BY Chika Abanobi
Today is February 14. A day set apart, in remembrance of St. Valentine, whose life is said to epitomise that love, it is celebrated, worldwide, as Lovers’ Day. On this day, a lot of love activities take place.
They include dating and social outings, which oftentimes end up in sexual encounters between two lovers from the opposite sex.
But Christian youths have been told that true love is not all about sex between a man and a woman but that which results in a long-lasting relationship.
And, it does not matter whether it started on the Valentine Day or not. Secondly, it is not a one-day affair which occurs only on February 14 but a lifelong venture that can be sustained, through thick-and-thin, only by God’s grace.
This is the summary of the message that the Holy Ghost School Youth Ambassadors, the youth arm of the Holy Ghost School Ministries, sought to inculcate into participants of its programme titled “Love, Dating and Valentine: A Reorientation of the Concepts.”
Held on Sunday, February 9, 2025, at 3-5 Matthew Ojo Street, White House Bus Stop, off Governor’s Road, Ikotun, Lagos, the event that featured varieties of programmes like choruses, short-talks, discussions, prayer session, sermons, and gifts exchange, drew participants from Lagos and Ogun States.
But of the lot, a discussion session choreographed by a five-man panel of discussants, comprising three female, one male, plus their moderator, a female, and the sermons, came as the icing of the cake.
Reasons for dating and costly mistakes
During the lively discussion, aimed at deepening and situating the theme, the discussants, many of who drew examples from personal experiences, caused wide range of reactions – empathy/sympathy, laughter and wild clapping. Subject matters covered include reason for dating, challenges, lessons learnt from succumbing to its pressures, what love really means, effects of one’s personal relationship with Christ on one’s love life and singlehood.
Almost all the discussants attributed their reason for dating to curiosity and peer pressure. One of them who claimed to be 16 when she met her first Valentine’s date said she was goaded into it by her cousins who were telling all sorts of stories about their experiences with their boyfriends. But she dismissed the experience as “pure rubbish, total waste of time.”
Another female discussant said that the only reason she went into it was because she needed some comfort from a man, other than that being provided by her parents. The only male among them confessed that he couldn’t think of any tangible reason other than having fun.
Dating for sex, a female discussant warned, is not something to dabble into if you are not psychologically ready for a relationship. This is because she tried it and came away with a love-child she was not prepared for, to show for her costly mistake.
She explained: “Before that time, I thought as a churchgoer I would go to my husband’s house as a virgin. I tried to hold on to that dream. But there was this flock of friends that would come around to share what they see as their exciting experiences with their boyfriends.
That was how I stepped into the first relationship. But it was like I didn’t know what I was doing or what I wanted. What I learnt from that experience is this: you can never truly enjoy sex if it was not done with the right partner that God has prepared for you.”
Love, singlehood and what they mean
Talking about what love really means, all discussants agreed that it does not mean a man having some financial muscle as to be able to take care of a girlfriend’s material needs or take her out to a sophisticated eatery somewhere in town to buy her esoteric food and drinks or to a boutique to buy her clothes and accessories on a Valetine’s Day.
They warned: for all you care, he could be doing all that to show off or to impress you as to put you under subtle pressure to yield to his demand for sex and not because he really loves you.
The male discussant said that a man can be patient and wait for two or three years to have sex with a girl. And, once that happens, their relationship could be over. To support his assertion, one of the participants later told the story of how he travelled all the way from Lagos to University of Ilorin to sleep with his ex-girlfriend, now married, on a Valentine’s Day.
The discussants compared true love to what Jesus did on the Cross for mankind, where He demonstrated His love, not because of anything He hoped to gain from man but as a selfless expression.
On how singlehood affects one’s social life, one of the female discussants thanked God for giving her morally strict parents. She confessed that their constant monitoring helped to keep her in check. She buttressed her point: “I had this set of friends while I was in secondary school. They would often come back with gift items – food and huge sums of money they claimed were from their mums. Within me, I would be asking what kind of mothers would give their children that much.
Then, one day while I was eavesdropping on their conversations I discovered that their boyfriends were the ones supplying them with those food items and money. And, they would always stigmatise me, poke fun at me and call me names.
But let me say this: if you know the kind of painful, shameful experiences that your so-called morally strict parents are shielding you from, you will thank God everyday for giving you such parents. In those days, I felt that I was missing out. But as I grew older, I began to realise that I didn’t miss anything.”
Valetine, rating and Christ
All the discussants agreed that Valetine is overrated. One of them said: “A lot of things happen that day that when you sit back and think, you may begin to ask yourself what was in it for you. Today, they show you love. Tomorrow, they break up with you, sometimes with a pregnancy that you are left to bear, all alone. To me, it’s sheer waste of time and emotion.”
They also admitted that their intimate personal relationship with Christ, something that the Holy Ghost School Ministries always emphasise, has affected their love life positively. The male among them said: “I’ve learnt that you don’t just fall in love with someone just because he is rich or wealthy or beautiful.
But before you do, you need to pray and ask your heavenly Father: ‘Father, is this the person you have chosen for me to live the rest of my life with? Right now, I am not under any pressure as to whether someone would snatch a girl meant for me before I am ready to marry her. I believe that when that time comes, the Lord will give me the lady that He has prepared for me.“
Love and dating, a Christian perspective
In his sermon titled, “Love and Dating,” Bro. Fidelis Yadi, the General Coordinator/Supervisor of the Holy Ghost School Ministries, underscored the points made by the discussants. He said: “If you are a Christian, you don’t need to select a day to celebrate love. Rather, every day is a day of love. What people do on Valentine’s Day, you can do any other day and even outperform them by the way you show love to your spouse. The Bible says to let us love one another for God is love.”
Like the discussants, he noted that dating before one is ready for marriage will lead to waste of time and money on someone you are not going to live with for the rest of your life. He quoted from 1 Timothy 4:12; Romans 12:9-10 and 2 Corinthians 6: 14-18 as well as drew inferences from personal experiences, to buttress his points.
The man who confessed to having his first date at the age of 14, added that from his experience, lovers discuss nothing tangible, at that age or at any level for that matter, before marriage.
He said: “Now, phone has made it easier to chat into the dead of the night. Instead of being busy praying, you are talking. And some of the questions you ask are funny, questions like, Did you eat food? What did you eat yesterday night? Did you eat spaghetti or moi-moi? Did you drink water after eating? How many cups of water did you drink? The truth is, you don’t have anything tangible to discuss. You just want to keep talking. Some would chat for three hours at a go. If you look at all they said, you can pick nothing tangible out of it.”
He counseled that if one is a Christian, it is not spiritually healthy to continue to engage in that kind of meaningless conversation.
He advised: “Before coming to the point of dating as a young Christian, your concentration should be on God. It is the time to build up your spiritual life, to invest in it. But with pressures you have around you, it is easy to waste time on unnecessary pleasures.
‘Many young men and women can chat for three good hours but open the Bible for them to read they would start sleeping as if the Bible is Valium 5 or sleeping pill that rocks people to sleep. Surprisingly, as you are sleeping, if your partner calls back, you will wake up and become alert, ready to continue the chatting from where you stopped.”
Dating, the preacher’s experience
On dating for marriage, he advised that a believer, especially a man must be financially ok and psychologically prepared before they can go into marital relationship with the opposite sex. But on the other hand, the opposite sex should not keep dilly-dallying or delaying till the time they are through with their life’s pursuits such as education if God had revealed to them who to marry. Being financially prepared, he clarified, does not mean that a man must wait to make all the money he would need in marriage, including that meant for white wedding, before he steps out.
Using his own marriage as an example, he disclosed that it was not the woman he originally wanted to marry that he eventually got married to but the one God Himself dropped her name in his heart. Even at that, he did not have all the money he needed. In fact, it was such that he and his wife did not have their white wedding until one year later, after their traditional marriage and after they had started living together as husband and wife.
Christ’s indispensable role in true love
In a short exhortation, Bro. Tony Umeh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Honesty Missions International, and broadcast host, “Voice of the Spirit,” added that although love is a short word, spelling-wise, in practice it is long. He said: “One of the problems we have is we are always looking up to people to love us like Christ when they don’t have the moral/spiritual capacity to do so. Nobody can love you like Christ except Christ is in him or her. When I say this, I mean someone who has died to the cravings of the flesh.”
.Throwing light on what he meant, he said: “A man can love you as a wife in his own understanding of love. But he can still go ahead to cheat on you. All these men that have side chicks, do you think they don’t love their wives? Touch their wives and see whether they will not fight you. But they still have side chicks.
‘The same thing applies to women. But the truth is, any man or woman without Christ cannot truly love in a way that can keep that marriage relationship going for life. Nobody can love you like Jesus. Do you know Him? If you don’t know Him, you cannot know love. Even when someone loves you, you cannot appreciate that love. But you cannot claim to love Jesus if you are busy allowing people to abuse your body.”
Abanobi, pioneer staff, Weekend Concord, former Associate Editor, The Sun newspaper, Lagos is member, Journalists for Christ International Fellowship.
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