Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo is the senior pastor of David Christian Center. He is widely known for his emphatic teachings in life and love. He is also a counselor and has a dedicated audience on YouTube.
He is married to a fellow Pastor Mildred Kingsley-Okonkwo and their union is blessed with three children.
His Message On Dating Syndromes
He explained Dating syndromes as being “behavioral patterns exhibited that are destructive to relationships and unknown to the person in question.”
The solution to these syndromes is to take responsibility for your love life.
He stated that although a lot of people believe that love is a feeling, that it is not always so. The idea that love is just a feeling makes you more susceptible to being controlled by love and love should never control you. Rather, you should control love.
Citing the Bible verse Colossians 3:2 that states
“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth”, he revealed that if your affections are set right, you can be able to control your feelings .
According to Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo, these are the 5 Dating Syndromes
1. ‘The I am worried about him’ syndrome:
“You will meet some people that are always attached to their ex, they are always attached to their past. Some of them say since I broke up with him, he has not been the same.When you date people like this, you talk for one hour, they spend 30 minutes talking about their ex.
If you are going to have a great future, you must let go of the past. No matter how bad or how great it was, to move forward, you must let go. Like I told you, you must take responsibility for your past.
“Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert”.
Isaiah 43:18-19.
2. The Beggar syndrome:
“These ones are not looking for people to date, they are dependants. They are projects, if you take them on , they will weaken you. Unfortunately it is not only women, there are men like that. People like this, anybody that has spare cash can manipulate them. So no matter how much your price is, you are still cheap. There Are people who can pay the price no matter how much.
My sister work hard, all these things, you can buy for yourself.
As long as money can buy your love, you are cheap and women like this, when they meet someone that has money than you, even in marriage, their eyes will still be everywhere. Watch out for the beggar syndrome, they are always dependant.
The virtuous woman, her price is far more than rubies.”
3. The blind syndrome:
“Some people just jump into a relationship,but are totally blind of the fact that they are in a relationship.”
4. The doctor syndrome.
“These ones are always attracted to sick people. By sick I don’t mean physically sick but people that always have problems. There are people that are always attracted to people that have problems in their lives. That’s all that attracts them, the more horrible those people situations, the more attracted they are to those people. There are many times I had to pull people out of those relationships, you are dating someone that everything in their lives has collapsed; they don’t know where they are going, they have not gone to school, they are not trying to learn a trade, they don’t have house, they don’t have a family and you are trying to date her, how? Where are you people going to? She needs to put her life together a bit, she needs to have a sense of direction.
These people are attracted to those kind of people, why are they attracted? Sometimes, what you have is a ministry to those people not for you to marry them but if you are in dating mode, everytime you see the people you have a heart for, you will think that God is saying you should marry them.
You can’t be dating everybody, For some you are sent to influence them, you are sent to help them or assist them not marry them. I can’t count the amount of stories I have heard of somebody paying somebody’s school fees with the mindset that when she graduate, I will marry her. No oga, you have a ministry of sponsoring people’s academics, it doesn’t mean you will marry them. I can’t count how many cases, they say ‘Pastor I paid her school fees for five years’.
School fees is not bride price, she will soon start working, she will pay you, your investment will yield but it doesn’t guarantee marriage.
You must not marry everybody you meet,you are called to help some of them.”
5. The converters.
“The bible makes it clear that as a Christian, you should not be unequally yoked with unbelievers but some people, especially ladies, they believe they will convert him and marry him. My sister you are not the Holy Spirit, your name might be comfort but you are not the comforter. You cannot convert and marry, if you could convert, you could have converted all the sinners in this world.
People don’t change just because you want to deceive them and pressure them to change for your own selfish purpose. Only the Holy Spirit can truly change someone. He is a drunkard and wife beater, you are thinking you can change him. He is a very violent and very aggressive person, you are thinking you will change him. Most women have this vision of changing who they want to marry and they always get a shocker when they marry, the person even gets worse than before because now they’ve achieved the project and they are no longer under any obligation to impress you, they have already married you. Stop thinking you can convert anybody.”