Tuesday 16th February 

A lovely Tuesday to you in Jesus name. 

We are still talking about love and this week our focus is on The Different Shades of Love. 

Love has shades and what do we mean by that? We means there are different expressions of love and that's because we have different relationships with different people. And there are  different expressions of your person. 

The Bible says different things about the Person of God. For instance, God is love, God is holy and God is a consuming fire but it is the same God.

Dr Myles Monroe said "When the purpose or the intent of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable". When we do not know the love commitments or demands that the different relationship needs, then we can get into trouble because we can abuse ourselves or abuse relationships. 

You need to understand the purpose of each relationship and the love demand that it requires. We must be careful to separate the love demand of the person from the purpose of our relationship with the person. Wisdom is to know the shade of love to express to the relationship with respect to purpose and not person.

Another thing we need to understand is the limitations of English language with respect to expressing some words.

The New Testament of the Bible was written in Greek and the word “love” in Greek has a number of meanings. 

An example is in John 21 : 15 - 17 (KJV)

15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.16 He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.17 He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

In this passage, Jesus spoke about “love,” Peter responded using the word “love” too,  but in the Greek the words used for 'love" are  not the same. The word Jesus was using was the word “Agape” which is different from the word Peter was using which was "Phileo", but in English they are both called love. 

Jesus was talking about love-  Agape and Peter was talking about love - Phileo. Peter finally got angry when Jesus decided to use the word “phileo” for him rather the word “agape”  He had used earlier because He knew it was a different shade of love. He knew Phileo was a lower shade of love to Agape.

In the Greek there are different shades of love and we can see the different shades of this love expressed in the Bible. 

As we continue this week, we will to look at the different kinds of love the Bible talks about and the commitments required for each.

Understand this, God’s love for you is the highest kind of love because you and I are the crown of his creation.

May the love of God make a difference in our life in Jesus name. 

God bless you. 

Enjoy the rest of your day.

 Monday 15th February 

Lovely day to you in the name of Jesus. 

We thank God for today. It is the beginning of another week.

This week we will be talking about the different shades of love. What do we mean by the different shades of love? It simply means the different expressions of love. Yes we talk about love but love is expressed in different ways. 

Love is a person, and just as a person could have different roles and expressions, so it is with love. For instance, some people know me through this devotional and podcast, so they could say I am pastor and a podcaster. They are not be wrong but that is not a complete expression of my person. I am also a father, a husband, a son, a brother to some people, a pastor, a friend, a podcaster and an author and so on. 

All these expressions of my person have people connected to them and I have some level of love commitments all of them. The truth is I cannot love everybody the same way and believe me, God doesn’t expect me to. 

Now if we don’t understand this we can get confused and get in trouble. So you think that the same commitment of love you have to your wife is what you must have with your mum, of course not. We must understand the different roles and the different love commitments that each role demand.

My mum and wife are very strong personalities. In the early years of marriage, it caused a lot of tension for me as I struggled to balance the personality clash that resulted from time to time. God gave me the wisdom to handle the situation and it was knowing the love commitment each role demanded and expressing it as such. They both understood it and I have never had to deal with that situation again.

Jesus understood the place of demand and how express his commitment Himself to the different roles. They tried tempting Him in this regard once but they were surprised at His understanding.

In Mark 12: 15 - 17 (NLT) it says;

15 Should we pay them, or shouldn’t we?”

Jesus saw through their hypocrisy and said, “Why are you trying to trap me? Show me a Roman coin, and I’ll tell you.” 16 When they handed it to him, he asked, “Whose picture and title are stamped on it?” Caesar’s,” they replied.17 “Well, then,” Jesus said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.”

He said “Caesar has his place and God His place. What is Caesars’ I know and I give it to him and what is God’s I know and I give it to Him". 

When we understand the different shades of love, then we'll know the love commitments or shade to give to the different relationships in our lives. 

As a father, shouldn't confuse the love you need to give your wife to your daughter and you don’t confuse the love you need to give your business partner to your staff.

When you understand this and you give each role the love it demands, it keeps you safe.

Jesus' example shows is that if you don’t understand this, you will be trapped.

You will not be trapped in Jesus name. 

May the wisdom of God to act right in this area be yours in Jesus name.

God bless you!

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Sunday 14th February 

A beautiful Sunday to you in the name of Jesus. We thank God for today, for His grace and love. We thank God especially for His love that covers our sins. We thank God for His love that speaks better things for us. I pray in the name of Jesus that we will experience the love of God in a new way.  I pray that this love will become a fountain flowing with new life and flowing out of us to become blessings to others in Jesus name.

We are still talking about the Person of love. 1 Corinthians 13 vs 8 says, 

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 

It says love never ends. In the bible KJV version, it says love never fails. 

Last week we discussed  the of power of love and we saw how powerful love is.  Songs of Solomon 8 :6-8 emphasized the power of love. It says many waters cannot quench love and that love is as strong as death. 

When you experience true love, it is not weak, it is powerful. We saw how Apostle John was transformed after he experienced the power of love. It became impossible to destroy him, all attempts to kill him failed. He just could not be taken out. Love kept him. Nobody could end his life because love never ends and John had a personal revelation of this love.

Jesus' was love personified. He said, nobody takes my life from me. I have the power to take it and power to lay it down again. When we truly allow the Person of love to affect and influence our life, His love would sustain us. His love would build and hold us.

Theologians tell us that they did everything possible to kill Apostle John, but he did not die. They threw him inside a boiling pot of oil but did not die. Why? Love never fails. Love never ends. The expression used in the Old Testament was that love is as a strong as death. In the new testament the expression is love never fails and so love is  stronger than death. Apostle John was banished to the Island of Patmos, they expected him to die there but instead he saw visions that became the Book of Revelation. Every attempt to end his life failed because love never ends. Love never fails.

This is what happens when we allow the Person of love to fully consume us. When we allow the Person of love to fully take up our life, it becomes impossible for death or anything to take us out.  Why? Love never ends. The only requirement is to yield our lives to Him.

My prayer is that you will allow the love of God to influence your life. Open yourself afresh everyday to this Person of love. When the Person of love overflows your heart, then the fruit of love, the fruit of the Spirit that we have discussed will overflow your heart and pour into others. As love flows out of you, much more will come back to you.

I pray this will be your experience in the name of Jesus. 

God bless you. 

Have a great a day.

 Saturday 13th February 

A beautiful Saturday to you in the name of Jesus. God is good and He is good all the time. May you experience the goodness of God, the love and the grace of God in a new way in Jesus’ name.

We have been talking about the Person of love. And we've been seeing the transforming power of this Person of love. Yesterday, we spoke about James and John, Sons of Thunder. The question is, how was John, particularly transformed from this violent, heady, angry, highly temperamental person to whom theologians generally call the apostle of love? 

The moment you truly experience the Person of love, it is beyond any explanation and definition and transforms your life completely. I have found out through searching the Bible especially the New Testament that there are no book that talks more about love more than the writings of John. The gospel of John has  21 and  The epistles of John (I, II and III John) have 7 chapters altogether and they both have about 40 references to love.

How did this son of thunder become the apostle of love? Keeping company with the Holy Spirit allows us to truly experience the Person of love and it gradually but radically changes your life. When we truly experience the Person of love, we can no longer be love-sick, we can no longer be love starved because the Person love becomes a living fountain, flowing fresh and flowing powerful from within us.

The Bible in John 4:13-15 (NLT) says,

 13 Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. 14 But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”15 “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me this water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to get water.”

The bible passage is the story of a Samaritan woman that Jesus met by the well. She had experienced what she thought was love in different kinds of relationships and had become tired. While listening to Jesus besides the well, Jesus showed her something different. This woman met the Person of love it was something else entirely. Jesus told her, if you really drink from me and experience the Love I want to give, you will never be thirsty again.

When you experience this love it grows until it becomes a fountain, bubbling with fresh love on the inside of you. In the end, you will never need anybody to validate you, because you will know that you are well accepted as a beloved of the Person of Love. You will have more than enough love flowing out of you to others. This Samaritan woman was desperate for this kind of love. She wanted to drink from the life source of love and from the Person of love. She wanted to experience the Person of love because of lack of fulfillment from all the so called love relationship she had been involved in.

Many of us have experienced disappointments in relationship and had different issues and pain with respect to love. Jesus is offering a new beginning. Jesus said, when you experience my life and love, it becomes fresh water, a fountain flowing with new of life and true love. I prayer that will be your experience in the name of Jesus. 

God bless you. 

Enjoy your day.

 Friday 12th February 

A lovely Friday to in the name of Jesus. We thank God for another beautiful day and a lovely weekend ahead in Jesus’ name. 

We're still talking about the Person of love and I’ll want us to read some scriptures and we will discuss them. 

Mark 3:17(NLT), James and John (the sons of Zebedee, but Jesus nicknamed them “Sons of Thunder”).

Mark 9:38-39 (NLT) 38 John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons, but we told him to stop because he wasn’t in our group.” 39 “Don’t stop him!” Jesus said. “No one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me.

Mark 10:35-37(NLT) 35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came over and spoke to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do us a favour.”36 “What is your request?” he asked.37 They replied, “When you sit on your glorious throne, we want to sit in places of honour next to you, one on your right and the other on your left.”

 Luke 9:54 (NLT) says, When James and John saw this, they said to Jesus, “Lord, should we call down fire from heaven to burn them up?”

The Bible verses we read gives us an insight into the personality of James and John, both of them were disciples of Jesus and He nicknamed them the sons of thunder. A thunder is fiery, it looks angry and it’s noisy when it strikes. It also can make people scared when it strikes and the lightening that is dangerous. This was how Jesus described the lives of these sons of Zebedee. Even though they were with Jesus, they seem to have none of the attributes of love that Apostle Paul spoke about in 1 Corinthians 13.  

They saw some people doing the works of Jesus Christ, casting out demons. They said no you can't be doing that, you don’t belong to our group. Jesus rebuked them for what they did, being factional and unkind and told them not to do that again. They were quite ambitious and self-seeking. They went lobbying Jesus to reserve the seat at His right and left for them when He set up His kingdom. They were clearly not concerned about what happened to the other 10 disciples.  

On another occasion when Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, they went by a community that didn’t welcome them. The sons of thunder felt insulted by the people and asked Jesus if they could call fire down from heaven and “roast” the people!  Jesus said to them, “You guys obviously don't understand that kind of spirit that is in you”. James and John were intolerant and quick to anger and yet they were followers of Jesus. 

But by staying around Jesus and being open to the help of the Holy Spirit their lives became transformed. Someone like John was so transformed he became known as the apostle of love. Why? Because he had experienced the love of God. The Person of love transformed him so much it was as if he was a new person. 

One of the lessons to learn from this is that we must never judge people and give up on them no matter what they seem like. They may be thunderous, hot tempered, irritating and selfish. Yes, we must not condone such attributes because Jesus didn’t condone it in the sons of thunder but we must also show love by being patient and believing the best of people.

My prayer is that we will experience the transforming power of the Person of the Lord. Just like Jesus made an apostle of love out of a son of thunder, I pray He will make something new and amazing out of us in the name of Jesus. 

God bless you.

Enjoy your weekend.

 Thursday 11th February 

A lovely day to you in the name of Jesus. We thank God for today. We thank God for His grace and love. We are still talking about the Person of love. 

Now we understand that love is a person and this person is God. So we can now see why it is a difficult to really define love, how in the world do you define God? Yes, we can say different things about God but nobody can fully define Him. He is beyond anything we can ever want to say. One of the major issue with love in today’s culture is that there is generally a wrong concept about love. For most people love is about them; how they feel, what they receive, remember the song “GIVE ME your unconditional love…” But the idea of love is completely opposite to what the Person of Love represents. 

God is not the kind of Person that wants to pull all the attention to Himself or wants everything for Himself. The Person of love gives. The Bible says it is more blessed to give than to receive. The outflow of love is more is more consistent with the nature of love than demanding love. When our concept of love is all about getting love; “love me, hug me, give me, make me feel special” and so on. Even though there is nothing wrong in these ideas, but if this is what we believe about love, then we are setting ourselves up for pain and heartaches.

Ephesians 3 vs 19 (NLT) says, may you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. 

Paul is saying here that when we experience the Person of love, when we experience the love of God, then it makes something out of us, it changes us. As the Lord begins to fill us, it gets to a point where it begins to manifest and overflow with His love. Then we begin to see all the attributes of love that Paul was talking about in 1Corthians 13 vs 4-8 manifest in our lives.

When we begin to see these fruit of love grow from inside of us, then we realize that this love is not about trying to receive or struggling to pull people’s affection towards us, it’s about sharing the overflow of God’s love from within and this is a function of experiencing the Person of love.

When we encounter the Person of love, it never leaves us the same. In Acts 4:13, the religious leaders of Israel spoke to Peter and John. The Bible says they took note the amazing transformation in their personalities and it was clear to them that they had been with Jesus. Experiencing the person of Jesus and the Spirit of Jesus, the spirit of love had evidently changed in their lives. 

My prayer is that you will experience this Person of love not just once, but continuously and may you will allow Him to fill you like Apostle Paul said, and make you complete and bring forth His fullness and power in you, so that His love can flow out from you to others. And as it begins to happen, more of His love will always comes back to you. 

God bless you.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Wednesday 10th February 

A lovely Wednesday to you all in the name of Jesus. 

We are still talking about The Person of Love.

God is love, God is wisdom and God is power. Love is a Person and love is God and God is love. We can see why it's so difficult defining love because how do you define God? Do you define it as the Father, do you define it as the Son? Do you define it as the Word? Do you define it as the Spirit? Do you define it as infinity?  And in all those things, you're right but you are not fully right because God is much more than all that, and it is the same when we are trying to define love. 

How do you explain the unexplainable? That was what Paul was trying to do, having experienced God love and transforming power, he wanted many more people to experience the same thing so he attempted to explain the love he had experienced.  

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (RSV) 

4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 

5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 

7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

8 Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 

In the traditional King James Version, it says in verse 8 "…charity never fails.”

This is Paul's attempts to explain the attributes of love. He was trying to say “...when you experience this love, when you truly experience this unexplainable, undefinable love of God, you will begin to see these things manifest in your life”.

The love of God love truly is beyond definition, it's beyond explanation, it's something that when you experience it in its reality, you would know it.

In verse 9, Paul says this "for we know in parts and we prophesy in parts."

So you see why it is difficult pinning love to a definition, it’s because we know it in parts and that is the way it is with the things of God. So don't feel bad if you experience of love keeps defying conventional definitions. As we continue grow in our walk with God, our understanding of love will keep changing. 

I pray in the name of Jesus we would go beyond explanation, we go beyond physical knowledge and open up ourselves to experiencing God and His love in a new way. When you encounter the Person of love, you would know it. You might not be able to explain it but you would know that you know that you know and the evidence of that experience will begin to manifest in your life in a way that cannot be denied. 

I pray that would be your experience in Jesus name. 

God bless you. 

Enjoy your day!

 Tuesday 9th February 

Praise God and we thank God for today.

We’ve been talking about this thing called love and like we said yesterday, throughout this week we want talk about the fact that Love is a Person. We have struggled and tried to define love, we have tried to say different views on love, but some way, somehow it just seemed to be bigger. 

We read Paul’s attempt to talk about love in Ephesians 3:18 - 19 and we saw Paul talking about the fact that this love of God is huge and how we can’t define the length, height, width, depth and how it is beyond human comprehension. So we are trying to unravel this love thing but one thing I have come to understand is that love is actually a person. And the fact that a concept like love can be a person is not new to scriptures and to our world. In Luke 11: 49, he was talking about the wisdom of God and he says “…therefore says the wisdom of God...” So we see wisdom being given the attribute of a person.  In Ephesians 3: 10 (AMP), the Apostle Paul gives some attributes of this wisdom. He said,

10 So now through the church the multifaceted wisdom of God [in all its countless aspects] might now be made known [revealing the mystery] to the [angelic] rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Luke 11: 49 refers to wisdom as a person and in Ephesians 3: 10 we see the attributes of this person called Wisdom. It is complicated and how it has many sides, it has infinite variety and numerable aspects. So how do you define something like that? How do you describe something that is complicated and many sided? 

The Bible says in 1 John 4: 8 (NLT)

8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Also in 1 John 4: 16 (NLT), it says 

16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

Can you see that God is love? He is not like love, He does not just have love, God is love personified and if God is love personified, how do you define Him? How do you explain God? Can you see why we have a big issue trying to explain this. Why? God is beyond explanation. If wisdom can have so many complicated side and mind you Jesus is the wisdom and power of God, then we can imagine how many manifestations love would have and the complicated nature of God’s love to the immature believer. 

My prayer is that you would experience this God in a new and powerful way and may His Spirit help you understand the love of God that is beyond understanding in Jesus name. 

God bless you. 

Enjoy your day!

Monday 8th February 

A beautiful to Monday to you in the name of Jesus. 

We are grateful to God for bringing us into another week. This is the second week of the month of February and God is always good. We are talking about love throughout this month and last week we were looking at the different meaning of love. We discussed the general view of love; what people have said, songs, movies, popular saying about love and we tried to see if we could come up with a true definition of love.

At the end of the story of the Good Samaritan Jesus said to the man who asked him the question about neighbour “Who do you think was his neighbour?” It is clear form the question that Jesus asked the man that He expects us to think through things, and all we are trying to do is to think and rethink the things we know about love.

This week, we will be talking about The Person of Love.

Throughout out this week we will be talking about the fact that Love is a person. You can see that we are trying to come up with some agreement about this “love thing”. Love is a person and all throughout last week, we saw how we struggled with the different positions about love. 

Somebody that had an experience with love is this man called Paul. In the book of Ephesians 3: 18 - 19 (NLT) he said,

18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Paul was talking about the love of God and he said listen, I want you to know “how wide, how long , how high and how deep the love of God is. Then he spoke about experiencing the love of Christ that is too great to understand fully. 

If you read Ephesians 3: 19 in the New King James Version, it spoke about knowing the love of Christ that passes knowledge. Can you imagine? How do you know what passes knowledge? That was what we were dealing with last week, we were trying to know something that is beyond human understanding. 

You can see that this struggle to fully understand this thing called love is not something that began recently, Paul wrote this almost a thousand years ago and he also spoke back then about the difficulty in fully understanding love. But if there is anything I want you to know and settle in your mind, it is fact that love is a person.

May God help us to understand and experience this love as we continue to think about it in the name of Jesus. 

May this week be wonderful for you in Jesus Name. God bless you.  

Enjoy your day!

Sunday 7th February 

A beautiful Sunday morning to you in the name of Jesus. It's a lovely day, bright, sunny, at least where I am. I pray it's a beautiful Sunday for you too in the name of Jesus. 

We thank God for today, for life and love. We're talking about love throughout this month. And we’ve been asking the question, What's the meaning of love?

Definitions are important to life, if you cannot define something, then you cannot properly understand it. But when you define it properly, it becomes easier for you to understand and enjoy the benefits. 

All we’ve been trying to do this week is to consider the various ideas people have about love and see it we can really understand this thing called Love. Let read again from the book of Songs of Solomon, Chapter 8:6-7 (NLT), and it says, 

place me like a seal over your hearts, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death. Its jealousy as enduring as the grave, love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame. Verse 7 says, many waters cannot quench love, nor can river drown it. If a man tried to buy love with all his wealth, his offer would be utterly scorned. 

Solomon is a very interesting person. Solomon was the wisest man of his time. He was not just the wisest but the richest as well. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He had money, food, wine and all the good things of life. If we read in the book of Ecclesiastes, which he wrote, he spoke about the fact that there was no pleasure that his soul wanted that he denied himself. He had everything. So, for the man to be saying this about love, he must be taken seriously. 

If love was a feeling, he would have experienced it, at least with all the harem of women that he had. If love was about things and money, he must have experienced it.  So, for him to write this, it must be because he has insight or experience about these dimensions of love. 

What is your experience with respect to love? 

I know people who have spoken about heartbreak situation, or broken heartedness. They speak of love at first sight, falling in love, falling out of love and all that. And like we have said earlier this week, if your concept and idea of love is wrong, then it's going to affect a lot of things about your life. 

But the moment you get this love thing right, believe me, it would change your life. And guess what? All of us we're created with the capacity to love and the capacity to receive love. Every one of us, even the toughest people. Everybody wants to be loved. But to experience that, we must know what is the true meaning of love. 

I pray about you that you will experience this true love before the end of this month in Jesus name. 

God bless you. Have a lovely day.