Invitation to Commitment

I have heard it said that what matters in a relationship is commitment, and not the feelings really; that there is no perfect person, and that people discover deep (sometimes truths about their partners that they only get to know about at times.

When we meet, we always imagine that we have met our Mr. /Ms. Right. We fancy about them, imagine they are the answers to our prayers and we take every coincidence to spiritualize and confirm our desires. At times, those that point out weaknesses that need to be worked on or laid bare are abhorred, while every person who is opposed to our choices is detested.

Few months or years depending on how truthful you are and how much you know one another, and how much you have allowed yourself to be reasonable; quarrels come, interests begin to conflict, and reality hits bang! We begin to see the areas of their lacking…By the way, she is not keen on keeping time, she is not as articulate and organized as I thought. He is not as caring as I thought…she can be dishonest, he is not as selfless…

Yes; she is not and He is not. They are not because we all have our imperfections. Each one of us stands a sinner in need of grace, a failure without allowing the Lord to be Lord over our weaknesses and hopeless without appreciating we are weak. You may have advanced in your walk of faith, but you too have weaknesses. You only may be an earlier patient in the hospital who having arrived earlier, can give the other party advice on how it is like to be in the hospital (C.S Lewis). The reality really is there is no perfect person.

Commitment to love that one weak person is what matters. Conscious commitment to love in weaknesses and in strengths, in lack and in plenty, with many other proposals and without. We DECIDE to Love, not FALL in… the problem in falling is when you fall, you rise…and unless you rise together, then that is the end of the relationship.

Love should be conscious, deliberate and in full cognition of the journey of love. Deliberate to put aside the frustration of expectations, to love. I believe this is the kind of love that God has for us; a conscious, deliberate love. It does not hinge upon how faithful our walk with Him is; if anything, He knows us, inside out, and loves us.    If some of us knew the thoughts of our partners or saw a movie of their lives, what they are while alone, things would be different.

The Psalmist in Chapter 139 says, ‘You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely’ (Vs 1-4) Someone said that true love is only where a person knows you inside out and still loves you!

God knows our ‘small, unknown sins’, as well as ‘the known’ ones…but loves us irrespective of this. The fact that we have received grace and we did not deserve it is enough reason to offer it to others who equally do not deserve. Many friendships and relationships are broken by the fact that our love was hinged on some expectation, some requirement: you must remain this way, must do this and that…

In conclusion, I invite us to be counted

• To be counted as people who has loved friends and the special friend with all their flaws and weaknesses.
• To be counted as people who took up the responsibility of courtship and marriage as a deliberate stewardship journey, to walk with him till you get to heaven together.
• To be counted as people who kept on praying for the Lord to deal with those weaknesses; shifting the attention from the flaws to what God is able to do
• To be counted as people who encouraged others to appreciate and engage the weaknesses and maximize on their strengths who. So help us God!