What God Told Me About My First Crush
By: Deji Yesufu
The year would have been 1990. I was just entering into my teenage years, and here was I encountering a challenge that I would today say remains a life-long problem: I had a crush on a girl in my neighbourhood. The real problem was not that I was in love. The real challenge was that it was about this time that I was also encountering the Christian faith in its pristine form. By profession, I regarded myself as born-again, and sincerely, there was nothing dubious about my profession then. I took my religion seriously: I attended church when I could; I studied the Bible diligently; I prayed and fasted – yet I was madly in love with the girl next door. Long before I read Paul’s words of despair in Romans 7, I had also agonised:
“…Romans 7:22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 7:23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 7:24 O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
As I battled my heart and wondered if I would ever be rid of this sinful nature of mine, God spoke to me. It was one faithful day – I can not remember the events around it, but I remember what God said. I was reading 1 Timothy 5, and stumbled on these words: “… 1 Timothy 5:1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; 5:2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.” God’s words were clear: treat the younger women as your blood sisters. The girl I was crushing on was younger than me, and I understood what God was saying: treat that young woman as your sister – nothing more. I did not immediately end the relationship. I still battled God on the matter: questioning God like the devil did Eve – “…did God really say…?” If I would be honest with myself, I knew what God was saying and what he wanted.
One day, I summoned courage, and I brought an end to the relationship. I can still remember the puzzle on the girl’s face. It was not like we were dating or married; but there was a heart condition I believe God wanted me to deal with, and with his help, it was done. Let me state straight away that that situation was only the first of many kinds of relationships that have arisen between me and the opposite sex. There have been hundreds of other crushes, but God’s word to all of them has always been: 1 Timothy 5:2 – treat the older women as mothers and treat the younger women as your sisters. As I grow older, and now that I have a daughter too, many of the younger women are no longer my sisters but my daughters; some others, due to age, remain sisters; while the older women are my mother. The only woman I have legitimate rights to crush on is my wife.
I tell this story today as a response to a pastoral concern I am handling presently. I used to think only men crushed on women. I didn’t know that women also crushed on men. And it makes sense because men and women are human beings with inert sexual desires implanted within them by their creator with the express purpose of such desires materialising in holy matrimony. In fact, the biblical solution to “crushing” is not prayer and fasting. It is simply to MARRY. God gave us our sexual appetite so that we can procreate and populate this earth with offspring and so that humanity does not go into extinction. And when the desire for companionship and sex hits a teenager, like I got stung years ago, the solution is to find a lady, marry her, and then find all my desires met in her. Unfortunately, as a 13 year old, I couldn’t afford to keep a wife. So I had to finish secondary school, grab a university degree, get a job, and then marry. In my case, it took another twenty years for this to occur. For others, and in places where things work, such teenagers could be married as early as nineteen/twenty.
Now besides God’s instructing us to treat women with dignity, let me hurry to add in this essay that when I say God spoke to me, I was able to point to the chapter and the verse in the Bible. It would do my charismatic friends a lot of good if they realize that God’s objective words are stated in the Bible alone. What God told me in 1990 is what he has been saying to every man crushing on women since Adam. It is also what he has been saying to the women in the converse. God’s objective word, as stated in the Bible, is relevant for all time. The Holy Spirit is able to take this objective, sufficient, inerrant, and authoritative word and make them relevant to our day. In the sense that God’s word in scripture can be illuminated and adapted to act both as instruction and/or direction for God’s people today.
To close my thoughts on this subject, let me draw my readers to the supreme need of men today, which is obeying 1 Timothy 5:2. That need can be seen via the sexual revolution that has taken over our world. The result is the birth of unwanted children, abortion, broken homes, divorce, etc. If men understand that women are not sex items but our mothers, sisters, and daughters, they will treat them differently. You only need to imagine another man treating your mother, sister, or daughter the way you are treating that young girl for you to change your ways. The sexual revolution of our time has become so rampant and defiant that homosexuality, paedophilia, and bestiality are the latest campaigns of the progressive man. Very few things define a man than sex does, and the moment a person becomes sexually debased, such a person becomes incapacitated in many areas of life.
I look back now, some 34 years, and I am thankful that the Holy Spirit instructed me to end that relationship, and I obeyed. I do not even consider my “obedience” in this matter an achievement; I think God simply had mercy upon me. And I pray that as many as are finding challenges obeying God in this matter of sex, God will empower you and ensure that your obedience is complete. No one ever gets over crushing at the opposite sex. We simply develop a disciplined mindset at these things, and we find grace in God in finding all our pleasures in our spouses. As for those who are single, well, get an education, get a job, and then get a spouse. Then thank me later.
Let me add something as a postscript: it is one thing to know what God demands of you. It is another thing to have the resources or ability to do it. If you are a person who does not believe in Jesus Christ; if you have never repented of your sins and trusted Christ for salvation; then you have no resources within you to obey God. So, repent today, trust Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, and then God will give you his Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that empowers and gives us grace to obey God’s commands, as stated in the Bible. If you have done this, send me an email at [email protected], and I’ll share some thoughts with you on continuing in your newfound faith.
Deji Yesufu is the Pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is also the author of HUMANITY.
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