The Products of Your Marriage

Hello lovely people, I am so grateful to God that we made it to another new year. I am using this opportunity to wish you all a gloriously blessed year in Jesus name.

I want us to start this new year looking at the products of our marriage, I have often mentioned that what we sow into our marriages multiples as yields for us. You can’t expect to get the best out of your marital life if you haven’t given your best into your marriage. If your marriage isn’t giving you what you want, then check out the value of what you are investing into it. And not just the value of what you invest, but that you make your investment with the leading of the Holy Spirit being mindful of the fact that marriage is not a one-size-fits-all institution. What goes for husband A might not pass well with husband B and what wife A can tolerate and cope with might be an outright irritation to wife B so in marriage you need to stay on your lane and focus on God.

But one product of marriage that is of great significance to you and the society at large is the offspring that your marriage produces. The children the Lord has blessed you with. Malachi 2:15 tells us that God made the man and his wife one in flesh and spirit because He was seeking godly offspring from their union. So to say that you owe God the responsibility of your marriage producing for God the godly offspring that He seeks.

I am not an expert in parental counseling and I only have teenagers myself and still on the learning curve like a lot of people that will be reading this, but one thing that I believe to be true both in Bible days and our present day generation is that your children and how you raise and train them have great impact on your destinies as parents. We have read of Prophet Eli in the book of 1 Samuel 1-3 and how his children through lack of discipline destroyed all that Eli had worked for as a priest before the Lord. And we also read in 2 Samuel 11-18 of how the small sin of David’s adultery destroyed the lives of his children. So we see that our actions and inactions as parents affects the lives of our children in no small measure as their lives affects ours as parents too. And then consider the fact that the more godly children we produce from our marriage who in turn fill up the society, the better the society we will have. As parents we have a very big role to play in the growth and development of our society through the growth and development of the offspring produced from our individual marriages.

Like I mentioned earlier, I am not vast in parenting issues as I am just learning myself, but would like for us to learn together and trust the Holy Spirit to open up the mind of God to us on this issue; it’s time to take our parenting responsibilities a little more seriously.

Job1:1-5

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest among all the people of the East.

His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.  

There are quite a handful of parenting stories to glean from in the Bible, a lot of them I wrote about in my book “Because the Lord Seeks Godly Offspring,” but the one that we will learn from in this post, is the parenting qualities of the man named Job.

The first few verses of the book of Job tells us so much about who job is, but one important lesson that I am taking away from these few verses and would also want you to learn from is Job’s qualities as a father. The Bible tells us that Job was a very rich man, he was so rich in wealth that he was the greatest man in the East at his time. You will agree with me that with such wealth also comes affluence and fame. So it will not be wrong to deduce that Job was rich and famous. Another thing that should be noticed about Job is that he was a man who feared God and shunned evil and so we can also deduce that Job took the things of God very seriously. We can conclude that Job was a man who wouldn’t miss church activities nor neglect the work of God. He must have been deeply involved in counseling and evangelism if such existed in his time. All these as a result of his love for God.

But all of these didn’t deter him from raising godly offspring. All his wealth and fame didn’t prevent him from purifying his children after every festive period. It didn’t disturb him from sacrificing to God on behalf of his children per-adventure they sinned against God in their hearts. It wasn’t just the open sins of his children that bothered Job, but the hidden sins of the heart of his children were also a concern for him.

We should also note that Job as a godly man was a lover of God and the things of God; so his pursuit of God and the things of God did not make him forget his responsibilities as a father. He was not too busy with church activities that he forgot to purify his children on a regular basis. He wasn’t too busy with business and work related meetings that he forgot to sacrifice to God on behalf of his children, and the Bible tells us that this was Job’s regular custom.

Do we now think it was wrong for God to make a boastful declaration concerning the life of Job to satan saying there was none like him on the face of the earth (Job 1:8, Job 2:3). Job was a true righteous man who didn’t fail God in any area of his life including his responsibilities as a father.

I want to learn from the life of Job and I pray that we all learn too, and the lesson therein is that we don’t have any excuse to fail God in producing for Him the godly offspring that He seeks from our marriage union. If Job as the greatest man among the men of the East in his time did not fail God despite his riches and affluence, then we don’t have an excuse. And if Job the righteous man did not fail God in his responsibilities as a father despite his pursuits of righteousness and his work for God, then we don’t have an excuse.

Eli the prophet failed God as a father and God did not spare him because he was a priest, so your pursuit of righteousness is not good enough a reason not to raise your children in the way of the Lord. As a parent I agree it’s tough combining all roles but with God’s help we are not designed to fail.

I pray you have been blessed by this piece, and I pray the Lord will help us dig a bit deeper on parenting as a product of our marriages and I pray the Holy Spirit will lead us in Jesus name. Remain blessed in Jesus name.