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I read someone sharing some important factors for success in marriage. According to the writer, building friendship is essential for success in marriage. Marrying the wrong person, lack of intimacy and nonchalance towards body weights, she said, are some factors that lead to marriage failures. Intimacy, according to her, is important and should be both sexual and personal. I appreciate the writer for all these reasons but there is a missing link for the sustenance of marriages – the God factor!
If we ask some people whose marriages have failed how they chose their spouses, their responses will be amusing and not far from the following: My Dad said that I should marry her; I liked him; she was very attractive; he was generous; she was the only lady who accepted my proposal; he comes from a very rich family; we grew up together and were fond of each other; I liked the way she led choruses in the church; I noticed that he liked me; I really cannot say; et cetera. There was certainly no God’s factor in the choice. Why should it then be strange that the relationship collapsed midstream?
If you buy a machine, the manufacturers will give you a manual. The extent the machine will serve you will depend on what you do or do not do with the manual. Without using it, you may put the machine in a box for safety and be paying someone handsomely for cleaning it daily, the machine will be of no use to you. If the box costs you millions of naira, the result will be the same. You may cherish the machine and even keep it on your bed, it will still not meet your expectation until you use the manual.
The manufacturer of the machine knows the machine more than any other person, including a Professor of Mechanical or Electrical Engineering, because he knows the materials he used in making it. If the manual specifies that the machine should be serviced every month and it is not done, how do we expect it to perform well? If in the manual, it is stated that the machine should never be installed where rain will beat it and you keep it outside your house on the advice of your company’s medical doctor or the bishop of your church, how will high performance be expected from it? If all other machines made by the same company and bought by other users are also installed outside the house where rain beats them, and they are not performing well, will anybody be right to complain that something is wrong with machines these days? Nothing is wrong with the machines but with the people who refuse to use the manual.
The woman of Samaria in John 4 had married and divorced many times. She was not even married with the man she left at home when Jesus met her and changed her life for good. He changes lives of people, who submit to Him, and they are enjoying their marriages. I have lost count of the number of divorces and remarriages of someone who was engaged the day I wedded. Kate was right when she said that the success or failure of marriages has little to do with the age in which we are. The marriage institution was not any man’s idea but God’s and His alone. He knows what stuff a spouse is made of and how a couple should live. He gave us the Bible, our manual, for life, including marriage. Without it, there is nothing we can do to sustain our marriage. ‘Did God tell you to marry? Is He in your marriage?’ are some questions we should be asking warring couples.
There is nothing wrong with marriage. It is crashing because that is what we want. We have abandoned God’s word and are doing marriage in our own self-conceived way. For success, we should follow God’s standard and nothing more. God means what He says when He set a standard for the choice of a spouse. It has nothing to do with tribe, human physique, academic attainment, financial position, moral standard, et cetera. God is to make the choice for us if we allow Him. He made for me, and people are surprised how I and my spouse live and relate. Theory is different from practice. My spouse went to school as her mates did.
During our morning devotion a few weeks ago, we read Dr. Luke’s account on the naming ceremony of John, the forerunner of the Lord Jesus. Elisabeth was asked the name her son would be called, and she said, ‘John’. It was a strange name, for nobody in their family had answered such a name. A note was given to Zacharias, her husband, who was dumb because he doubted God’s Word. The request was what his son would be called. He wrote, ‘John’. How did his wife know this, since she was not present, when God’s angel spoke to him, and he returned home dumb? It was intimate relationship, resulting in communication, even when her husband was dumb. They communicated in writing. Their old age could not also rob them off intimate relationship. There is nothing my wife, who is my friend and prayer partner, and I, do not discuss. That was why a lady, who was aware of this, said one day: ‘If a lady kisses you, you will tell your wife’. That was a true testimony. How then will our marriage crash?
When God’s manual (Bible) is put in the trashcan or kept on the shelf, the marriage will fail, despite the beautiful vows made during the wedding. When the manual is not used, the position or advice of a renowned Professor of Theology or a renowned Marriage Counsellor is of no effect. None of the patriarchs in the Bible divorced his spouse because they allowed God to control their homes.
The first time I heard ‘My Ex’ was in the US. It was said without qualms, with smiling faces, as if it was normal. I never knew that it would be imported into our country. Today, helped by the internet, it is everywhere. May God deliver us from that. What we need is not the importation of weird practices but God’s manual. The beauty of it all is that nothing is late if we swallow pride and pick up the marriage manual – God’s Word – now, and read it daily. If couples do this, there will be immediate healing in their marriages.
For further comment, Please contact: Osondu Anyalechi: 0909 041 9057; [email protected]
