If your theological convictions are not actively making you more gracious, humble, and repentant than your beliefs are not being shaped by Jesus they’re motivated by a desire to be argumentatively “right.”
Back to this because these comments are insane. Calling Rebecca feminist because she said women should work, be productive and not see their singleness as something to be liberated from is crazy. She’s literally just talking like a normal person.
A Nigerian man seeks companionship, he does not ask himself if he is kind enough, if he is interesting enough. He does not care about emotional availability, neither does he care about personal growth. What does he do? He calculates whether his account balance has crossed some invisible threshold that makes him deserving of companionship.
It is why brothers in their 20s and 30s with decent jobs and good characters still insist they are "not ready" for a relationship. Not ready, they mean, to be the walking ATM they've been conditioned to become. By the time they finally "achieve," they've lost the capacity for stillness. They can sit in boardrooms for hours but cannot sit with a partner for thirty minutes without their minds wandering to the next transaction or the next proof of worth. Small talk becomes an unbearable and inefficient use of resources. Apologies become obsolete when lavish gestures can purchase peace. After all, "na wetin women like be this" is the script etched into their consciousness.
A Nigerian woman seeks companionship, she does not ask if "he works," instead she asks, "does he have money?" One question honors process; the other worships outcome and remains strategically incurious about provenance. She says she's being realistic. Clear-eyed about how the world actually works, not how it pretends to work in romance novel. But when did "clear-eyed" become indistinguishable from "deliberately blind to certain things I'd rather not see?" When did assessing partnership potential become inseparable from calculating financial insurance against her own vulnerability?
Her affection then, becomes calibrated to a cash flow. Pragmatism metastasizes into a shield against intimacy, against the" terrifying" and "reckless" work of actually knowing and being known.
Our dating culture is mostly an elaborate performance of mutual extraction. Both genders, diminished. Both complicit in a system of leveraged buyouts.
Everyone gets exactly what they negotiated for, and no one gets what they actually need. A genuinely exhausting way of life.
The law is powerless to justify mankind before God. But God has made a way in Christ. And this plan includes Jews and non-Jews alike, freely walking in the freedom of God's children, through the gospel.
We continue our study of this beautiful letter tomorrow. Join us.
One shocking reaction I get from Christians anytime I mention that Adam was not deceived into eating the forbidden fruit and that he knew the consequences of eating it was defying God yet he chose to go with his wife into sin, is "Awwn, that was love!"
Love!?! Love!?! 😩😩
What kind of love will make a man defy God who is most excellent, most beautiful, most wonderful, who is the good?
Love isn't joining your bride in her rebellion, love is willingness to take the punishment she deserved for her defiance, love is dying in her place not joining her in her sin!
Only one Adam loved his wife and it's not the first one!
The last Adam, was willing to lay down his life for his rebellious bride, willing to take the punishment she deserved, willing to reconcile her back to God. Now that's love!!!
“A Lagos Love Story” does offers nothing concrete but an empty collection of tropes.
@ivanvespasian writes about its tedious clichés and lack of decent narrative.
🔗: https://t.co/9R2KuiiEPL
“The Christians that we are not in private, let us not pretend to be in public” - @ebeletheservant speaking during our recent camp held in Lagos, Nigeria. Watch the full message on YouTube via this link: https://t.co/RowcngkFru
#IHSCamp#IHSMovement#HisPresence
The more I speak with others about their daily routines the clearer it is that prayer is one of the most neglected spiritual disciplines in nearly every believers life.