An Attempt to Define True Love

            The word love is about the most misunderstood word the world over today.    From the perspective of Hollywood, love is presented to the world in movies as a sexual relationship between a male and a female.  They do not have the perception that these movies project the female gender as basically a sex symbol and that the real motive of the male in these movies portend an exploitative attitude.  Most of the story lines present run contrary to the concept of what true love is.  This is a skewed presentation of what love is.  Hollywood therefore presents sex to the world and calls it love.

            Many of us today have accepted this narrow-minded definition of love and the mere mention of this four-letter word immediately evokes sexual thoughts and inclinations in our minds.  Generally, we have allowed a lot of things to be explained and defined for us from the wrong source and perspective.  In the same manner, we have consigned the understanding of a concept as deep as love to the warped and immoral mind-set of Hollywood movie-makers.

            You may not be among those with the kind of tunnel-vision understanding of love and might even be a Christian with a good standing in the Church and with God.  What difference does that really make?  Many Church folks are as guilty as those who have the understanding of love from corrupt-minded movie-makers.  Once you talk about love in the midst of the believers, they immediately raise their holy antennas and question the rationale for love relationship between the brethren especially if they are of the opposite sex!  They have also bought into the Hollywood concept that consign love to mean immorality and sex!  “God is love”, we affirm.  But what is the result of this belief and affirmation if the people for which Christ died are alienated and not shown the love in practice?  They attest to love in mere words and deny the power that it brings when put into action.

            The object of God’s love is people.  If people cease to matter when love is concerned, even if God’s name were to be dragged in, it will amount to nothing.  Today’s religious people have erroneously overshadowed the purpose of God’s love for mankind with so many meaningless activities that only feeds our over-bloated egos.  We are more willing to testify of being on our kneels praying for ten hours rather than seek for opportunities to be able to testify that we spent a whole day with a friend who needed our company to overcome a serious fear or emotional stress in his or her life.

            The question we should ask ourselves often is:  what is the result of our prayers in the lives of people?  Does God delight in activities that just satisfy our half-alive consciences on what we believe to be God’s heartbeat?  I have heard a lot of well meaning Christians say that God’s heartbeat is to be shut up with Him in prayers.  Prayers, yes!  We possibly cannot do anything without it.  But what does prayer mean when it is not focused on what lines up with God’s ultimate purpose for mankind?  Prayers as God’s heartbeat must be carried out in conjunction with actions that results in the fulfillment of the overall objective of God on earth.  This objective is basically reconciliation of mankind to God.  Imagine a scenario where our Lord Jesus Christ came and performed all the miracles and wonders we see in recorded scriptures and yet never went to the cross to die for us?  As a friend once said, that would have been “half-bread being worse than none”.

            In defining true love, I do not intend to take you through some new or strange path or to propound a new theory, but I believe that as you come along again in the unveiling of this subject with another author, your understanding will be enlightened and God’s Grace will cause you to live a meaningful life according to His purpose for mankind.

... to be continued.

Living Free

          I want to address you here on a personal level.  It is from my heart to yours.  There is such a thing as Personal Liberty.  That is my own coinage of how you can live free on the basis of your personal convictions.

          Many of us do not have personal convictions.  We do what we do not because we understand it but because of so many other considerations.  Friends, if you are not living your life based on personal liberty, you are not really living.

          This personal liberty stems from your personal knowledge.  It derives energy from the totality of who you are as a person.  This is the combination of what you know and understand and believe.  What you believe most times also stems from your background as a person and the various experiences you have garnered while growing up.  After becoming a grown up, what other things have formed your current set of values?

          Just in case you do not have any values that determine how you live, then you need an overhaul as a person.  You need to seat down, get an understanding of the characteristics of the purpose driven life and what it is specifically you are supposed to be doing.  Are you already getting confused?  A lot of people reading this right now will understand what I mean but perhaps you are not getting the idea of what I am saying.  Check out my mailing address (goba_ogwuche@yahoo.com) and phone number (+234 (0) 816 573 5746) and I can engage you in a coaching time that will enable you understand purpose for living in a matter of days.  It will be right for you to get Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life from any bookstore in your city to help you get started as well.

          Having located your vision and goal for living, and armed with a road-map to lead you down the road, you must be determined to stay on track until you hit your target.  While you are at it, you will be visited with a lot of distractions.  This is where your personal convictions will be tested and come into the fore.  People, I mean, well-meaning individuals, friends and family members will question your rationale for settling for a particular way of life; they will question your vision.  Those probing and questions are meant to test your convictions as you stay connected to your life-goal.  On many occasions, they may even think you have gone crazy, which is a normal reaction.

          Let me tell you why you must remain focused.  You are totally responsible for your destiny in life.  No one will stand guard on your behalf if you don’t hit target.  Never allow another man’s convictions to sidetrack you.  They may mean well for you, but they can never be you.  They may be older than you are, but they do not have your convictions.  They may have more than enough experience but they are not surely seeing what you see.

          Many times, it bothers me why people want me to behave like them.  Some others want me to think the way they do.  It’s practically impossible.  That is too limiting.  I was created to be unique and different and something more.  That is why my thumb print is different from yours and is not identical with any other single person on the face of the earth peopled by over 6 billion people.  If by God’s divine design and mandate, I am supposed to be different, who is man to think I am wrong?

          We owe ourselves individual responsibilities to respect the uniqueness of one another as a people created by God.  Do all that is in your power to accept people the way they are – I am not advocating a radical position where you accept people’s unwarranted morale misdemeanor.  For those of us in leadership positions, it’s always difficult to accept people for who they are especially if they are different from our own perceived “correct” way of doing certain things.  With all our good intentions, we fail when we want people to think like us, act like us, dress the way we dress and even talk the way we talk.  God through nature has decided people should be different, unique and yet able to agree on common grounds of principle and this should be done in such a way that no one is seen to be forced to agree but by total personal convictions.  Disagreement is legitimate and opinion is free.

          In my personal experience over the years, both in my capacity as a leader in the Church and as a Church growth student, I have discovered that the Church and its leaders are occasionally guilty of not appreciating or accepting people who are different from their cultural mainstream.  This results from a number of things including people’s style of worship, the way they dress, their specific doctrines and theological beliefs, etc.  I heard of someone who was asked to leave a church service because he raised his hands in worship.  In another Church, everyone dressed very nicely for church service and those who didn’t weren’t welcome.  We must learn to understand that we cannot all be the same.

          

... to be continued...