The Marriage Series 16

I will always bless God for His grace on our lives; not just my life as a tool in His hands to reach your hearts as readers of His messages, but your lives also, the lives of those who receive God’s messages through this blog and are continually blessed by it. May our names and that of our families never be found missing in the Lamb’s book of life.

I just finished reading a book this afternoon “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers and I was overwhelmed by the display of unconditional love from a husband to his adulterous wife. It was such a rich and beautiful kind of love that I wish we could find such in marriages today. If only such a love can exist for real, it would have been a very beautiful feeling. And may be it actually does.

But what is real is the story of a man who reached out to me a couple of days ago, full of pain of betrayal from the wife he loved dearly but says he loves no more owing to her unrepentant infidelity and disloyalty to her marriage vows and her husband and children. This man feels pained and insulted at the fact that his wife is having extra-marital affairs with a man almost two decades younger than her, and seems more loyal and committed to the family she was supposed to leave behind much more the family that God has asked her to establish. Now despite all my pleas to this man, he is hell bent on taking a divorce and walking out of the marriage as a means of relieving his pain and getting his sanity back. He has concluded within him that his wife is beyond redemption.

This case is one of so many cases like it where the couples feel like there is no more hope and nothing to hang unto as a means of lifeline that the marriage can hinge on for possible survival, but that is all so wrong. I had shared in my last post that God hate divorce, and we all know that doing what God hates is a sin, so God forbid that our marriages would drive us away from God rather than closer to him.

The man who reached out to me about his wife and her unrepentant wayward lifestyle wanted me to share his story so that other people can learn from it and while I await his full story, I still will want to say a thing or two to him now, much more than to his wife whom I am yet to hear her own side of the story.

I was listening to the radio this afternoon while in my car and I stumbled on a radio show on marriage. The anchor pastor of the show shared the story of a woman who was complaining about her marriage and lamented on all the effort she had made to change her husband to no avail. And this pastor said he told this lady to stop playing God in her marriage and know for sure that she can’t change her husband, rather she needs to work on herself to become better each day and in the process enhance the change in her husband.

I can’t agree more with this pastor and it is from this angel that I want this hurting husband to view the situation in his marriage. It hurts, but it is a fact that you cannot change your wife. Yes you are her husband and she is supposed to submit to you as her head, but that submission cannot be forced, it’s a choice she has to make and abide with. But what is within your own control is you. You have control over yourself and you are within your own reach. Let the change you seek in your wife begin with a change within you.

Just as the Lord instructs the wives to submit to their husbands who is their head as she would submit unto God, so did God instruct the men to love their wives unconditionally. The response of your wife to you should not be a determinant factor to the extent of love you show her. Loving your wife when she does what pleases you is not what God asked of a man to his wife, but loving her even when she does not do those things that make her a good wife. Loving her despite her flaws and faults, loving her when she gets on your nerves is the extent of love God requires of you as a man towards your wife and even more. The Bible says in the pattern in which Christ loves the church.

When you love your wife in this manner and you continue non-stop till eternity, its just a matter of time before the story of your marriage changes for the better and your wife will be all that you have prayed her to be and more. Every marital problem does not have to end in a divorce; God has better and more beautiful way of handling things if only you don’t let the hardness of your heart get in the way.

I pray that we have been able to learn some valuable lessons from today’s blog post. There is still more to come. I hope to share a testimony of submission in marriage in my next blog post and it promises to be a very interesting piece to read believe me. Please do always keep a date with us here, with God you can never get it wrong.