Have You Commercialized Love by Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Is love commercialized?

There is nothing commercialized about the platform. It is a totally different thing from church

Church is free. Church has been free. I have been a pastor for 30 years

Everything about church is free. This is a professional organization

We started it because churches did not have professional help when it came to marriage and love

Pastors just generally gave marital advice and sometimes some of the most horrible advice, because they are not knowledgeable about marriage

I did trainings and certifications. We run a professional organization with counselors alongside professionals

The benefit we bring is a Christian background. When you tell church people to go to the secular, the counselors do not value your faith

Illustration: the husband with erectile dysfunction

A married man had erectile dysfunction. The counselor told him to try other women. That counselor does not factor in faith, loyalty and commitment

Illustration: the couples with sex life issues

Some couples were told to introduce BDSM. They went and did it and the experience was not great for them

Most pastors are bivocational. There are pastors in real estate, pastors who are lawyers, pastors who are bankers

Our former vice president was a full pastor, a senior lawyer and a professor. If you are a pastor you can still do other things

Lessons from waiting for children

Nobody is going to escape challenges in life. Even the most righteous person will face challenges. We do not get to choose the challenges we face

Knowing God for yourself is important. There is a difference between teaching the Bible, living the Bible and trusting God personally for your own life

Some people will mock you. Some will not tell you their wife is pregnant because you are the pastor who has been waiting

The key is to trust God, be patient and do not let anything come between you and your spouse

Challenges like this can crack a marriage when it becomes "it is your fault". Your commitment is first to your spouse

That is why the vow says for better, for worse. You do not get to choose your worse

The partnership is supposed to strengthen us while we face it, not divide us because of it

Illustration: my wife and faith

My wife had been told since she was a teenager, by different specialists, that she might never have kids. I grew up in a word of faith environment, so we trust God completely

On the day we started the relationship we named our children. I said we are going to have children

After marriage she became anxious and did everything possible, medically and in prayer

I told her, if you are in anxiety you are not yet in faith. A lot of things we do we think are faith, but it is anxiety

Whenever she saw her period she would be depressed for some days. I said we are not counting periods, we trust God

When she settled to trust God she stopped running to different doctors and she calmed down

I knew she had shifted to faith when she saw her period and did not change her tone or mood. It was not long after that children started coming

I believe everything about your life is custom made. You just do not know it yet or you are not tapping into it

Everybody's story is inspiring. Everybody can be a hero if you know how to approach your story

Even if you do not win, putting up a good fight will inspire someone. There is a good lesson from any story, even one that looks like defeat

You never know what people are going through until you go through something

Before I got married I never heard of PCOS. There are many things you never hear of until you go through them. Millions of people are facing this challenge

It helps you empathize, connect with where they are and help them come out of it

Ladies shooting their shot

I do not think I ever said ladies should propose. Blogs are not in the business of news, they are in the business of views. They can twist anything

I have a message titled Seven Mistakes Ladies Make When They Like A Guy. One of the mistakes is not to talk

I encourage ladies to initiate conversation. Not to initiate a relationship. Not to initiate marriage

If I see you drinking tea and I like you, I can ask: what are you drinking, is it nice, can I try it, where can I get it. That is all

I do not think a woman should initiate proposal. I do not think she should even initiate relationship. She can initiate conversation

Women assume men are bold. Many times they are not. Many times a man is terrified of you, especially when you hang out in groups

Do not go in groups of four, five and six. Space yourselves out once in a while. Then be responsive

I do not think it is really a wrong or right situation. However, as an experienced person, I am not a fan of a woman saying "I like you, I want us to date"

Women who take the lead that way eventually get frustrated. They expect the man to take the lead in the marriage. He has been trained to wait for you

They come back and say he never initiates anything. That is how the whole thing started

Some men are so terrified and laidback that the only way they will get married is when the woman says yes. They will never initiate

So you must be ready to continue like that. Down the line you cannot start complaining. You will initiate everything, even sex

It is a personality type. Some women genuinely are okay with it. If she is well prepped and ready, then it is fine

But most women find it tiring. Women are not wired to be the one taking that responsibility

Why the church needed this conversation

When I got born again, apart from the late Pastor Bimbo Odukoya, there were not many people teaching on these things

It is a specialized thing. It is not what every pastor can teach. You are either called or equipped to teach it or not

Pastors have given horrible advice because they feel pressured to think they can speak about marriage when they cannot

I found out I was called to do it

There was a natural gift and flair for it, and I also got trained professionally to add to it. Today it is my main career outside of being a pastor

Relationships in a social media age

Relationships have always had pros and cons in each generation. We are just connecting online more than normal, but the challenges are still the same

Everywhere we have been, they say their country has the worst divorce rate. Canada, the US, the UK, Australia. People are facing the same issues

The main thing is people are not learning. To drive you go through school, they test you, then they give you a license

With marriage they give you a license before you start learning anything. So the crash rate for marriage is about 50%

The percentage of planes that crash is far lower because of the training a pilot goes through. Once you say you are in love, everybody says go ahead

People are pressured by what others post. That is the highlight of their lives, not reality

People are not doing enough human interaction. You cannot fall in love with somebody's profile picture. We need to bridge the gap with more human interaction

Working with your spouse

We had to establish some basic rules. We can be dual things to each other

She is still my babe. I am still her husband. But at work I am her boss. She cannot romanticize a board meeting

It comes with maturity. You must separate how we are as a couple from how we are as people in the organization

Tattoos

I do not regret it at all. I am an honest and authentic person. If you are not a religious person you will get those kinds of reactions

Jesus was not religious. He connected with God in practical life. Religious people actually killed Jesus

Religious people are more interested in the rules, not the relationship. The Pharisees asked why he was praying for somebody on the Sabbath

Christianity is not following rules. It is about a relationship

God has never been opposed to people's cultures or hairstyles. Christ did not wear suits. He wore a garment. A suit is somebody's culture

Tattoos have always been part of human culture. Older men all over Lagos had them. Everywhere in the world there were tribal marks

God used tattoo as an example Isaiah 49:16

He used an example the culture could relate to. People put tattoos to remember. He was saying, I have tattooed you, so I can never forget you

Christ also has a name written on him Revelation 19:16

Illustration: the leader with the prison tattoo

I preach in multi-racial churches

In a church where even the white pastor has tattoos, a leader will say: I did this tattoo when I found Christ in prison. I met the Lord and I wrote my salvation story

How can you tell that man his tattoo is a sin

There is not even one scripture that says tattoo is a sin

Leviticus 19:28

It does not say tattoo is a sin. What it says is do not do it for the dead. The verse after talks about not shaving Leviticus 19:27, and all pastors shave

Leviticus was not speaking to the body of Christ. It was speaking to the Jews, who were in a culture where people did certain things

God was saying do not do these things that separate. It has nothing to do with decorative tattoos

Microblading is a form of tattoo

Christians once fought over makeup, trousers, jeans, wigs, perfume and television. People fought to say these things have nothing to do with Christ

Infidelity

People cut what they want out of context. There are many reasons infidelity happens. Often it has nothing to do with your spouse

But there is also the issue where a spouse is withholding physical intimacy. You are pressuring that person. It is a reality, not something I made up

I am a professional. I do not share my opinion. What matters is what the stats, the science and the scriptures say

We have seen couples who have not had sex in 3 months, in one year, in 2 years

If the person says that is why they did it, that is what we write down. It is not for me to investigate

There is no excuse for doing something bad. The person is only saying why they did it

I would encourage them to build self-control. If you know you cannot cope with a sexless marriage, then talk about what to do about that marriage, whether you want to stay or not

On divorce

It is not about okay. It is like saying is accident okay. If it happens, it happens. There are things beyond your control

Part of the basis of divorce in scripture is if your partner abandons you 1 Corinthians 7:15

If he has carried his bag and left for two years, three years, or has gone to marry somebody else, you are already divorced by default

Serious abuse where your life is in danger is another

The platform and its pricing

It is not a dating site. The 700k was not for matchmaking. That makes no sense

Every pastor I meet around the world tells me one major problem. Our sisters and brothers are not getting married. They are committed, faithful people in their 40s and 50s with no husband

This platform came out of about two years of research. We started by manually connecting people

We found out that a lot of people are not even matchable. Even if you bring them 10 good options, they will not see anything good

There has to be a re-engineering of how people think, both guys and girls

If your mindset is worked on, you do not even need me to connect you. You will start seeing opportunities around you

We researched about 10 things common among people experiencing delay in marriage

• Social skills. A guy says how are you, where are you, what are you doing, and he ends there. In your mind, if he wants to marry me he should know what to say. The guy does not know
• Choice of partner. What they are looking for does not exist. Even if you wait 100 years you will not find this person

We also paired people and saw how they interacted

A sister can be in your church and you think she is nice, but how she treats you is not how you judge. You need to see how she treats other people

The platform was set up to solve this on a mass scale, because I cannot do one on one with everybody

It is like a class. If we are in the same class there is a higher chance of me finding somebody like me. We teach you, because some people are not matchable

It was not free to build

One person wanted to charge 10 million naira to build it. Who will pay the staff, the graphic, video and editing people, and the coaches, some of them Americans paid in dollars

It is like a Christian university. Consider it a marriage university

There is a part of it that is free. The basic part is 70,000 a year. That comes to about 5,000 a month

We even found out we have to review those prices because it was not sustainable

Illustration: the man who wanted a wife from the UK

A man said he wanted a wife from the UK because all his siblings are there

I told him to get on the platform and connect with women in the UK. He asked if he must pay 70,000

Even if I give you the woman, how would you get data to talk to her

70k is the cheapest level, one for everybody. Some people need extra help, and that is where the 700k comes in

That is 58,000 a month for a therapist to work with you. There is no therapist in the world that will take 58,000 a month