FOR WOMEN ONLY: Oceans
of Love!
There
comes a time when you have to stop crossing oceans for people who wouldn't jump
puddles for you.
-Anonymous-
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Image from nutritionistnyc.com |
In my discourse with a
girl who wrote to me a few months ago, I concluded that worshipping the ground a
man walks on is not a difficult feat if you’re a woman. You don’t need 19th
Century slave trade skills to implement this one. Nor do you need to bribe the
victim with secrets from the darkest corner of their closet where the skeletons
fear to tread. It all has to do with some tweaking of a girl’s romance wiring. It
wasn’t the first email I had received from a member of the opposite sex who
asked to pray, talk or meet up and discuss about a rut she was in because she
was at the beck and call of a guy she liked. Of course, I do none of the above but usually direct all such emails
to my wife lest I get into an emotional entanglement. But when the help sought
by the girls is not deeply rooted and she doesn’t have to open up her heart to me,
I simply reply using a 1500 word piece.
This particular girl was
adamant to talk to my wife let alone meet her. I would normally get skeptical
about a girl like that and this was no different. She claimed she had done
several terrible things and it took tons of effort to confess it to a stranger
whose blog she reads. She wanted the blogger's advice and nothing more. I decided to make an exception and give a listening ear
to the girl. She talked of how she loved her former boyfriend but was
devastated when he caught him cheating on her. She wept bitterly and cursed the
day she fell in love with him. After a few weeks she returned to him. He had
missed her and called to say he loved her. He promised her sweet nothings and
vowed he wasn’t cheating on her with that classmate girl she suspected. They
made amends and in a few hours they were back in the dating game. In no time,
the dating game got a substitute player. He was cheating on her again. She had
all the proof but wouldn’t believe it until she heard it from him. Her reaction
made me remember a meme I once encountered on Google Plus. It read, “Women are
like the police; they have all the evidence but still insist on a confession.”
The meme is debatable
but the implications are not. Women have been known to be the boomerang of a
destructive relationship. Why do they always come back? I took the incident to
my wife, who let me know that she was in the process of talking things through
with two girls in a similar debacle. They were all in relationships where they
were treated like trash (their confession, not mine) and they still found
themselves returning to the men. I hardly found a similar case among men so I
got intrigued by the women. Much later, more ladies with similar cases wrote
and I couldn’t help but notice an overwhelming similarity in each despondent
story.
In all cases, the women had slept with the men
Some women who had NOT experimented with pre-marital sex found themselves debating certain
relationships with questionable men but from their responses, one could easily
tell that they possessed significant willpower over the decision. They easily turned down jerks, cheaters and players.
Realize this, beloved,
that you are not just a meat-bag with a brain for an engine to propel your
daily activities; you are more. Your life has purpose. It has meaning! You are
a spirit, you have a soul and you live in a body. You can travel the entire
cosmic universe and search for meaning beyond the galaxies but you will be
surprised to find that the meaning is in who you are. You are a spirit from a God
who desires its restitution from a broken, sinful world. Sex outside marriage
beloved, is a sin and sin is not just breaking God's rules; it's breaking God's heart. Sin is a power and it’s the reason some of these women kept
returning back to hurt. There is a power over them.
Your sexual body
Your body is your flesh
and bones. The oxytocin hormone in women’s bodies produced during lovemaking
creates a bonding with the men they sleep with. Your physical body was made by
your Creator to create a lasting desire to connect and reconnect with the man
you give yourself sexually to. This hormone is good for marriages and terrible for sex outside a marital commitment especially with more than one person. It is a contributory factor as to why the women
feel bound to the men on the body level.
There’s more
Your Soul
Your soul is your
mind/memories and your emotions. Every sexual encounter has memorable emotional
effects. Rape causes trauma. Pedophilia creates fear and consensual lovemaking
creates longing. On these grounds, women feel bound to men on a soul level. Whilst Hollywood tells you that you can meet a stranger, hit the sack for the night, shower in the morning and feel precious, experience has taught many otherwise. Women may believe the lie of the movies because it paints the picture of the man who is everything they need. He is gentle yet buff, emotional yet tough. He is the Prince Charming of our souls and the hero of the day. No matter how bad he messes up, they can put up with it as long as he is the one that they crave. A famous pastor I know calls it emotional porn. When these women see false hints of that in a real man they desire, they actually believe he could fill that gap. If he isn't everything, then they are his motivation to become it. So when Prince Charming proves to be not-so-charming and breaks your heart, your world bursts at the seams. You placed your hope and it not only broke but it fell and hurt you in the process. There is inner turmoil when you are abandoned by someone you connected sexually with. Even worse when they leave you for another.
Well, how come when the
women stop sleeping with the men, the bonding still holds fast? No more oxytocin should take care of the body
bonding right? And terrible, hurtful memories should destroy the emotional longing she has for him right? It doesn't work that way. Your Creator beloved, did not make your body and soul to avoid
problems. He made it for a world without problems-a perfect world. But we ruined it (Ol' Adam n E.V.E). The human being was crafted in a perfect world to enjoy benefits. God
created you to act on his command not to react to sin. When we go against his
command for our sexuality (and any other command), we create sin and we are faced with the consequences
of it. And some of that consequence, especially for women, is being trapped in
a hurtful relationship and losing will power to disengage.
Timothy Keller once
said, “What the heart trusts, the mind
justifies, the emotions desire, and the will carries out.” Your
heart trusts that the pleasure and connection of a sexual encounter outside marriage will
be worth it. Therefore, your mind justifies it with excuses such as “he loves
me”, "We love each other","I'm not hurting anybody","It's my life". Because your mind justifies it, you pursue a temporary pleasure that makes
you feel temporarily good so your emotions desire it. As a result, your will
carries out the act. The end result is emptiness, isn’t it? If your premise of trust is based on something delicate, fragile or mortal, your whole life will collapse.
Your Spirit
There lingers an
emptiness in every human being that sex, money, beauty, pleasure, morality,
fantasy, entertainment, justice, revenge, education, human approval and
virtually all perceived existence will never fill and will never satiate. The
more we try, the emptier we become. We were built for more-spiritual intimacy
with real satisfaction that only comes from the Creator of all that exists. That's where our premise of trust should be.
Some of you will stop
reading here because the last thing you wanted to hear was that you need God.
Heck, you possibly were in church recently and you felt that the people even judged you.
Listen, beloved, you can walk down that road but we all know where it leads. This is not about other people. This is your page in life. This is you. You walk down that road and it
starts with guilt for returning to Mr. Goodlooking knowing well that the
relationship is abusive (physically or emotionally) or hurtful. Then it follows with anger at yourself for
going back (yet you don’t know why) and anger at those around you who don’t
understand why either, followed by a hunger to drown the pain and feel
appreciated and loved so you return to him again. You may scream, “Ernest, you
think you know me? You think you have me all figured out?” The answer is I
don’t. But I know someone who does. I am no longer asking you to measure up to
a list of dos and don’ts in the Bible to fix your “spirit”. Many have tried
that. It’s not how it works. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.
I’m here to introduce to you someone who will give you life that you don't have.
Beloved, an encounter
with Christ Jesus is not a mere friend-request or a networking introduction. Every reaction to Christ is
extreme! You can either hate him exceedingly or worship him immensely. You think
you’ve tried it? If it elicited none of the two extremes, chances are it wasn’t
Christ. When Christ says he is the only way to God and the only healer of your
pain, he is either right or he is not. He is either one or the other. He can't be middle ground or moderate. He didn't say "I am a way." He said "I am the way." (John 14:6) Once you understand who He is and claims to be, your move will either make you loathe
him for saying something so narcissistic or love him so extravagantly for the
sacrifice of your sin upon that cross.
You have already heard
the rules since you were a kid: You know that you should have sex only during
marriage. You know that you shouldn’t be living with him. You know deep down that
he doesn’t love you yet you yearn for him to just say it even when you know he
doesn’t mean it. You know all these and you’ve even heard if from your best
friend and your momma. But knowing them won’t save you. Knowing them is a tool.
And every tool needs a wielder. Christ is that wielder. Know the wielder not just the tool.
If you're a woman and have been caught
in the rut of an abusive relationship that you keep running to over and over
again and you don’t understand why, you owe it to yourself to pursue a final
solution. If you’ve tried over and over but still find yourself giving in to
sex despite the fact that he’s cheating on you, have the guts to give yourself
a fighting chance for the worth of your life through God. Because there comes a
time when you have to stop crossing oceans for people who wouldn't jump puddles
for you. And that time is now. All God requires is that you jump a simple puddle of faith because he crossed oceans of stars to save your soul.
The Bible says that a
sexual encounter binds. 1 Corinthians
6:16 “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with
her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”
Prostitute here means a
context and not only the person. The Bible isn’t only talking about sex with a
harlot but sex outside God’s will. The context here is consensual sex. Any consensual
sex will bind you to that person whether they be a prostitute, your boyfriend
of clandestine relationship. Any lovemaking outside marriage is often a pursuit
to derive a satisfaction that can never be filled with anyone but your Creator.
Why do the girls keep running back? You hunger love. Come to the King of love.
Why do they return to abusive relationships? They seek to have worth. Christ
gave you infinite worth when he forgave you of your sins. You stand un-accused
and loved! He took the punishment for them because you were not worthy to come
to God even with all your good and moral deeds piled up to high heaven. He clothes you with righteousness so
that God sees you pure. When the world calls you a slut, he sees a virgin. When
the world calls you sinful, he calls you forgiven. When the world calls you
hopeless, he becomes your hope. He hides you under his wing, protects you from
the hurt of relationships gone sour and promises to give you a relationship of a marriage that
works (not just here on earth) but ultimately and eternally with the perfect gentlemen…Jesus
Christ-the man who crosses oceans of love for you! His love for you can never be
stopped by a better looking woman or something so terrible that you may have
done. So stop crossing oceans for mere men that won’t jump puddles for you.
Pray that they may come to know Christ but don’t place your hope in them
because God is making you anew.
2 Corinthians 5:17
states, “Therefore is anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”