"BEFORE YOU FIND THE RIGHT PERSON, BECOME THE RIGHT PERSON".

A 4-Part Series on Love, Relationships, Character and Surrender to God

If I could sit down with my younger self and have one conversation about relationships, I know exactly where I would start.

Not with red flags.

Not with compatibility.

Not with communication.

Not even with marriage.

I would talk about consecration.

Looking back over the years, I can clearly identify several mistakes I made in relationships that ultimately did not end well. The painful part is that many of those mistakes did not happen because I lacked information. They happened because I ignored principles that God had been faithfully placing before me through His Word, wise counsel, and everyday life.

Like many Christians, I was in church. I loved God. I prayed. I served faithfully in the house of the lord with a genuine love and passion for His work and for the church at large, including all the people who crossed my path.

Yet, there were unfortunate moments when my decisions in relationships were more influenced by my desires than by God's wisdom.

God’s word entreats us to love as an essential part of His will for us:

“Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbour, you will fulfil the requirements of God’s law.

[Romans 13:8NLT]

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

[1 John 4:16NLT]

You can serve the church actively, and yet your heart can be quite far away from the Lord whose church it is.

In our current dispensation, there is a lot of heartache from failed relationships because most of us pursue love relationships with a “self-serving mindset” which ultimately does not end well for both parties. We struggle with having Christ-centred relationships with the opposite sex (both platonic and romantic), toy with people’s hearts and emotions albeit unintentionally, but sometimes still go ahead even when we clearly see warning signs because we want to have a “lived experience” what the spirit of the Lord clearly cautions us to avoid.

What I did not realise in my younger years was that, many of my struggles (and possibly yours) could be traced back to one neglected biblical principle: Consecration!

The word sounds intimidating and perhaps, even “old-fashioned”. For some, it conjures images of monks, endless prayer meetings, or a life stripped of joy and freedom, just like I thought the first time I heard it. But after searching the scriptures and having learned from seasoned men of God (the likes of Apostle Arome Osayi, Apostle Micheal Orokpo, Dr David Ogbueli, among others) who have taught beautifully and expansively on the topic, and also from christian literature, it has become clear that biblical consecration is neither strange nor restrictive but rather a response to the love demonstrated to us by God through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

How open are you to yielding to God’s will?

At its core, consecration simply means living with the conviction that God's will matters more than our own, and that is a truth we need to accept early in life because frankly speaking, most times, our self-serving will, leads us down paths of self-destruction. Consecration is choosing to place Christ at the centre of our decisions, desires, ambitions, relationships, and future.

In a powerful teaching titled: Myths and Makes of Christian Dating, Coach Alex Yeboah Sasu and his wife, Gloria, pioneers of Sayinspires Hub define Christian dating as:

"Two Christians in a dating relationship who run it with biblical principles."

This definition is simple, yet profound, because the quality of our relationships will always be shaped by the principles governing them.

The quality of our relationships will always be shaped by the principles governing them.

"If consecration is so important, what does it actually look like?”

I am sure, having read to this point, you, my dearly beloved reader and co-believer in Christ, have asked yourself the question above. This series is an attempt to help us answer this question biblically and practically. If what you have been engaged with so far resonates with you and you’d want sound Christian coaching, why not explore this with Sayinspires Hub.

In the next article in this series, we'll begin unpacking the word CONSECRATION itself, one letter at a time and discover why the first six letters may completely change the way you approach not just romantic relationships but even platonic ones as well and ultimately your personal walk with the Lord, as we delve into: "Who has my heart?". The third part of this series will then dissect the remaining five letters accordingly answering the question, "What kind of character am I building?". Then we conclude on this subject matter with a practical take-home message we can all appreciate in the final part of this series, tackling "What happens when God’s will clashes with what I want?".

Do not miss out on the subsequent episodes in this series, and remember:

Biblical principles are for our welfare and protection (and that of others we engage with), not an oppression of our lives in Christ.