What Women Do to Invest in their Marriage

I am so sorry for the small break, needed to attend to urgent family concerns, but here I am live sending you this from the bottom of my heart.
In my last post we looked at some extraordinary husbands and how they invested in their marriages and they enjoyed peace and love in the marriage. In today’s post we will continue in that line and consider some extraordinary wives who have invested much in their marriages too and the yields that returned to them on their investment.

And the first wife I want us to consider is Sarah. It appears we can’t just learn enough from that woman called Sarah and I understand why the Bible would model her as a godly woman of old. It is no doubt that Sarah belongs to the league of extraordinary wives and the things she pulled through in her marriage appears matchless in today’s world.

The first lesson that endears me to Sarah was her issue of barrenness. Here is what the Bible says in Genesis 16.

Genesis 16:1-2

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

The Bible tells us in Genesis 15 how Abraham had petitioned God over the issue of him not having a child and the Lord had promised him one. As women, we know what it feels like to know that your husband is sleeping with another woman, so we can appreciate Sarai’s courage in inviting her maidservant into her husband’s life to share her husband with her. But she did that for a reason. She must have taken that option just in the bid to satisfy her whining husband who was desperate for a child. And even though a lot of people will consider Sarai foolish for her suggestion and the outcome of that suggestion, I choose to consider her reason for the suggestion and how much she was willing to sacrifice for the peace of her husband and marriage. That was a huge investment in marriage to me.

Then we see in Genesis 12:10-20 and Genesis 20:1-18 where Abraham instructed his wife on two occasions to tell half-truth that she was his sister rather than his wife and Sarah obeyed. What a submission that was. What a huge investment in marriage that was. I have gone through Sarah’s submission more than once on this blog and each time I am convinced that she has earned the honor of being the mother of all godly women by her exemplary submissive life in marriage.

You might then want to ask what Sarah’s return on investment was after all she sacrificed as investment in her marriage. First Sarah became the mother of many nations as the Lord had promised. At age 90 she gave birth and the sigma of barrenness was removed from her life. Then she won back the love and respect of her husband. Abraham loved her again. And then she had a postmortem recognition as the mother of all righteous women. And so you see that Sarah investment paid off at the end of the day.

I wondered what would have become of Sarah if she didn’t obey her husband to the point of lying for him. Well probably she would have been out of his life and wouldn’t be a part-taker of God’s promise in Abraham’s life. And most assuredly we wouldn’t have heard anything again about Sarah again in the record of time. But she is there today because she invested much in her marriage and the gains of that investment accrued to her.

Then another woman that I love to respect as a wife is Abigail in the story found in 1 Samuel 25. What an outstanding extraordinary wife she was, for her to stand by a mean and surly husband like Nabal despite the fact that they both had two totally different characteristics and personalities, is something to emulate from Abigail.

Abigail knew that her husband was mean and surly, she knew her own worth as a beautiful and intelligent woman and yet she remain faithful to her marriage and she went ahead to plead the case of her mean and surly husband before David. She filled the deficit in Nabal’s character and she was all that he wasn’t. On account of her, her husband and his household were spared by David and she didn’t even let him know. She didn’t mention to her husband how she saved his life. It was a labor of love in secret and the returns of what she invested was obvious in the open. That is the kind of wife Abigail was. She was not one to blow her own trumpet.

Now you might ask what her returns on her marriage investment was? This same Abigail became the wife of King David after the death of her mean and surly husband. The Lord freed her of the burden of a husband who was unrepentantly mean and surly and gave her to a more deserving husband who was a king.

Then we see another extraordinary wife in Esther who got to the throne as queen by virtue of her simplicity and focus on God. When Esther was confronted with an issue that she needed to resolve with her husband king Xerxes in the book of Esther 4, the way and manner she presented her case to her husband tells a lot about her marriage investment. The reverence she accorded her husband is something worth emulating. And did she get the desired result? Well, we all know the way the story ended in the book of Esther. The man Haman who plotted the downfall of her uncle and race, was put down instead and the gallows he prepared for Mordecai, he was the one hung on it in his stead.

You might want to ask if Esther could have approached the matter from another point of view, well the answer to that is yes. And would she get the same result, well that I can’t tell. But one thing that is sure is that Esther’s approached worked for her and she received her desired return on her marriage investment. This is something worth emulating.

And just to cap this up, I want us to consider the story of Ruth, she was another extraordinary wife. These are women that I am not just learning from, but applying what I have learnt from them in my marriage and I am getting good returns on investment myself. Sincerely I can't blow my husband's trumpet loud enough. It was my birthday last Sunday and even though we didn't have any form of celebration, my husband didn't stop disturbing me to know what I would want as a gift for my birthday. If you think he should know and spring up a surprise, I will tell you that he has sprang too many pleasant surprises on me almost on a weekly basis that he is beginning to run out of ideas. That is what God is doing for me, that is my testimony, that is why I say with confidence that it's important to invest in your marriage and you do so prayerfully.   

We all know the story of Ruth in the book of Ruth and she was so extraordinary that a whole chapter of the Bible was dedicated to telling her story. Ruth was a wife who remained faithful to her marriage even after the death of her husband. Now who does that? More so when she was legitimately free to marry another husband before God and man.

But there was something more that attracted Ruth to her mother in-law after her husband's death that was beyond physical marriage. Ruth begged her mother-in-law not to let her return back to her people and her god.

Ruth 1:16

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

This declaration was what distinguished Ruth from Orpah her mate. Ruth was willing to embrace the God of Naomi, she wanted to align with the God of Israel and that simply pushed her from the league of ordinary nice wives to an extraordinary wife. She put the God of Israel in the equation of her decision to stay married despite the death of her husband. And just like you can never involve God in an issue and loss out, Ruth got her full returns on her marriage investment. God honored her such that she found another good husband in Boaz and she was included in the lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ. So whenever you want to trace the lineage of Jesus you will come across the mention of Ruth and Boaz. But the ordinary nice Orpah frizzled out of the Bible the moment she decided to return to her own people and her own god.

What are you willing to invest in your marriage? When you make up your mind to make God your focus as your reason for investing in your marriage, then you can be rest assured that your yields in that marriage will gladden your heart. When you decide to submit to your husband not because he deserves it, but because you do it to please God, you can be sure that your marriage will be sweet and you will have peace, and the prosperity that accrues to obedient children of God will accrue to you. And just to make it sweet, your husband will grow to love you. These are the gains that yields to you when you invest in your marriage.  

If you have been blessed by this, and you have learned much from this eye opening marriage write up, you might want to check more books inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by me on My Book Store here. These are books written based on the truth of the Bible, and are guaranteed to make a huge and positive difference in every area of your life. They are worth more than their money value and they will bless your life greatly. If you buy now, you will enjoy great discounts on purchase. But nevertheless, you will always have a seasoned word from God on this blog that will bless your life absolutely for free.

In my next blog post, I will try share a story with you that we can learn from as we invest right in our marriage.