Our topic for today is Rudiments of Courtship. You need to know that every individual, family, and situation is unique. The same way, every courtship is unique. There are no two situations that look exactly the same due to various reasons which could range from background, individual differences, and personalities that are involved. Though, we can see similar situations or courtship, none is a duplicate of the other. What worked well for one couple might not work so well for another🤷🏽‍♀️. However, there are some principles that work for everyone in spite of the differences. Those principles serve as an almighty formula that always works when properly applied to relationships. Let’s visit the foundation because if the foundation be destroyed, what shall the righteous do🤷🏽‍♀️. Many unpalatable situations we see in relationships today could be traced to a faulty foundation. Many do not even understand what they are into, and when the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse they say is inevitable🙇🏽‍♀️. Let’s start by re-defining courtship🌚.

You need to know that it is not all relationships between a man and a lady that are courtship. Just thinking it is courtship does not make it one🌚. Courtship is the relationship between a man and a woman with marriage in view. It involves a man and a woman going out together as an intending couple with a stated or an understood goal of marriage with the leading of the Holy Spirit. Did you notice the sentence, Marriage in view and the leading of the Holy Spirit? There is no Christian courtship without the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is His leading that makes a Christian courtship and not the fact that both individuals go to church or are from a pastor’s family🤷🏽‍♀️.

1. Christian courtship is a courtship that has the Holy Spirit as its foundation.

It comprises the Holy Spirit and two mature individuals who have yielded their entirety to the Holy Spirit. The Scripture says those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Romans.

Another important aspect of the definition is that marriage must be in view. Courtship is not for people who just want to indulge in each other’s emotions but for people who know what they are signing up for. If you do not have marriage in mind or you do not see yourself getting married anytime soon, and especially with that person, then you have no business being in a courtship. You should rather work on your business, career, academics, and other areas while you gain momentum for marriage. When I say marriage in view, I am not talking about some emotional ecstasy or butterfly that is moving in your tummy that makes you feel you could get married soon even though both or none of you is mature career-wise.

2. Dating is not God’s route to courtship or marriage.

   Some try to argue that the reason they go into a dating relationship is so they can get a better view of the person they are planning to be committed to later on so that they will be sure that is the right person for them. It is more like a trial and error. The Bible says that as the heaven is far above your head so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. He also says that He has His own standard, process, and methodology which stands sure.

3. MY HEART DESIRES VS. GOD’S WILL.

   You need to know that God’s will is not a person; God’s will is a concept. If you do not want to miss out on God’s will, you have to learn how not to lean not on your own understanding and trust in God absolutely. It is the heart of God that you should search out because His secret is with those that fear Him – Psalms 25:14. The Bible clearly says that the heart of man is desperately wicked; you can’t know it! You are going to fail trying to discern a fellow man with your own reasoning. You can’t know it by staying with them for a long period; you can’t know it by hanging around them. Rather, except God shows it to you, you can’t even imagine it. You can’t get it by studying them. It is God who will reveal the right person to you. To have an issue following God’s leading is simply saying to God: can I really trust you? The heart [is] deceitful above all [things;] and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9. If you need anything to assure you that God is dependable, remember His word.

4. How should a Courtship start?

   Prior to that point of acceptance, there is no courtship. Courtship hasn’t started until a brother proposes and a sister has accepted. You have to confirm your convictions with trusted people who are not emotionally involved as you are because what you are about to get into is quite emotional and you could be manipulated. Brothers, when God has spoken to you and you have confirmed what God has said from the mouth of two or three witnesses and you are ready to do God’s will, then you should open your mouth and speak. Don’t approach someone if you haven’t settled down with the fact that you are spending the rest of your lives together; don’t go to meet them and tell them you are only meeting them because God says so. That is why you need another person to confirm with you. Whatever it is that you have with God, settle it with Him and don’t bring a lady into your indecision. Don’t bring her onboard and subject her to statements such as: “I just want to manage you or I am only managing you.” When you are done with your convictions, do not send signals to her. Open your mouth and talk. Don’t just go around her and be perambulating for years thinking she will figure it all out. If you do this, you will be heartbroken. If the lady is serious with her life and has other proposals, she will pray about them and be gone. Open your mouth and talk. A closed mouth is a closed destiny. Ladies, when a brother has opened up his mind to you through conversation, and you are convinced of going with him in this lifetime journey, you have prayed and you are convinced you’re going to spend the rest of your life together. After fulfilling all righteousness by patiently consulting with people concerned around you, open your mouth and acknowledge that you have accepted his proposal. Make sure you speak affirmative words. Say the word: Yes, I will marry you in very clear terms. Do not say let’s go on and see how things would turn out. If you say that, then you are a deceiver and that guy should probably watch out for you. It’s most likely that you intend to put him on hold while you eye other men. Respond with the mind of being led by God and not that of uncertainty. Any relationship you can’t trace how it started is not right. “One thing led to the other” kind of relationship is a no-do🙇🏽‍♀️. If your relationship came about because “one thing led to the other” and you fell in love along the way, it is a failure and disappointment in disguise. If you can’t lay your hand on any mutual agreement between you two as the foundation of your relationship with God’s backing, it will end up in regret. Nothing was defined in the relationship so, anyone can opt out at any time.

5. Duration of Courtship.

   Even if an individual is pretending, they can’t do it for long. A short courtship might have worked for some people as exceptions, but it does not mean it is right or that it will work for you. Regardless, it is a big-time risk. If 100 people enter into a marriage with a short courtship, only 5 of them may likely succeed, and the rest 95 will fail woefully. Those 5 succeeding still do not make it right. Anything less than 1 year is too short and you have just succeeded in preparing for a ceremony alone and not marriage. From experience also, anything longer than 3 years is too long as it gives a breeding space for fornication.

You want to know more? Get my book, Principles of Courtship

Our topic for tonight is “How to confirm God’s will” and “How to be sure he/she is God’s will.” Take the one that suits you best. The two mean the same thing; I did that just for clarity. Now you know there is a part of praying, letting God speak to you by revelation, dreams, prophecy, peace, the word, etc. I will not be talking about that one tonight; I will talk about how to be sure what you received via dreams, revelation, peace, etc., is not fake. How to know the originality of what you called God’s will. This topic is very important because we now see failed marriages here and there, and these set of people claimed God spoke to them, only to dig and see that they actually missed the voice of God. If only they knew that they could always check the authenticity of their claim, their marriage would have been a heaven on earth.

You know there are products you buy that the manufacturer will tell you to text a pin to a particular number to check if what you have in your hand is original or fake. Have you seen such before? You will check some, and you will get a reply that it is fake. At another time, you will receive a congratulatory message that what you have in your hand is original. Whether you are engaged, about to be engaged, or single, tonight’s message is for you so that you don’t make this huge mistake. There are some things you need to cross-check whatever you received with, so that you will be sure of what you have in your hand or whatever you are about to enter.

3 John 1:2 – Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. Don’t forget that God wants you to prosper all round; whatever behavior that negates this plan of God for you is evil and not His will for you, and that could mean that the devil has manipulated you somehow, most times, through your emotions.

1. If they request for sex

   It doesn’t matter if they spit fire when they pray; it doesn’t matter if they can pray in tongues for a whole day; it doesn’t matter if they lead praise and worship, and everyone under the session falls under anointing; I mean it doesn’t matter if they are the president or sister’s coordinator; it doesn’t matter if they are the one that takes Bible study every week. Anybody that asks for premarital sex, whether male or female, is not the will of God for you. It is understandable if the two of you go careless and one thing led to another, but someone begging to have sex with you or even threatening to end the relationship if you don’t give in, and all you could think of is the dream or vision you saw when they proposed a relationship to you. I mean someone is intentional about premarital sex haaa. Don’t stress yourself; they are not God’s will. To think that I have heard of this act coming from ladies is something else, just telling you that it is not gender-based, even though we see more of it from men. Proverbs 13:21 – Adversity pursues sinners, but the righteous will be rewarded with prosperity.

2. Check if they are lazy or not diligent in their dealings?

   This is very important. Proverbs 13:4 – The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the soul of the diligent is made fat. The kind of life that you will live if you get married to a lazy person can never please God. It can never be in line with what God has in stock for you, especially if you are a woman. Life is naturally stressful for a woman already – menstruation, ovulation, pregnancy, childbearing, nursing, etc. House chores. To now marry someone that cannot work, make money, and take care of you is a no. A lazy man will even destroy your dreams, visions, aspirations. If a woman is lazy, she cannot take care of herself; how will she care for you and the children? The issue that is about to destroy some homes today is the issue of neatness; husband complaining that everywhere is dirty, the children look unkempt, and you see homes coming to an end because of this, and they keep claiming God spoke to them. I sincerely think lazy people should marry each other. I’ve seen many tattered women because they married a lazy husband, even though the woman is hardworking. Carrying too much responsibility. You see he does not like work now, but because of the nonsense butterfly that is running in your stomach, you are not thinking straight. He hates to be pressured to make money; he loves a soft life and he doesn’t have money, run o. You even give him your own hard-earned money to eat, not to do any project o; sense is waiting to catch up with you in marriage.

3. Do they love to live their lives according to God’s commandment?

   If no, then there is no shortcut to it; they are not God’s will. Watch out for: “I just need to read and understand my Bible; am not the church type.” God is not brutal; He knows we cannot do without fornication; even God knows that we cannot walk without our head shaking. Deuteronomy 29:9 – “So keep the words of this covenant to do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.” Your marriage cannot prosper if you don’t do it with someone that loves to live their lives according to the word of God. Joshua 1:8 – “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.”

4. Do they have a Zion where they feed from?

   Or are they just wandering to and fro the Earth like the devil? You see this kind of people, it is anyone married to them that can explain to you. Those that do not have anyone to put them in check, those people with no authority over them and claim to be a child of God are the most dangerous. They will even isolate you from your source, so you can be positioned well for both spiritual and physical troubles. Psalms 128:5 – “The Lord bless you from Zion, and may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.” It is a must to have a guide, somewhere you can be receiving light, sun, water so you can germinate properly, where you can learn and get matured.

5. Do they love to commune and serve?

   98% of people divorced today will still be together and be enjoying each other if they had a relationship with the Holy Spirit. If only the Holy Spirit can just put them in check, if the Holy Spirit can talk to them both. A believer that could not hear God speak should be a taboo, should be irritating to you, should be a no-go, should be an abomination. Job 36:11 – “If they hear and serve Him, they will end their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures.” If you do marriage with someone that hears and serves the Lord, all the years of your marriage will be in pleasure. Don’t forget that it is important that your partner is passionate about the things of God. They should love to serve God, they should be actively serving God with their time and resources. It is not enough for them to say, “I am a child of God.” Let them prove it to you in action by doing everything I have opened your eyes to tonight.
   God bless you.

Yes, you can publish your book without ISBN. It doesn’t make your book unsafe or freely available to be pirated by people. If you print my Facebook post without my permission, I can sue you. People sue over the originality of social media posts.

Also, ISBN doesn’t mean whoever is desperate enough to steal your work won’t go ahead. If you can drag them to court because you have ISBN, you can also drag them if you don’t have it.

The purpose of ISBN is mainly to give revenue to the government and to put the name and details of your book in an INTERNATIONAL BOOK REGISTER like a database where people can go to and check for some details on your book like Title, publisher and number of sales. I’m not sure Nigeria can boast of reliable data as touching this even with your ISBN.

HERE IS IT
1. If you are releasing an e-copy, don’t let ISBN stop you. You don’t need it. Amazon and other digital stores will even allow you to sell your books without ISBN.

2. If you are printing just few copies and you are selling it directly to people, you don’t need it.

3. If you are printing a lot of copies of your book, say 100 copies and above, it costs you nothing to get an ISBN because it’s just around 10k.

Summary- ISBN shouldn’t stop your e-book or few printing.
If you are printing more, you are already spending money, adding ISBN cost shouldn’t be an issue.

If you have not read my article on BECOMING AN AUTHOR, go grab it!

I hope this sends relief.

We should talk about REVISING & EDITING in this edition but first, I want to address some points raised by one of the readers of the first edition.

“I want to write books but I’m like: ‘Who will buy the books?’
‘I am not well known
‘Can my knowledge be trusted and consumed?’
‘If I want it to be free, I will need sponsors.’

You should be your number one first cheerleader. If you inform someone that you have authored a book, the first thing that comes to the mind of that person is NOT HOW MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT OR READ THE BOOK. The first thought is “Oh, so, you are an author?” An author is an author. That alone is a big win. Also, WRITE FOR POSTERITY. If no one reads today, someone would read tomorrow. If you withdraw or procrastinate till tomorrow, you won’t have as much time and passion as you have today.

Personally, I don’t care how many people buy my books. I remember working on 4 books at a time. My wife saw the zeal and demands the team and I were putting in order to meet the release date. She said, “Have you found out how many people that have booked these books so that you can know if to take it easy or continue with the push?”. Up till that time, I wasn’t interested in how many people have booked for it. When I asked, GUESS HOW MANY? Just GUESS first. Like how many people do you think must have made a booking for the books? ONE PERSON! I am not trying to sound ridiculous. Just one. When I heard that, I told myself: “We must not disappoint that one person”. I went on to add ONE more to that series to make it 5 at once! Today, that series is our MOST SOLD SERIES.

Asking if your knowledge can be trusted or consumed. Do your best. Write in your area of interest, and visit more resources as I explained in the last edition. The worst that can happen is for you to write a book today and do a revised edition five or ten years later. A revised edition is allowed.

Concerning making it free and needing sponsors. You don’t need sponsors to make a book free. Publish as PDF today and print tomorrow. I will talk about publishing later on.

EDITING AND REVISING

When you are done with the manuscript of the book. The next is to REVISE. Revising is reading your manuscripts with the aim of adding to it. As you read, you may feel like dwelling on some points, expounding some, adding to some passages and so on. You may end up with a book x2 of the manuscript. Do your best, and don’t be too concerned about the pages else you water down the content. I will talk about pages under publishing.

FIRST EDITING. I am usually the first to edit my books. Read it line by line after you have revised it. Be careful not to start adding and adding at this stage. Except it is highly germane, don’t add more at this point, just correct. Else, you will never finish the book. Correct and move on. Leave the addition for another book.

SECOND EDITING. The best choice is a professional editor. They usually charge per word or line. The next choice is your friend who is good at English. Tell your editors to INDICATE the correction and NOT TO EFFECT it. You should effect the highlighted corrections yourself if you can work on the computer. If you can’t then be with them before they effect it.

Two things: if they highlight the corrections for you to see, you will be able to improve your writing skills. Second, some editors didn’t get what you are trying to say and that was why they may flag it as an error. If you explain to them, they can reword correctly. Some corrections may even be the opposite of what you mean. This is most important if you are a first-time author.

PROOF READING. Proofread after accepting the corrections they make. At this stage, if more ideas are coming to your mind, keep them for your next book except they are extremely important. Because ideas and inspiration no dey finish.

You may get another person or persons to proofread and go through your work. They are not meant to make grammatical corrections even though they may do that as well but their main work is to VET or CRITICIZE your work.

BIBLE PASSAGE PROOFREAD. Look for one person, his job is just to confirm the Bible passages.

These stages are not cumbersome or unessential. The truth is, after you have done all of these, somebody will still pick your book and point out OBVIOUS errors. Just do your best and improve on it in the future. I believe in continuous improvement against delayed perfection. No perfect book including books written by the whites.

You want to write many books, that should form the third series.

If you have any questions yet uncovered, drop them.

My biggest advice for you today is WRITING & REVISING ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT. THE EDITING & PROOFREADING WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF. JUST WRITE.

Let’s start with WHY you want to write a book. Don’t bother. Any reason is good enough.

What KIND of book do you want to write? Spiritual, moral, novel, play etc. I am largely a spiritual book author and so, permit me to talk more from the angle of a spiritual book. Don’t worry, all the things I will say will be of help.

Are you a READER? If you hate reading and if you are not a reader, I can’t say you should not write but you may be far from being a good writer.

TO COMMENCE WRITING. Decide the kind of book you want to write and the TITLE or theme of the book. If you are a vast reader, I suggest you get at least three books on the same subject to refresh you. If you are not a vast reader, get more than three. You are not the first to write on that area and you won’t be the last. Your contribution is to that body of knowledge. It’s just right you get to see what others have said about it and how they said it. Paul travelled to Peter for 15 days to compare notes.

START. Once you start writing, close all books and sermons you have consulted to avoid pirating their works as much as possible. What you will learn from reading other books is not just what they write but also their style, language, formatting etc. Which you may adopt. I remember meeting a pastor in Winners after my second book. He said I should look at the formatting of Bishop Oyedepo’s books and adopt that formatting. Formatting comprises the font, line spacing, paragraphing etc.

ARE YOU WRITING YOUR BOOK on paper or typing with your phone or with a laptop? Anyone is good. I wrote my first three books on paper. If you are using paper, you will still need to type with your phone and eventually put it on a 💻 laptop.

WRITE OUT THE OUTLINE. Write out the topic of the book first and the areas you want to cover. Divide it into chapters. Even if it’s two or three chapters for starters. Do that. Even if it is one. As you develop the chapters, you will be able to expand them into more sub-topics and even chapters.

IF YOU ARE WRITING ON A PAPER, get two pens: red and black or blue. I will tell you what it is meant for. The complex issue with spiritual books is BIBLE PASSAGES. If you are conversant with your Bible, as you write, Bible passages would be running into your fingertips. Some, you may not know where it is in the Bible or even remember the full text. You can quickly write it down with the other pen- colour red as in this case. The reason is, you can easily trace it later on and fix it.

This will allow you to sustain the flow of inspiration. Even if you want to write out the full text, or you want to develop or expound that passage, you should still write the passage in red or a different colour. If you are typing on a phone or laptop, you can simply highlight it.

In the next series, let’s talk about REVISING, EDITING and probably WRITING MANY BOOKS.

Have any questions, drop them.

My biggest advice to a writer is to set a time-bound. Decide to put all things aside within a period of days or weeks to focus just on writing both day and night. Once that period is over, it is settled.