"I want to marry! I am of age!"

I posted a question on my facebook page yesterday on what is the right age for ladies to marry; I got many responses and all of them tend to have different answers.  As a matter of fact, no two answers were the same.  That sent me a clear message - we are all different people with different wiring and wanting different things.  My discourse on this particular subject today is not on the right age for marriage either for guys and ladies but on the matter of why one desires to get married in the first place.

Is marriage mandatory?

The answer up-front is no.  I know some of my religious folks would already be bending over to pick up stones directed at me... hold on a moment!  I know God says its not good for man to be alone.  So, he created Eve to be a help meet for the man.  A companion, a friend and a love mate.  That is correct.  However, when God sent His Son Jesus Christ to planet earth, marriage was not on the table for the Saviour of mankind.  Why?  The work on hand was too serious to be meddled with "civilian" affairs which includes marriage.  As far as God was concerned, the purpose for which Christ was sent had no built-in plan for him to be married.  Marriage was going to be a "distraction" for Christ.

There was no record on the marriage life of the Apostle Paul.  So we can safely say he was too busy being a doctor of the Pharisaical law and later as Christ's Apostle to the Gentiles that marriage was going to be a distraction for him.  Can you imagine someone claiming to be Paul's wife?  She would be the loneliest woman on the earth because the bob would have no time for her! 

From these two examples, my religious folks should be satisfied that marriage cannot be for everybody.  Having said that, Paul himself said in one of his Epistles to the Corinthians that "in order to avoid fornication, the man should have his own wife and the woman should have her own husband".  Justifying this further, he said, "it is better to marry than to burn".  Great.  Marriage serves the right and godly purpose for the expression of pure animal love.  But we must bear in mind that if we marry only for the purpose of meeting biological needs, we would have hit the wrong target.  The purpose of marriage should be higher than sex which is only about 20% or less of the marriage life.

My young man and lady, have you decided why you want to marry besides sex? It is wrong to be sexually active outside marriage but you and I know that anybody can have sex.  Mad people do too!  If you marry only on account of sex; the drive will vanish over time and you will be faced with someone you are not in sync with and trouble will confront you.  That is laying your future on a faulty foundation.

What should be the right motives and reasons for marriage?  We will discuss them in details in the days to come.  Keep a date with me.  Your life coming forth life gold is my basic objective.  Stay connected.

Let Your Life Count: Whether Married, Divorced & Remarried

In this season, this is the last blog I am writing on this hyped subject of marriage and divorce.  Someone asked me why I decided to do this since the subject is very unpopular and discussing it can be controversial.  My answer is this:  someone has to discuss what everyone does not want to talk about.  The Bible did not shy away from discussing it and making it plain, why should we run away from it?  The trouble with us is that we want to be acceptable, popular and seen from a perceived correct position, but the truth is this: my job is not to be popular but to be truthful and be purposeful to the point that I am able to help someone.  If this series has helped anyone, then I am satisfied even if I am crucified.

As I end this series, I also want to leave it on the mind of my readers that your life is not over because you are divorced.  The problem is not with divorce, it is with a faulty marriage from day one.  If only we can pay attention to details, follow God's plan and marry aright, divorce would not be an issue.  Divorce is a symptom of a greater problem called faulty foundation in marriage.  That is the reason why I want to devote the next couple of days talking about how to marry aright.

You might wonder why I didn't start with that... I start with the end in mind. I have told you the consequences of marrying on faulty foundations, now we will discuss how to marry aright.  But if you have fallen by the way side, it is time to get back up and get your life back on track.  That you were married and divorce is not the end of your life.  Do not mind those who tell you that your life is finished because you failed in marriage.  Failure is a relative expression.  You fail when you give up trying, but you are not a failure if you have to start again.  It annoys me that today, especially in the Church, when a saint falls, we shoot him dead, while in the world, when anyone falls, they come together to get the person back up.  In the battlefield, when a soldier falls, his colleagues gather around to help resuscitate him.  That is the ideal for the Church but we rather kill the fallen warrior instead of helping him back up.  I am encouraging all those who have experienced heart break in marriages and it led to a divorce that there is a second chance for you.  The Bible presents clear testimonies of second chances.  Even God had to start again in Genesis 6 after He destroyed the first world and left Noah and his family in the world to continue the race.  If God could start again, you can start again.

In contemporary world, we have men and women who have had to start all over again after their first attempt at matrimony failed and they are doing well.  Someone told me that a particular preacher who got divorced is not born again because she did!  Well, I smiled and walked away because that was a very ignorant statement to make.  Some of you reading this may be shocked to know that some of the famous preachers making huge impact have been divorced and remarriaged.  Please note that I am not advocating and promoting divorce as a concept but I am only educating your pure mind to be clear about the vexed issue of Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage.

Let me share with you a few of them for the avoidance of doubt:

1.  Jim Baker, his marriage to Tammy Faye ended in 1992, he remarried.
2.  John Hagee, Pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio: his first marriage ended in 1972.  He
     remarried the next year.
3.  Bishop Noel Jones.  His marriage ended in the early 1990s.  He is the Bishop of the City of Refuge
     Church in Gadena, California.  He is single.
4.  Clarence McCledon, his marriage of 16 years ended in 2000.  He is remarried.
5.  Joyce Meyer, divorced first husband in 1966, remarried in 1967.
6.  Robert A. Schuller, divorced in 1984, remarried the same year.
7.  Charles Stanley, marriage ended in 2000 after 44 years, he is single.
8.  Robert Tilton, twice divorced, remarried.
9.  Paula White, married to Bishop Randy White ended in 2007, single.
10. Prophetess Juanita Bynum, marriage to Bishop Weeks III ended 2007, single.

I must also sound a note of warning that these facts are not presented to help you validate your desire to break a marriage if you can mend it, but it is a testimony to the fact that marriages do break up even with Christians and they can have their life back and it can still count.

I am done on this subject and hope it has been a source of help to many.  Lets talk about another subject.  Thanks for reading.
 

The Religious Angle to the Marriage & Divorce Saga

I am gradually rounding up this discourse on the critically important subject of Marriage & Divorce.  This discussion on this subject became necessary when I discovered that there have been a lot of confusion amongst people as to what is right and wrong and especially the confusion in the Christian Church as to the right and wrong of the very vexed issue.

My focus today is on the argument of the religious class.  My issue basically is that a host of people are suffering because they are fed with lopsided information that binds them and keep them from receiving the joy that God has in store for them.  I know a lady whose husband on account of her becoming a Christian sent her packing.  From biblical injunction, she is free to re-marry but I was shocked that the Church told her she can't!  Do we know what we are doing to God's people because of ignorance?

That is also the reason why I advocate for Christians to take time always to read the Bible themselves and not to depend on private, skewed and unbalanced interpretation by ministers and preachers who carry a traditional mentality of scriptures that are not in consonance with the revealed will of God.  This may sound very harsh but the suffering God's people are subjected to in the name of fulfilling a religious obligation is becoming appalling.

Let us get this issue straight:  Was Esther who became the wife of the King of Persia of old God's servant or not?  Yet she was the second wife of the King after the first wife messed herself up at a State Banquet - disgracing her husband in front of guests!  God set-up Esther to become queen and she was an instrument of deliverance to God's people in her time!  Would God now turn around and crucify her for being a second wife after she had fulfilled his purpose?  


King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and killed her husband.  God sanctioned the King by taking the life of the child that was born out of wedlock.  The other child that followed after the King married the woman was Solomon and God in His wisdom felt the right heir to the throne of David was Solomon!  The child of an adulterous woman!  That is a direct attack on our holier-than-thou thinking that has kept people away from God when we ourselves are not ready to enter the Kingdom!  How are we better than the pharisees and Sadducees of old?


For those of us in ministry, we have had cases of ministers divorcing and re-marrying and a whole lot of people criticizing them that their ministry is over.  I laugh a lot about that.  God gave the man the ministry before he was born and before he married.  If unfortunately the marriage fails, God's call on the man does not fail except the man refuses to obey the call.  David did not cease to be King even when he committed adultery and sealed it with a murder.  He asked for forgiveness and God saw His heart and he was forgiven.  When is divorce a sin?  When it is done in defiance to God's word.  In most cases, divorces are solutions to a lingering problems in a marriage that has failed to fulfill its purpose.  


For the avoidance of doubt, the Bible clearly states the reason for biblical divorce as adultery (Matthew 19:9) and desertion (1 Cor. 7:13-15).  These scriptures explain clear biblical grounds for divorce.  There are cases however that are neither here nor there in scriptures and in such cases, the believer or child of God should count on God's wisdom to make a decision.  For instance, if you have a husband who constantly physically abuses the wife, it would be counter-productive to ask the wife to remain under that condition until she is physically maimed or killed.  Husbands have been known to have murdered their wives in cases like this.  How does this glory God in anyway?  If you have a partner who constantly sexually abuses your child, that is a clear signal to dump the relationship because destinies have been put at stake.  


Like I mentioned in my earlier blog, I have no apology for being blunt and plain on an issue the Church especially in our part of the world has refused to address squarely.  Can ministers who have divorced and remarried still work in the house of God?  I know a lot of people quote 1 Timothy 3:2 ".... a bishop must be a husband of one wife..."  Very correct.  It said, the man must be a husband of one wife not a polygamous man!  It did not say the man must have been married only once, but a husband of one wife.  Clear scriptures.  It implies that even if the man was divorced, it should be that at any point in time, he should be a husband of one wife.  The scriptures do not contradict itself and is not ambiguous.  It becomes ambiguous when we interpret it to suit our traditional mind-set.

In our day, Joyce Meyer stands tall as a survivor from an abused childhood and a very abusive first marriage.  We would not have had a Joyce Meyer if she never married Dave Meyer after her first marriage crashed.  Do you know how many people's destinies have been touched by the ministry of this woman?  If she had met a traditionally minded preacher whose knowledge of the Bible is unbalanced, many destinies would have been compromised.  Ministries, nations and persons of all shades and colour have been blessed by Joyce Meyer because she had the courage to pursue her ministry irrespective of her failed first marriage.  

Watch out for our last discourse on this subject in a few days.  Stay connected to the right source!