Let's Talk About Love 💞

(gentle piano music) ♪ Can we talk about love y'all ♪ ♪ Love y'all ♪ (coughing) ♪ I've never had anything as good as you ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ And I think I ever will ♪ ♪ No, no, no ♪ ♪ Hey, tell me that I really love to be true ♪ ♪ What? ♪ ♪ When living in the fairy tale ♪ ♪ No, 'cause if you had it ♪ ♪ Then you know it ♪ ♪ When I'm talking about love ♪ (laughing) ♪ Have you ever felt it? ♪ ♪ It's when it comes from a bump, a bump ♪ ♪ Ain't none alike it 'cause of tried ♪ ♪ I've tried all the loves before ♪ ♪ But it's love them ♪ ♪ Talkin' about ♪ ♪ Talkin' about ♪ ♪ Is a real love issue ♪ ♪ When I'm talking about love ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ (coughing) - You guys, my just-me-one you was wrong with me, oh my God. I'm just grateful to God for love, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello from wherever you're listening around the world. Thank you very much for tuning in, God bless you. Well, it's February 14th and I'll just tell you my spirit to record this episode for you, just to let you know that you're special. You loved, you are cherished, you're the prize goal, you're the prize guy. Mama Papa, you're special and today is February 14th. So Valentine's Day, I want to go into the history of that. I'm sure you probably have an idea of what today is all about. But this episode today, we're talking about love. Now, what is love? Some people might say, "Oh, love is a feeling." Well, feelings come, feelings go, I know love to be kindness, love is patience, love is selfless, love is giving, love is firm. When they say love is enduring, what it means is that love is firm. Like it's unshakable, it's unshakable. And the real love actually begins with you. The love equation starts with you, you know. Because you cannot love God, you cannot love others if you don't love yourself. So today we're just going to quickly talk about yourself and how you can demonstrate this love for yourself, for God, for others. And I will say you have to start with little small steps. Begin with small little steps. You know, take care of your body. Take care of your body. You know, I once heard the Oracle of Omaha, right? He was saying that, okay, he was looking like a group of you, way back in '90s to some American youth, so you're used around the world. And he asked the question, said, if you had one car, if you were giving one car, and you were told that this car is really car, you drive for the rest of your life, you know. And if you mess it up, you won't get another one. How would you treat that car? Most likely you're going to ensure that you service it regularly, you wash it, you keep it clean. You're sure that the paint doesn't run out. And if it's running out, you're going to try to repaint it. You're just going to take very, very good care of that car. In fact, you might not want to pack it outside. You want to create a shade for it. Like, in place where you can pack it without excessive weather effects on it. Now, imagine the disc car is your body, because you get one body, and you are not likely to get another body again. Now, some people have been so privileged, so blessed to be able to afford surgeries and other body parts when one part goes wrong. So you hear people having a heart transplant, a kidney transplant, they have an eye transplant. They're able to get prosthetics if they lose their legs or their limbs. They're able to fix one or two other parts of their bodies as they need a rice. But it doesn't come cheap, and it's not easy. And most times, it's not guaranteed. So the body you have now, God bless you if you're healthy, you have to as much as possible do your best to preserve the vitality of your body. So you have to eat right, eat right, eat when you're hungry, and avoid the wrong stuff. Food is fuel for your body. Food is what keeps your body running. And let me just say this. Your body is important to God, because your body is a vehicle through which it works. And that's why sickness is something that God does not like sickness is something that doesn't give joy and glory to God, because it immobilizes your body and prevents your body from fulfilling the purpose. From being the vehicle that God will use to torture us and do great things in this world. So eat when you're hungry, avoid the things that can destroy your body. Anything that doesn't feed your body, anything that doesn't feed your mind, should be avoided as much as you can. Whether you're ingestantly through your mouth, your eyes, your ears, your nose, your skin, or your mind. As long as it doesn't or plieft, it doesn't edify. It doesn't help your body to perform to the glory of God. You should avoid it. And when I say, whether you're ingesting it with your eyes, I mean things that you watch. You know, you're watching something, you're looking at something and you know deep in your soul, deep in your spirit, you know that this thing is not contributing positively to your life. You should avoid it. You're listening to things that are not, are not oblifting. You know, there are some things you hear sometimes and you are deflated. There are some things that you hear. It stays with you and whenever you remember it, you are, you are losing your joy, your peace. You should as much as possible, avoid those things. You know, including things that you smell. Personally, I don't smoke. And when I walk past people who are smoking or I mean environments, where there's so much smoking going on, I feel very uncomfortable. So things that you smell, whether it's smoke or foul orders or whatever it is at all, that does not edify your body as much as you can. You should avoid it if you are doing a job where you have to come in contact with that constantly. I join you in prayers that God will provide something better, so that your body is in good shape and in the right condition. Now, what about skin? You know, some people say, what are you interested in with your skin? Any hash can be called anything at all that you put on your body or you subject to your body to that does not add value to you and enable you to fulfill the purpose for which God has treated you. That is something that you have to try to avoid. OK. Now, next, we talk about sleep. Sleep is a major way that your body regivenates itself. However, do not be indulgent, do not be lazy. Yes, you should sleep, but do not sleep excessively. I think for adults, the recommended time is between six to five hours. The regular time should be like eight hours, but we know in this world of today, so much attention is demanded and required of you. So if you can do eight hours of sleep fine, but if your shadow doesn't permit it, try to as much as you can get between five to six hours of sleep. I read an article once that said that if you do not sleep, your brain begins to eat itself. In fact, if you have watched yourself, you see that most times when you don't sleep, you don't get the right quality of sleep. You see that your performance is slow. And if you want to get the performance up, that's when people begin to go for enhancement, performance, drugs and other substances that in the long run do not help. So as much as you can, sleep. And if you're not sleeping right, maybe like you're having sleep difficulties, I pray that God gives you rest, God gives you peace and enables you to sleep right. Next is your dressing. Oh my God. Oh my goodness. Dressing is very important. If it wasn't important, God would not have dressed Adam and Eve after they had even messed up. So dressing is important. Dress your body well. And beyond beyond beyond the fact that God is a first fashion designer and you know, shoulders importance of dressing, your body is a temple of a holy spirit. Your body is the palace of God. Let me let us think in a little. Your body is a palace. Your body is like where the king lives. So when you come out, people need to see the majestic nature of who you are. And I'm not saying grand by expensive clothes or if you don't have the money to buy clothes, you have to do whatever. No, what I'm saying is dress yourself neatly. Cover yourself. Cover your body. Let your dressing be neat and portray the image of who you are. Don't make it look chubby. Don't make it look cheap. cover your body properly and just ensure that you are not going to lose weight. that you are the embodiment to encapsulate what you want to project yourself to be to the world. Next is your soul. You have to take care of your soul, reconcile yourself with your creator. If you are still running away from God, you haven't stayed having a conversation with him. I encourage you. Please go back to him. God has missed you and he's looking forward to having that relationship with you. I promise you that once you reach out to him, he will catch you. So take a moment to say what of prayer. And like I always tell people in prayers, yes, if you have the opportunity, you kneel down, you close your eyes and you know do all the great things that we know about prayer and you know you're closing your eyes to take your way in destruction, you're kneeling down to show that you're revered and you're submitting to him. But if you are not able to do that, like if you're in the place where you're not able to do that, you may be walking, you may be in your office, maybe in your classroom, just say it would have prayer to God. Whether you say it out loud or you say it in your heart, he's there, he's listening and he's hearing you and he will act on it. So reconcile yourself with God, pray, pray without seizing, when they say pray without seeing like you're having a conversation with God at all times. Like, oh, I'm going to cook. Oh, Lord, what do I cook? Oh, I'm thinking to cook this. Please help me to cook it right. Oh, Lord, this tastes nice. Thank you. Oh, this food is delicious. Oh, I don't really like this. Why am I eating it? Lord, what should I do? Like, have a conversation with your father. And like I say, I think one of the major challenges that some people might not have had that's close relationship with your father. So sometimes it's difficult to understand what it means to have a close relationship with God. But I pray that God helps you, you know, your creator. Because when I say God now some people just like, oh, who is God, your creator at least you know, you didn't just call me or you're all like, you didn't fall from the sky. And that's there's some it being that was responsible for forming your mother's woman in the test tube or whatever. It was you were formed before you were born like before you came out to begin to grow and become who you are now. So, um, have a conversation with him, have a relationship with him, communicate with him, you know, as much as you can. He's eager to hear from you. And as you tell him stuff also, listen for what he has to say. And how do you hear what he has to say? You hear what he has to say through the words. Study the scripture, people, study the Bible. And sometimes some people I know find it difficult to read the Bible. I pray that God gives you the strength. I pray that the Holy Spirit himself who is the inspiration behind the writing of the scriptures that he gives you the wisdom he reveals to you what he wants you to know per time, you know, and he helps you to understand the scriptures. And I think I should say this at this point. So I know many of us have digital Bibles, which is great. But I want courage to also get a hard copy Bible, get a paper Bible, people. In fact, I had to order another paper Bible because the one I used to have like two, three, four, five Bibles, but I moved locations and because I couldn't move with a lot of stuff, I sent the majority of them to my permanent address and I just came with one. So I had to order for another one. Now, why do you need a paper Bible? I made some observations that I a little bit shocking that some of the digital Bibles sometimes do not have the accurate words stated in them. So one may say, for example, you're reading, do you live in translation? You're reading the King James translation. When you check the sentence in reverse in your virtual Bible, compared with that same sentence in your people Bible, sometimes not all the times. Sometimes they are not exactly the same. And I was listening to a preacher preaching and he said, we have to be very careful about it. For me, it was like an aha moment, a big light moment for me. We have to be very careful with just allowing ourselves to be subjected to virtual stuff. Because one day you just wake up and discover that the Bible has been edited and you can't do anything about it because you don't have something else to refer to. And that just struck me and I remembered that statement when I made the observation. So not to scare you. I'm just saying that you should please as much as possible have a hard copy Bible that you can use as a reference point or you can study as often as you can. In fact, I would recommend you know, when you read the words like feeding your soul. So when you're asked to fast physically and not eat for days, so many people know how much of a struggle that is. Imagine your soul going a day without eating, without without hearing from God, without reading the word, without being fed with the word. So please encourage you to study the word. Praise and worship. You know, praise God and worship Him with songs and hymns, spiritual sounds, praise Him and worship Him with plans. You can make your own poems. You can praise Him in your own words, but praise God because when you praise God, He shows up. You know, you're just like when you have your own edlifada, even your friends or whoever it is in your circle. When you begin to extol them or you begin to praise them, you see that something in them moves, something in them shifts and they want to do something great for you. So in the same way, that's how it is for our father. You have to praise Him, you have to worship Him, you have to honor Him and worship from the death of your heart. You know, it's not just lip pain, lip service. Let it come from heart deep, you know, from your heart to his ears. Next, I would say take care of your spirit and how do you take care of your spirit? First, you know that you have your spirit, right? Your spirit, having a physical experience in your body. In the same way, every other human being you meet is a spirit. So for you to take care of your spirit, you also need to reach out to other spirits. You also need to, when I say reach out to other spirits, I don't mean like good looking for your spirit. I mean, you need to reach out to other human beings. You need to show other people that you also care for them. I didn't have to be you doing big great stuff that are life changing. It could be very little things. I think I once shared a time when I was just, I just fell into some kind of sadness. I couldn't explain it. And I was just being like, Oh, people don't really care for me and all that. And immediately the Holy Spirit reminded me that what do you remember when this person did so soon? I said, for you, do you remember when that happened? And God in that moment encouraged me to reach out to those people and appreciate them for what they did for me, regardless of the fact that they did these things like maybe several years ago, some periods in the past. And my observation is that once I began to reach out to them to say thank you, it's that enjoy began to build up within me. I became so joyful and they also reached out to me. And then if you are the people that I had probably done things for in the past, began to reach out to me as well. It just became like a chain reaction. So each time you feel unloved, I will encourage you the best step for you to take is to should love turn other person. And that person may be a stranger. The person might be someone that you had met in the past and just reach out to somebody. It could be something as little as smiling, you know, smiling at his train, smiling at someone in the commute, just smiling at somebody in a convenience store or in the road or in your office or whatever. Just be good, be good. You know, each time you feel like you're having a terrible day. Remember that other human beings around you might also be having terrible days together of the fact that they may be laughing or smiling. So you do your best to also reach out to people and share your pain, you know, share your pain, share your pain. Look for someone to express your pain and your, I know these days it could be challenging to find people that you can't trust. But my prayer is that God will lead you to the right people whom you can express yourself to, share your heart with and who will encourage you and help you to be strong and be the best of who God wants you to be. Demonstrate your love for your family and your friends. Oh yeah, family is everything right? That doesn't mean that you should kill yourself for them or you should go overboard but you have to show that you love your family. And the best way to show that you love your family is by being there is by, you know, they say there are different ways of the most reaching love. It could be acts of service. It could be by giving. It could be by just being a listening ear. It could be by just letting them know that you are dead, you know, when they need you. So this is a very good season, a very good time for you to show love to your family. In fact, I had to do something for my family regardless of the fact that thousands of miles away from them. I had to do something to remind my mother and my siblings how much I love them in this season of love. And I encourage you to do the same. Okay? If you haven't done it already, it's not too late to use the weekend. Tomorrow is okay. Friday is just today's a way, use a weekend and show the people around you, around you that you love them, that they matter, that you care for them. And like I said, you don't have to go overboard during something huge. It could be something very, very tiny gesture. It could be a phone call, you know, it could be an SMS message just to say I appreciate you. Thank you for blah, blah, blah. Even if you feel like you haven't done anything for you, just say thank you for being you. So, show love for others, appreciate those who have been kind to you, very, very important. The best application for more is appreciation. When you show gratitude, when you appreciate people, you are demonstrating to the university, demonstrating to God that you really need more of this thing that they have done for you. And I assure you for my own experience that you will get more help. So, reach out to those who have been kind to you, those who have supported you, those who have helped you to actualize your dreams, your hopes, your aspirations in whatever dimension. Even if they help you take a little step along the way. If you kind of reach out to them directly pray for them genuinely and pray that God will bless them and take care of their own needs. As they have helped, take care of your needs that they would also never lack help when they need help. In need of help, if I didn't. After talking about smiling, you also need to perform small, good deeds, post-trainger, some for the people in your circle, be diligent in delivering on the task and responsibilities that are set out for you. That is another way of showing that you love yourself. You know, doing your best, that's whatever it is your hand is giving to you because you don't want to misrepresent yourself. You do not want to misrepresent yourself. I say it at the third time. Whatever opportunity you are giving is an opportunity for you to show the world who you are, for you to portray your light to the world. And I encourage you to shine. Shine. Do not put your light on that bush. Do your best at whatever your hands are trying to do. You know, the goal in life is not just to win. The goal is actually to be your best part time. Remember, I was watching a clip and someone very popular wanted to learn how to play tennis. And the coach asked him, "Okay, what's your goal in this class?" And he said, "Oh, his goal was to win. His goal was to win the match for the day." And the coach said to him, "Okay, then you might as well just take this racket. Give it to anybody you're still working on the street and tell the person to complete it to you." Because you probably have a little knowledge of tennis chances are that you are going to win the person. So without being enough for you, and he said, "No." And he said, "Okay, so what really is your goal?" He said, "Oh, he wanted to learn how to play tennis." And he said, "It was like excellent. That's your goal." So you want to learn how to play tennis meaning that you have to give it your best. And once you give it your best, and you know that you have done your best, then that's fine. And you keep opening your best, right? To keep the world's continuous improvement, to keep doing, stretching yourself, you know, as much as you can, to until you actualize your full capacity. Feed your mind with the right material, feed your mind with the right material, feed your mind with the right material. It's such a blessing for us to have minds that work that we can use to reason, we can use to create and do great things. So feed your mind with the right material, books, sounds, visuals, and people. So round yourself with people and sounds and books and visuals that are uplifting. When I say visuals, I mean anything you see with your eyes, it could be videos, it could be things you see with your naked eyes and general public, it could be things you check on your phone. It could be anything that's all. It could be things that you read on various social media platforms or a professional platform. So news, I mean, when I was younger, I used to sit with the news. Like I could watch, I could watch the news from morning till night. And I realized that as young as I was, I was really worried about the world because I was seeing a lot of funny things. But as I've grown older, I know that's okay, I could just check the news a few minutes a day. And I'm fine. Once I get the headlines and the major stories and maybe the things that really matter, that's okay. I don't need to sit in the news and sit with the news for so long checking updates. Because you keep telling the same thing over and over again. So anything that can be depressing, anything that can dampen your joy, please, please, please as much as you can, try to avoid, if it doesn't, or lift you, try to avoid including people. So surround yourself with people who uplift your soul, people who encourage you to be your best, people who find the good in you and encourage you to be better. And a lot of people who are always washing you, writing you off, talking you down and trying to make you feel like you're less than. So find a way to surround yourself with people who are uplifting and you yourself make efforts to uplift other people, make efforts to uplift other people. Protect yourself from characters that are persistently toxic. Some people, it's not like they are not capable of changing but they are determined not to change. So when you find yourself in a relationship or communication or in some kind of a fail, or the other way, somebody who is persistently toxic, who persistently wants to pull you or pull other people down, because they may not be pulling you down, but they may be. You know, talking down, writing off, attacking other people, you don't want to be around those kind of people because you smell like a company you keep, right? So if you have a toxic person, chances are you yourself will become toxic and if you are not toxic people, you think you are. You may even think that you're not but by the time you begin to do a self-interspection, you begin to see that you have some of your picking some of those traits from that toxic person. And it was when the toxicity is directed at you. So when you have somebody who is unappreciating, who is on loving, who always wants to say things that are very hot for you and rights of your achievements, it's people who cannot celebrate your achievements. You know, like, they want you to be the one always celebrating them, but they cannot celebrate you. They are not happy when you are happy. There are some people like that, they are not happy when you are happy. When you are talking about things that are great that have happened to you, they want to talk about the bad things that have happened to them. You know, you need to find the way to limit the time you spend with those kind of people because you cannot pull from an empty cup. So if your cup is not being filled and you have people who are always dreaming, I mean, there are some friends who only, I don't call them friends, but there are some associates, people who you know, who only remember you when they need. Who only remember you when they have a problem. And after you have helped them to come out of that challenge, you'll later hear from a third party, from a third source, that's, oh, they are, you know, celebrating eggs or ABC happened to them that is great. And while you are happy for them, for me, I often pause to say, okay, so you remember me when terrible things happen to you, but when great stuff happen, you do not remember that I should join you in the celebration. You don't remember to share good news with me. You only want to share bad news, but you don't want to share good news with me. You need to find a way to keep those people where they belong because you are not the trash can. You are not the trash can, you are not the dust being, you are not the handkerchief, you are not the rag that you, that you only, you know, the rag, you will remember the rag when they need to, to take care of something that is dirty. You only remember the handkerchief when you sweat. You only remember the dust being when you have trash to throw into. So you are not any of those things, anyone who only thinks of you when things go wrong, which will not cause you when things are good, will not appreciate you to say thank you or celebrate with you when great things are happening to you, please find a way to keep them where they belong. And yeah, finally, finally, remember that you are the prize, you are fearfully and wonderfully made, you are precious, you are a precious piece of this puzzle called life. If you are missing life will not be complete. If you fail to do that, which you are supposed to do, it makes life and this cycle incomplete. You are cherished and the world is waiting for the blessing that you carry. So shine your lights, day bless, take care, remember that you are loved. Bye.