With a female voice, “Hi Berhan, I just call to say hi and to wish you a happy Easter” was a voice message I found on my answering machine right after I celebrated my first year wedding anniversary. (This was in 1998 – no smartphone, no Facebook, no social media, no nothing.)
After we had our three kids, my prayer time got shorter and shorter and kind of disappeared in thin air. When the Holy Spirit comes and whispers in my ears saying, “Why don’t you pray now?” I will immediately say, “I’m not able to; can’t You see?” And the Holy Spirit asks, “Why can’t you?” I will say, “The children You gave me take all my time and energy and I have no strength left to pray and read the Word.” In a way, I was saying to Him, “If it was not for my children, I would have been praying and worshiping You; but since they are here, sorry, I can’t do that.”
He has to come up with something like this because he married his 7th grade classmate; a girl he put his eyes on since that day; a day he realized that he missed one one of his ribs.
This young man realized that marriage is a ministry, a call. And he not only affirmed his girl that she is his but also he is hers! How romantic.
Don’t miss the second part of my interview with beautiful host of “4:12 Christian Youth Show” Abegail Hun on Elshaddai TV.
Part II will be aired tomorrow at the same time (9am EST; or 10 seate in Ethiopian time).
The host, Abegail is asking me the difference between holiness and purity.
Holiness is a gift from God. When God sets something/someone apart for His glory, that thing/person is called holy.
When it comes to purity, which can only be applied to “a person,” not a thing, it is a result, outcome and product of that holy work God did in the person.
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a HOLY nation – – -” (1 Peter 2:9a) – This holiness can’t be found from work; but from God, as God sets the person apart and declares him/her as His possession.
Purity is the working out of what God worked in the holy person:
“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to WORK OUT your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who WORKS IN you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13)
This is a very short clip to encourage young and single men to get married. For those of you who don’t understand Amharic, this is what I’m saying with one or two points added here:
A4P Guest: I read your blog yesterday about encouraging single girls to marry a man who loves Christ more than he loves the girl he is dating. Well, I thought I found that man and married him three years ago. All the spiritual things I thought he had were nothing but fake. I now don’t even think that he is a believer in Christ anymore. He is addicted to all sorts of Internet filthy stuff and he has no plan to deal with it. As he told me, he became addicted to this thing ten years ago. Had I known about this while we were dating, I wouldn’t have married him but there was no way for me to know that he was addicted while we were dating. And he didn’t tell me even if I shared with him everything about me.
A4P: So, tell me how you came to know him and what had made you believe that he was in love with Christ more than he was in love with you?
A4P Guest: I met him in my church. I thought he was very spiritual because he used to talk about God 24/7 and if the church door opened for whatever reason, he was there. He missed no church program. He also used to preach in some church programs. I used to be blessed by every word he uttered. He encouraged me to grow in Christ and used to text me spiritual messages almost everyday.
The truth of the matter is: no one can get sexual fulfillment by attending his/her sexual urges outside the confinement of marriage that includes God. People, who seek sexual fulfillment outside the will of God, become slaves to all their sexual instincts. They can’t say “No” to any of their urges. Hunger and thirst for sexual fulfillment takes over their lives and makes them slaves. They get too obsessed as to how they meet their next sexual urges. They browse around from one website to another; from one social media to another with hopelessness and despair. They tend to say, “But I have more sexual desire than any normal person.”
But the truth is, most often than not, they are normal people with normal sexual desire; the difference is, they throw themselves in “the Sarah Desert” as they seek fulfillment without the will of God. They do all sorts of things, but they get nothing out of it.
