God Demonstrates His Love

God shows [demonstrates] his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8

Notice that "demonstrates" is present tense and "died" is past tense. God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The present tense implies that this demonstrating is an ongoing act.

The past tense implies that the death of Christ happened once for all and will not be repeated.

Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.
1 Peter 3:18


...suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame...
Romans 5:3-5

(The goal of everything God takes us through is hope. He wants us to feel unwaveringly hopeful through all tribulations).

Suffering >> Endurance >> Character >> Hope

How is that possible?
...because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:5

God's love has been poured into our hearts.
The tense of this verb means that God's love was poured out in our hearts in the past (at our conversion) and is still present and active.

God did demonstrate his love us in giving his own Son to die once for all in the past, for our sins. But he also knows that this past love must be experienced as a present reality if we are to have patience and character and hope.

Therefore, he not only demonstrated it on Cavalry; he goes on demonstrating it now by the Spirit in our hearts. He does this by opening the eyes of our hearts to taste and see the glory of the cross and the guarantee it gives that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Love is Patient

• Love always does what is best for others.
• Love changes our motivation for living. Relationships become meaningful with it. No marriage is successful without it.

Love is patient. Love is kind.

It is not envious, it is not boastful, it is not proud.

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered; it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Where there are prophecies, they will cease;

Where there are tongues, they will be stilled;

Where there is knowledge, it will pass away....

...and now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

After Watching Porn - 001

We too often allow unattainable ideas to dictate what we allow ourselves to say.

God can and does act in that moment of regret.

It is often in the moment after the act that Satan spins his most eloquent web: menacing thinking patterns, bargaining with a distant and disapproving God.... It is in this moment that Satan does his finest work. It is in this moment that we need God to do His finest saving.

1. Know your enemy. Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret; but worldly grief produces death (2 Cor.7:10). Recognize that you have a powerful personal agent who is singularly focused on your destruction. Do not forget that Satan is at work. If you do, it is easier to believe hidden, subversive, subtle, destructive lies. Evil gains power when it is forgotten. Don't forget: After you indulge, you are still mid-battle with a tenacious, evil person bent on stealing your life, and he has not yet gotten it.
2. Fight self-hatred. Porn is the twisted manipulation of innocence for the raw crave of erotic appetite. To have a grieved conscience is a good thing... [but] wallowing in self-deprecation and feeling like paying penance to God for sin is a sad and ironclad torture. It is false, and it is a wicked oppression. Not surprisingly, suicide rates are high among porn users. 
• No wonder David uses such deeply physical metaphors when he pleads with God for grace over sexual sin: 
• Blot out my transgressions;
• Wash me;
• Cleanse me;
• Purge me;
• Blot out my iniquities;
• Create in me a clean heart
• Scream that, with David. Replace the groan of human self-hatred with an unbroken war cry of divine love.
• If you are tempted to wallow, don't let your (good) intuitive hatred of sin lead you to hate yourself. 
• Be patient with yourself, because God is patient. He is fighting for your life. He has not forgotten you. He has not left you. Keep fighting with him. Keep gasping for the air of divine life - the Life-Giving Spirit.
3. 
   
4. .

Single Again

Singleness

• Singleness is more important than marriage. Marriage depends on singleness.
• Our culture built us to get along with others. We were trained to focus on other people. That is why we are not equipped to have relationships with others.
• The most important relationship in life should not be inter-personal relationship. It should be intra-personal relationship. You cannot have inter-personal relationship until you have settled the intra-personal relationship. I need to love myself.
• If I don't know and love myself I cannot love another person.
• The most important pursuit in life is self-knowledge. Singleness is about finding myself, loving myself, valuing myself, accepting myself, understanding myself and then appreciating myself so much that I can now share myself with another person.

Some Notes:

1. People think they need to get married to be complete;
2. You don't need to be married to fulfill God's purpose;
3. Get busy fulfilling God's purpose and stop looking for someone to marry;
4. Failure in marriage can derail your purpose;
5. It is better to be unmarried and happy than to be married and depressed.

Divorce

• Don't just get custody of the kids. First get custody of yourself.
• The ultimate trauma in life is divorce (Mal.2:16);
• Divorce is a violent act.
• You don't want to develop a level of bond that you are not responsible for.
• Divorce is traumatic.
• There is no cure for the broken heart. God hates divorce because it creates a wound that no medication can cure. Only a personal encounter with Jesus Christ can heal the broken heart.
• Despite God hating divorce, He still loves the divorcee.
• Divorce is tragic because it is the death of relationship.
• It is impossible to get divorce unless you are married. Marriage is the prerequisite of divorce. Hence singleness is the most important pursuit in life.
• The ingredient determines the product. 
• We want perfection with defects;
• We expect success while building with failure;
• Divorce: something went wrong at the foundation level - the male and female was contaminated.

Marriage

• My marriage is only as good as the single me.
• I bring into the marriage only that which I am a single. No more, no less.
• Whatever I am, I create. 
• It is more important that I bring the best to the relationship. I should work on becoming the best.
• Marriage is like an omelette. It is only as good as the eggs. Omelettes are determined by the quality of the eggs.
• Do not be unequally yoked because you cannot unyoke the individual eggs from the omelette.
• You carry your life with you, so make sure it's one you want to carry.
• If you knew all you know about you, would you marry you?
• Are you the kind of person I can enjoy living with for 90 years?
• What do you have that I can live with forever?
• Take care of your life first.
• Are you a gift or a curse?
• Are you a promotion or a demotion to me?
• What is it that you have that will improve my life?

The Myth of Singleness

• Are you single or merely unmarried?
• To be single should be the goal of even the married because it is the singleness that keeps the marriage together. It is singleness that makes the marriage possible. Marriage is two whole people coming together. If you are not whole and get married to a whole person, you become a parasite. You suck life out of him/her. You use them to try and get complete. You are no longer a blessing; you are a curse.
• Most married people have never been single. Unmarried is a state while singleness is a disposition. It is an assessment of your entity.
• It is OK to be single but not to be "alone".
• Adam did not even know he needed someone. 
• Relationships are for sharing your victories and success with; not to bring on your burdens and depression.
• If you don't need to be married, you are probably ready to be married.
• Love is a decision to share with someone.
• You don't love someone because you need something from them.
• If you are not complete, marriage will expose you.
• Don't use your time looking for somebody, use your time becoming somebody.
• Unity in vision is more important than unity in love.

Let Me Live

Yesterday I made a mistake
Now it is in my past
My context has changed
My perception is different
My lessons learnt
Let me live

If you stay stuck in my past
You will sound like a broken record
You will distort me through a shattered mirror
You will see me through stained lenses
Let me live

Drop the stones of judgment
Step down from that high pedestal
You will see a different me
When we stand eyeball to eyeball
Let me live.

Poem by Martin Kibisu

LIFE after Divorce or Separation

Isaiah 61
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners

• God does not encourage nor enjoy division. He is not in favor of broken fellowship. He is God of unity.
• God is not the author of destruction.
• Divorce - release a commitment that you had made for life. When you come into marriage, there is a war on to destroy you. Satan instigates everything to destroy it. We commit to each other to defend each other for life. Divorce is thus apostasy. 
• Promises are made to humans - vows are made to God. A vow is unto death. (Eccl.2). Built into a vow is the penalty. My making a vow, it allows God to judge you if you break it.
• Marriage is not made for divorce.

Separation

• If you are not able to handle the effects of a divorce/separation, you will eventually die.
• A key problem with divorce/separation is denial. Healing starts with acceptance.

Psalm 43:5

Why are you so downcast oh my soul, why so disturbed within me?

• Depression is a result of disappointed expectations.

How to Recover from Divorce/Separation

1. Where are you in your recovery? Did you avoid it (emotionally and mentally). This is avoiding it.
2. Others escape it by getting into another relationship too quick. There is no escape from the real feelings of trauma. The best way to deal with it is look at it straight into the eye.
3. Denial. Mentally block it and assume it didn't happen.
4. Acceptance. Others accept and deal with it.

Waiting and Dating-Part 1

• Habits and attitudes established during the dating years generally carry over into marriage.

Principles of Dating Readiness

1. You are not ready to date until you are fully aware of both the benefits and the dangers of dating. Human beings interact with each other in the spiritual, soulical and physical dimensions. Healthy relationships should always begin at the spiritual and intellectual levels - the levels of purpose, motivation, interests, dreams and personality. The physical dimension is the least important.
2. A good understanding of God's standards for relationships. This requires a certain degree of spiritual maturity.
• There are only 2 choices: either you will follow God's standards by deliberate choice, or you will follow the world's standards by default. Unless you plan ahead to keep yourself pure on a date, you probably won't.
• Dating is no place for trial and error.
3. Resolve in your spirit that you will not lower or compromise God's standards for any reason, even if it means losing dates. Standing firm on what you believe is a sign of both spiritual and emotional maturity. There are no second-class areas of life to God. He is after your best. He wants you to obey Him, follow His Word, and stand firmly on His standards. Anything less and you cannot expect to receive His best.
4. YOU ARE READY TO DATE WHEN YOU DON'T NEED TO
• If you feel that you need a date in order to be complete or fulfilled personally, you are not ready for dating. Need involves demand and implies that there is something lacking in life. As long as you perceive lack or incompleteness within yourself, every relationship you enter will be, to one degree or another, an effort to supply that lack or bring a sense of completeness.
• You are ready to date only to the extent that you feel whole and complete within yourself, apart from any other person (except God). When you regard dating as a matter of choice rather than necessity, you are ready.
• Before Eve came along, Adam was alone, but he was not lonely. Loneliness is a spiritual disease. Adam was alone because he was the only one of his kind, but he was completely fulfilled as a person. In tending the garden he had meaningful work to do. In his authority over the living creatures, he was exercising his God-given dominion over the created order. He enjoyed full and open fellowship with his Creator.
• The time you are most prepared for dating is when you don't need anyone to complete you, fulfill you or instill in you a sense of worth or purpose. You are ready to date when you have first learned how to be single.

Waiting

Those that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.