastor is first of all a man before he is a man of God. He has all the strengths and weaknesses as well. He does not live in heaven. When you have been going for counsels every day, and you are falling in love, and your pastor is enjoying your presence daily, it is better to withdraw because there are counsels that can cancel a man’s destiny.
When you know you have developed feelings for your pastor, what are you still doing with him every day in a counseling session that has not finished? You need to help yourself and help your pastor as well. In fellowships on campuses, care must be taken particularly not to use your position to defile people you are meant to lead.
3. Don’t fall in love with your lecturer
In your bid to pass an examination, don’t end up in the bed of your lecturer. There are no ways you want to explain it, it is a dangerous trend to take.
4. Don’t fall in love with your sibling
You won’t be able to get married to your sibling, so why indulge in unnecessary games and tell yourselves you are in love? If you have been sexually involved with a sibling or you still involved, that is what the Bible describes as incest. Even society frowns at it. You can go to God and ask Him to forgive you and He will forgive once you are genuinely repentant.
5. Don’t fall in love with a minor.
Those feelings you have for a three-year-old or a five-year-old child are demonic and you need to seek help so that you don’t end up becoming an abuser and end up messing up that child’s life. Leave that little cousin alone! Leave that innocent niece alone and stop kissing her all the time! Stop putting her on your laps! You need to confront yourself.
Be real with your feelings because it doesn’t happen in one day, it is progressive. That is why the Bible says judge yourself that you not be judged.
6. Don’t fall in love with your parents’ age mate
Don’t fall in love with a married man who is as old as your father or a woman who is as old as your mum because of the mammon spirit. Promises of going to Dubai, shopping in London, allowance of hundreds of thousands every month are not worth the agony and regrets that will later follow a person that gives his or her body out as a commodity! Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost; it is not something to trade for money. How would you be another woman’s headache, sleeping with her husband, and then think you will have God’s support?
If everything is about seed and harvest, what then will happen to your own home? The next time he comes telling you that you are the one he loves, tell him he is not only lying, but he is lying in state. Tell him to go keep his money and go back to his wife. That is how to live right and trust God as your provider and stop looking at a mere man as your Jehovah Jireh!
7. Don’t fall in love with an unbeliever
Don’t fall in love with a man or a lady that does not know God. Don’t even pray about it, because it won’t work out and God will not answer that prayer. Don’t bother to say you will convert him or her because you are not the Holy Spirit that converts. You have not even converted yourself!
Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands (2 Corinthians 6:14-15 Message)
8. Don’t fall in love with an abuser
Finally, but not exhaustively, don’t fall in love with an abuser! Why would you stick with the one that is constantly abusing you physically, sexually, verbally, or emotionally? Why stick with the one that you know is in it for the money? Why stick with a person that slaps you today and begs you after only to come the next day to donate more slaps? Why degrade yourself to be trampled upon and slept with at will? Why fall in love with a person who is not in love with you but using you? Why cope with the one that tells you you are ugly and stupid?
Why are you so generous with your body that you sleep with the one that hates your guts? Who called you into such philanthropy? Child of God, you are more than that! You need to raise your shoulder and walk out of that relationship. If you cannot walk out, then run or even fly away but by all means, free yourself like a bird out of the snare of the fowler, and go into the newness that God has for you!
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. (Psalms 124:7 KJV)
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY I fall in love with the right person.
PRAYER FOR THE DAY Lord, help me to fall in love with the right person.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee (Proverbs 4:5-6 KJV)
Words are powerful. Words are eternal. They don’t die.
Jesus said words are spirits.
Joh 6:63 KJV It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
Nations have gone to war because of words spoken and battles have been known to come to an end because of words.
Jesus also said that words reveal what is in a man’s heart.
Luk 6:45 AMP The upright (honorable, intrinsically good) man out of the good treasure [stored] in his heart produces what is upright (honorable and intrinsically good), and the evil man out of the evil storehouse brings forth that which is depraved (wicked and intrinsically evil); for out of the abundance (overflow) of the heart his mouth speaks.
You can decode a man’s attitude from his words. His words, when analysed will show you where he is going.
This morning, I want to show you a few words that men who claim to be your lover often say that show something is defective somewhere. They let you know that your relationship or marriage needs some attention and counsel. Here are a few of those statements that your lover may not be saying.
1. I am not a religious freak. I don’t like church stuffs. I can’t be a fanatic.
What he is really saying: I don’t want to be spiritual. I will not always go to church. I don’t believe in God that much. Once we are married, you will have to stop going to church as you do now.
The implication: Your spiritual life will be depleted. You will not be on the same page. Without a good foundation of spiritual life and relationship with God, you will be limited, you will do a lot of things with struggles and you will never be able to enter the fullness of God’s blessings for your life.
2. There is nothing wrong with sex as long as we love ourselves, although I am not insisting. Even pastors are messing up.
What he is really saying: I will soon get you. It is a matter of time. I will wait for you to get emotionally connected with me and fall in love hopelessly and then you won’t be able to say No. How will I be in a relationship without having sex? ‘You never know anything!’
The implication: His word already reveals his heart. If you stay in a relationship with such a person, you will soon compromise. It is just a matter of time. If you value your relationship with God, you will disconnect from any tiny appearance of compromise before you become entangled and fall in love.
3. Let’s keep our relationship to ourselves for now. I don’t want any pastor or parents to know. Don’t even tell too many of your friends for now. I am a private person and I don’t like being discussed all over the place. Let it just be between the two of us. When the time comes to go public, I will let you know.
What he is really saying: I don’t want to go all the way with you. I don’t want any commitments; all I want is sex! Let’s make the casualty to be only you and not involve any authority figure that will tie me down.
The implication: He will not walk the aisle with you. He is not interested in marriage and there is no point wasting a few of your years with him. A good courtship is not supposed to operate as a secret cult!
4. I really love you and that is why you are number one out of all my girlfriends. You are the one I want to get married to.
What he is really saying: I have other girlfriends that I sleep around with. Be careful so I won’t change my mind about you because I have so many of them in my hands.
The implication: He is manipulating you with that statement and he may not get married to you eventually. Even if he does, there would not be an automatic disconnection with his girlfriends especially if they are sexually involved. You will have to contend with that after marriage and practically fight battles that could have been avoided. As a child of God, you are to be loved and adored by your husband. The moment you are being threatened this way, something is not quite right. Don’t stay under a manipulative man; that is not God’s plan for you.
5. Even though, I am married, I don’t love my wife. I don’t know why I have not met you before I got married. You are my true wife. I will find a way to leave that woman and marry you. You are so caring, loving and I can do anything for you. Just stay with me, I will give you anything you want and I will marry you eventually.
What he is really saying: You think it is so easy to leave the mother of my children? You are just a baby, and I will keep on giving you paltry sums of money to get what I want. I will rent a house for you and buy you a car and I will visit you there for sex. The day you say you are no longer interested, I will collect my car and my house.
The implication:Adultery is not worth it. You will simply waste your youth and practically stop your life. It will look sweet initially but soon turns into gravel in your mouth. Disconnect from such relationships because God doesn’t want you there.
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY I am wise. I have a better understanding of my lover. I know what my lover is saying and not saying.
PRAYER FOR THE DAY Pray that God will show you what your lover is not saying.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. (John 6:63 ESV)
ACTION PLAN FOR THE DAY Review all your relationships and follow God’s instructions to find out what your lover is not saying.
Losing a loved one is a painful experience. During such a period, they need to be comforted because of the pain they are in. They miss their loved ones and are trying to come to terms with not having them around anymore. This can truly be an excruciating experience for people.
At such a time of loss of a loved one, they need to be comforted and only God can do that for them. No word that anyone can speak will be able to offer the much needed comfort, if God does not come in. And how do we bring God into the situation? It is simply by praying for these ones.
You can pray to God to comfort the people that has lost a loved one. Before you go to say a word to them, get on your knees and say a prayer for them. Only He can comfort them as they should be comforted. His love for them will make Him to.
Say their names in prayer, asking that the grace of God will help them get back on their feet and continue with their lives. Losing a loved one will definitely create a gap in the lives of the people, but God is able to fill up that gap and make their lives whole again. That is the reason you need to pray for comfort for them.
Prayer: Lord, please comfort all those who need to be comforted right now. Help the people who has lost a loved one to receive your comfort and love in the name of Jesus. Amen
Action point: Pray for that person you know who has just lost a loved one. Pray that they will receive comfort right now.
A happy marriage does nothappen by accident, there are deliberate steps both spouse have to take, we’ll continue on this topic today.
9. Delight in your days together.
That is consciously being a happy person. Celebrate what you have now. Yes, things will be better, but don’t postpone your happiness till when things become better.
At whatever stage you are in right now, be happy. Celebrate and be proud of your spouse. Don’t be quick to want to fix things about your spouse. Stop being overly sensitive to the faults of your spouse. Don’t use a magnifying lens to see and look at your spouse’s faults.
Don’t exaggerate your spouse’s faults. Know that we are all humans. We are giving to mistakes, errors, and shortcomings. Teach by example, give information, don’t sermonize, don’t criticize. Never allow your spouse to feel they are no good. Stop drawing attention negatively to your spouse.
Delight in your selves together. Enjoy your selves. Have a good sexual life and do a lot of talking. Don’t let work, business or the children steal your time spent together.
10. Aim at love every time. Let your guide post be to walk in love.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
1 Corinthians 13:4 – 7 NLT Let the words of this scriptures be before your face. Meditate on it. Keep not in your heart, put it on your lips. Confession brings possession. As part of your daily routine and daily prayers. Ask God to make you a love being. A dispenser of love and confess the whole attribute of love over yourself and your spouse. Speak to your spirit that you are patient and kind.
The more you talk about these virtues to yourself the more you become them. That is walking in the spirit and not gratifying the deeds of the flesh.
Try and follow all these tips and improve on them. You will see your marriage take a new turn for the better.
May God grant us more understanding.
God bless your marriage
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY My marriage will work.
PRAYERS FOR THE DAY Lord, give me an understanding for my marriage in Jesus name
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Eph 5:28 ESV In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
ACTION PLAN FOR THE DAY Have a hearty discussion with your partner today.
