Friday 18 August 2017

I Wasn't Lucky

Hello wonderful people, trust we are all doing great today. May the Lord bless us and our homes in Jesus name.
My last post drew some interesting reactions that I would love to respond to in this post, please note that these were not just the responses I got, they are just the ones that calls for a response for me. I pray and hope that we will keep learning as we make efforts to make our marriages an haven for us and our family to the glory of God.
Below are some of the comments that I would want to respond to in today’s post.

First Reaction
No offence meant, but I don't agree with this post. It's easy to give advice and counsel when we are not the ones wearing the shoe.
How do you tell a woman whose husband hates her, claims she is evil, married two additional wives, not to hurt? How do 
you tell her to make love passionately, like it was a lack of passionate love-making that broke the home? For all I know, the woman may have been praying when he married the 2nd and instead of a miracle, her husband married the third.
I always believe marriage is not a do-or-die affair. I would rather fear for the woman's safety in the midst of hate than try to restore the home. If there is anyone who needs to work right now, it is the man. I would rather look on how I would further empower this school teacher who has three children to cater to, than win back a man who walked outside his vows. In the eyes of God, he is the sinner not her. He is the one that needs repentance.
In addition, when we get to the judgment throne, God will not judge us a couple, but as individuals. Our faults will lie at how we trained our children. So, I will advise that woman to focus on making sure her son/s are raised well.
My personal advice to her would be: forgive him. Let go of all hurt. Move on with your life with or without him. Empower yourself. Find joy from within. It is never the duty of anyone to make us happy, they can only complement our efforts. Find a hobby. Mingle with friends and family. Save money and insure your children's future, don't make your husband next of kin. Use any of your child. Finally, go to God and let him console you. He is the husband that never fails. If that home is toxic, move out for your own sanity and good health.
One more thing, Babes. You can never compare Sarah's situation with hers. Sarah knew what she was getting into. She had her options and when her plan failed, she used her option without flinching. She didn't need to fast and pray for a miracle. She just said it and it happened! I can imagine the woman in this write up saying such to her husband. The slaps and beatings that would design her face would even make heaven reel.

Second Reaction
Babes Oluchi, you wrote my mind. It's easy to dish out advice until u experience the exact same thing. A man with free will do what he wants to do no matter what. The man is grossly irresponsible and no amount of sex will change him. Let's stop rewarding bad behaviour and laying a bad example for our kids.
Just to add, Our Lord that we should emulate never enabled bad behaviour. Its not Christianity to enable bad behaviour it's religious. Let the woman move on, she is miserable as it is, please don't add to it by heaping coals of fire on her.

Third Reaction
 "The responsibility to build the home rest solely on the wife as we read in Proverbs 14:1".....

This...and a lot of other things are untrue and the very things that are causing problems in marriages from time imme
morial. We have shouted ourselves hoarse trying to make women learn to stop enabling irresponsibility in men. Two cannot work together except they agree!

2. "Ensure that your sex life with your husband is fantastic, satisfy your husband sexually and in that regard do not give him room to have any complain"

Are we for a moment...going to consider the risk of being infected with an STD? Oh,,,,we did not think about that? The man in question has 2 other woman who may or may not have other sexual partners. How many times have we seen women who are pros in bed, women who do all the things mentioned in the post and even more...yet their men cheat on them with an inexperienced woman? Do you know what this does to a woman's self-esteem? IT IS NOT HER...IT IS HIM!!! Stop ignoring the very root of the problem.

3. "Those who stole him from you did just that, beat them to their game."
NO, MA. He was not stolen. He made a conscious choice. After you've won that set of women, what of others that'll come later? What a way to live...driving yourself to a point of exhaustion because you are constantly living your life to "beat the game of the women who stole your man". Is that your God-given purpose? Is that what God had in mind when he created you? It's tiring, please.

Fourth Reaction
Permit me to say that the fact that it worked for you does not mean it will work for someone else. Not every woman is willing to spend all of their youth going through emotional torture (+ or - physical torture), praying fire prayer and basically living their lives only to please a man, just so that when he has diabetes and erectile dysfunction at 70years he can come back to her. What is left to enjoy of the marriage? And I think it is unfair to imply that the only wise option is to 'fight for the marriage because the responsibility of building a marriage rests SOLELY on a woman's shoulders'. I think it is also wise to know that everyone has a mission from earth apart from marriage and it might be foolish to remain in a miserable marriage for life because like it or not, prayers and all you listed may do nothing to make the marriage better. Let's just say you were one of the lucky few your tips worked for.


I am so sorry these comments are quite lengthy but I didn’t write them and I just wanted to ensure that I capture the comments exactly as they were written. And to say that I don’t appreciate these comments would be a lie because they give me room for further discussions on marriage issues.
Also please not that I don't give nods of approval of the evil men do in marriage. There are quite a handful of post on this blog that men have been strongly chastised, so on this blog we take a holistic view of marriage issues based solely on Bible truth. No sentiments whatsoever. 
One thing I have discovered in life is that a lot of those who advice for divorce and are always of the opinion that marriage is not a do-or-die affair are those who would do anything to keep their own marriage. A lot of feminist actually do have happy homes and when I tried checking the profiles of some of those who posted this comments I noticed they had lovely family pictures of husband, wife and children put up there. Its sad they aren’t teaching what they are doing to keep it together in their own marriages to those who are having trouble in theirs. Surely it's not that they don't have arguments and misunderstandings in their marriage, you bet they do. 
When my marriage was in trouble I had a friend who was in fact a close relative of my husband that I always confided in and she was gave me similar advice as these ones I posted above and those comments from her then made me feel so good that I would go home and put up an attitude of attack before defense towards my husband. It wasn’t making my situation any better. It was a fire for fire situation in my home any day I venture speaking to this my adviser until one day when I went to see this my friend and confidant in her home and I saw her treating her husband like a king. A scenario totally different from the picture she had painted for me and advise she had given me. That was when I realized how foolish I had been. I stopped seeing her and picked up my cross and began to follow Jesus, looking up to Him to help me heal my terrible marriage.
In response to these messages the first thing that caught my attention is the insinuation that the husband hates the wife and thinks she is evil; now its interesting to note that it wasn’t hate that was between these two people when they got married. At the point of marriage they loved each other to the point that they concluded within themselves to spend the rest of their lives together. So what went wrong along the line? How did love turn to hate between them? Wouldn’t it be better wisdom to try to address the underlining issue between these two that has now made them enemies rather than lovers and friends than to conclude that walking out of the marriage is the best solution. No wonder Jesus said in Matthew 19:8-9 that the reason why Moses permitted divorce was because the hearts of men where hard, indeed the hearts of men are still hard and unyielding till this day.
Then another comment says that it is wrong to say that it’s the duty of the woman to build the home, when its clearly stated in Proverbs 14:1 that “The wise woman builds her home, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.” It’s most likely we have different Bibles that we are reading or that the Bible is a lie. For this comment, I have no response, but a wise person is one who follows the word of God as found in the Bible and lives his/her life based on the truth of the word of God as found in the Bible.
One thing that comes to mind on an issue such as this is that when a husband leaves his wife, he is not leaving her to be with or marry another man or an animal, he is actually leaving his wife to be with another woman. So you ask, what does this other woman have that his wife does not have? What is she doing right that the wife isn’t? That in itself should be a wake-up call for the wife, that another woman can beat you to it and be better than you in treating your husband right. True the man made a conscious decision to be with another woman, but what did the wife make a conscious effort to do? 
Interesting in the case of the woman I shared her story in my last post; a couple of months ago I was lying in bed with my husband and we were looking at pictures on his facebook wall and we stumbled on the pictures of this same man with a birthday cake. It was his birthday and he celebrated it in his office with his colleagues, took some pictures and posted them on facebook. And my husband commented and said the cake he was cutting and taking pictures with was made for him by his third wife. So I thought why was it not the first and God recognized wife the one making a cake for her husband on his birthday? Well I guess she was still hurting.
But as an ordinary person is it understandable that you will gravitate towards the one who shows you that she cares for you more than the one who doesn’t. I don’t excuse this man’s behavior in anyway and I condemned it strongly in my last post and still do. But two wrongs never make a right.
It’s quite easy to say that a wife should forget about her erring husband, get a divorce and move on and concentrate on herself and children. It’s good advice, but not good enough. These children will grow and stop to be under your roof to start their own leaves. Whether you like it or not those children will leave and you will be left all alone; at that time, what happens. What happens when you are old and grey alone with no strength for women empowerment and you are all alone in a big mansion with no companion? Ecclesiastes says two are better than one, God sure didn’t make a mistake when He declared in Genesis 2:18 that it is not good for the man to be alone.
Another interesting thing I find about woman of these days, same of which we find in the comments I am sharing is that it is quite convenient to discard an erring husband, but when you have a child who is giving you troubles, do you just throw that child away like you would your husband? If you can labor over your child, why then can’t you labor to save your marriage? A healthy marriage will provide well behaved children. The assignment to train a child belong to the husbands based on God's standard and not the wife. So you are taking up a task that God assigned for your husband and leaving the man to rest on his responsibility, and an irresponsible man who go to rest and say it was your decision to take up the task so he shouldn't be blamed for it.  If you build your marriage and join forces with your husband to train your children, the burden will be easy and you will have good returns for your labor over those children.
In one of the comments, a lady wrote that the wife must have prayed for her marriage and what she got was a second wife, so rather than pray for her marriage she should go to God to console her. Now if God did not prevent her husband from taking a second wife, He should just console her at least. Isn't it? Well I am trying not to be sarcastic in my response, so I’ll just say what should be said.
First God answers prayers when you ask right. God is a God that hears and answers the prayer and cry of His children; He does not close His mind to their voices, but God does not do magic. When you pray, God answers and gives you a line of action to take, when you do as He has instructed, you will get your desired outcome. It’s important that when you pray you also pay attention to the voice of God telling you what to do. If you follow that voice you can never make a mistake. And if you are not clear with what you have heard, cross-check with your Bible. God and His word are one and the same. He will never tell you to do what is contrary to what you have in the Bible. God will not tell you to divorce your spouse when He said that He hates divorce.
But God will not bend for you no matter the circumstance. He will not change His rules and patterns for you. If you are praying and you expect to wake up and see a new man right before you who is faultless and sweet to behold without any input from you, then you are getting it all wrong. Prayers without deeds are dead. When you pray, God shows you the line of action to take, when you take it, you will succeed. If you are not sure search your Bible find out what stories or instructions are in line with what you are trusting God for and follow the instruction and you will have success. For every locked door there is a key, find the key and open the door. 1 Peter 3:1-2 says if you are married to an unbelieving husband, it is through your behavior when he sees the purity and the reverence of your life that he would be won over to the Lord without words, but with actions. So you are the tool God will use to bring about the change in your husband that you have been praying for. That is why prayers must be accompanied with right actions in direction of God's instructions either directly to you or by following what you have read and learnt in the Bible.  
When you pray for God's financial blessing you don't just sit in your house doing nothing and expect an angel to come drop billions of cash on your laps. When you want God to bless you the first thing that comes to your mind is your work. You will work and pray that God bless your work and make you succeed in your endeavor; that is just how is works in marriage, you will pray and then act based on the instructions you receive from God concerning what you have prayed for. You can't pray and not act right and expect a magic from God. Such does not yield the returns you desire. 
Then another person also mentioned that I was just lucky with my own marriage situation. My dear sister, I wasn't lucky, I was determined to make it work and it worked. I was faced with a marital challenge and I was determined to have victory of that challenge. I prayed and I followed the instructions of God and with God I succeeded. I had the last laugh over my situation. Rather than bending for my challenge, it bent for me.
And in the case of STDs that was mentioned, if God is keeping you alive and you are a child of God no matter how many times your husband sleeps with other women God will always keep you safe. It is not in the nature of God to punish a wife for the sins of her husband. Jeremiah 31:29-30 says, “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes – his own teeth will be set on edge.” It’s not unheard of that a husband would contact a sexually transmitted disease and the wife is clean and safe yet they are married and well together (remember Magic Johnson the famous basketballer). So I don’t have a fear for a wife in this case, it’s the husband who sinned and it’s the husband who will be punished.
Just to rape this up I will say, marriage is to be enjoyed and not endured. But whether you will enjoy your marriage or not is a function of how well you have built it. If you want to eat a sweet cake, you know you have to put in a sizeable amount of sugar in your cake mixture before putting it in the oven to bake. In the same way, if you want to beautiful marriage, it’s important that you begin to learn the secrets of a successful marriage and apply what you have learnt. Marriage is an investment that is worth far more than the value of what you have invested in it when you invest right.
On a final note, I will say that your marriage decisions are yours to make. What this blog is all about is to help you make the right decisions in marriage by following the word of God. Here we teach the secrets to success in marriage based on the truth of the Bible. If all else fails God and His words never fails. I pray that we all have a wonderful marital life in Jesus name.

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