The flower blooms in the morning and its beauty draws your attention. Its fragrance smell lifts your spirits high. As the day goes by, the harshness of the heat turns it brown and it dies. When two people are attracted to each other, the illusion of love is the flower. When the harshness of life kicks in and the reality of who each of you is opens up, the blossoming love begins to die out because you have seen the real version of the person.  You are unsure of the one standing before you, because they look the same to you, yet have another personality that you had not dictated. That person has not changed. You have just realized you are getting to know them better. Now it’s up to you to deal with this new revelation. Love is built and grown. You just don’t happen to find it lying around.

I would like to highlight certain things about a relationship. The first and foremost is God. Leaning on him for guidance and purity of mind and action. Secondly, it needs personal love. Loving oneself, understanding oneself (strengths and weaknesses), and accepting them, before loving the other party. 3. Friendship. Being able to appreciate one another as friends (knowing each other’s likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses) 4. Trust. Passing the point of friendship to courting, which means looking toward marriage. In here, you are able to share your secrets and seeing each other as humans and not as superhuman. No one is perfect, but we do not need to control one another with emotions, anger or conditions to make them show their love to us. 5. Being appreciative of the little things that the other party does, and letting them know how much they mean to us. 6. Sacrifice. Being able to let go of your pride and time, and think of the other party as well. It’s not always about you. 7. Communication: Learn to find topics that interests both of you, that will enable you both to grow in knowledge, wisdom and mind. 8. Forget about sex. It is not listed in a relationship, till the time that God ordained for it to happened, which is your married bed, with the vows said before God. These are the things I appreciated in my relationship and have learned from others and what God has been teaching me.

Facebook is very public and there’s no privacy on your wall. When you care for someone, you would want to protect them and protect their privacy. You consider their feelings based on what you post on your wall for your friends. You may not know it, but it might hurt them.

Why do you want to create unnecessary feelings on your wall? What would your friends and relatives think of your relationship? Worse. What would they think of the person you are with? When you write about your relationship, write about what God has been teaching you through the issue you went through together. How did you resolve the problem? Did you think you made the right decision together? Will this uplift God’s name and encourage someone else?

As a girlfriend/boyfriend, you should be willing to sit down and be a friend and listen to him/her and ask each other questions that are bugging you. If someone wrote things about me on their wall I would be hurt as well, because I would expect some privacy, especially if I know I did something stupid and regret it. Not all your friends need to know. Who are your closest friends?? Are they uplifting your spiritual walk and your personal life? Are they there to encourage you or just make you feel good? Do you learn from them as well as they from you? These are questions we often forget to ask ourselves? The world has taught us that others revolve around us, forgetting to teach us that we need each other to revolve.

Have your own principles that govern your actions. Once you learn to put down your principles and stand by them, those who will not appreciate those principles will disappear. It will not matter if you have only one true friend in the world who will appreciate you. You might have too many friends, but might be your friends for the wrong reasons.  I can attest to all that I have written above, and I will continue in the path I have chosen. I built a better relationship with God

We make choices based on what we want our futures to look like. You won’t want your life to be beautiful when you make someone’s miserable. You won’t want blessings when you don’t bless others and look down on them. Your happiness comes from within. When you evaluate yourself and are proud, knowing God will be proud, then you can put a smile on your face knowing all is well. With this, you can carry a relationship a long way until God decides your purpose is over.

Thank you Lord for the gift of love. Without your everlasting love, we humans would not know how to love our brothers, sisters, friends, fiancées, husbands and wives unconditionally. The example you set for us leaves us no room to boast about our powers, but enables us to humble ourselves and remember that if it was not for your unfailing love, we would have almost been paid for the wages of Sin. Hence we cannot condemn one another and think we are too righteous and they are the worst sinners. We are unworthy to pass judgment on anyone, because their sin might not be close to half of what we did. To this I thank you for saving me from the person I would have become. Now I can love because of your grace and mercy.

How many times have you heard the word ‘WAIT’ said to you? Think of an office setting, where you are told the manager will see you in a moment. A moment turns to 10mins, 20mins, 30mins an hour and you are still waiting. How about a job application which you sent in 2 months ago, and no reply and you are still waiting? Fine. You asked God for something and he never answered you? Did i hit the spot yet? 

I am not toiling with your emotions, but just helping you reflect on your questions and thoughts. How did you respond to the long periods of waiting? Were you frustrated? Were you heartbroken? Were you angry? Did that frustration and anger lead you anywhere?

In the book of Habakkuk chapter 1, it starts off with Habakkuk asking God questions: 

2 How long, Lord, must I call for help,
    but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
    but you do not save?
3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
    Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    there is strife, and conflict abounds.
4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
    so that justice is perverted.

God answers him, by saying:

“Look at the nations and watch—
    and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
    that you would not believe,
    even if you were told.

God is basically telling him to wait. However, God’s answer as it follows, is not Habakkuk had expected. God said wait and see what i will do to the wicked. God however, will use people more wicked than the wicked people Habakkuk is questioning God about. Then Habakkuk starts questioning God’s method of punishment. How can God use more treacherous people, especially a God who hates evil and can’t stand the wicked. 

Chapter two: Habakkuk learns to wait on God and his methods. God tells him that he will accomplish what he has revealed to him. Habakkuk learns to listen to God’s reply although it is not what he had expected. Prayer encourages us to wait on God to carry out his work in us. He renews the strength of the weary (Isaiah 40:31). Everything has an appointed time when God is involved. God’s answer changed Habakkuk’s perspective about his circumstance. Chapter three demonstrate that prayer gives birth to assurance. Had Habakkuk not prayed to God and ask God the questions, he would not have understood God’s ways. He listened to God’s answer, which didn’t come the way he expected, and after God explains to him his reasons, he assures God’s superiority. His perspective about the whole situation changed, and he gained assurance that God was in control of the situation. All he had to do now was wait for what God had promised to happen. 

God hears our prayers and his timing is the best. When he tells us to wait, we should be willing to sit quietly without talking, yet holding on to faith that he will do what is right. My life has not been filled with sweet honey, but God has been faithful to me, because in every circumstance, I learnt that he knew what was best for me. Sometimes you don’t need words, but to sit quietly for a few minutes and reflect on all that’s been happening, turning it all to him. My perspective about my life and family was set a new again in church this morning. Be blessed as i have been.