Sunday 25 December 2016

What is Most Important to You in Marriage? Love, Trust, Time or Sex (2)

A very Merry Christmas to you, may the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ remain in your hearts and in your lives forever. I pray that Jesus will not be missing in your hearts, He will not be missing in your homes and He will not be missing in your marriages. The turnaround that you have been seeking God for will surely come without delay in Jesus name.

Though we are in that celebration and relaxed mood, yet we will need to continue to feed on the word of God. And so we will continue to look at the gist that I started with yesterday. Which is the most important element in marriage? Is it Love, Trust, Time or Sex? Yesterday we were able to search the word of God for the role of love in marriage based on discoveries made from Bible; today we will look at the role of Trust in marriage. How can we make use of Trust in our marriages?

Faithfulness in marriage is a must by God’s standard. If you have any sexual relationship with a man or woman who is not your husband or wife, you are either committing the sin of fornication for those who are not married or the sin of adultery for those who are married; and same gender sexual relationship is a taboo to God, but that is not the focus for this write-up. Everywhere in the Bible we read about God warning us to abstain from sexual immorality, that tells us how much God holds the marriage vows we make to each other sacrosanct and He expects that as His children we do the same. The marriage bed should be undefiled in any way.

Jeremiah 17:5-10
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no-one lives.
“But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”

This passage is where I find God speaking about trust in a very explicit manner and I am sure the next thought that comes to mind is: Does this apply to marriage too? How then can I marry a man that I cannot trust? So by the special grace of God we will try to understand the application of trust in our marriages going by God’s declaration in Jeremiah 17:5-10.

The first truth I want you to understand is that this declaration of God in Jeremiah 17:5-10 is applicable in every area of our lives including our marriage; if it were not so, God would have given some exemptions. So when you allow the strength of your marriage to hinge on the trust you have for your spouse, you are acting in error and you are opening yourself up for a big shock or a possible heartbreak. This is one of the reasons why some marriages are unable to withstand the storms that hit them because the center of the marriage is very fragile and unpredictable.

God said cursed is the man who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for strength, He didn’t say except your spouse. So as long as your spouse is under the umbrella of man, and he/she is flesh you are putting yourself at risk putting your strength in him or her. This is not my words, but the word of God. But you will understand how a marriage can run successfully without the strength of that marriage being centered solely on your trust in your spouse and yet you are not having to suspect your spouse of any wrong doing because the word of God says "cursed is the man who puts his trust in flesh" and so destroying the peace, love and harmony of your home and marriage.

Jeremiah 17:6 says “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.” When the strength of your marriage is from God and not your spouse, your marriage can withstand any storm. When you daily commit your marriage into God’s hands, He will continually watch over that marriage. When you are always praying for your spouse, then God will always watch over your spouse to make sure he/she does nothing that will jeopardize the strength of the marriage. You need to acknowledge, understand and appreciate that you spouse left alone is a potential vessel in the hands of the enemy to test your faith and destroy your peace. But when you hand over your spouse into the hands of God, the Lord will form a hedge roundabout him/her such that he/she becomes unreachable by the enemy of your peace.

For you to have a good understanding of what I am trying to get across in write-up, I will share a short story on this: A young lady was struggling with infidelity in her marriage, she had fought her husband on so many occasions on his adulterous life-style to the point that she just didn’t know what else to do. The man kept making broken promises to stop having extra-marital affairs, but they were all promises never kept. Because she knew that God hated divorce, as a Christian she could not divorce her husband.

Eventually, she cried bitterly to God for help. In tears her and prayer the Lord spoke to her heart that infidelity will forever be a thing of history in her marriage. She held on to the word she heard from God and hinged her faith on it. Gradually her husband started getting bored with other women and began to pay more attention on his wife. Today, she is at peace, not because she knows her husband cannot cheat on her again, but she because she knows that God will not go back on his words. This should be the application of trust in your marriage if you want to have a marriage that can withstand any storm.

One important fact is that your spouse is flesh and vulnerable to attack, he or she might not want to intentionally betray your trust but they might it because they are vulnerable. The fact that they betrayed your trust does not amount to lack of love from them to you, it’s just because they are flesh and they are susceptible to attack and can also be vessels in the hands of the enemy to attack you. And so God says trust Him instead and He will perfect all that concerns you. When you trust your spouse into the hands of God you have better confidence because God is forever faithful and He will not betray your trust in any way. You can go to sleep that your spouse will not betray your trust not because in truth they can't betray you, but because you have handed them over to God and you are confident that God is faithful not to betray your trust in Him. He will keep that which you have kept in His care including your spouse and marriage. 

Going back to our big question which is: Which element is most important in marriage? Is it love, trust, time or sex? I will say that trust is very important in marriage but who do you trust? Is God or your spouse? The way and manner you invest your trust in marriage determines the returns it yields for you, so it’s important that you invest it wisely.

May the Lord bless our homes and marriages in Jesus name. 

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