Sunday 22 May 2016

Money & Marriage

Good morning beautiful people of God, it's a beautiful day that the Lord has made and it is a day to rejoice and be thankful for. Never mind the situation you are in right now, never mind the challenges you are facing at the moment. When you learn to praise God through your challenges, you are consciously telling God you trust Him enough to pull you through whatever it is that you are going through that seem so tough for you to handle alone. And you can be sure that those who trust the Lord can never do so in vain.
In today’s post I will trust the Lord to teach us some vital lessons on the issue of financial responsibility in the home. Is this become a big issue in marriage? Without blinking an eyelid, the answer to that question is a very BIG yes. Money which the Bible says “answers all things” and also says “is the root of all evil”, has been the root of many evils in marriage when not  handled properly.
A responsible man will tell you that the man should be the sole provider in the home and he’ll quote 1 Timothy 5:8 which says “anyone who does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” to back up his claim. With this Bible passage every man should understand that as the head of the home, he is saddled with the responsibility to financially take care of his family. This is his God assigned responsibility and it will be much easier if he sees it as God sending him on assignment to take care of a set of people He has kept under his watch rather than seeing it as an obligation to his wife and children. The man will fair better in taking care of his family when his focus is on God who sent him to carry out the task above those who are the beneficiary of the task.
But life generally is full of ups and downs, the road of life is never straight and so there will be times when the man though willing to but is unable to meet up with this task of financial provision for his family. God who knows the end from the beginning has provided a wife for the man as his suitable helper to make up for the down times in his life. She has been assigned by God and equipped by God to help her husband whenever there is a fall in his life, and even the financial fall is not excluded.
So many times I have written that we have allowed baseless traditions to erode God’s original design for marriage. There is nowhere in the Bible where a woman is prohibited from assisting her husband financially from providing for the needs of the family. Proverbs 31:10-31 describes the wife of noble character as one who brings her husband good all the days of her life. She is described as one whose trade is profitable and one who brings her food from afar. The Bible says she is like a merchant’s ship who does not eat the bread of idleness. This is a woman who is well prepared to support her husband if and when her help is required. She is the crown of her husband’s life.
I agree that the man and wife cannot share equal responsibility in meeting up with the financial needs of the home, and I also will state that God has not called the wife to be the breadwinner of her family, but she is a prepared and readily available support to her husband when it is required. As a wife you need to know that it is your responsibility to support your husband financially and in every way he needs support when he needs the support.
With this truth laid out, I have heard a lot of women say that once their husband knows that they have money or they are making money, these husband begins to shelve their responsibility of providing for the home claiming that since they (wives) are working they can as well pick the bills. This is turn has caused a lot of issues in the home. Now the question from these beautiful wives is: Should they start to keep a secret about their financial status from their husbands so he can fulfill his responsibility and not shift this burden on them as wives. They also wonder what their husbands are doing with their own income that it has all of a sudden become impossible to pick up the family bills while they are still working?
Like a said earlier the man is the principal provider for the family; he is the head of the family and he should understand that he can only effectively exert control over his family if he is financially providing for them. 1 Peter 3:7 and Malachi 2:13 reveal to us that a man who deliberately refuses to take care of his family stands the risk of having his prayer unanswered by God. This act of irresponsibility is a big hindrance to the prayers of the man.
But in marriage deceit is very costly; I will not advise that a wife keeps her financial status a secret from her husband most especially if he demands to know about her financial standing. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 5:24 that a wife should submit to her husband in everything, and that includes your finances. But when you have obeyed in this regards whatever action your husband takes with this information is an action he is accountable for and he will bear the consequences or benefit of whether his action is positive or negative.
I will say to the couple in marriage that whatever you sow into your marriage whether in deeds or in money, are all seeds sown that will germinate and produce a harvest in multiple of what was sown. It is common occurrence that when a man makes the sacrifice of providing for his family, such a man prospers, and the moment he stops providing for his family his financial life begins to take a negative down turn. It’s simply because he has stopped to sow the seed that are bound to produce the expected harvest for him. And when it’s his wife that taking up the responsibility and does the needful, she also begins reap a harvest in the measure of what she has sown.
The economic situation the world over isn’t looking or feeling friendly and it has taken its effects on many homes. I will say that in order to forestall its negative effect on our homes and marriages, its time that all hands will be busy generating the required income to run the home. Its not a time to let the husbands bear the husband alone and also it is not the time for the man to shy away from his God given assignment just because God has blessed the wives. When both couples are making effort then the home will be protected from the negative wind sweeping through the world’s economy. May the Lord bless our homes.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Why Do We Worship God

Many people feel like they should only praise God when they have received a blessing from God. Honestly, I was in that category too, so I am...