It’s another beautiful day and another glorious time to share the truth of the word of God on this blog. I am really feeling blessed to be a vessel in God’s hand I must say and as always I bless God for the lives and homes that are blessed and touch by the truth of God’s word on this blog.
In today’s blog I will be making good my second promise, so in this post we will be looking at the role of in-laws in our marriages. What assignment do our parents, parents in-law, siblings and siblings in-law have to play in our marriage based on the design of God at the beginning?
Genesis 2:24
For this reason a man will leave father and mother and be united to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Matthew 19:4-6
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Ephesians 5:31
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
Genesis 12:1
The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”
These passages above will be the focus point of this blog message. At the beginning when God instituted marriage, it was about the man leaving and then cleaving. So every successful marriage working according to the plan and purpose of God for marriage begins with a leaving and then proceeds with a uniting/cleaving. So based on God’s design for marriage a man should leave his father and mother and cleave/unite with his wife and the two will become one flesh. But before the wife feels she does not have to do the leaving, the man is required to be united to his wife alone and not the wife and her parents, siblings, uncles or aunties. So what that means is that for a marriage to actively and successfully kick off, both the man and his wife are required to leave their fathers and mothers and cleave to one another to become one flesh.
What this tells us is that based on God’s design for marriage, at the point where the wife’s parents hand their daughter over to her husband, they have relinquished control of her life over to her husband. Paul said in Ephesians 5:23 that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. Once marriage commences, the influence and control that parents have over their married daughter drops and the husband takes up the mantle of leadership over her life.
The important question that will easily come to mind is that why would God require that a man and his wife leave father and mother and cleave/unite with each other? And what the Lord opened up my mind to in answer to this question is the fact that the provisions of marriage is mainly for the husband and the wife. Any addition to the combination of the husband and wife will translate to extra strain and burden on what God has provided for the man and his wife. The bringing in of father, mother, sisters and brother into your marriage is so to say bringing extra luggage into what God originally planned for two. Now it is not God that will have to increase the supply to fit your desire but that you trim your desire to suit the provisions of God for your marriage.
I am always moved to liken the call of God on the life of a man to that call God made on Abraham. When God called Abram in Genesis 12:1, He gave the same instructions as He gave to the man in marriage and that was to leave is father’s household and go with his wife to a place only God knew. Abraham obeyed but then he didn’t leave his father’s household behind. He went in the company of his nephew Lot. But reading through to chapter 13 of the book of Genesis, verse 6 tells us that the land could no longer support Abraham and Lot staying together, and quarrelling began to arose between Lot’s herdsmen and Abraham’s herdsmen. And this went on until they both realized they had to part ways.
This is what plays out in marriage when the husband and wife refuses to leave their father’s household behind before cleaving to each other. They enter into marriage with unrequired and unnecessary extra luggage that eventually brings about quarrels and fights in marriage which in turn rubs them off the joy and peace of marriage.
When God realized that it was not good for the man to be alone, He had the option of providing the man's mother for him as a helper, but He did not do that. Rather the Lord formed a suitable helper for the man from within the man as his wife. Every man should be able to differentiate the place for mother and wife in their lives and not try to compare or swap roles. A man should take care of his parents and ensure they very well provided for. But carrying them along into his marriage will only result in the same scenario as we read of Abraham and Lot. The issue of the husband’s mother living in her son’s house with his wife is like having two bosses occupying the same space and having the same roles; there will always be clashes and fights with peace farfetched.
In the same manner the wife’s mother has no business living with her daughter when the daughter is married. She has her own home to watch over. When the mother has been able to train her child in the right direction then she has no reason to worry over her once she is married. Any other issue arising should only be taken care of in prayers and godly counsel.
I have heard of a husband beaten up silly by the siblings of his wife for not providing financially for their sister. What beats me in this is that when the siblings knew they could provide for their sister why didn’t they marry her? The fact that the woman can still say she is married to the man after he had been beaten silly by her siblings is what I am fining hard to comprehend, but this is a true life story.
Marriage is about a man and his wife and not a man and his wife and his brothers, parents, sibling. Neither is marriage about a man and his wife and his wife’s parents and siblings. When a man is not man enough to marry, it is okay that he remains unmarried rather than marry and allow another man run his home for him. In the same manner, when a woman is not matured enough to marry, she is better off remaining under her parent’s watch than marrying and having to run back home to get a response for all her husband’s requests and complains. May the Lord bless our homes.
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