The Marriage Series 14

Hello beautiful people of God, I trust you are all doing great to the glory of God. It’s another beautiful day and another beautiful opportunity to share some valuable truth about marriage. If only we can have the Kingdom of God come and His will be done in our marriages, in no time at all we will the Kingdom of God come and His will be done in our society. So you will not just be improving your personal life and experience when you apply the truth of the word of God in your marriage and home, you will be affecting your society positively by what radiates from your home and marriage. And you will go a step further by sharing what you learn from the word of God and on this blog with a friend. Little drops of love makes an ocean of pleasurable experience.

In today’s post we will be looking at some external interference in marriages and how to deal with these interferences. Some external interference that often affects the smooth running of a marriage are: influences from relatives namely: parents, siblings, cousins, in-laws, aunties, uncles and so on. Then we have the influence of friends, acquaintances, so-called parents in the Lord and any other person that you allow to have unnecessary hold or say in your marriage. 

Genesis 2:24

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 

In God’s marriage design at the beginning the interference of families and friends was not captured. In fact the Bible says “therefore a man will leave father and mother and be joined to his wife.” For a marriage to succeed there must be a breakaway of the married couples from every form of interference. A couple who seeks to have a successful marriage will shield their marriage from any external input.

I am not advocating that you ex-communicate your family members because you are married, but that your family which you originated from and your friends do not in any way have control over the family you are building in your marriage. They are two separate entities and should be handled and treated as such. Any attempt to marry the two families into one is the building blocks for a troubled marriage.

When you have troubles building your home and you genuinely seek help, not that you have made up your mind on the path you want to take but that you are lost and confused, first take a break and pray. The Lord will direct your way a voice that can speak out the will of God for you to lead you on the path to take to receive the help you need when you need it.

Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 4:9 that two are better than one, and I kind of wonder why he didn’t say three are better than one. It is often said that two is a company and three is a crowd; the company is what God works with and not the crowd.

I sometimes wonder why God instructed a man about to be married to leave father and mother to cleave to his wife. This same instruction was what the Lord gave to Abraham in Genesis 12:1 when the Lord called Abraham and told him to get out of his country away from his family and his father’s household to a land the Lord will show him. When I sought the Lord on this issue, I realized that this father’s household is unnecessary influence to what God has in store for the married couple and their marriage. There is the tendency that the father's household will pervert or contaminate God’s plans for the marriage. These are influences the Lord does not desire to work with as the issue at hand does not concern them.

Another important angle to view the matter from is that everyone has different races to run; each individual and marriage has different issues to deal with. The assignments for each couple are different. What God permitted for couple A might not be what He will permit for couple B, and so what works for marriage A might not work for marriage B even if the wives are sisters from the same mother or the husbands are brothers of the same father. So, on all fronts there is no basis for comparison, so when you allow couple A to influence you in your own marriage you might get it all wrong while it might be all right for couple A. God who made the master plan at the beginning now says leave them all behind and let Me go on this journey with you. With God in your marriage you can never get it wrong.

I once heard the story of a couple; the wife’s mother practically controls all that happens in their home. She measures the quantity of food everyone in the home eats and the wife depends on her mother’s advice for everything. She handles her marriage and husband exactly the way her husband tells her to. It got so bad that the wife’s mother moved in and began to live with them. The husband tried to cope with this for the love he had for his wife until he could no longer take the madness unfolding before him. He had become a slave in his own house. Then one day he took the bull by the horn and walked his mother-in-law out of his house and instructed her never to return. The wife cried and her husband bluntly told her its either she sticks with him or go marry her mother. And that was how they broke free from the domineering mother-in-law. But I tell you that I don’t blame the mother-in-law, she was given the space and she took advantage of it.

I do not advocate that we disrespect our parents or parents-in-law because we know that they should have no influence in our marriage, but we should apply wisdom in dealing with them, accord them their full respect while shielding our marriage from their influences. May the living God give us wisdom to be able to deal with external influences in our marriages.

I am trusting God to be able to deliver the mind of God to us on the issue of Marriage and Divorce. I hope and believe we have been enjoying the marriage series so far, if yes please pray that the God continue to open our hearts and teach us how to make our marriages a divine success. There are a lot more contained in the book Marriage: God’s Rules of Engagement, you can order a copy from the links provided below. I assure you that with God you cannot get it wrong in marriage.