I Love You, But... Order Printed Copy

Author: Opeyemi Akintunde
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About the Book

"I LOVE YOU, BUT..." by Opeyemi Akintunde is a Christian relationship guide that explores the complexities of love and marriage. The book offers insight into common issues that couples face in their relationships, such as communication, forgiveness, and compromise. It provides practical advice and biblical principles to help couples build and strengthen their relationships.

Susannah Wesley

If a passing stranger walking through the rural village of Epworth, England, on any given day between 1700 and 1720 had peered through the window of the home of the rector of the local Anglican church, he might have caught sight of something quite strange. Depending on the time of day, this observer might have seen a woman sitting in a chair with her kitchen apron pulled up over her head while ten children read, studied, or played all around her. Two of those ten children would have been little boys — John and Charles — who would grow up to shape the course of Christian history and thus change the world. The woman under the apron would have been Susanna Wesley, who assumed this odd posture for two hours almost every day. In a moment you will understand why. Susanna understood the dynamics of large families. Born the twenty-fifth of twenty-five children in 1669, Susanna Annesley grew up the daughter of a prominent, highly educated minister in cosmopolitan London. She had little formal education, but growing up in an academic household with so many older siblings left her well-read and well-rounded intellectually. She met Samuel Wesley, an aspiring Anglican minister, and married him in 1688, when she was nineteen years old. Susanna’s remaining fifty-three years were far from easy ones. They were characterized by loss, hardship, and struggle. Yet she became a woman of immense legacy, largely through the dual virtues of organization and prayer. Susanna delivered nineteen children, but nine — including two sets of twins — died in infancy. Another was accidentally smothered in the night by a nurse as Susanna recovered from labor and delivery. Her husband, Samuel, did not succeed in his thirty-nine-year assignment as rector of the church at Epworth. An intellectual academic, he simply did not understand or identify with the rural villagers in his parish. Nor did they care for him. When he involved himself from the pulpit in a highly divisive political matter inflaming the entire nation in that era, he earned the hatred of a vast segment of the populace. On two occasions the Wesleys’ parsonage burned down, most likely because of arson on the part of Epworth’s embittered parishioners. Susanna and the children were seldom spared harassment and insults. Samuel was not good with money, and he once spent several months in debtors’ prison. The parsonage came with a small farm, but Samuel was uninterested in and ill-suited for farm work, so this too was left for Susanna to manage. This was in addition to the huge task of homeschooling all of the children, with their varying ages and gifts. For decades, Samuel expended all of his energies and most of the family’s meager wealth working on an exegetical treatise on the book of Job. The sad irony is that while he was away for long periods of time studying and writing about Job’s intense sufferings, his living, breathing wife was enduring real pain and hardship, largely on her own. Susanna’s household organizational skills are the stuff of legend. She knew from personal experience that quality one-on-one time with a parent is hard to come by in a family with many children, yet powerfully important. So she set a rotating schedule through which each of her children spent an hour with her alone before bedtime on a designated night each week. What is more, she somehow found a way to manage the household and give her large brood of children a world-class education that included both classical and biblical learning. Her girls got the same rigorous education as did her boys, something virtually unheard of in that day. Traditionally, girls of that place and time were taught “feminine” skills such as needlework and music before undertaking the most basic education, such as learning to read. Susanna firmly believed this was wrong-headed. Her girls were taught the same curriculum as her boys. Among the “bylaws” by which she ran her home school was this: “8. That no girl be taught to work till she can read very well; and then that she be kept to her work with the same application, and for the same time, that she was held to in reading. This rule also is much to be observed; for the putting of children to learn sewing before they can read perfectly, is the very reason why so few women can read fit to be heard, and never to be well understood.”1 School hours were from 9:00 a.m. to noon and then 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., six days a week. All but the smallest children completed their assigned chores promptly before the start of the school day. As in many one-room schoolhouses in generations past, older children helped teach the younger. No Excuse for Not Praying! Susanna took her relationship to God as seriously as she did her duties as a wife and mother. Early in her life, she vowed that she would never spend more time in leisure entertainment than she did in prayer and Bible study. Even amid the most complex and busy years of her life as a mother, she still scheduled two hours each day for fellowship with God and time in His Word, and she adhered to that schedule faithfully. The challenge was finding a place of privacy in a house filled to overflowing with children. Mother Wesley’s solution to this was to bring her Bible to her favorite chair and throw her long apron up over her head, forming a sort of tent. This became something akin to the “tent of meeting,” the tabernacle in the days of Moses in the Old Testament. Every person in the household, from the smallest toddler to the oldest domestic helpers, knew well to respect this signal. When Susanna was under the apron, she was with God and was not to be disturbed except in the case of the direst emergency. There in the privacy of her little tent, she interceded for her husband and children and plumbed the deep mysteries of God in the Scriptures. This holy discipline equipped her with a thorough and profound knowledge of the Bible. Prayer Leads to Teaching When husband Samuel was away, as was often the case, a substitute minister brought the Sunday morning sermon at the church. Susanna found these messages uninspiring and lacking in spiritual meat. She had a good-sized congregation of her own at home, so she began teaching them the Bible in her kitchen on Sunday afternoons. Soon neighbors began asking if they could attend. Word circulated and others from the area began asking permission to attend as well. So thorough was Susanna’s knowledge of the Bible, and so gifted was she at communicating its truths, that on any given Sunday after church, Susanna would have as many as two hundred people in attendance at her informal family Bible study, which started in her home but soon moved to a larger venue. Susanna passed away in 1742 at the age of seventy-three, living long enough to see her sons John and Charles become world-renowned leaders of the global Christian movement. This is her legacy, forged in large part in those diligent hours of intercession under that makeshift apron tent. The Lasting Legacy of Prayer John Wesley is estimated to have preached to nearly a million people in his long, fruitful life. His powerful, evangelistic services were frequently held in the open air to accommodate audiences in the tens of thousands. Traveling on horseback, he regularly preached three or more times a day, often beginning before daybreak. Even at the age of seventy he preached, without the assistance of modern amplification, to an estimated throng of thirty-two thousand people. It is hard to overstate John Wesley’s theological impact. He remains the dominant theological influence on Methodists and Methodist-heritage groups the world over, including the United Methodist Church, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, all of which played a pivotal role in the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century. Wesleyan theology also formed the foundation for the holiness movement in the United States, which includes denominations like the Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), and other groups which compose the colorful mosaic of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement in North America. As prolific a writer as he was busy as a preacher, John Wesley has been called the Father of the Religious Paperback. His published sermons, tracts, pamphlets, and booklets number roughly five thousand items. In addition to theology, Wesley wrote about music, marriage, medicine, science, abolitionism, and current events. Although John married, he and his wife, Mary, had no children. Because of his giving nature toward the poor, the oppressed, and the unevangelized, he left little of material wealth behind when he died in 1791 at the age of eighty-seven. One biographer said John Wesley “was carried to his grave by six poor men ‘leaving behind him nothing but a good library of books, a well-worn clergyman’s gown… and — the Methodist Church.’”2 The same writer observed that John’s impact was so profound that he in effect “supplied a new starting-point to modern religious history.”3 John’s younger brother Charles was very much a partner in and vital contributor to these accomplishments. A brilliant musician and lyricist, he wrote more than 6,600 hymns, many of which are still in hymnals the world over today. Charles and his wife, Sarah, had three children who survived infancy, including two boys, Samuel and Charles Jr., who were musical prodigies. Charles Jr. grew up to serve as the personal organist of the English royal family. His brother, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, became one of the most accomplished British composers of the nineteenth century. A contemporary of Mozart, Samuel is sometimes called “The English Mozart.”4 John and Charles Wesley were passionate lovers of God and powerful persuaders of people. As a result, the brothers were viewed by many of their contemporaries as religious fanatics. History has been far kinder in its verdict. It views them as world changers. And every one of the changes they wrought is part of the legacy of Susanna Wesley. In his 1864 biography, John Kirk wrote of Susanna, “Her name has been everywhere received with respect; and by a large and influential Christian Community it has been cherished with strongest affection. Her success in the education of her children has been the theme of universal admiration; and no one has yet ventured to hazard even a conjecture as to how much the cause of religion and the well-being of the human race are indebted to her steady piety and extraordinary talents.”5 We hope that as you read [the story of] Susanna Wesley, you’ll grab on to the power of them. For Susanna Wesley, there was no amount of distraction that could keep her from prayer and the Bible. That kind of life, deeply rooted, produced great fruit, as evidenced not only by the people who came to hear her teach but also by the children she influenced. The great truth in her story is how prayer does not occupy the stage of activity. Its power is in the quiet trust of gentle souls who are willing to pull away from the everyday to commune with God. John Wesley, The Heart of Wesley’s Journal, ed. Ed Hughes and Hugh Price (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 127. William Henry Fitchett, Wesley and His Century: A Study in Spiritual Forces (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1906), 1. Ibid. Peter Matthews, Who’s Buried Where in London (London:  Bloomsbury, 2017), 37. John Kirk, The Mother of the Wesleys: A Biography (Ambler, MA:  Tresidder, 1864), vii. Excerpted with permission from Only One Life by Jackie Green and Lauren Green McAfee, copyright Jackie Green, Lauren Green McAfee, Bill High.

god's estimate of the lost

At no point is faith more tested than in receiving the divine estimate of the present estate and destiny of all who are not saved; yet the record stands on the sacred page and is as much a part of God's revelation of truth as is the more winsome disclosure concerning the saved and heaven. In vain does man struggle to deliver himself from the dread and shadow of the former while still attempting to retain the comfort and light of the latter. Even a blinded, unregenerate mind must be convinced of the unreasonableness of selecting only desirable elements out of the unitive whole of divine revelation. If man can dispose of the dark picture which describes the estate of the lost, he has, by that process, surrendered all claim to authority and all ground of assurance in those Scriptures which describe the estate of the saved. Man is prone to disregard the plain boundary lines of distinction between the saved and the unsaved as indicated in the Bible. He is naturally occupied with the temporal things that are seen, and is by nature blind to the eternal things (1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:3-4; John 3:3) which are not seen. He is inclined to conceive of salvation as resulting from a manner of daily life, both moral and religious, rather than a state wrought by the creative power of God. An appeal for a reformed manner of life is to him "practical" and "reasonable," and he sees little value in the Biblical appeal for personal faith in the saving power and grace of God. A saved person, by his new life from God, may live on a higher plane, and certainly will; but to attempt to live on a higher plain will not, and cannot, impart the new life, or save a lost soul. The unsaved, according to the Bible, include all who have not been accepted by God through a personal trust in the crucified and risen Saviour. All moral and religious people are not, therefore, according to the divine conditions, to be counted among the saved. Paul prayed for Israel "that they might be saved" (Rom. 10:1,2), and those for whom he prayed, it should be remembered, were the very ones of whom he wrote in this same passage that they had "a zeal for God" and went about "to establish their own righteousness." We know, also, that they fasted, and prayed, and gave a tithe of all they possessed; yet, in spite of all this, the faithful, inspired Apostle prays that they might be saved. To be saved was evidently, in the Apostle's mind, more than the diligent effort along the lines of moral and religious practices. The Bible sharply distinguishes between the saved and the unsaved, and in its classification, of necessity, wholly ignores what may seem reasonable or unreasonable in the sphere of human life. It bases its distinctions on the eternal necessities and provisions within the larger sphere of the kingdom of God. Here the important issues of conduct and service are not first to be considered. The deeper reality of an entire new nature is rather the primary objective, and no good works can take its place. It is as terrible for a church member, or minister, to be lost as for any one else. Certainly there is nothing in the fact of church membership, ordinances, or the preaching profession that can take the place of the Biblical requirement for salvation, or mitigate the final doom that is assured to those who reject the Saviour. The five virgins who possessed every outward appearance and profession were, nevertheless, without the oil which is the symbol of the divine life. In spite of all their religious externals they heard it said, "I know you not." "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (Matt. 7:21-23). "Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent" (John 6:29). The estate of the unsaved is described in the Bible by positive terms: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life"; "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved" (John 3:16; John 18-20). "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:36). "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44). "Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2). "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man" (Mk. 7:21-23). In Eph. 2:1-2 the contrast between the saved and the unsaved is first drawn at the point of possessing or not possessing the divine life: "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." This death is not physical, for the dead ones are said to be walking according to the course of this world, the aspirations of which walk are centered in the things of the world system. They are also said to be walking "according to the prince of the power of the air [Satan], the spirit that now worketh in [energizeth] the children of disobedience." This classification, "the children of disobedience," includes all who have not been "made alive" by the power of God. Disobedience here is a state of being and is federal rather than personal. "By one man's disobedience [Adam] many were made sinners." So, also, "by the obedience of one [Christ] shall many be made righteous." Thus the acceptableness of the saved one is also a state and is federal rather than personal. He being in Christ is a child of obedience; the unsaved one being in Adam is a child of disobedience. In Adam disobedient and lost; in Christ obedient, righteous and acceptable to God (Rom. 5:19; Eph. 1:6). He "became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Before the infinite holiness of God no person, saved or unsaved, can rightfully claim, within his own merit, to be obedient and righteous in the sight of God; yet the weakest person who stands in Christ is, by virtue of that position, a child of obedience in the sight of God. In all the children of disobedience, regardless of professions or conduct, Satan is here said to be the energizing power. The energy of this mighty being may inspire refinement, education, culture, and the externals of religion, for it is not against these external virtues that Satan is opposed. His enmity is intelligently directed against the saving grace of God, which is a widely differing issue from that which the problems of personal conduct present. Satan is said to be energizing the unsaved within all the spheres of their present activity. In like manner, the saved are said to be energized by God: "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). The testimony of these two passages is to the effect that there is now no such thing as an independent human life. Men are either energized by God or by Satan, and accordingly as they are saved or unsaved. The estate of the unsaved is revealed again in Col. 1:13: "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." Until this divine transformation is wrought, man must be considered as yet in the powers of darkness. This revelation is given in other passages: "Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them" (2 Cor. 4:3-4). "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19). "That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12). "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" (Rom. 1:29-32). "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Rom. 3:10-18). "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like..." (Gal. 5:19-21). "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5). "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psa. 51:5). "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9). "From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness" (Mk. 7:21,22). "That which is born of the flesh is flesh..." (John 3:6). "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:7). "And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins ... and were by nature the children of wrath even as others" (Eph. 2:1,3). "There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not" (Ec. 7:20). "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags..." (Isa. 64:6). After this manner the Bible reveals the present estate of the unsaved, and upon the above lines of distinction which are outside the sphere of this world. Every condition presented in these passages demands a superhuman power for its cure. Men are not said to be lost in the eyes of their fellow-men, or as measured by the standards of the institutions of the world. They are lost in the sight of a Holy God, with Whom they finally have to do, and under the conditions that exist and are effective in a larger sphere. In like manner, men are not saved by an adjustment to the estimates and conclusions of the limited world of fallen humanity, or by what may seem to them to be reasonable or unreasonable. Salvation is not a human undertaking. It did not originate in this sin-cursed world. It is of God and unto God, and hence moves along lines and under conditions and necessities which are of a higher realm. To be saved one must see himself as God sees him, and adapt himself to the divine principles of another world, which principles have been faithfully revealed in the written Word. A man of faith is one who thus adapts himself to the revelation of God; one who is instructed by and acts on the unfolding of facts revealed by God which would otherwise be unknown through human understanding. It was this divine estimate of humanity, described by the words "lost," "perish," "condemned," under the wrath of God,"blind," in the powers of darkness,"dead in trespasses and sins," which brought the Saviour from heaven to earth. It was this dark picture that impelled Him to give His life a ransom for many. His saving work was a practical accomplishment. It has provided every needed cure that could be demanded by the infinite purity and holiness of God. From Salvation by Lewis Sperry Chafer. Philadelphia: Sunday School Times Company, ©1917.