Communication In Marriage

Hello people, how are you doing? I believe by the grace of God we are all doing great. On behalf of everyone reading, I thank God for the grace to see another week. It’s not a right to be alive, it’s a privilege that we shouldn’t overlook.

And so, we continue on issues that I had to deal with in the course of my writing break and while having my one-on-one discussion with couples with troubled marriages. And the next prevalent trouble we have in marriages is communication. One of the major killers of marriage is communication; either total lack of communication or partial lack of communication and then interestingly the evil of assumption.

The husband assumes that his wife should know his dos and don’ts without first highlighting them to her and the wife also has her assumed set of qualities that a man should possess and then imposes her own expectations on her husband that he is not even aware of. If for any reason he doesn’t meet these expectations, she becomes gradually resentful.  

In this post, we will look at the effective communication that yields success in marriage and then take on a practical illustration to help us understand better.

For us to be able to communicate effectively in marriage and even in any environment we find ourselves, these three keys need to be constantly put into consideration. And they are: What you say, how you say it, and when to say it.

Often, we believe that we need to express ourselves in marriage and not bottle-up issues, and to this, I will say that those who hold this mindset are not totally wrong but then there is the need to use this approach with wisdom. Expressing yourself in marriage is not wrong if and only if you express yourself at the right time and in the right manner. Proverbs 16:24 says, “Pleasant words are like a honeycomb. Sweetness to the soul and health to the bones,” so if pleasant words can heal the soul and even the bones how much more will it heal the marriage. Whether for the husband or for the wife, it is important that you express yourself in a manner that brings healing to your marriage.

Proverbs 18:2, 6, 7
A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions. 

A fool's lips bring strife, and his mouth invites beatings.

A fool's mouth is his undoing, and his lips are a snare to his soul. 

Proverbs 17:28
Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue. 

Proverbs 21:23
He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity. 

The passages above clearly shows that there is a time to speak and there is a time to be quiet. Even though it's so good to express yourself in your marriage but that expression should not be at all times. They should be selective and well thought over before spilling them out in order to secure the peace and prosperity of your marriage. So it's not just important to know what to say and how to say it, it's also important to know and understand when to say what you want to say. 

It’s important to understand that it is dangerous to act in marriage under the influence of emotions. When you are angry or happy do not act hastily. Pause on your action and think it through properly, taking into consideration the consequences of your action before taking that action.

Another interesting communication flaw in marriage is on the issue of sex between the man and his wife. Several couples find it hard to communicate with each other when it comes to sex between them. The wife thinks it's shameful to express her sexual desires or preference to her husband and thus hold it in and in more than one occasion this has led to extra-marital affairs. And the same goes for the husband, some men are either insensitive to the sexual desires of their wives or find it hard to express their own sexual desires to their wives. They adopt coded languages in the hope that their spouse will decode and understand what they are communicating with signs rather than words and when that does not happen, frustration and extra-marital affairs sets in.

What beats me in some of these cases is that the husband or wife finds the nerve to express their sexual needs to an outsider who is not their spouse but find it hard to express same to the God-ordained husband or wife that they have. Your wife or husband should be the closest person to you, yet he/she is the one you seem farthest away from and that should not be. Genesis 2:26 says, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

As a wife, you should know your husband more than any other living being, otherwise, you are not fulfilling your purpose in his life. And if you know your husband well enough you should be able to understand when and how to express your wants and desires to him that yields maximum result. Several times, some wives think they are in the lives of their husbands to correct them when they are wrong, unfortunately, it’s not so. Most men see such a wife as controlling and nagging and that results in resistance which is accompanied by fights.

In the same manner, the language of effective communication for a wife is love. Whatever a husband desires from his wife, he is sure to get it through the medium of unconditional love for his wife. Couples need to speak up what they want from their spouses in a manner that they are certain their spouses would understand and when to make the request and how to make the request determines how well they will have their request granted. There should be no shame in marriage and so coded language and assumptions should be reduced to the barest minimum or eliminated entirely.

I have written several times on the issue of sex in marriage, but I am trusting God to help me revisit the issue again. I look forward to sharing with you soon. 

Why Run When You Can Win

It’s another beautiful day, and another beautiful opportunity to share the truth of the word of God with you on marriage. I pray the seed of the word of God sown continually through this blog will germinate and produce fruits in your lives, to the glory of God alone.

During my break, I discovered one interesting vice in marriage, and that vice is that couples are always quick to separate. One too many arguments and both are quick to go their separate ways. Some of the not-well-thought-of assumptions that precede this separation is that the wife who oftentimes is the one who walks out of the marriage does so with the believe that her husband will miss her and come begging, or that her absence will make him have a rethink on the things he is doing wrong, and he can come back to his senses.

Unfortunately, in seven out of every ten cases such as this, what is expected does not happen. The husband who claims he didn’t send his wife packing never goes to beg. His ego wouldn’t let him and though he may be hurting, his pride will override what his wife had anticipated should happen when she left. So, what was meant to repair, eventually destroys completely. Over time, frustration sets in, divorce is filled, and the marriage is dead. Several blame games are played with no winner but all losers.

One of the excuses women give is that they anticipate violence from their husbands. You hear things like, “he slapped me once and before he kills me, I better leave to save my life.” I totally agree that quite a lot of death have occurred from violence in marriage, in fact, the number and reoccurrence of such are quite alarming. But what has caused this is as a result of lack of knowledge and divine wisdom that encourages a healthy and prosperous marriage. God said, “my people perish for lack of knowledge.”

Running away from a troubled marriage does not solve the problem, and if you truly are a child of God you will understand that running away from your marriage is doing what God who is your Father hates. Now, you might want to add that ‘is God not seeing how my husband or wife is treating me.’ Well God sees it all, and He wants to help you get it better if you would let Him. The problem you are having is that you don’t agree with God's way of fixing the situation and so you assume that God is unjust. So, in the long run, the problem is not with God, the problem is with you.

In Malachi 2:16, God says He hates divorce, also did He say He hates violence. In Matthew 19:4-6 Jesus reiterated what God had ordained from the beginning, that the man and his wife are no longer two but one, and what God has joined together, man should not separate. Again in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11, God through Paul warned us married couples that a wife should not separate from her husband and if she does, she is only allowed to reconcile with the same husband and not marry someone else. And that I a man should not divorce his wife.

Some may argue that Jesus permitted divorce on the ground of infidelity and to this I accept. But the clause remains that whoever gets a divorce on the grounds of infidelity is to remain unmarried or be reconciled to the same husband or wife they left.

If this is then the case, what happens to those who are under the yoke of terrible marriages, why are they not given the privilege to walk out of such the marriage with their lives intact? Well, its because God knows that their marriages are not the problem and it can actually be better if only they wait on Him, obey Him and follow His instructions in handling that marriage. And so, if your marriage is troubled, seek God, when you seek God listen to Him, He will show you what to do. When He shows you what to do, please do it and you will have a lasting joy in your marriage. This is just as practical as it is written. I am a living witness to what I write. I have counseled so many people to do this and their stories have changed for the better.

There is no such thing as a wrong marriage, neither is there anything like a mistake marriage. If there ever is such, then you are the wrong and the mistake in that marriage. What you sow in your marriage is what you reap from it. Change your seed and see the difference. If God does not make mistakes, and He didn’t go on leave when you were getting married and He says in Malachi 2:14 that He acts as witness between you and the wife of your youth, then your marriage is not a mistake, you only lack the wisdom and understanding of how to make it work.

It is wrong to go into marriage with a stereotype mindset about marriage. What works for couple A in most cases will not work for couple B and so you should not be lazy in discovering what will work for your marriage and run with it to success. Some wives are homely and easily convinced. If your wife is not so, that does not make her bad, it only requires you knowing how to bring the best out of her and applying same. And because your sister’s husband finds it easy to express love to his wife does not mean your husband should be the same, after all, they didn’t have the same foundational upbringing. Even brothers of the same father and mother act differently on the same issue. As a wife or husband, it is your responsibility to know what works for your marriage and run with it. And in knowing what works for your marriage, the simple wisdom is to seek God, listen to Him, obey His instructions for your marriage and succeed.

One important thing to highlight here is this, the Bible says we should test all spirit. In listening to God, you need to be objective and open-minded. First, understand that God will not say to you what does not agree with His word. If the voice you are hearing is saying you should take a step that is not agreeable with what is in the Bible, then that voice is not of God because God and His word are the same. God will never tell anyone to divorce his/her spouse because what the Bible tells us is that God hates divorce. Jesus let us know in Matthew 19:8 that Moses permitted divorce because the hearts of men were hard but that it was not so at the beginning.

But when you pray that God should heal your marriage and as a wife the voice you hear says you should go and submit to your husband (just like I heard in my own case), then that voice is from God because what you hear agrees with what you read in the Bible. In the same manner, if what you hear from God says to go love your wife unconditionally, then it is the voice of God because it agrees with the word of God that you have read in the Bible. Anything outside of this is not from God, it's just the dictates of your emotions that will not yield for you the desired result.

I pray some valuable lessons have been learned from today’s write-up and I pray that moving forward we will have a better understanding of how to handle difficult situations in our marriages. Challenges in life are there to build us up and make us stronger and your marital challenges are no exception. Those who run for battle cannot understand the joy of victory, only those who fight to win. Understand very clearly that your spouse is not your enemy and quit fighting the wrong battle. Until you hear from me again, remain very blessed.  

What Is The Content of Your Prayer

Hello beautiful people, I trust we are all doing great. Once again, it’s good to be back and I give all glory to God for you and me and all our loved ones.

In my last post, I started a discussion on one of the issues I have found prevalent in my time of discussing with women with troubled marriages. I have had to talk to a handful of men, but the issue of praying has mostly been the women’s approach of handling troubled marriages and even though it is the very best approach which has never proven to fail, it’s not an approach in isolation. With prayer comes a call to action. Prayers are meant to lead one to a set of actions that will propel your marriage to the desired destination.

What I will be sharing in my post today will be a continuation of what I started in my last post and though the last post seemed to focus more on wives, it’s a general concern for married couples. Whether your marriage is in trouble or not, it’s important to constantly be in the place of prayer to hear from God on how to effectively handle your marriage for success. And this is for the husbands as much as it is for the wives.

After knowing the importance of prayer in marriage just like in every other area of our lives, what exactly are the things we present before God in our prayers and what are our expectations from that prayer? I am so very sure that all our hearts troubles and how our husbands have been unfair to us and how our wives have been a thorn in our flesh are chief of what we will pray about. Well, it is very okay to lay them all before God in prayer, after all God said we should cast our cares upon Him because He cares for us. But what do we expect God to do in solving those huge problems we have placed before Him? Do we think He will put our spouses to sleep and do a surgery of heart on him or her and the next morning he/she becomes a brand-new person we have been longing for?

Well I know there is nothing God can’t do and in Him, there is no impossibility. But sincerely that hasn’t been God’s usual approach in recent times, and we need to be awake to that reality. And that is why I am continuing from where we stopped yesterday. What if God wants to use you to change your spouse? What if as you pray, God works in you and then presents you afresh to your spouse and you become the light that clears the darkness in your spouse's life? That is another way in which God works to give us what we want in our marriages. It has been His style of approach that I am more familiar with. No one has ever seen God and still lives, so if God will give us what we want and pray for, He uses people and sends them on assignment to accomplish His desires in our lives and answer our prayers. So why are you not that person that God will use to bring about the change in the life of your spouse and thus answer your prayers concerning him/her?

And so, we go back to the prayer thing, when we pray for God’s intervention in our marriages, one important thing that we need to sincerely include in that prayer is that God should teach us what to do to make our marriages better, and He should open our eyes to what we should be doing to make the life of our spouses better. When you pray this prayer sincerely and are expectant, you will first notice some changes in your own life. You will start to experience is a shift in values about marriage, the wrong mindset about your rights in marriage will begin to give way to God’s values and norm for marriage. In no time you will be a light in the darkness of your marriage. So as your light shines brighter, it drives away the darkness in your spouse. With weeks going into months and months into years you will start to notice changes in your spouse that please you and gives you peace.

Though this may be painstaking at the beginning, it gets easy with time, if you are determined and you don’t give up. With consistency, it becomes part of you and you find yourself giving your best to your marriage effortlessly.

When I prayed for a change and for God’s intervention in my troubled marriage many years ago, God told me to go and submit to my husband. Initially, it was tough because I never thought I should be the one sacrificing again since I was the one unloved. But I knew God hated divorce and so walking out of the marriage was not an option for me as a child of God. I had to go and check the dictionary meaning of the word submit to understand what was expected of me. Then I realized that before then I respected my husband but didn’t submit to him.

It was painstaking to literarily do exactly as my husband says, whether I think he is wrong or right. But the beautiful thing is that God stood by me through it all. I will always have that nudge in my spirit whenever I want to do something my husband says I shouldn’t do. When God tells you to do something, He stands by you to help you through it. But today, submission is me and I am submission. I submit to my husband effortlessly now. I think not to submit is now what I require effort to do. And believe me when I say I have a beautiful marriage and a loving husband. The same man, and the same marriage.

To put all these in a nutshell, I want to say that it is very good to pray for your marriage, but what is the content of your prayer? I have always said that marriage is not a 50-50 arrangement. If you give your marriage only 50% of you, where is the remaining 50% invested? If you give your marriage 100% of yourself, God will multiply that for you. You will have a good marriage such that you will have peace in your mind and are productive in other aspects of your life.

Marriage is not a place to be served. Never go into marriage with an entitlement mindset. Go into marriage with a purpose in mind and that purpose should be to make the life of your spouse better than you met it. If that is all that you can do for humanity and God, you have done well. When both husband and wife have the same purpose of making effort to better each other, they are both better off in the long run. And peradventure you (whether husband or wife) are the first to come into a better understanding of what marriage should be, then rather than complain and compare your spouse to other spouses, be the light that drives out the darkness in your spouse. Let your light so shine that he/she get a bigger and better picture of what marriage should be through you.

So in my next post, we will be discussing more of the things I discovered in the course of my break and on my one-on-one discussions with couples. 

Prayer Is Not Enough

Hello people how are you doing? I believe you have missed reading from me, I have also missed writing too. But I need to put a little effort into business issues too. But be rest assured that no matter for how long I take a break, I will always be back to share the hope of a successful marriage to those who dearly need it.

While on this break, I have had to do a handful of one-on-one counseling for couples with failed marriages. And in this blog post, I will be sharing some of the prevalent issues that I discovered. Please permit me to inform you that if I am unable to discuss all the issues on this post, then we will continue in the next post by the grace of God.

One common thing that I found with wives in these troubled marriages is that they always claim to be praying. If I ask them what they have been doing to improve their marriages and effect the positive changes that they seek in the lives of their husbands and marriage, the common thing that I hear them say is that they have put it all in prayers. All the efforts are in praying. In as much as I believe so much in prayers and God has blessed me and my marriage in no small measure through my prayers, I will still say at this point that for a troubled marriage to heal, prayer is not enough. You cannot sit idle and remain as you are and keep praying without doing anything and expect a magic performed on your husband by God such that he will just be a changed man possessing all the qualities you seek in him overnight. If that is your expectation when you pray then I am informing you now that you will tarry longer on that prayer altar than you bargained for without getting the result you seek.

When a person prays for God’s blessing financially, he/she does not sleep lazily at home doing nothing and expect a billion Naira credit alert from his bank. The ideal thing is that there must be some form of work he is doing for which he seeks God’s blessings and then he prays God's blessings on his effort and God answers and then blesses the works of his hands.

In the same manner, when you seek God’s intervention on your marriage, then you must be ready to get your hands to work. When you pray for God’s intervention in your marriage situation, you don’t just pray and stand up and go. Prayer is a communication between the person who is praying and the God he /she is praying to. So, you tell God what you want, and He tells you how to get it. Sometimes, God may send someone to hand over to you what you have prayed for, and sometimes He leads you to the source of what you have prayed for and teach you how to get it. But in marriage when you pray for God’s intervention, He teaches you what to do to attain the point of comfort in your marriage that you seek. The Bible says “Prayer without Deed is dead.

One thing I know that God tells every wife to do in marriage is to submit to her husband as unto the Lord. We find this in Ephesians 5:22-24, 1 Peter 3:1-6, and even in Colossians 3:18. We should understand that if God will repeat the same time thrice through two different vessels of His, then He means what He says. From 1 Peter 3:1-2 we can conclude that as a wife when you pray and do not submit to your husband as unto the Lord, all your effort amounts to a waste of breath and energy, and I repeat that you will tarry long on the altar of prayer without result. Because it is through the purity and reverence of your life which springs from your submission to your husband that he will be won over to God thereby becoming the man you desire him to be. 

Quite a number of wives complain that they have endured so much from their husbands. One of the very common conclusions that I have heard from wives is that the husband does not care for them, provide for them and outrightly neglects them and so they pack their bags and walk out of the marriage. And yet they complain that the husband still does not provide allowances for his children that they took away from him. And then I think; if you were living with your husband and as far as you are concerned he didn’t take care of you and didn’t provide for the family upkeep, how then do you expect him to start to care for you when you are not there in his face.

One very foolish mindset that we have as women is that we believe that when we walk out of the so-called terrible marriage and away from the wicked husband, he will come to his senses and do the needful. But in almost all the cases I have seen and dealt with, separation never solves the problem, rather it makes it worse. And a simple separation that you had hoped will improve the bad situation eventually leads to a divorce. So, what was supposed to be temporary separation eventually turns to a permanent separation.

1 Peter 3:1-2

Wives, in the same way, be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

One truth that has never changed is that the word of God never fails. Like I mentioned earlier, the solution to a troubled marriage is not in walking out of the marriage; and divorce is also not a beautiful solution to a bad marriage. But we read in the Bible passage above that if a woman is married to an unbeliever (For me, I want to define the word unbeliever as not just someone who does not believe in Jesus Christ, but as someone who does not exhibit the traits of godliness. A husband whom his wife has characterized as wicked), it is not by words that such a man is won over to God, but by the submissive behavior of the wife through the purity and reverence of her life.

I have said earlier that prayer is good and important to heal a broken marriage, but it is not enough. When you pray that God heals your marriage, you also need to wait on God to speak to you on your action line in that marriage for it to heal. What 1 Peter 3:1-2 is telling us is that no matter how bad that marriage situation is, it is through your submission that God will bring about the desired change that you seek in that marriage. Your prayer performs two functions; first, you go to God to make a complain/request and then you wait on Him to tell you what to do and when you do it you will get the change that you seek.

Your submission to your husband is a seed that you sow into your marriage. It is the investment to make in your marriage for which you expect returns. And then your prayers act secondly as a form of watering on the seed of submission that you have sown. So, when you submit to your husband and then you pray, what God does is to use you and your godly behavior as a reference in drawing your husband to Himself. You will be winning your husband to God not by words but by your actions.

And then just before I finish up this write-up, I would want us to understand that there is a big difference between submission and respect. Quite a number of women always say that they have submitted to their husbands, yet he treats them badly, but what I have come to discover is that we misunderstand respect for submission. What we give to our husbands is good respect, but that is far below what God commands us to do.

The dictionary meaning of the word submit is “to yield yourself to the authority of another,” and one very prominent synonym word for the word "submit" is “obey.” So what God is saying to us as wives is to submit ourselves to the authority of our husbands, and when we take is further for better clarity, we are asked to obey our husbands. So, if your husband says to do a thing, what God is telling you is that you should do exactly as he says. Do not add to it or take away from it. Just do as your husband says.

This is a universal law of marriage for all women without any exception and without any clause. You will find this same instruction over and over again in the passages of the Bible (Ephesian 5:22-24, Colossian 3:18, 1 Peter 3:1-6). And one important thing is that the Bible did not add any qualifying adjective to the word husband, so to say that God did not define for us the kind of husband to submit to and the one not to submit to. So, whether your husband is good, bad, ugly, kind, or harsh, as long as he is your husband, you are to submit to him and obey him.

For some, this might sound like hard teaching, but it’s the most effective way to a gloriously beautiful marriage. It worked for me, and it has worked for so many others and it will surely work for you if you apply it undilutedly. Please note that this is an instruction of God for His children alone. This is not a teaching for everyone. But if you want God's intervention in your situation, then you need to apply God's approach in that situation. 

When Man Gets it Wrong

I am so very sorry that I have taken so long a time to write a post, it simply because I am trying to find a means to be a complete wife myself. So I am moving from being a full-time housewife to being an entrepreneur wife, you know like the one you read about in Proverbs 31:10-31. Just like any other wife out there, I am also a work in progress, sharing what has worked for me with other couples.

In this my long break, even though I have not taken the time to write on the blog, God has been doing a lot of writing in people’s lives through me and I bless His name. And I realized that there is still a lot to be done with regards the issue of marriage.

In space of time that I have been away, I have had to do a lot of talking to couples and one thing I have noticed is that we seem not to understand who the true enemy of how marriage is. That divine revelation of understanding that my husband is not my enemy helped me to seek God right with my marriage and God came through for me.

First, I want us to go back to Genesis 2:18-31, there God said it was not good for the man to be alone and so He decided to make a helper suitable for him, which He brought to the man and then she became his wife. Before this declaration by God, He had made all living creatures, He made the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and the beast of the ground, He even made the living plants, and God made them male and female. So God made them in pairs of twos, one male, and one female. He made them independent of each other. And that is why it is just natural to find a male goat mating with different female goats. It is also not out of place to see a female dog mating with any male dog she sees. There is no marriage in the animal kingdom, neither is there marriage in the plant kingdom. When God made them, He made them independent of each other and so there is no sin when a female goat mates with a different male goat each time the need arises. For them, they only come together for the purpose of procreation or should I say reproduction only. 

But with mankind, the story is different. The Bible tells us that when God made man, He noticed that it was not good for the man to be alone, but rather than make a female man like He did the other animals, God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and took a rib from the man and then formed a woman and brought her to the man to be his suitable helper and wife. The big truth in this for every man and woman married and intending to be married is that no matter the geographical origin of the two individuals that make the married couple, no matter their language or skin color, the God who made them says He made the wife from the rib He took from the man and so they are not two different individuals like they would want to believe or that the world system has made them believe, but they are one in flesh and spirit and the God who made them has declared that He the woman from the rib He took from the man so there is an element of the man in the woman. As a wife, you carry a part of your husband in you and it is important for the man to understand that a part of him resides in his wife. God who made us all declared it so.

The world didn’t make the man, so the world cannot state the genesis of the created man, we are made by God and cannot question His declaration in our making, so if God says He made the woman from the man, then it is simply so without any argument or contention.

This revelation is very vital to the success of any marriage. The simple understanding and embracing of this revelation is so very important for a marriage to move forward successfully. And so we will look at how to make good use of this divine revelation for a successful marriage.

The first thing that a man needs to know is that his wife is an extension of him by virtue of God’s declaration at creation. If this is so, then if he can’t be an enemy of himself, then his wife cannot be his enemy. So it is the lie of the devil to convince a man that his greatest enemy is his wife. Your wife is never your enemy no matter how much you have convinced yourself that she is. 

Yes, I agree that some wives do evil things to their husbands, but she is simply a tool in the hands of your true enemy to destroy you. Fighting your wife amounts to you fighting the wrong battle and leaving the true enemy of your life to run loss and free. If the devil is done using your wife against you, he will anyone else close to you that is ignorant of his scheme and before you realize it, you make an enemy out of those you should truly love and leave your true enemy having a filled day on your ignorance. Ephesians 6:12 says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, so your fight is not against any flesh, and so we should not go hating those we are destined to love.

I agree that a wife might be misbehaving, she will misbehave so many times that the only solution that may seem appropriate to human reasoning is to get a divorce and let her just go before more damage is done. But we are not mere humans, we are beyond human reasoning when we apply the mind of Christ to our reasoning(the bible says we should have the mind of Christ).So to say that we should reason like Christ as we children of God having in us the Spirit of God. 
Now, one thing that the husband should not forget is that his wife is an extension of him, she was taken out of him. A man also fail and fall sometimes and even most times, but does he not dust himself up and pick up is life and learn from his mistakes? If yes, then why is he finding it hard to look beyond the faults and failures of his wife and find a solution better than a divorce noting that his wife is an extension of himself by the declaration of God?

Let’s look at this illustration: Let’s assume a man trips on his leg and falls, and most certainly he has tripped on that same leg more than once, but that does not translate to him cutting off the leg. In the same manner, the fact that your wife who happens to be an extension of you is not fulfilling who she should be in your life does not translate to you sending her out of your life. The fact that you don’t feel physical pain by your actions of sending her out of your life, does not mean your destiny isn’t feeling the pinch of your action. Yes, she might be causing you emotional pain, but your reaction to that pain has its impact on your destiny.

You might wonder what divorce has to do with destiny. Let’s check this out: Proverbs 18:22 tells us that a man who finds a wife finds what is good and obtains God’s favor, so to say that the entrance of your wife into your life is the entrance of God’s favor into your life. When you drive your wife out of your life then logically you are saying goodbye to the portion of God’s favor that she came into your life with. For your destiny to blossom your need good measure of God’s favor in your life, so the exit of your wife from your life is depleting the favor of God in your life requisite to the growth of your destiny. So when you go for a divorce, you might get some emotional relief, but you have depleted the measure of God’s favor for your life.

We have taken time to highlight the problem and I trust God that divine revelation from Him will give you a deeper understanding of what God is communicating through this write-up far beyond the words that I have written. But before I close, I want us to trust God on the way forward for a troubled marriage other than rushing for a divorce and I want God to address this issue from the husband’s perspective.

In Matthew 25:14-15, Jesus tells the parable of a man going on a journey and then entrusted his property to his servants and gave them talents according to their ability. What stroke me hard in that passage is that the property owner shared his properties among his servants according to their ability. This tells me that although the gift of God for our lives is supposed to make us rich and add no sorrow to it, yet it is according to our ability.

Proverbs 18:22 then tells us that “he who finds a wife, finds what is good and obtains the favor of God,” so to say that your wife is a gift from God to you, but yet the Lord gives you this wife based on your ability. You will agree with me that there is no perfect wife in the world but there is a perfect wife that God has created for every man based on his ability. If your wife is not yet perfect for you as a husband then it’s important that you check how far you have been able to exploit and utilize your ability. No matter how tough your wife may be, you have already been endowed with the ability to make her into the perfect wife that fits and suits your destiny only that you do not know you possess that ability or you are not exploring and exploiting that ability enough. And if this is the case then it's important to run back to God who created you and blessed you with an ability to help you discover the ability that is in your requisite to making your wife a better person suitable for your life's destiny.  

Before you cast the guilty verdict on your wife and call her imperfect and incapable and then run for a divorce, it’s important to check within you if you have exploited and explored all the ability that God has given you. And if your answer is yes, then you are not return to the throne of grace to seek and obtain more ability from God who gives without finding fault to continue to be a husband to your troublesome wife till she becomes all that God has called her to be in your life with the help and support of the living God.

When you have explored all that you know to do and it is not working, explore love. When you love and pray, you cannot get it wrong. 

So She Slapped Her Mother In-Law

So we look at the second issue that I promised to discuss in the second part of my previous post and the issue is about a lady who was beaten black and blue with bruises by her husband because she slapped her mother-in-law. And another lady who was also beaten by her husband because she seized his phone as a result of abuse of phone use in the house.

Quite a handful of women maintain that for no reason at all should a man beat his wife and even though I agree to this theory, I will add that for no reason at all should a wife provoke her husband to anger. Life is all about causes and effects. I know that a lot of wives suffer from the hands of aggressive and violent husbands but the truth of the matter is that if a man is exhibiting violent tendencies, there must be reasons behind his behavior and before we throw the baby away along with the birth water we need to check again and have a second thought on cases of violence in marriages.
If your marriage is not undergoing spiritual attacks that might generate continuous or frequent conflicts between the husband and his wife, and there are no cases of extra-marital affairs on the part of any of the two, and we have ruled out pair pressure, financial and economic pressure that can cause tension in the marriage and home, then the next thing is for the wife to watch her conduct to ensure that she avoids things that will provoke violence in her marriage. I speak to the wife first because she is the homebuilder, not that husbands too don't provoke their wives to anger but a gentle response the Bible says drives away wrath. 

It’s so easy to condemn a man who beats up his wife for any and every reason, God said in Malachi 2:16 that He hates a man who clothes himself with violence as with his garment and so I will not fault anyone who speaks against a violent husband. But we also need to point the searchlight on the wives. I agree that there are some gentle-spirited wives that are grossly maltreated by their husbands, but in the same vein, there are some dangerous mouthed wives too. The Bible says in Proverbs 21:23 that “He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.” When a wife does not have control over her temper and cannot exercise authority over her tongue, then she is in trouble.

It is assumed that a real man should know how to handle difficult marital challenges without being violent, but is that an excuse for the real wives to be uncultured? For as long as a wife would want to be treated like a queen by her husband then she should be ready to treat him like a king first. A beautiful marriage does not just happen it is cultivated. And whatever you sow into your marriage is what you will reap from it. God’s word can never prove false, we learn in Genesis 8:22 that as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest will never cease.

It is the duty of a woman to build her home, and as she builds it so shall she live in it. No woman should ever think that she is empowered to verbally discipline her husband not to talk of thinking of punishing her husband for wrongdoing. She is a suitable helper to her husband according to the word of God in Genesis 2:18 and not the husband’s disciplinarian.

I do not exonerate the husbands of wrongdoing in marriage but if a woman is living with the notion that she can correct her husband when he is wrong then she should be ready for a lot of marital troubles or challenges. 1 Peter 3:1-2 says it is through the reverence and purity of a godly wife that an unbelieving husband is won over to God. And in my own words, I will say that it is through the purity, reverence, and prayers of a godly wife’s life that her husband is corrected and not by words. If for any reason you try to exert control over your husband in any way no matter how subtle, it will meet with resistance and if you have a husband who does not have control over his emotions, that resistance will be accompanied by violence.

No matter how right you think you are in a marriage, the secret to a successful marriage mostly requires the ability of the wife to be able to stoop to conquer. Marital battles are not fought in words or fist, they are fought on the knees in prayers.

A real wife will not for any and every reason be rude to her mother-in-law not to talk of slapping her. If you cannot raise your hands to slap your mother, then never think of doing that to your mother-in-law. If the Lord has declared that the two have become one in flesh and spirit, then by simple reasoning, you as a wife is your husband in another form. If then you and your husband are no longer two but one and we can reason then that the wife is the husband in another form, then we can also conclude that the wife mother is also the husband’s mother and the husband’s mother is also the wife’s mother. As a wife, you didn’t come out of your husband’s mother’s womb, but because she is your husband’s mother and you and your husband are one, then she has become your mother.

And then God said in Exodus 20:12 that, “Honor your father and mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” So a real woman who is living to please the Lord will follow the instructions for of God her life to honor her husband’s mother who is also her mother by virtue of marriage.

Even if your mother-in-law wrongs you in any way and does not treat you like her child, you who is a real woman who knows the truth of the word of God and is working according to the will of God will do as the word of God says and attract the love of your mother by marriage through the love, respect and honor you show to her. If then she continues to be mean to you, she will surely face the wrath of God. When you do your bit and honor, respect and love your mother-in-law, you give room to God to do His own bit by fighting your battles for you. 

I agree and know certainly that two wrongs don’t make a right, so to say that I consent to a husband beating up his wife is not the picture here. But as a wife never do anything whatsoever to provoke your husband to anger. Pray and apply wisdom in relating to your husband in a manner that promotes the peace and joy of your marriage. 

What Abraham Did Wrong

I have been reading about people making cases for polygamy lately, most especially on the news  media of some African nations. Even a pastor is not even left out in the campaign for polygamy. And one of the arguments I face most in my assignment in helping marriages heal is the call for divorce in the face of tough marital challenges. It’s always a huge task trying to make people who are hurting understand that God can't be wrong is saying He hates divorce. It sometimes get to me when men in God's service encourage spouses to get a divorce as a solution for tough marital challenges. People very close to me have taken time to turn their backs on me basically because I tell them there is no marital challenge strong enough to call for a divorce. I still stand my ground and I say it over and over again that if God can heal my marriage then there is no marriage He cannot turn around for good. I didn't have the worse case scenario in my marriage but I must confess that I had my own fair share of tough challenges in marriage, but today I can tell you confidently that marriage is not just sweet, but very sweet. And like a profound marriage counselor often says, it depends on the cutlery you use to eat it. 
If you are willing and determined to make your business work, and are determined to be the best in your career, then having the best of marriages is only a matter of determination, focus and divine help. The first two depends on you and are variables, the last one is sourced at the throne of God and it's a constant factor that can be relied upon not to fail.  

I will break this write-up into two parts because the issues on my mind to write about will be a little too lengthy for just one post so I don't bore you with a lengthy read. I would first want to write on the polygamy campaign and then tell a story of a wife who was beaten black and blue and even had her flesh torn by her husband because she slapped her mother-in-law and another story of a wife who says she was beaten by her husband because she seized his phone because he was doing legit/illegitimate activities with the phone and was abusing phone use in the house.

I am sure you will agree that we have a lot to look at for just one post to contain so it’s just better that we break it into two or even three parts.

But I will want to start with the issue of campaign for polygamy for a man to have peace of mind in his marriage. And where the people making this campaign got their findings from is a mystery to me. If a man is having problems coping with one wife, then how can he cope when he doubles or even triples his number of wives? Rationally thinking, such a man is just multiplying his problems in the proportion with which he mulptiplies his wives.

The major basis for people who argue for polygamy is that for it exist in Bible days and men of God who had more than one wife were not said to be sinners then there is nothing wrong with polygamy. Even if we will buy that argument, the first thing I want to point out is that "in what way did polygamy solve marital problems in Bible days for those who engaged in it?" Rather than polygamy helping marriages, it compounded it. I want to mention at this point that this message is for those who desire to do things God’s way. So it might not apply to everyone but just those who seek to align themselves with the will of God for their lives.

In 1 Timothy 3:1-7, the very first criteria Paul gave for a man seeking to be an overseer is that he must be a husband of just one wife. Now you might think that because you don’t seek to be an overseer this does not apply to you. But if you seek to be the head of your home, then you seek to be an overseer in your home and over your family, then the same rules apply to you. You must be a husband of but one wife.

A lot of people have assumed that Abraham married Hagar while being married to Sarah, and so it’s right. But what we didn’t realize is that in the days when Abraham allowed himself to be talked into that act of polygamy in the pursuit of an heir, God withdrew from him. In Genesis 16:16 we read that Abraham was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael, then the next verse was Genesis 17:1 which says “When Abraham was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the Lord God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless.” We need to understand that the time difference between Genesis 16:16 and Genesis 17:1 was a long 13years of God's silence in the life of Abraham.

Two things I noticed here, between the time Abraham was eighty-six years of age when he had Ishmael and the time he was ninety-nine years the Lord did not speak or visit Abraham. So to say that if Abraham was operating within the will of God for his life, God will not withdraw from him. And when God showed in his life 13years after, it was to call him back to order. God told Abraham to walk before Him and be blameless. If Abraham had been walking before the Lord before then, God will not make such a call on his life. So when we advocate for polygamy it’s important that we understand that because a few men of God did it does not make it right.

Jacob was another prominent case study on the issue of polygamy. The Bible told us that he labored 14years to marry Rachel. It appeared that Jacob was cheated, he labored 7years for Rachel and was given Leah and so he had to labor another seven years to marry the love of his life. But did we notice that Jacob never even prayed before choosing a wife for himself. Should we not then wonder if truly Leah was God’s choice of a wife for Jacob? If God did not approve of Leah as Jacob's wife, Leah will never be a wife to Jacob. 

Jacob married for love and beauty, yet he married a jealous woman, a liar and a thief Genesis 29:31-31:55). So much for love and beauty. Four women had children for Jacob solely as a result of Rachel’s insecurity and jealously yet she was more loved than her sister.

Genesis 29:31 say “When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, He opened her womb, but Rachel remained barren.” This tells me that though Jacob loved Rachel more but God loved Leah more for Jacob. Per-adventure Leah was God’s choice of a wife for Jacob and not the beautiful Rachel. If we read through Genesis 29:31-30:24, we will see how Leah enjoyed God’s favor in her marriage. And I pray that men will see the handwriting of God on their marriages and follow the path of God’s will for their marriages.  

In order not to make this post too long and boring, I will just stop at this two polygamous men of God, but we still have men like David and Solomon to consider. But in all, I have observed that polygamy is characterized by issues such as jealousy, rage, strife, malice, backstabbing, unhealthy competition just to name a few. God did not institute marriage for troubles such as this. Marriage is supposed to be a comfort zone for the individuals in it. When you commit your marriage into God’s hands, and you let him lead the way in your marriage you will enjoy it so much that you will not have a thought for polygamy. May the Lord bless our homes in Jesus name.