“God is love, but he created Satan!” - Femi Fani-Kayode has 7 lessons for you on love and “abundant life”
Helping
such people is like conjuring up the Angel of Death, like invoking
Abaddon, the spirit of destruction, and like trading with the grave:
they can never be appeased or satisfied and they will always want more.
Love
is beautiful but it can also ravage and destroy. It brings pleasure and
it brings pain. It brings joy and it brings sorrow. It brings light and
it brings darkness. It brings laughter and it brings tears. It brings
peace and it brings turmoil. It brings tranquility and it brings
turbulence. It brings serenity and it brings rage.
It
brings passivity and it brings aggression. It brings selflessness,
kindness and generosity and it brings cruelty, sadism and masochism. It
brings restraint and balance and it brings wild passion and extreme
emotions. It brings the promise of a new dawn and it brings the
testimony of a tragic sunset. It is indeed the greatest paradox that has
existed since the beginning of time.
God
IS love yet He created satan, the harbinger and apostle of hate, death
and destruction. The songwriter wrote ”love hurts, love scars, love
wounds”. Another wrote ”sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it
hurts instead”. How true this is.
How
poignant and appropriate are these simple words from these two
beautiful and celebrated songs. Yet at the same time that same love that
can be so painful brings the sheer pleasure and blessing of lasting and
cherished memories.
And
the true test of love comes not when things are smooth and rosy but
when challenges come and things go wrong. They say that when someone you
love insists on leaving, however painful it may be, you must let that
person go.
If that person is truly yours he or
she shall eventually return but if they are not yours they will never
come back. Whichever way, you win because you cannot lose what was never
yours and what is yours will always come back to you.
Courage, patience, faith, strength, a
gentle disposition, a firm resolve and a large application of the Balm
of Gilead to wipe away the pain and heal your wounds is the key to
survival and to weathering the storm of separation from a loved one. I
know because I have been there. Apart from that, good old fashioned time
has a way of healing broken hearts and wounded souls and of revealing
the truth of every matter.
In
the Book of Proverbs 30: 18-19, King Solomon said, “there are three
things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the
way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a
ship on the high seas, and THE WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAIDEN”.
How
profound, deep and wise this great King was. ”The way of a man with a
maiden” is indeed one of the great mysteries under the sun. This is not
only a spiritual truism but also a tried and tested home truth. The
morale of the tale is that no force on earth or below the earth, no
situation, no set of circumstances, no degree of alienation and hateful
words and no misunderstanding can keep two people that are truly in love
apart forever.
That
is indeed the power of love. It cannot be hidden or supressed for long
and it cannot be resisted no matter how hard we try or how often we are
persuaded. It is indeed a beautiful thing. Yet as a dear friend of mine
recently told me, despite it’s awesome power, ”love is pain”.
There
is however a deeper truth and that truth is as follows. When the Lord
establishes the reasons and creates the circumstances for you to move on
from anyone that you were once close to or that you love and when He
makes a way for a new beginning for you, never complain and never look
back.
Don’t
be like Lot’s wife lest you turn into a pillar of salt. Don’t be like
the children of Israel that were led by Moses into the desert only for
them to begin to yearn and crave for the ”onions and garlic of Egypt”
where they had once been slaves.
Remember
that Abraham could not prosper and find his calling until he was
separated from Lot. God may well be doing a new thing in your life by
throwing the garbage out and separating you from someone that you had
once trusted and that you were once very close to, so grab that
opportunity with both hands, move on, make new friends and enjoy the
ride.
When
two people that were once very close fall apart don’t be too eager to
fix it or to come back together again simply because you may not be able
to move to the next prophetic level of your life if you do.
God
is in the business of removing stumbling blocks and the secret agents
of the devil from the lives of His children so don’t complain when those
you once loved begin to behave like water demons and dragons, begin to
tell the most hideous lies and begin to manifest hatred towards you.
When that happens just hold your peace, smile, remain silent, have a little patience and wait and see their end.
There are some ”little foxes” that
you just don’t need in your life when you are about to rise up so no
matter how painful it is for two close people to go their separate ways
the wise thing to do is to ”let go and let God”.
And when you do let go, be thankful
for the moments you once had together and go forth in peace and with as
little rancor and dissention as possible. For those that repay good with
evil the bible says ”evil shall never leave their household”.
So
don’t fight for yourself when you are wronged by ingrates and those you
once helped, supported and assisted: instead let that powerful verse of
scripture fight for you.
Always
remember it and call it before God during your time of intercession and
prayer by just saying the following words: ”those that have repaid my
good with evil, evil shall never leave their household”. Stand on these
powerful and precious words and have faith in the mystery and efficacy
of the Holy Word of God knowing that scripture cannot be broken by any
power in heaven, on earth or below the earth.
After that just hold your peace and
no matter how long it takes, whether it is a few seconds, minutes,
hours, days, weeks, months, years or decades, wait and see what happens.
Always remember that ”God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to
perform” and that vengeance is His. He will judge, He will reward and He
will avenge.
Again
remember Mr. Kayode Ola’s simple yet deeply profound words. He said,
”keep your head up. God gives his hardest battles to his strongest
soldiers”. No matter what you are going through, no matter who has hurt,
cheated or betrayed you and no matter what your circumstances are learn
to take the pain with dignity and to despise the shame, for it shall
surely pass.
In
order to escape rancor, betrayal and conflict try your best to avoid
loud, vexatious, greedy and ungrateful people because no matter how much
you do for them in their time of need they will never be satisfied.
Worse still they will despise you for your generosity and compassion
which they perceive as nothing but weakness and stupidity.
Helping
such people is like conjuring up the Angel of Death, like invoking
Abaddon, the spirit of destruction, and like trading with the grave:
they can never be appeased or satisfied and they will always want more.
Worst still the more you help them and the more you give, the more they
will demand and the more they will hate you for it.
Finally always remember what Mr.
Herbert Mensah, one of Ghana’s and indeed Africa’s brightest and best,
once said: “never cry for someone who does not know the value of your
tears”. This is wisdom.
Save
your tears and sorrow only for those who love and appreciate you but
never reject or treat with contempt those that genuinely care for you.
This is because, generally speaking, human beings are fickle, unreliable
and shallow and those that truly care are very few.
The truth is that we live in a harsh
and cruel world and only God’s love is pure. Only He stays with us to
the end no matter what we are going through. Only He is faithful. Only
He loves us for what and who we are and not for what He can get out of
us.
Permit
me to enrich this contribution by sharing what I describe as the seven
lessons for abundant life. The first is that without God there is
nothing and with God there is everything. The second is that if you help
ten people in life count yourself lucky if one returns to say thank you
and count yourself lucky if only one of the ten betrays you.
The
third is that you must trust no-one because it is those that are
closest to you that will hurt you the most. The fourth is that you must
never write off or despise anyone no matter how bad their situation
because you don’t know what they may become tomorrow. The fifth is that
you cannot afford not to help your friends and you cannot afford not to
fight your enemies.
The sixth is that true knowledge and
insight is gained not by the best secular education or even by life’s
many experiences but rather it is gained by divine revelation.
The seventh and final lesson is that
you must conquer your fears and no matter what you are going through:
be positive, be happy and hold on to your faith in God knowing that He
that created you is quietly working His purpose out for your life and He
will never forsake or leave you either in this life or in the life to
come.
Seven is the number of perfection so
let me stop there but if you can hold on to these seven home truths you
will go far in life and nothing will hold you down.
Permit
me to conclude this contribution with the following counsel. In love,
pain and the mystery of separation never forget that when your loved one
fails you and decides to leave, as painful as it might be, the Holy
Spirit and the Balm of Gilead is more than able to heal your wounds and
make you whole again. You will live to love another with equal measure
and that love will surely be returned because everyone has their very
own life-partner waiting for them out there somewhere. It is just a
matter of finding him or her.
If
your lover or spouse chooses to leave never forget that if he or she is
truly yours and if it is the will of God, one day, no matter how long
it may take, you shall surely be together again because what is truly
yours shall always return to you. If that doesn’t happen and it doesn’t
work out that way just give God the glory and give your love to another
because the one that left was clearly never yours in the first place.
If
needs be just take the pain and move on. Yet if you ever find your true
love and you are sure that it is God’s will for you to be together,
never let go no matter what because if you do so you may never find it
again. Despite all it’s complexities and pain love still remains the
greatest gift that God ever gave to humanity. And nothing describes the
essence of true love, or what is known in Pentecostal circles as ”agape
love” (meaning the power to love even the unlovable), as the beautiful
words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 1:13.
He said, ”If
I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so
as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away
all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love,
I gain nothing.
Love is patient
and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It
does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it
does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things. Love never ends.
As
for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy
in part but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I
was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned
like a child.
When
I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror
dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know
fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love
abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love”.
Loving somebody in itself is a burden. To betray love is a curse. This is wisdom. Shalom.
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Kevin Djakpor's Blog.