Forever After Island, September 2026 by Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo: Sermon Notes

One problem in marriage

Go and read the book of Song of Solomon. God is not afraid or annoyed by love. He is actually love and he created love

We toured Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and seven cities in Europe. Everywhere they told us, "Thank you for coming. We have the worst divorce rate"

The problems people face in marriage are universal. It is the same one problem

There is only one problem in marriage. It might have many branches and many expressions, but it is one problem: ignoring the design of the designer

Once you handle marriage and ignore the manual, you are going to suffer

Illustration: the small plane

A pastor was offered a free ride on a small plane and was blackmailed into taking it. In the cloud the pilot said he didn't know how to fly in the cloud, and passed out

They took the radio and said, "Hello, anybody there?" Another plane picked up the signal and said there is a protocol, it's not a phone. That pilot connected them to the tower

The tower guided them on what to press, the speed, everything to look at and how to land. They landed the plane

What are the chances, if the pilot passes out and you and your spouse are on the plane, with nobody to talk you through what you are seeing? Very slim

That's what is happening to marriages all around the world. They are winging it. They are doing guesswork. If you fly a plane by guesswork, 99% of the time you will not make it

They are trying to do love and relationship by how they see it. That's not how this works. There's a manual. There's a right way to do marriage.

If you do it that way, with the right understanding, your marriage or relationship will not crash

Love is enough

"Love is not enough." That statement is itself a problem, because of how people define love. What they mean is feelings, and love is not a feeling

Real Bible love, love by the designer of love and marriage, is enough 1 Corinthians 13

What many people are calling love is not love at all

4 aspects of love

Matthew 22:37

Jesus gave us a clue to what love is. Love has four aspects

Why people struggle in marriage is that they catch only one and say they have love. No, you have a part of love

Illustration: the car

A steering wheel is part of a car, but on its own it is not a car. A tire is part of a car, but on its own it is not a car

Even if you have four tires, the steering and the engine, and the car has no seat, it is still not a car.

For it to be a car, it has to have everything that makes it a car

That's the clue Jesus gave. For it to be love, it must have all four

1. Heart: agape

   When you hear heart biblically, it is your spirit man. It is not romance. They call it heart because of its location

   Your spirit has a location, the same way your mind has a location in your brain. When you look up trying to remember something, you are drawing from your mind

   Psychologists can tell whether you are lying by the part of the brain you are drawing it from

   Every human being carries a spirit. When the spirit leaves the body, the body becomes useless and rots. What sustains this body is the spirit inside. We just can't see it

   The mind is up here. The spirit is near where the physical heart is, around the heart and stomach area John 7:38, Proverbs 20:27

   The belly there is not the belly that has beans and yam. It is the same location

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   You must first love with your heart, your spirit man. That's why God doesn't expect a born again Christian to marry someone who is not born again. They are not even spiritually alive

   The spirit man receives its life from the life of God Romans 5:5

   1 Corinthians 13 is this kind of love

2. Soul: eros

   This is the one most celebrated. Hollywood, Nollywood, Bollywood, K drama and all the love songs. He is the most popular, but still the most useless of the four

   He is full of excitement and passion. He makes you unable to sleep at night. He makes you read chats from years ago as if they were love letters.

   He makes you burn your food when you are cooking. He makes it hard to read for an exam

   He is the one making sure people marry and have children. Without him, nobody in their right senses will marry

   "Love is blind." His job is to make human beings blind enough to marry. Without him, nobody reading the terms and conditions of marriage would enter it

   He suspends your mind for a short time to deceive you enough to come to the altar.

   The moment you say "I do," he has gone to the crowd to look for two other idiots to deceive

   So people say, "I don't love you anymore." It's because he has gone. He is the first to go.

   His job is not to stay with you. His job is to bring you to the marriage

   By nature he does not stay. He is very restless because he has a lot of customers to catch. If you want him back, you have to call him back, daily.

   If you don't maintain him, he's gone

   Eros is sensual, sexual love and passion. Without it the marriage won't work. We need passion. He is important, but he is very fickle and gets tired quickly

   David's son slept with his sister. He loved her so much he could not eat.

   The moment he slept with her, the hatred he now had for her was more than the love 2 Samuel 13:15

   Prayer warriors with a horrible marriage

   Some homes are very spiritual. Before they discuss, they sit down and say, "Can we pray?" Even before sex at night they pray.

   The only issue is that as they are spiritual, they are not friends.

   Husband and wife call each other brother and sister

   They are so spiritual they don't realize they still need passion. Everything is spiritual. They don't know this one needs servicing and maintenance

   Use kind words. Buy birthday gifts and Valentine's gifts. Take each other out. Surprise each other. Compliment each other. There are people who have never said something nice to their husband or wife

   Tell someone, "Your top is so nice," and it brings positive emotion. Buy them a new phone and it brings positive emotion. Anytime you don't see him, somebody is not doing their job

   You can always bring him back by simple acts of kindness, words of affirmation, love language, gifts. Many people think he will stay by himself. He doesn't

3. Mind: phileo

   This is friendship and understanding. It is not romantic. It is practical

   Many people that say they are in love have only the soul. By the time he goes, they are stuck.

   "We are always quarreling. She doesn't understand. He doesn't understand." Because they didn't have this one

   When the soul is there, an ugly person looks fine. A troublemaker looks like a peacemaker. Once he goes, your eyes clear. You find out you and this person can't agree about anything.

   You don't see things in the same light

   The number one thing you do in marriage most of the time is make decisions together. If both of you are not friends, not on the same wavelength mentally, every decision will be a battle.

   You make thousands of decisions

   

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   Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo

   David's Christian Centre, Lagos (DCC).

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   Even where to keep the soap becomes war. "Keep it here." "No, here." "In my family it is here." There's no mind. They are not friends

   So we always tell people, marry your friend.

   A friend is somebody you are happy to be with even if you are not touching each other. You are touching each other mentally. You like the person.

   You have so many things in common

   It is better to have it before. But even if you don't, you can build it by understanding each other, being patient with each other, being interested in each other

   Some spouses send their partner a meme or something funny and the partner doesn't even comment. That's a capital offense. That's how friendship is built.

   If you're not interested in what I'm interested in, we are drifting

   Titus 2:4 The word love there is phileo, how to be friends with their husband

4. Strength: storge

   This is commitment love. They call it strength because when you are not in the mood, this one shows up. It has strength. It has commitment

   It is family love, the kind of love a mother has towards her child.

   A woman who says "I can never wake up at midnight to cook for anybody" will stand up and cook once her baby cries at midnight

   Mind is companionate love. Strength is compassionate love

   It is the one that gives you a soft spot for your partner, whether they are right or wrong, whether they are pleasing you or not

   A husband and wife can be quarreling and the wife is still asking, "What will you eat?" That's compassion

   If you don't have it, once there is a small disagreement they turn to monsters towards each other. People who say they are in love and married turn to monsters because there is no compassion

In English we use love randomly. It is one word. The Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew, and there is no one word called love in it

The Bible has them as different things. In English we call all of it love

So when they say love is not enough, what do you mean? If you mean just one of the four, you are correct.

A tire is not a car. A steering wheel is not a car.

But when they are together, love is definitely love

There's a manual. If you don't understand it, you go by yourself and say, "I'm in love." What do you mean? Feelings are not love. Attraction is not love

Attraction is not love

Attraction is normal, but attraction is not love. Attraction doesn't mean relationship

People so attracted to themselves, the marriage did not last one year. After the passion they found the other things were not there, and it became a struggle

Attraction is not only physical. Physical attraction is just one kind, and unfortunately it might not last. Your bodies will change. Somebody will add weight. Somebody will lose weight. Somebody will have twins or triplets.

Your shape will change

There is also mental attraction. You like how this person thinks

I've shared the story many times of how I met my wife. It wasn't first physical. The place was dark. I could not even see her.

We were talking in a group, and every time she spoke she was very witty and very smart. I was attracted

Attraction doesn't mean marriage or love. You can be attracted to many people. Don't cross to the next level because you like her hips or her hairstyle, or his chest or his voice

You can fall in love with someone's singing on stage. In your mind, "he will be singing in the house, my baby, bring my food." He might give you no attention.

He might be on his phone throughout. He might be mean and impatient. What you saw on stage is the gift

You say, "I love him." You don't know him. The next stage from attraction is "I want to know you." Not "I want to marry you." Not "I want to date you"

Illustration: the pastor's wife

A pastor's wife came to sit at the altar on Sunday morning. She said she wanted to marry the man who preaches here. They said, "You are already married to him"

She said, "The one that preaches here is different from the one at home." The one at home is very mean. He doesn't pray or read the Bible.

The one here is very funny, very nice, very spiritual

You can fall in love with somebody on stage, thinking that's the person you are going home with, and you meet a whole human being

Attraction can be physical, spiritual (you like how they pray, how they preach), emotional. It doesn't mean you love them. You are just attracted to them

You can like a house from the outside, and when you enter you pass the toilet to get to the kitchen

Divine guidance and divine standards

Genesis 2:22 to Genesis 2:23

God did not tell Adam, "This is your wife." God brought her. God connected them. God presented her

Does God give people, or show people, their husband or wife? The answer is yes and no. It depends. There are two ways you pick who you are going to marry:

• Divine guidance
• Divine standards

You will never see anywhere in the Bible where God tells John to marry Lydia. God has never told somebody to marry another person in the Bible

God has given us free will. If God wanted robots, he could arrange robots. Even your salvation, God said we should choose Joshua 24:15

Marriage and salvation, what's more important? For salvation, God says you should choose. But many Christians, when it comes to marriage, say, "God, you choose"

A lot of people who say God told them who to marry, it's not God. It's their own heart telling them, a heart you can't see.

Your spirit is in alignment with God, so your spirit knows a lot of things

Many Christians don't live from their spirit. They live from their mind. Especially in Nigeria, if you are living from your mind, you will suffer. The hardship is too much

Live from your spirit. Your spirit has God inside it. Your spirit knows where you should go and what you should do with your life 1 Corinthians 2:11

Somebody asked me how I knew I was going to be a pastor. From the minute I got born again, I knew. Nobody told me. I just knew from my spirit. My spirit was alive

So a lot of people who say God told them who their husband is, it was their spirit. Their mind was confused, but their spirit said, "Marry this girl"

This does not mean God does not lead us. God can lead you Proverbs 3:6

But some people are waiting and waiting to hear a voice while everything looks clear. There are divine standards

I didn't hear a voice to marry Pastor Mildred. The girl made sense in every way. Spiritually sound. She knew God for herself. Mentally sound. A fine girl with good behavior.

So what was I waiting for?

As a child of God, you are led by the peace of God in your heart. If you are about to do something and you get a check in your heart, don't do it.

If you are about to do something good and there is no restraint or check in your heart, go ahead and do it

Some people think we are robots and God will tell me everything. "I will not eat until God tells me." You want to be a robot and you don't want to take responsibility.

God gave you a mind. We are underestimating the power of the mind God gave us

Unbelievers do better with their mind because they are not waiting for anybody. The fact that most Christians wait to hear God is what is delaying us from even taking over the country.

Nobody wants to run for politics unless God tells him

The unbeliever has no God to tell him. He just knows that government is good, and if he is in government he will make decisions.

So the quality of people ruling us is getting worse and worse, because brilliant Christians are waiting on the Lord

Yes, God does lead people. But he also wants you to use the wisdom he gave you, based on his word. The criteria is there

One flesh

Genesis 2:24

Marriage is not just a relationship. It's not just a union

Marriage is a covenant. One flesh is not about skin. A husband can be in Abuja and the wife somewhere else. They are not one flesh in terms of skin

The phrase one flesh means one person. It is a covenant term. It means you are now operating as a unit. That's all it is trying to say

Illustration: the jersey

My wife was in Manchester while I was here. She was buying a Manchester City jersey for our son. She didn't know which one to buy and sent me pictures of the three they had.

I said, "Buy this one. It will be nice. I'm buying one for me too"

We operated as a unit, though we are not physically in one body

You are not one spirit, because both of you can be praying in different places. You are not one mind, because you can think differently.

You are not one body, because you can be in different places

However, you channel your spirit, your soul and your body, by your own agreement, to operate as one unit

Cleave

Many people don't notice this word: cleave. Cleave is not automatic. It is an active word, not a passive word

Like holding your phone tight in a crowded market. You hold tight and you shine your eye

Many marriages have failed because after they joined they thought, "We are one," and walked their own separate ways

When people tell me my marriage failed, I say no. Marriage does not fail. You failed. One of you, or both of you, stopped cleaving. Somebody let go

It's not that it just happened and I didn't know how. You hold it. You cleave. That is an intentional act, when it is easy and when it is not easy

Union and unity

What God blesses is not the union but the unity

Proverbs 18:22 speaks of all the good things said about marriage. But we all know people who married and their life went down.

You see many people married and struggling, insulting each other, fighting, and you wonder why the scripture is not showing

It's not the union that is blessed. It is the unity that is blessed. And the unity is not automatic. It must be done intentionally

Stages to build unity:

• Conversation
• Consideration
• Consensus
• Compromise

I might need to do something I don't like for us to stay united. It's not "I must have what I want, you must have what you want." We are divided already

My wife cannot sleep when the light is on. If she enters a place she must close the window.

If I enter anywhere, the first thing I do is open the window and let the light come. I put on all the lights. That's how I sleep

How can we have unity if there is no conversation, no compromise, no consideration?

Whenever you see a couple walk in unity, it's not automatic. It's not that they agree on everything. They were intentional to maintain the unity

It is the unity that is blessed, not the union. The union can be horrible