KINGDOM PRINCIPLES FOR A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE (1)

One shall chase a thousand and two shall put ten thousand to flight. Two heads are better than one, they have a better reward for their labour. These are the words of Ancient wisdom.

It is good to marry, and not just marry but marry right.

Marriage is serious business. It is beyond wearing wedding dress and throwing bouquet! It is much more than being the winner or the chosen among many. Ladies dance and are so very happy on their wedding days, but for some that is short lived simply because of their choice of marriage partner.

Marriage is not for babies but matured souls. And I am not talking about age here.

What is Marriage? - It is a covenant relationship that is enacted between a man and a woman, God being the chief witness.

Marriage as God intended is to exist between a man and a woman. (God created Eve and gave her to Adam as an help-meet, if his partner was meant to be another man, He would have formed a man for him and not a woman. Period!)

Marriage is the stage where you leave to cleave. (so shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife...) All of your life you had been close to your parents and siblings but when you decide to marry, you are saying I am ready to move on in life, to leave my family of orientation and start my own family of procreation. It does not mean of course that your parents seize to be recognized or revered, it only means that your relationship with them is re-defined according to the Scriptures.

As parents we need to know that our children are Off-springs who will sooner spring off! He/she will grow to a stage of maturity and we are going to have to let them go! That is why I am a great advocate of the correct order of relationships. A couple must never put a child in the place that belongs to his/her spouse. Your spouse is your other half, not your child. No one must be allowed to take his/her place both in your heart and by your side. A couple must consciously work on having and maintaining a very healthy marriage relationship even while raising their children, so that when they eventually spring off, there won’t be left two strangers at home. (That is when the father or the mother will not be able to stay at home but will be busy seeing to the affairs of their married daughter or son. : A full talk for another day.) In essence, what I am saying to married couples is to work and continue to work on your   marriage, after your children get married, a higher level is expected to be reached in your own marriage. You need to keep fulfilling your purpose in one another’s life and now you have more time to do that! Pray for your married children, counsel when needed and help if/when you need to, but leave them alone, practically let them be! God bless all parents!

When you decide to spend the rest of your life with a particular man or woman, whom you are ready to be seeing beside you as you wake up, every single day of your long life! And you are never expected to leave him /her until death do you part! Aaaah!  Serious business!( Is there anyone who wants to build a house, who will not first sit down and count the cost to see if he can ....) says the Lord Jesus, how then can you want to start a home, which is more real and demanding than building a house-because another human being is involved and the most difficult resource  to handle is the human resources. In the case of a house, you’ll be talking of buying sand and cement etc, once you have money, these ones will answer when you call, but human beings will reason things out, see issues from their own point of view which could be very different from what you are viewing. Why should anyone therefore rush into marriage without careful and prayerful considerations? Majority of marital problems our society is faced with today is as a result of wrong and hasty marriages, among other things, for more check out this episode: https://youtu.be/mnEghr0SOI0.

Marriage is God’s package of complementing your strengths and engracing your weaknesses! Marriage carries the divine favour that covers your errors and colours your efforts! Like an orange juice needs to be gotten from the orange, so you are to wisely suck out juice from your marriage. All you need do, is to peel the orange-discovery- and gently squeeze the juice out of it and into your mouth, i tell you it is sweet and refreshing. And as a matter of fact you don’t only enjoy the juice, you get additional blessing of seeds, which when wisely tended, has the ability to reproduce after its own kind and so you always have fruit. ( Seed bearing fruits after its own kind)

It does not matter the level of fruitfulness you function at when you are single the moment you marry, grace is greatly enhanced, especially when you marry in the Lord (again, the need to marry right is mentioned here, and this is one of the reasons I am particular about helping the unmarried to choose right.)

That is why you must marry right! You cannot afford to marry the wrong person. If you marry the wrong person, you are doomed. So many got married for the wrong reasons or outside God’s will and are paying so dearly for it today. So, before you marry, you must get things very clearly- Why are you marrying him or her? If it is for the wrong reason, you have got another thing coming!  

Is it because you feel age is no longer on your side? It is better to be a fulfilled single than be a miserable married man/woman! You don’t drink poison to quench thirst, do you?

Even if you are in courtship with someone, it does not matter how far you have gone (no matter how far north you have gone, the moment you turn back, you are facing south) if you discover  that you are in a wrong relationship , just run!  Save yourself untold hardship that awaits you in that marriage.

Marriage is meant to be enjoyed, not endured!

I used to know a lady in the late 90’s. She is educated, classy and quite beautiful! She was all over town, painting it red and catching fun wherever it was happening. We were inviting her to church and one day i paid her a visit, while we talked she told me how ready she was to settle down, provided the right man came along. And this was her idea of the ideal man: A handsome man with lots of money and great influence. She said she would be so submissive and so love the man as the bible asks, that if he says to simply stay at home and do nothing/go nowhere, she will absolutely concur. May i add that it’s been over ten year and she is still not married.

Let’s use this as as a case study.

Why was she going to marry Mr Ideal?

Would she be fulfilled in such a marriage?

Has she or not mortgaged her freedom? (Esau, selling birthright) Many people are like Esau these days, they say what is in a birth right, when i am dying of hunger? Instead of remaining single, let me just marry any man that comes along. There is this slang that’s been used, (maa loo bee) I will use it like that. You don’t know what you are in for until you have sold the Birthright and finished eating the porridge. Oju e aa wale, ara e, a bale!

If you marry for money, if/when there is no money again, what happens?

If you marry for beauty, what happens if/when beauty fades?

If it’s for connection, when the table turns, what happens?

Are you ready for Marriage?

Man:

Woman:

Bearing Fruits in Spirit, Soul and Body

Spirit: Contrary to popular belief that  when one gets married, he/she does not have time for God and the things of God like before, i like to state here that this can be effectively handled with good planning.

God’s blessings maketh rich and adds no sorrow! Marriage is indeed a blessing, and please permit me to say that it is a blessing in every way.

I believe Marriage is the place where you get very practical with the things you have learnt while you were single. And may i say that the number of hours spent in prayers at times does not necessarily determine how effective the prayer is / or is going to be. Moreover with the joint efforts, you won’t need the long hours. This is what i am saying. If you are confronted with 5,000. And God has said that one shall chase a thousand, handling 5,000 becomes an uphill task for one person and takes a whole lot of efforts to surmount the mountain, however as a married person, when you come together in agreement (matt 18:19) and pray, you effortlessly chase the 5,000 and probably look for additional ones you can tackle in advance, why ? (two shall put 10,000 to flight!)    ..to be continued.