I KNOW SOMEONE WHO DATED 2 DIFFERENT MEN FOR 10 YEARS EACH AND I REALIZED THERE WAS A PROBLEM WHEN THEY WERE CELEBRATING THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELATIONSHIP

IF A MAN SAYS HE WANTS TO MARRY YOU, ASK WHEN?

IF YOU DON’T TRUST THE PERSON YOU WANT TO MARRY, DON’T MARRY

THERE’S NO ONE PERSON GOD CREATED FOR YOU – GOD WILL ALWAYS PRESENT MANY GODLY OPTIONS

THERE’S NO ONE PERSON FOR YOU BUT THERE’S ONE KIND PERSON FOR YOU

GOD DOESN’T GIVE ANYBODY COMPLETE SPOUSE, HE GIVES YOU RAW MATERIALS

THERE’S NOWHERE IN THE BIBLE THAT SAYS YOU SHOULD MARRY WHO YOU LOVE BUT YOU SHOULD LOVE WHO YOU MARRY

-Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo on 15 WRONG MINDSETS SINGLES HAVE

One of the things I like to talk about always are the books. We like to encourage people always to buy books. You have to develop yourself so it’s important you invest in knowledge. If you are a single lady in the house, there’s this book here titled “7 Questions Wise Women Ask”. I wanna recommend it for you because when a guy is asking you out, one of the things you must know are the 7 questions you must ask him. There are 7 questions wise women ask. One of the questions is WHEN. If a guy is saying, “I want to marry you”, ask him, “WHEN”.

One of the things that are happening today is that we are majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors. So, people are so obsessed nowadays with proposal than with the event itself. So people climb the bridge – last time when we were in Abuja, we saw people doing pre-wedding shoot on the bridge. I say, “after all this work, if the marriage doesn’t work, I’ll be upset with you o”. So we are focusing on proposal, climb the street pole and everything to propose – camera, posting, there are some of those proposals that do not lead to marriage. There are some, I’ve supervised the returning of the ring myself.

We went to return the ring because you’re not lord of the ring, you can’t keep it on for 5 years, we’ll go and return the ring. There are some we didn’t return the ring, we sold the ring because the person is not worthy of returning the ring. You can’t punish us for 5 years, we need the money to go and buy something else. We sell the ring (laughs). Hallelujah. Now, I know people that buy the ring, we have gold we want to sell, contact me. It’s from returning ring that I started that side business. I am telling you.

So, ask WHEN? There are people that want to keep you forever. As a lady, time is sensitive for you. A guy can stay till 42 and start having kids immediately. He can even stay from 52 and start having kids the next week. For a woman, it’s not like that. As a woman, your relationship with time is very sensitive. If both of you are 30 when you are in the relationship, if he delays you for 10 years, he is now 40, his own options for who to marry are increasing, your own options are reducing. When he was 30, he can marry from 30 down. When he was 40, he can marry from 40 down, it’s increasing.

So, a man’s relationship with time is not the same as your own. His chances are getting better with time. At 30, he can marry from 30 below. Now at 40, he can marry from 40 below. More people available. To you, at 30, you can marry from 30 below, at 40, you can marry from 40 below. So it means the people are reducing. So, ask WHEN. You want to marry me? Great. Is 10 years okay? When I proposed to my wife, I proposed with date. My proposal was, “how does August sound in your spirit?”. Hallelujah (laughs). It was with date. And truly, by August of that year, we had done our traditional wedding and September 3rd, just a few days after August, we had gotten married.

That’s how to propose. Not I want to marry you. Which year? Pastor, I know someone that dated somebody for 10 years. We knew there was problem when they were celebrating anniversary of the relationship. 10 years dating and they did not marry, sir. And after the lady got tired and left, she started another relationship, another 10 years. This is not that they told me o. It’s people I know personally, so, it’s not hearsays. 10 years tenure. Even the president is 4 years these days, per tenure.

Men, this book here is titled 7 QUALITIES WISE MEN WANT. The thing is that men are not so relationship minded especially at the beginning of their lives – most men are more interested in making it. So they say, “all these relationship thing, no”. Many men here, it’s a woman that dragged you here. It’s business seminar you want to go for. You say, “all these relationship this thing”. But you see, don’t make that mistake. You need to realise that at the end of the day, one of the things that will determine your happiness the most is who you marry.

As a man, you must have figured out now that the way you think is not the way a woman thinks. Women are very sophisticated so they can think on their feet. For men, thinking is a process. It’s a chore, it’s a thing. You have to sit down and think and if you marry a woman that doesn’t give you peace, it means you won’t have the engine room to bring out ideas. So, peace is very important to you. My mentor, Professor Emeritus Solomon David, in scriptures. He’s Professor Emeritus of relationship. Even Havard has not done the research Solomon has done.

Solomon David had 1000 women in his life and he still died of natural causes. Even people that have 2 women, they die young. Solomon had a thousand women and there was no internet. No phone. This means he was seeing them physically. No email, no WhatsApp, no Instagram. How did he even use to pass information to them? They will have a log book for their addresses and names because there’s no way he can remember all the names. He’ll say, “I know you”. She’ll say, “yes, I’m your wife”. He’ll say, “ahan, sorry! I’m very sorry about that”

1000 women and if you’re seeing one in a day, it means it takes about 3 years to see again. He’ll say, “thank you, Jennifer. It was great spending time with you. Your next appointment will hold err, August 6th, 2028. God bless you. See you then”. Professor Emeritus Solomon David said, “if you marry a contentious woman, you would go to the wilderness, go to the roof” because peace is a very important thing for you as a man. There are many men that say, “Pastor, this girl, I like her so much but she gives me trouble, what should I do?”. So I dealt with the 7 qualities wise men want.

Ladies, let me talk about this book titled MANUAL. So many ladies always ask me many questions about men. So, I gave you the manual. You know when I buy a phone, they give you the manual, am I correct? So that’s what this book is, it’s a manual for men. If you’re a woman and you plan to marry, Pastor, when I bought a dog, one of the wedding gifts I gave my wife, I bought 2 pitbulls. I’m very extreme sometimes. So, we had to get a trainer and they told us there are ways to train a dog. You can’t have these kind of wild dogs and not train them. So they started teaching me how to train the dogs and they said, “in a …” because dogs come from animal family and that family, they don’t respect you because you’re the owner. They don’t respect you because you’re the oldest. They respect you because you’re the strongest.

So they said, if you give those dogs command, don’t repeat the command because many people say, “bingo, sit, sit, sit”. They said, “no, you don’t tell a dog that”. If you say, “sit, sit, sit”, you’re telling the dog that the first command you gave, you too didn’t believe it. So, you must say, “SIT!” and don’t have any interaction with the dog until they do that first command. So they were teaching us those things and you know, if they can give manual for dog, you want to marry a full human being, you need manual. So what I did for women in this book is that I taught women how men think. Men and women think differently.

Women, have you ever wondered why when men are chasing you, he’s calling you morning, afternoon, night, but once you say yes, he’s busy. Have you noticed that? Women ask me that all the time and I answered some of those questions in this book. It’s because men are hunters. There’s no hunter that keeps running around once an antelope has entered. Men are project driven once project is completed, they go and rest. They are incredibly demotivated once project is completed. Even he can’t explain why he’s so demotivated. Another thing that happens is when most times there’s a lot of talking when he’s toasting you and little to no talking after you have agreed is because men and women talk for different reasons.

The part of the brain that activates a woman to talk is always activated when she’s stressed or when she’s happy. So if she’s stressed, she wants to talk. If she’s happy, she wants to talk. If you’re the person in her life, you’re the victim. This is why men say women talk too much because everything that happens in her life, talk is how they deal with it. Men on the other hand deal with things through isolation. So, this is why men think women talk too much and women think men don’t talk at all because we are different. So, during the toasting period, men talk for information, women talk for affection.

So during the toasting period, men are talking too much to gather information. By the time you have said YES, he has pretty much gathered all the necessary facts, so he sees no need to continue talking after you have agreed. By that time, he has all the information. But women on the other hand don’t need special information, they talk for affection. So I answered a lot of your questions here. If you are a woman that wants to marry, this book is for you. Let me go into today’s message.

Today, I’m going to talk about 15 WRONG MINDSETS SINGLES HAVE. This is just to help you lay a foundation to be sure you don’t have the wrong mindset.

1. MARRIAGE IS HARD

It is a wrong mindset. Marriage is not hard, it is people that are hardened. Jesus said that in Matthew 19 about divorce, he said, Moses permitted you to divorce because of the hardness of your heart. It’s not because marriage is hard that people are divorcing. It’s because people’s hearts are hardened. When you yield to the spirit of God and submit to God, you’ll find out that marriage is not hard. Yes, it is demanding but it is not hard. Don’t have that mindset, you might have seen so many, heard about so many bad marriages, you may have seen so many bad experiences, you might have even experienced some – heartbreaks by yourself, but you need to realise by yourself that marriage is good.

Everywhere in scriptures that God talks about marriage, he said that it’s a good thing. He started by saying that it’s not good for a man to be alone, meaning it is good for a man to be joined together with a woman. He said that he that finds a wife finds a good thing. He said, marriage is honourable in all. He said, two are better than one. You will never see God anywhere say that marriage is bad or marriage is hard. It is men that say it and most times, it’s because we have deviated from God’s plan and standard. And if you’re a Christian, even if you’re not a Christian, you can become one, and line up with God’s plan for yourself.

So make sure you’re not hardened. Make sure you’re yielded. Follow God’s plan. God has a plan for marriage. My wife is the first woman I ever dated – first ever. So you don’t have to kiss so many frogs to find your prince. If you follow the guidelines from the beginning – I have a book here called WHO SHOULD I MARRY? Many young people don’t know the qualities to look out for in who they should marry. I hear things like, “I want tall…”, I’m telling you. I was watching Instagram live, two young ladies who are enterprising and successful, they were running businesses, they had finished schooling, I think one or two of them had masters, they were running their businesses, global brands, and they got to the point of relationship.

Both of them were single and one of them now asked, “okay, what are the qualities to look out for in a husband?” And I got interested, and she said, “he must be tall…”. Please ladies, what are you using tall to do? Have you ever seen any marriage that is working after 10, 20 years and they said, “what’s the secret of the marriage” and they say, “it’s the height of my husband, that’s what is making this thing work. His height, this his height, I thank God for his height”. Have you seen it anywhere before? If all of you marry tall, who will marry the short guys? The average person cannot properly articulate what they are looking for in a wife, or a husband, and it’s important you do that.

If you follow God’s guideline, “the person must be in Christ”, inspite of how you feel, the person must have character. It’s one thing to have Christ, it’s another thing to have character. Some people have Christ, they don’t have the Christlike character. A church is a hospital. It’s not everybody here that is normal. Every good church attracts all kinds of people, that’s how you know it’s a good church. Jesus ministry attracted prostitutes, tax collectors and Judas. He was in the leadership – deacon board. Don’t say, “I met him or her in church”. Follow the guidelines, sir. The person must be in Christ, have godly character, compatibility and all that I mentioned.

2. MARRIAGE MUST HAVE PROBLEMS

That’s not true. Marriage doesn’t have to have problems, you can have a sweet marriage, a peaceful marriage. You can be well prepared and well adapted to who you are going to marry and the demands of marriage. If you go about expecting to have problems, you will eventually have it. What you expect is what you accept. Perspective is very important. Marriage doesn’t have to have problems. And by problems, some things are not problems but usual…let me give you an example. Pumping your tires, changing the oil is part of the maintenance thing you do to your car. That’s not a problem.

When your car breaks down everyday (a comedian said he had to rent house for his mechanic beside his house, that’s how bad the car was). So there’s a big difference between your engine knocking and changing tires and oils and basic servicing. So, marriage doesn’t have to have problem.

3. MY SPOUSE WILL MEET ALL MY NEEDS

Many singles, when they’re dreaming about marriage, that’s all they are dreaming about. I’ve never seen anyone dreaming about marriage, dreaming of washing plates, saying, “I’m just fantasizing of how I’ll use morning fresh to just wash” but those are the things marriage will take. They asked one young bride, “what’s your biggest surprise?” She said she’s surprised that she will be cooking everyday. I said, “no o, you won’t cook everyday before?” That’s what marriage takes. Somebody said one time, “I’m 28 and I don’t have a relationship, and I’m so sad”

“So why do you want to marry?”

She began to list all the things she believes her husband will do for her. I said, “you’ve not mentioned all the things you are going to do for him”. No human being can meet your needs. If you’re not happy before marriage, you won’t be happy after marriage. Many people entered with high expectation but low preparation. The only person that can meet all your needs is God.

4. ABUSE IS NORMAL BECAUSE NO ONE IS PERFECT

By abuse, I’ll summarise it into beating and cheating. There are many singles that believe it’s okay for someone to beat you or cheat on you, they are even expecting it. Some people will even say, “if e no beat you, e no love you”. Abuse is not normal, please don’t let anyone subject you to such untold hardship. Please ladies, don’t go about believing that all men cheat. That’s how men are, all men must cheat. What you expect is what you accept. Don’t walk about thinking like that. There are still many good and faithful men out there. This is why a lot of people are settling for less. It’s not normal for a man to think he can discipline his wife by beating, she’s not your child. Women too abuse o but no-one talks about that because no man in his right senses will go about saying, “my wife beat me yesterday”. Most people that divorce, the thing that made them divorce was present and clear before marriage.

5. I WON’T BE HAPPY AND FULFILLED UNTIL I’M MARRIED

Listen guys, it’s good to be married but it’s also good to be single. Your single years are not a curse. They are not the years you use to wait for marriage, they are the years you use to prepare for life. Most great people, Kingdom ambassadors, world shakers, found their purpose when they were single. Your single years are the time to have self discovery and focus on yourself. You would never have it again like that once you marry. Your life will never be the same again once you marry. Use your single years to build your capacity, to build your foundation. Your single years are precious, build a relationship with God. Jesus, John the Baptist and Paul were single.

6. YOU MUST LOOK OUT FOR YOURSELF IN MARRIAGE

There are many people entering marriage with the mindset of “hmm, men and women are scam, that you must hide your money o, you must take care of yourself o, you can’t trust anybody in this life”. I’m telling you, there are people already entering marriage in a defensive mode. I still counselled someone recently that said he will never allow his wife know what he earns. All kinds of defense because once marriage is built on deceit from beginning, it cannot last. It’s built on falsehood and fakeness. You’re painting a picture of what you are not. If you don’t trust the person you want to marry, don’t marry.

7. THERE’S ONE MAGICAL, MYSTICAL TRUE LOVE FOR ME

Single people believe that there’s one person God has created from the foundation of the earth that I must marry, his name is John, and you’re going about everywhere looking for John. “Are you my John?” There’s no one person God created for you. God will always provide many godly options. Some of you, the best options have already come but you’re still waiting for that John. That’s what God did in Genesis 2. When God said it’s not good for a man to be alone, I’ll provide him a help meet, the first thing God did was to bring all the animals before Adam. God wanted to see what he will call them. If he had called any of thosd animals, “my spouse”, then we would have been married to lions today. You can’t date everyone that enters your life.

There’s no one person for you but there’s a one kind person for you. There’s one person with certain qualities that are best for you. God doesn’t give anybody complete spouse, He gives you raw materials. There’s nowhere in the Bible that the Bible says you should marry who you love but you should love who you marry. Where people fail is loving after the marriage not before they married. The first one is love, the emotions. The second one is love the decision or actions. The one that keeps a marriage is love the decision not love the emotions. Nobody feels in love all the time but you can act in love all the time inspite of how you feel. What really makes a marriage work is not the feelings but the workings. People are more interested in getting married than in getting along.

8. THERE ARE NO RULES TO LOVE AND MARRIAGE

“Don’t go to seminar, don’t listen to these pastors, don’t read all these books, don’t listen to all these motivational speakers, there are no rules to these things, it’s just by luck. It work for some, it doesn’t work for some”. It’s only failures that say that. I’ve never seen the richest man in the world say, “this thing is luck o, just be doing anything you like”. I’ve never seen that. It’s only failures that have that ideology, that just marry. Marriage is like a box, when you get home, you’ll just open it. What if it’s snake that is there? No, marriage is too delicate to enter by chance. There are rules to everything that is working in this life. There are rules to having a good marriage. Rules like:

• Quality people have quality marriage
• Rule of knowledge
• Building friendships
• Follow the process

Don’t be available for dating, be available for marriage.

9. YOU CAN SETTLE FOR LESS AND CHANGE THE PERSON AFTER

Many single people believe, “I can change him, at all, at all, na him bad pass, so far na man”. No, you can’t change anybody. Agree, if the person never changes, will you be happy? Don’t settle and think you can change anybody. Even to change yourself, you can see how hard it is. When I was a young pastor, I was always saying I will loose weight. I’ll say I will just get joggers, if I get track suit and trainers, I’ll start jogging. I don’t know who heard me in the spirit. My birthday, they bought me trainers and joggers. That’s when I knew trainers and joggers were not my problem

10. YOU NEED A LOT OF MONEY TO GET MARRIED

Young men are the ones that say that. No, you don’t need a lot of money. You just need a sense of direction. Most people that married did not have a lot of money. You are waiting for favour to marry, the favour comes after you marry. He said, “he that finds a wife, finds a good thing and obtains favour”. Many of you are the ones delaying yourself. You’re waiting to hammer before you marry. No o. Marry first, then you will hammer. The women bring favour into your life especially when it’s a good woman. Women are favour carriers. The Bible says, “a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband’s head”. You enter your kingship when you find a good woman.

11. YOU NEED TO LOOK LIKE A BEAUTY QUEEN TO ATTRACT A SPOUSE

Most women think, “I must look very beautiful, the competition is high”. So you buy different organic cream – bone straight. Brain straight is better than bone straight. You don’t need to look like a beauty queen to attract a spouse. Two things can attract a man – beauty and charm. Charm is character and grace. So if you don’t have the beauty, can you develop charm? You’re spending all your money on cosmetics yet no man.

12. THE PERSON THAT WILL MARRY ME WILL LOVE ME THE WAY I AM

People love you the way you are now but they expect you to keep growing with them. So, don’t stay the way you are. Keep improving. Improve your character, capacity and earning power.

13. GOOD MEN AND WOMEN ARE NOW SCARCE

That’s not true. If you are a good man or woman, you are not the only one left. You’ll find them only that it is God that gives them. The Bible says, “a prudent wife comes from God”. God is the main distributor.

14. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE A SEXUALLY PURE RELATIONSHIP

Most singles believe that “aha, in this day and age, is it possible to have a relationship where there’s no sex?”. The answer is capital YES. Don’t let any devil deceive you. Don’t go and build a relationship on a foundation that will never stand. There are many godly relationships. I have wed-ed more virgins than non-virgins in my life. I kid you not. Some of them, even weeks after, we’re still trying to instruct them on what to do. It may sound funny but they have more chance of the marriage lasting than all these experience you are gathering. You say, “how can you marry someone that you’re not sexually compatible with?” Until you meet the person you want to marry, any experience you’re gathering is a waste of time. If you are virgin, you’re doing yourself a favour. Don’t think they’ll now do “dorime” and bring you one perfect husband.