The Marriage Series (1)

Hello wonderful people of God, it’s a new week and a wonderful time and opportunity to do the will of God and what actually give me great fulfillment. Beginning with this post, I hope to start a new series of marriage teachings starting from the very foundation of marriage. This series I believe is very valuable to those who are not married but of marriageable age, and also valuable to those who are already married.

These series of teachings is not just valuable for the women, but also for the men. I am trusting God that through this series, the living God will breathe life into every dead marriage situation and by God grace what looked like irreconcilable difference will be a beautiful beginning for every home in Jesus name. So I beg you to please share this marriage series with a lot of your friends and those whom you know that needs this. It’s a helping hand that does not cost you money.  

Over the weekend I found myself talking to three men on the topic of marriage, two of these men are not married, and one in particular has had very bitter experience with the ladies she has dated in time past and so in his words, he is giving women matter in his life a long break. According to him he is enjoying his space and he is not ready to give up the peace he now has for another relationship that is destined to cause him misery.

From what this man told me, his first girlfriend died in a car accident several years back, he caught his second girlfriend in an affair with another man and the third girlfriend was abusive and while they were dating, they had a misunderstanding, and just as little as “dear check yourself, you could be the problem in this relationship,” earned him slaps and beatings in the presence of some of his family members. He was just being civil not to have given her the beatings of her life for what she did as he told me. But after that incident he gave the issue of women a big halt in his life and it has paid off.

It is for many people who have negative perception of marriage such as the man I meet over the weekend either already married or yet to be married that the Lord has laid it on my heart to start all over again from the foundation of the issues in marriage. The Lord desires to touch our lives and our society and bring about the desired change that we have been crying to Him for, and He desires to start from the home.

Genesis 2:18, 21-25

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him.”

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of the man.”

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

I have made several references to this scripture in so many of my blog post, but in this series where we speak about everything that has to with marriage starting from the beginning, we will begin to talk still from this passage and the foundation of marriage.

There are many lessons to learn from this scripture above, there are a lot of things the Lord has opened my heart to in this scripture that is helping me understand marriage better and has been the starting point for me in rebuilding my marriage to the success that it is today.

I have shared this first lesson more than once on my blog and I am still going to share it again as if I had never done so before.

When God formed the animals, the Lord made them all in twos; the male and the female. So we have the male and female beasts, the male and the female insects, the male and the female rodents, the male and the female birds, the male and the female fish. All species of living things that God made where paired in twos, male and female. But when it was time for God to create the human, the Bible records that God formed the man from the dust of the earth and breath in him and he became a living being. Then God put him in a garden He had prepared for him and asked him to work it and care for it (Genesis 2:7-15).

Probably as an afterthought or just in the wisdom of God, the Lord realized it wasn’t okay that the man should just be by himself, and so He declared that it was not good that man should be alone. But of all that God created, from the beast of the ground to the birds of the air, to the fish in the sea none was found a helper suitable for Adam (Genesis 2:19-20). But what beats my imagination is that God could have formed the woman from the dust of the ground like He did all other creatures He made, but because this helper had to be a suitable one (in stronger words: a perfect fit) for Adam, God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and from within him took a rib and from that rib He formed a woman.

I am trying to find a way to explain this in a way that it will create an impression in your heart and give you a new revelation of what the Lord did in the cause of creation and in the foundational institution of marriage as it did to me. God would have create the woman independent of the man like He did for all other living things that He created, but in the case of man it was different. This is because the man and the woman where not created to be independent of one another. The husband and the wife are not separate entities but are one and the same spirit in two different body forms. The flesh and spirit of the husband and wife are two part of one entity.

And if only as husband and wife you understand that your spouse is you in another form, you will appreciate him or her better and understand that whatever you do to hurt your spouse, you hurt yourself too.

It is very natural for a female animal to have sexual relations with any male animal they come across. The Hen can mate with any chicken it sees when it is on heat; different dogs can mate different bitches when on heat, any male lion is free to mate any lioness when on heat, nature does not frown at such, but it is not so with humans and this is because our formation at the beginning is different. God did not create a woman independent of a man. There is a specific man from whose ribs you were formed as a woman. With this man you share the same spirit and flesh. That is why nature does not permit a woman sleeping with just any man she sees and it is also wrong for a man to keep mating any woman he sees and comes across. We are humans and not animals.

So this is the very first foundational truth and lesson I am picking up and sharing from the scripture above. As a married man or a man intending to marry, know for sure that your wife or wife to be is a part of you. She is you in another form. She shares with you same spirit and flesh (Malachi 2:15, Matthew 19:4-5). She is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. When you hurt her, you hurt you; you hurt God’s favor for your life (Proverbs 18:22), you hurt your destiny. If you are still unmarried and you never knew this about what you are about to do, take a pause and soak it in properly. Your wife might think differently, rationalize issues differently, understand concept differently, look different from you, come from different parents (which is obvious), come from a different ethnic group or even a different country, she might be a different race or color, but she is you in a different form and that is the wisdom of the supremacy of God displayed for you. With this revelation, you have a better understanding of how to treat your wife when you marry her.

For the woman the lesson is a bit different, several times we always wonder why the men have it easy in marriage than we do and this has made us push for equality in marriage now more than before. But if you agree to the Bible scripture that is above, you will notice that if the man and the woman where created independently like all other animals, we can claim equality. As a woman you are made from the man, you are a product of the man, you are a substance from a man and so you can’t rationally claim equality with a substance that you were brought out of. But that does not make us women inferior to men, in fact there are no basis for comparison or competition because why God made the woman out of the man was to be a perfect fit to help him. It was that she might be his suitable helper; another being from out of the man to understand him better and so be suited to help him better.

This man from whom you are formed and for whom you are formed was not pronounced perfect. As a matter of fact it was on the basis that he was not good enough as he was alone that God thought it out to create you from him to help him become better and perfect if that is attainable. So you were not created out of the man to be his worst nightmare but his suitable helper. You were not created for the man to drain value from him but to add value to him. You are in the life of that man not because of your doing but because of the will of God and you are on assignment for God to make the life of that man better than the way you met him. That is your duty as a suitable helper and it is to God and not your husband that you will report on the issue of this assignment. As you agree to marry that man if you are not ready for the assignment of a value added agent please take a step back and clear yourself of the blinding love that you feel. If you are not ready to be an agent of change in the life of your spouse please you are not ready for marriage yet.

In my own definition, I love to define marriage as two people brought together by God to pour of themselves into the lives of their spouses to make their spouse better than they met each other. Now I want to ask, on what basis are you founding your marriage? What is the basis of your marriage decision? If you have a clear understanding of your divine mission in marriage, whether married or yet to be married then you brace yourself for what lies ahead. But if you are not ready to add value to the life of your spouse, then you are not ready for marriage. No matter how bad mannered your spouse is, if you are not ready to enter into his or her life and make a positive difference then you are not ready for marriage.

You might want to ask if you can change your spouse? My answer to that is yes. First you need to put up a positive front, a loving heart and plenty of prayers into it. You can’t change a negative attitude with negativity, and you can’t put out hatred with more hatred, you can only conquer hate with love and love that you never get tired of giving. (This bit I believe is for those in troubled marriages).

So we continue on this series in my next post, until then remain blessed.