LET's TALK ABOUT SEX

Summary of Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo's message at the Redeemed Christian Church God National Youth Convention in camp.

LET's TALK ABOUT SEX

Proverbs 4:23, Proverbs 6: 23-27

Be careful what you take in, the music and movies you watch could desensitizes you to the truth. It is the truth you know that will set you free.

Colossians 3:5-6

You are to honour God with your body, sex is not allowed outside marriage.
Even though Nike may say 'Just do it!" You're not to with SEX!

The simple thought of sex crossing your mind is not a sin but the desire for sex is the sin!

Sex goes beyond the physical, it's spiritual and emotional!

In the bible, when a man sleeps with his wife the bible says "He knew his wife" but when a young man sleeps with an unmarried woman the bible says "He laid with her"

Don't let anybody deceive you, you can know them by their words. e.g "You don't need to tell anybody what we are about to do!"

If a guy comes to you with a condom, he is a con(artist) and you are dumb!

Virginity is something you give away and not what is taken from you by force! If you were violated and tampered with, only your virginity is broken, you destiny isn't, so don't mess up yourself! You are still so precious in God's sight. God values you, He values your body so honor Him with it!

85% of those who live together before getting married end up divorced. 50% of marriages in UK and 80% of black marriages in US end up in divorce!

If you sell yourself cheap, you end up being treated anyhow. A man who cannot treat you like a lady doesn't deserve you and any woman who cannot treat you like a prince doesn't deserve you!

Don't start what you can't handle! The skin is only a few centimetres deep and beneath that skin, there are 18million nerves passing information round. When ever someone touches you sexually, your nerves sends info that are stored somewhere in your brain. That's why when you see the person later you remember the touch! You have imprints of people on your life through sexual relationships.

Don't let anyone touch you in a way that is not holy. From hugs to kissing and then the deed happens unplanned!

Once you mess up your sexual life, it messes up your spiritual life! Get it right!

Exodus 26, 27 gives a summary of the Tabernacle. It was divided into the outer court, the Holy place, Holy of Holies. As a human being, your body is the outer court, your soul the holy place and your spirit the holy of holies!

The outer court gave access to many levities and they brought their sacrifices there. Your body is your outer court many people will have access to you, you'll meet many boys/girls but be careful, many will come and go. Proverbs 4:23

Only the priests were allowed into the holy place. The holy in your body is your soul. Your emotions are conceived there. Before you let anyone touch your soul, be very careful! The reason many broken relationship ends up a soul tie is because they let someone else make an impact on their soul and no matter how much they try to forget the person it is difficult.

Guard your soul, don't let just any nice person get in. The holy place had a lampstand in it, anyone who must get into your holy place was be a lamp. Ladies, any man that wants to court/date/marry you must have more light than you already have! He needs to be the lamp! Don't settle for less!

Only the High priest was allowed to enter into the holy of holies (Hebrews 9:7) ! He had to break through the veil to get in. There is only man allowed to get into you and that is your husband! When a man sleeps with a virgin, it's more than just sex! It's spiritual, it's a blood covenant!

Guys note, everywhere you go as a man and have sexual releases, your testicles will testify against you! The reason God gave you two testicles is because the bible says out of 2 or more witnesses, a statement is established (Deuteronomy 17:6).

There is a point when sexual activities goes beyond the physical, it becomes a demonic activity! It is spiritual!

Easy sex does not make more romance, neither does not give joy and happiness!

When you have sex while waiting to be married, you crush the foundation of your marriage

Don't let anyone blackmail you to stay in a relationship! After giving your life to Christ break away from every ungodly relationship!

Titus 2:11-12

To get out:

It requires the decision to maintain your integrity!

It requires a bold step to confront ungodly relationship you are in!

Break away and make a vow to be pure!

Keep yourself and honour God with your life!

No sex is safe sex!

Desire change, deny yourself!

The Unstoppable City Builders

Summary of Pastor Matthew Adebayo's message @ the ongoing RCCG Youth Convention in Nigeria. Read and be blessed by it.

**The Unstoppable City Builders**

Gen 11:1-8: The people had one mind, one goal, one purpose and they worked together to achieve that purpose!

The power of unity is unstoppable! If the church will come together in unity and work together with one purpose, we will build nation!

The city could refer to a place or the people while a builder is a constructor. A city builder is therefore someone constructs a city/people.

3 CHARACTERISTICS OF CITY BUILDERS

1)City builders always have a desire!

The starting points of all achievement in life starts with a desire, ability to recognise what you want in life!

Don't hide under the pretence of spirituality! Many just wait for the holy spirit to do everything but this is wrong! You need a burning desire and driving force in life.

City builders have vision! Have the image of the city you want to build in your heart, create a mental picture of desire and start working towards it.

Phil 2:5, when you have the mindset of christ, you can set your life right and your life settings will be better.

2) City builders are determined !

They are men/women of determination who have made up their mind on what to do! They are risk takers who refuse to give up come what may. 2Sam 23:15

City builders don't succumb to threats, they are not fearful. Even in the face of death city builders don't give up! Esther 4:15-16

3) City builders are Diligent!

Proverbs 22:29. They are not just hard working, they work hard to achieve what they have set their minds to do.

Prov 13:23, Prov 12:11. Any christian youth is not at work is a joker! No city builder folds his arm and gets anything done on earth.

If you can't take over your immediate environment, you can't take over your local government! If you can't take over your local government , you can't take over your city! If you can't take over your city, you can't take over your nation!

To be a city builder, you must start by making a difference in your immediate environment!

If you're not able fly, run! If you can't run, walk! If you can't walk, crawl! Just do something, make sure you are not stagnant!

Keep moving because if you don't move, you'll be removed!

Romans 8:14-19

Move now because God is counting on you! Move now because your nation needs you! Move now because the world is waiting for you!

Beyond Self

According to Joel Osteen, "so much of our culture is inward focused." We are all living our thought. People are conditioned to think, “what’s in it for me?” But the most rewarding way to live is not with the attitude, “How can I get blessed today?” No, if we are always self-focused wondering how we can benefit all the time, we are definitely living with a shallow, temporary mentality. Instead of looking out only for your good, turn it around and say, “How can I be a blessing to others? Who can I inspire to rise higher? What seeds of greatness can I call forth out of someone?” Leaders, that’s living at a higher level. That's living with monumental responsibility.

Today, I encourage you to be on the lookout for ways to be a blessing to other people.

Freedom

The pros and cons of owning your own business are vast. Few among them are PROS - Control, Money, Creativity, Freedom... CONS - Uncertainty, Risk, Lack of structure. Having taken all these factors into cognisance, I think we should ponder on the word FREEDOM. What does it mean to you? Do you long for it?

With freedom comes great responsibility. Many atimes, people mishandle it because they believe starting or owning your own business means sleeping early and waking up late; going for leisure during active hours; pursuing luxury with their capital. This has led to the collapse of several businesses. As a just and diligent minded person, your story should not be so. You should start, grow and sustain your own business while you use your freedom wisely.

Meet you at the top.

Success Management

We all aspire success. However, success do not teach us anything, but failure taught us to ask better questions. The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure. Failure does not mean we are failure by nomenclature. Less wonder T. S. Elliot said and I quote: "Success is relatively what we can make of the mess we have made of things."

In actual fact, we should both learn when we succeed and/or fail. But we seldom learn in success because of the pride it reinforces. In this context, kindly remember King Nebuchadnezzar who said, "This is the great Babylon which I have built by the might of my power and the glory of my majesty." Meanwhile all glory unarguably belong to God.

Hmmm...great success pave the way to illusions of omnipotence and the feeling of self-sufficiency. Dear leaders, don't fall into perils of success. Manage your little and gigantic feats and tow the path of greatness.

Have a SUCCESS-full week!

TarGET...

When I was working in the Insurance industry, there was a lot of talk about target and how people are going extra miles to meet it.

However, I remember one of my colleagues who always maintain that target is not to be met but to be maintained. In other words, target is a driving factor. A motivation which most of the times turn out to be negative.

Perhaps target could be self-imposed. You may tell yourself that you must attain certain level of work. I often do that and it has helped me a lot of times.

For example, I blog on several social media at specified time and keep to this. But when I fail to meet up, I always feel bad.

In view of the above, I am tendering my unreserved apology for my inability to do my usual two blogs in the month of July 2012.

It is well.

Save and Invest A-S-A-P

Listed and analysed below are series of salient points on the basics of savings and investment. The import of this paper is to enable you understand the importance of planning for your financial future.

Why Save and Invest?
We start with this question because many people believe it is impossible to save talk less of investing where you do not have enough to care of your immediate needs. It starts like this: we work; we earn; we chop; then…we ‘siddon’ look for our next pay cheque. Many people experience financial hard times when they get older because they never got the facts on saving and investing. In order to be financially healthy, you must create room for saving and investing.

The best way to achieve financial success is to plan for it. Maybe you would like to:
• buy a car when you graduate from the citadel of higher learning;
• have some money set aside for special occasions or emergencies;
• build or buy a house someday; or
• live comfortably in retirement.

Once you decide what you are saving for—and when you would like to have it—you can decide how you should save and invest.

The best time to learn about money is when you're young and/or still in school. But unfortunately, we seldom take this advantage when we are young. For instance, people in my generation (myself inclusive) learnt the art of money in the hard way.
However we were taught some mathematical concepts such as Simple Interest, Compound Interest etc while we are growing up. We never see the bigger picture in regard to these subjects. We are so much obsessed with learning to pass examination. Perhaps, all the mathematics, physics, economics etc that we studied in school are put in place to prepare us for the future. In order to buttress my point, let’s check out the magic of "compound interest."

What Is “Compound Interest”?
Compound interest is the interest you earn on interest.

Illustration Using Basic Arithmetic
If you have N10,000.00 and it earns 5% interest each year, you'll have N10,500.00 at the end of the first year. But at the end of the second year, you'll have N11,025. Not only did you earn N500.00 on the N10,000.00 you initially deposited - your original "principal" - but you also earned an extra N25.00 on the N500.00 in interest. Twenty-five naira may not sound like much at first, but it adds up over time. Even if you never add another dime to that account, in 10 years you'll have over N16,200.00 through the power of compound interest, and in 25 years you'll have almost N34,000.00.

The above is just an illustration using an amount as low as N10,000. Could you imagine the returns on millions of naira?

Here, we are discussing consumption versus savings and investment. Imagine you spend N1,000 on GSM recharge cards every week for say a period of 5 years, you'll spend N260,000 on recharge cards. If you give up or reduce your expenditure on that recharge cards by half and invest the money (ie N130,000) instead, earning 5% interest compounded every year for 5 years, you'll have over N165,916.60.

How Can I Save and Invest?
Many people get into the habit of saving or investing by following this advice: "Pay yourself first." Many people find it easier to pay themselves first if they allow their bank to automatically remove money from their salaries and deposit it into a separate savings or investment account. Other people pay themselves first by having money automatically deposited into an employer-sponsored retirement savings account (RSA) which is otherwise known as Pension contribution.

There are many different ways to save and invest, including:

• Savings Accounts
If you save your money in a savings account, the bank will pay you interest, and you can easily get your money whenever you want it.

• Endowment/Insurance Schemes
These schemes tend to offer higher interest rates than savings accounts.

• Fixed Deposit Accounts
You can earn an even higher interest if you fix your money while you promise that you're going to keep your money in the bank for a certain amount of time.

• Stocks
This may sound distasteful to you. But it remains a feasible cause to own part of a famous viable company that provides some of the services you and I enjoy. When you buy stock in a company-you become one of the owners while you secure your future. (Well, let’s move on as I leave this monumental topic for another day)

• Bonds
Many companies and government borrow money so they can meet their financial needs and be successful. One way they borrow money is by selling bonds. When you buy a bond, you're lending your money to the company or government so. The company and/or government promise to pay you interest and to return your money on a date in the future.

• Mutual Funds
This is another way to go. You can buy stocks and bonds by buying shares of a mutual fund. A mutual fund is a pool of money run by a professional or group of professionals who have experience in picking investments. After researching many companies, these professionals select the stocks or bonds of companies and put them into a fund. Investors can buy shares of the fund, and their shares rise or fall in value as the values of the stocks and bonds in the fund rise and fall.

• Real Estate
This is the new and latest bride in town. It is an acceptable norm that landed properties appreciate and never depreciate hence everybody wants to own land and houses. But this greatly depends on your diverse motive of owning these properties – asset or investment. As an investor you buy, hold and sell the property when it appreciates.

Risk and Return
Every item of savings or investment mentioned above has its advantages and disadvantages. Kindly note that every investment involves risks. Generally, some of the issues are:
• How fast you can get your money when you need it,
• How fast your money will grow, and
• How safe your money will be.

For example,
• Savings Accounts
Your money in Savings Account tends to be very safe because it's federally insured through the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), and you can easily get to your money if you need it for any reason. But there's a tradeoff for security and ready availability. Your money earns a low interest rate compared with investments. In other words, it gets a low return.

• Endowment/Insurance Schemes
With these products, your money is safe depending on the viability of the Insurance or Investment Company. However, your money is not readily available until the agreed maturity date. Return here is high.

• Stocks
For decades, the investment that has provided the highest average rate of return has been stocks. But there are no guarantees of profits when you buy stock, which makes stock one of the most risky investments. If the company doesn't do well or falls out of favour with investors, your stock can fall in price, and you could ‘lose’ your money.

You can make money in two ways from stock. These are:

1. Capital gain or appreciation - when the price of the stock rises as a result of its good performance.
2. Dividend - when a company pays out a part of its profits to its shareholders. This is not automatic as a company may decide not to pay out dividends, choosing instead to keep its profits and use them to expand the business.
One of the riskiest investments you can make is buying stock in a new company. New companies go out of business more frequently than companies that have been in business for decades or longer. If you buy stock in a small, new company, you could lose it all. Or the company could turn out to be a success. You'll have to do your homework and learn as much as you can about the company before you invest. And only invest money that you can afford to lose.

• Bonds
The company's "promise to repay" your principal generally makes bonds less risky than stocks. But bonds can be risky. To assess how risky a bond is you can check the bond's credit rating. Unlike shareholders, bond holders know how much money they will make, unless the company goes out of business. If the company goes out of business or declares bankruptcy, bondholders may lose money. But if there is any money left in the company, they will get it before shareholders. Bonds generally provide higher returns (with higher risk) than savings accounts, but lower returns (with lower risk) than stocks.

• Mutual Funds
The risk involved in Mutual fund is determined by the stocks and bonds in the fund. No mutual fund can guarantee its returns, and no mutual fund is risk-free.

• Real Estate
The risk here is limited and human. You may encounter risk when you buy property from swindlers. Also, you can not rule out the unscrupulous ‘omo onile’ factor.

Conclusion
Always remember: the greater the potential return, the greater the risk. Risk is scary because no one wants to lose money, but there's also such a thing as "too safe." We all know that prices go up. That's called inflation. For example, a loaf of bread that costs fifty naira today could cost one hundred naira ten years from now. If your money doesn't grow as fast as inflation does, that's like losing money, because while fifty naira buys a whole loaf of bread today, in ten years it might only buy half a loaf.

How to Handle your Risk and Return

1. Diversify
One of the most important ways to reduce the risks of investing is to diversify your investments. It's common sense: don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you buy a mixture of different types of stocks, bonds, or mutual funds, your savings will not be wiped out if one of your investments fails. Since no one can accurately predict how our economy or one company will do, diversification helps you to protect your savings. If you had just one investment and it went down in value, then you would lose money. But if you had ten different investments and one went down in value, you could still come out ahead.

2. Manage your money
Many people do not understand what personal finance or budget means. They neither believe nor operate one. For you to excel financially, you need to plan your inflow and outflow adequately.

You should be accountable for every naira that goes in and out of your pocket.
Do not jump at every offer thrown at you by banks. Some of them might turn out to be a Trojan horse. Very prominent examples are credit cards which have entrapped and enslaved a lot of people due to high charges and interest rates.

I am not condemning credit cards. If you owe money on your credit cards, the wisest thing you can do is pay off the balance in full as quickly as possible. You may only have problem with the cards when you do not repay in full.
Once you can manage your money, then you can save and invest.

3. Make a Plan
The key to financial security is to have a "financial plan." That means you should set financial goals and start saving or investing to reach those goals. While that may sound hard, it doesn't have to be. You'll first need to figure out where you're starting from – for example, how much do you owe, how much money have you saved already, how much money will get from your job or your parents. Next, you should set goals. Do you want a car? A further college education? New clothes? Once you know what you want, when you want it, and how much it costs, you can figure out how much you need to save each week or month or year.

4. Save and Invest for the Long Term
Perhaps the best protection against risk is time, and that's what young people are fortunate to have the most. On any day the stock market can go up or down. Sometimes it goes down for months or years. But over the years, investors who've adopted a "buy and hold" approach to investing tend to come out ahead of those who try to time the market.

5. Investigate Before You Invest
Another way to reduce risk is to do your homework before you part with your hard-earned cash. Consult financial experts and regulators to check up on the background of any person or company that you're considering doing business with. Find out as much as you can about any company and that landed property before you invest in it. And beware of "get rich quick schemes." If someone offers you an especially high rate of return on an investment or pressures you do invest before you've had time to investigate, it's probably a scam.

6. Avoid the Costs of Delay
I believe you are all familiar with these assertions: delay is dangerous; procrastination is a thief of time, ‘time na money’; delay is the deadliest form of denial etc. But we rarely take them serious. As important as time is, it can be the most important factor that will determine how much your money will grow. If you saved 1,000 naira a week at 8% interest starting from the time you were eighteen years old, you would have N1,679,532 saved by the time you're 50. But if you wait until you're 30 years old to start saving, you'll have to save N2,933 a week to catch up. In fact, just one year's delay – waiting until you're 19 years old to start saving 1,000 naira a week at 8% interest – will cost you a whooping sum of N135,995.81 by the time you're 50.

Thank you.