How do I know who I should marry? (Part II)

My last blog majored on how you may be able to know who should be your spouse.  I ended the discourse by suggesting to those who might not have come to the knowledge of their purpose yet in life to go find out.  The truth here is hinged on the fact that you cannot possibly make the right and correct choice if you have not placed your hand on the reason why you are here on earth.

Why is this very important?  I have said this before and will say it here again; you have no business looking for a wife if you have no work to do.  This is not talking about a practical job but a life-time vocation/work.  God gives a wife to you based on the job he has asked you to do.  If you marry outside the purpose for which God created you, the relationship may deny you the fulfillment you require in what you were created to do and this can be very frustrating.  It's akin to living in hell while on earth.

Whoever becomes your spouse should be one who is in sync with your purpose; motivates you, encourages and fuel your passion and gives you the drive to continue when you feel low.  Do not ever marry someone just because you are lonely; you can be married and still be lonely!  Don't marry because you are sexually in need; you can be married and be sexually frustrated!  Okay, this is becoming interesting.  She has great looks, nice lips, great hips and she's got all the right curves in the relevant places.  Is her mind in sync with you?  Do you have the same view about religion?  Are you together on how to handle finance?  What is the basic interest that will keep the spark on after the excitement of the honeymoon?  If you cannot place your hands on the tangibles in this respect; please don't proceed.

Who you marry is totally your call.  It is not your daddy's call, nor your mother's choice.  Your friends may give you a head-start but they cannot make your decisions for you in this respect.  It is basically your choice and you have to make an informed choice.  What books have you read about relationships?  Have you carefully observed where you are headed in life and taken at second look at your relationship?  If you can bridge the gap that exists right now and what makes you thick in life is not threatened, then you are on track.  If you have to make a U-turn on your vision and mission for life because your prospective spouse does not fancy it, then you must watch it.

Marriage is about 40 to 50 years project.  Are there things you can live with and things you cannot?  Why should a guy slap you because he is angry and you still insist on going on with the relationship because you "love" him?  If he started it when you were courting, he will do it a hundred times when you are married.  If he did it at all, he can do it again.  Your lady calls you a fool just because you guys are having an argument?  That is definitely a game-changer!  Slip of tongue?  Its from the inside - you don't speak what you never thought about.  Mutual respect is critical to marriage and if you can't find it in your relationship - your married life might be a frustration at the end of the day.

Things that make for great marriages are noticed and nurtured from the courting stage.  If a marriage is going to hit the rocks, the signs are obvious from the beginning. 

You enjoy great conversation with your fiance?  That's a great sign.  The guy looks out for your interests and apologies for mistakes.  Treasure that guy!  She always want to help you out and is interested in your career and general well-being.  That looks like your wife.  A husband should be a comfort giver; a wife should inspire confidence and rest/homeliness.  True love is concerned about the other person because when there is a giving, there will be a returning of the same which was given out.

I wish I had more time to continue... I hope this gives you a clue as to how to arrive at who should be your wife or husband.  I expect your questions and we can discuss them.  Godspeed!

"Is he the one? Is she? How do I know?"

My last blog titled "I am of age, I want to marry" gave me a clue to the near crisis situation young ladies and guys face today as to the issue of marriage and relationship.  The amount of interest it generated amongst my readers is a huge encouragement for me to continue on in this series.  Today, I want to major on the subject of how you may know the right person for you.  I must however warn that there is no method that is cast in stone, however, I try here to discuss clear and general principles that are based on sound footing which if followed will definitely lead you on the right track.

The threshold of interest/friendship

What really makes you want to be friends with someone of the opposite sex?  You definitely are not friendly with every guy or lady if you are of the opposite gender.  There must be something that you must have found interesting to you that you want to identify with.  This must not be mixed up with the general interest guys have for ladies for the sole motive of taking them to bed; neither is it the crush a lady has on a guy just because he simply looks good and she wants him for one night stand.  This likeness and interest I discuss here is simply pure and has no desire for lust as its basic motivation.

If you like someone, it means there is something inside of you that know that the other person has some value to offer your life.  This threshold of interest which leads to friendship must be entered into with caution so that you are not in a way making hasty commitments before you are supposed to.

There are different occasions at which you might meet your new acquaintance.  It could be in school or at work or just in a bus and the normal and casual "hi hi" kind of relationship is established.  You are most likely drawn towards each other because of a certain kind of chemistry you share which might be difficult to explain.  This chemistry which draws you to each other should naturally lead you to begin to check each other out with respect to your future as individuals.  

Questions on your mind like "does this person respect me? does she believe in me? do we share the same values for life?  does he share my passion?  do I have a tendency to gravitate towards him just because it is him who said it?  does she answer my questions of whether women can be trusted (or vice versa)?  does she love me for the sake of who I am or what I have?  do I love her for the sake of herself irrespective of her faults?"  If you answer YES to at least 80% of these questions as you relate with this person for upwards of six months, then you are supposed to take this relationship a bit seriously.  If your answer is NO in at least 50% of the entire catalogue, you should begin to make a steady retreat.  These are initial tests that most of us never did or do not consider necessary.  We just go on a swing of feeling, having been swept off our feet with sweet words which men and women have learnt how to say over time especially when they have ulterior motives at the back of their minds.

The question of purpose

As a young man or woman, if you do not yet have a handle on why you are here on earth, a relationship towards the end of marriage should be the last thing on your mind.  If you get serious and make commitments in a relationship before you find out your purpose and what you should be doing, you might suddenly discover that you are hooked to the wrong person who does not value or respect what you are cut out for and frustration and eventual crash of that relationship becomes apparent.  In some other cases, in a bid to hold on to the relationship especially when they are married and at the same time on to purpose; they may end up not fulfilling their destiny and at the same time have a very frustrating marriage.  That is akin to the story of a people who looked down on the profession of plumbing and exalted philosophy of any kind.  They ended up having very dry taps and came to naught when sound theories were required of them.


It is therefore critical for you to have a handle on purpose... the reason why you are here on earth before you think of entering a serious relationship that may end up in marriage.  If you at a loss as to how to find out your purpose, it will be necessary for you to get in touch with me and I can send you an advance e-copy of my book "WHAT CAN YOU SEE?" for a price you can't find anywhere if you so desire.  Send me an email to this effect and I will communicate with you the details of how you may pay and obtain the e-copy of the book.  My email address is godwinogwuche@yahoo.com.  The next set of discussions on this subject may become more profitable for you if you understand your purpose for life.


I will come to you with Part 2 of this particular subject with fuller details on how to know your partner in marriage.  Stay connected and don't touch this dial for a second!  Thank you for paying attention.  Keep your comments coming.

"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!