What Women Do to Invest in their Marriage

I am so sorry for the small break, needed to attend to urgent family concerns, but here I am live sending you this from the bottom of my heart.
In my last post we looked at some extraordinary husbands and how they invested in their marriages and they enjoyed peace and love in the marriage. In today’s post we will continue in that line and consider some extraordinary wives who have invested much in their marriages too and the yields that returned to them on their investment.

And the first wife I want us to consider is Sarah. It appears we can’t just learn enough from that woman called Sarah and I understand why the Bible would model her as a godly woman of old. It is no doubt that Sarah belongs to the league of extraordinary wives and the things she pulled through in her marriage appears matchless in today’s world.

The first lesson that endears me to Sarah was her issue of barrenness. Here is what the Bible says in Genesis 16.

Genesis 16:1-2

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

The Bible tells us in Genesis 15 how Abraham had petitioned God over the issue of him not having a child and the Lord had promised him one. As women, we know what it feels like to know that your husband is sleeping with another woman, so we can appreciate Sarai’s courage in inviting her maidservant into her husband’s life to share her husband with her. But she did that for a reason. She must have taken that option just in the bid to satisfy her whining husband who was desperate for a child. And even though a lot of people will consider Sarai foolish for her suggestion and the outcome of that suggestion, I choose to consider her reason for the suggestion and how much she was willing to sacrifice for the peace of her husband and marriage. That was a huge investment in marriage to me.

Then we see in Genesis 12:10-20 and Genesis 20:1-18 where Abraham instructed his wife on two occasions to tell half-truth that she was his sister rather than his wife and Sarah obeyed. What a submission that was. What a huge investment in marriage that was. I have gone through Sarah’s submission more than once on this blog and each time I am convinced that she has earned the honor of being the mother of all godly women by her exemplary submissive life in marriage.

You might then want to ask what Sarah’s return on investment was after all she sacrificed as investment in her marriage. First Sarah became the mother of many nations as the Lord had promised. At age 90 she gave birth and the sigma of barrenness was removed from her life. Then she won back the love and respect of her husband. Abraham loved her again. And then she had a postmortem recognition as the mother of all righteous women. And so you see that Sarah investment paid off at the end of the day.

I wondered what would have become of Sarah if she didn’t obey her husband to the point of lying for him. Well probably she would have been out of his life and wouldn’t be a part-taker of God’s promise in Abraham’s life. And most assuredly we wouldn’t have heard anything again about Sarah again in the record of time. But she is there today because she invested much in her marriage and the gains of that investment accrued to her.

Then another woman that I love to respect as a wife is Abigail in the story found in 1 Samuel 25. What an outstanding extraordinary wife she was, for her to stand by a mean and surly husband like Nabal despite the fact that they both had two totally different characteristics and personalities, is something to emulate from Abigail.

Abigail knew that her husband was mean and surly, she knew her own worth as a beautiful and intelligent woman and yet she remain faithful to her marriage and she went ahead to plead the case of her mean and surly husband before David. She filled the deficit in Nabal’s character and she was all that he wasn’t. On account of her, her husband and his household were spared by David and she didn’t even let him know. She didn’t mention to her husband how she saved his life. It was a labor of love in secret and the returns of what she invested was obvious in the open. That is the kind of wife Abigail was. She was not one to blow her own trumpet.

Now you might ask what her returns on her marriage investment was? This same Abigail became the wife of King David after the death of her mean and surly husband. The Lord freed her of the burden of a husband who was unrepentantly mean and surly and gave her to a more deserving husband who was a king.

Then we see another extraordinary wife in Esther who got to the throne as queen by virtue of her simplicity and focus on God. When Esther was confronted with an issue that she needed to resolve with her husband king Xerxes in the book of Esther 4, the way and manner she presented her case to her husband tells a lot about her marriage investment. The reverence she accorded her husband is something worth emulating. And did she get the desired result? Well, we all know the way the story ended in the book of Esther. The man Haman who plotted the downfall of her uncle and race, was put down instead and the gallows he prepared for Mordecai, he was the one hung on it in his stead.

You might want to ask if Esther could have approached the matter from another point of view, well the answer to that is yes. And would she get the same result, well that I can’t tell. But one thing that is sure is that Esther’s approached worked for her and she received her desired return on her marriage investment. This is something worth emulating.

And just to cap this up, I want us to consider the story of Ruth, she was another extraordinary wife. These are women that I am not just learning from, but applying what I have learnt from them in my marriage and I am getting good returns on investment myself. Sincerely I can't blow my husband's trumpet loud enough. It was my birthday last Sunday and even though we didn't have any form of celebration, my husband didn't stop disturbing me to know what I would want as a gift for my birthday. If you think he should know and spring up a surprise, I will tell you that he has sprang too many pleasant surprises on me almost on a weekly basis that he is beginning to run out of ideas. That is what God is doing for me, that is my testimony, that is why I say with confidence that it's important to invest in your marriage and you do so prayerfully.   

We all know the story of Ruth in the book of Ruth and she was so extraordinary that a whole chapter of the Bible was dedicated to telling her story. Ruth was a wife who remained faithful to her marriage even after the death of her husband. Now who does that? More so when she was legitimately free to marry another husband before God and man.

But there was something more that attracted Ruth to her mother in-law after her husband's death that was beyond physical marriage. Ruth begged her mother-in-law not to let her return back to her people and her god.

Ruth 1:16

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

This declaration was what distinguished Ruth from Orpah her mate. Ruth was willing to embrace the God of Naomi, she wanted to align with the God of Israel and that simply pushed her from the league of ordinary nice wives to an extraordinary wife. She put the God of Israel in the equation of her decision to stay married despite the death of her husband. And just like you can never involve God in an issue and loss out, Ruth got her full returns on her marriage investment. God honored her such that she found another good husband in Boaz and she was included in the lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ. So whenever you want to trace the lineage of Jesus you will come across the mention of Ruth and Boaz. But the ordinary nice Orpah frizzled out of the Bible the moment she decided to return to her own people and her own god.

What are you willing to invest in your marriage? When you make up your mind to make God your focus as your reason for investing in your marriage, then you can be rest assured that your yields in that marriage will gladden your heart. When you decide to submit to your husband not because he deserves it, but because you do it to please God, you can be sure that your marriage will be sweet and you will have peace, and the prosperity that accrues to obedient children of God will accrue to you. And just to make it sweet, your husband will grow to love you. These are the gains that yields to you when you invest in your marriage.  

If you have been blessed by this, and you have learned much from this eye opening marriage write up, you might want to check more books inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by me on My Book Store here. These are books written based on the truth of the Bible, and are guaranteed to make a huge and positive difference in every area of your life. They are worth more than their money value and they will bless your life greatly. If you buy now, you will enjoy great discounts on purchase. But nevertheless, you will always have a seasoned word from God on this blog that will bless your life absolutely for free.

In my next blog post, I will try share a story with you that we can learn from as we invest right in our marriage. 

What Men Do to Invest in their Marriage

I promised in my last post that we will share a story on the gains of investment so that we can relate well with the topic more. But just before I do that, I want to take some examples from the Bible on men and women who actually made God the focus of some key decisions in their marriage and the returns on investment based on these decisions in their marriage paid off big time. They had good returns on the investments they made in their marriage.

The first man I want us to consider from the Bible is Isaac, we will find the story of his marriage in Genesis 24, and the first interesting thing to learn in that story is how Isaac got married to Rebekah. I wouldn't want us to focus on the whole detail of how the choice of wife for Isaac came about from the beginning but what I find as a learning point in relations to marriage investment is found in Genesis 24:62-67

Genesis 24:62-67

Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. He went out to the field one evening to meditate and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, “Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?”

“He is my master,” the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself.

Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

The story above is the last detail of the marriage between Isaac and Rebekah. What makes me have so much respect for Isaac and count him among the league of extraordinary men was his willingness to marry and love Rebekah without any preconditions. All Isaac knew and was satisfied with was the fact that Rebekah was a wife God chose for him and he knew and understood that God would give him nothing but His best. He didn’t bother if she was well brought up, he didn’t worry about her family background, her ability to make a good wife was not pre-tested by him; he didn’t even bother to find out if she would be submissive and obedient or not. All he knew and was enough for him was the story told to him by his father’s chief servant. It appears Isaac didn’t even know that Abraham had sent his servant on a mission to get a wife for him, yet he took Rebekah to his mother’s tent and there he married her and loved her and was comforted. There was absolutely no precondition for him to love his wife. Yet he loved her and had one of the best of marriages in Bible times.

We would even notice that Rebekah’s barrenness in Genesis 25:21 didn’t stop Isaac from loving her. But rather than tag her barren and ill-treat her, he loved her enough to pray to God on her behalf and she conceived. This is the kind of unconditional love of a husband to his wife that yields positive returns on investment.

Another man that I love to respect in the league of extraordinary husbands is Joseph the earthly father figure of our Lord Jesus Christ. For a man to agree to take for himself a wife carrying a child who is not naturally or biologically his and father such a child and still love his wife knowing she was carrying a child that is not his, is a very commendable trait and that makes me respect Joseph so much. And we see that his marriage to marry was without troubles as no record of such was found in the Bible.

And another man I love to respect a lot as a husband in the Bible is Job. Job was a man of many good qualities; he was a wealthy great man yet he was a man who feared God and shunned evil. But he was a great husband too if you ask me, and my reason for coming to this conclusion is this: We read in Job 2:9-10 that in the heat of Job’s trial all the advice that could come from his wife who should be a support and a helper to him was to curse God and die.

Now a wife who should be a shoulder to lean on in times of trouble is literarily the one asking you to curse God and die. A normal man would make enquiries to know if his wife was not the cause of her woes for her to be wishing him dead or only have the wrong advice for him when he needed her encouragement and positivity the most. But even though Job rebuked his wife for her foolish advice, he didn’t cast her away. And when all things were restored to Job and he became wealthier than he was before his troubles began, we didn’t read in the Bible that Job took another wife. Job remained married to his wife and even had other children with her. This is just what can be done by an extraordinary man.

One thing that these three extraordinary men had in common was that God was their focus. They did what they did not because their wives deserved such treatment from them, but because they trusted in God and made Him the reason why they did what they did. And did it pay off at the end? We all know it did and they all had good returns on their investment. Job never stopped to be a wealthy man and his record was not tarnished before God on account of divorce, and Joseph had his name included in history and in the lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who would have heard of Joseph or reckoned with his person if he had walked away from Mary on account of infidelity? But he listened to the voice of God and he enjoyed that accolade of a hero. And that wonderful husband named Isaac became the father of many nations like his father, he also had a good record before God and he was a blessed man till death; in the midst of severe famine, Isaac was growing rich until he became exceedingly rich that kings began to fear him on account of his wealth.

These are worthy men to emulate and when a man makes God his focus even in marriage, he would invest right in it and have a very good returns on his investment.  

If you have been blessed by this, and you have learned much from this eye opening marriage write up, you might want to check more books inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by me on My Book Store here. These are books written based on the truth of the Bible, and are guaranteed to make a huge and positive difference in every area of your life. They are worth more than their money value and they will bless your life greatly. If you buy now, you will enjoy great discounts on purchase. But nevertheless, you will always have a seasoned word from God on this blog that will bless your life absolutely for free.

So before I go into the story telling, I would want us to search out the Bible for extraordinary wives too. This will give us a balanced view of the matter, and so in my next post we will look at a few extraordinary wives in the Bible that we can learn from and probably enjoy good yields on our marriage investment as they did. Until then, please remain very blessed.   

The Returns on Marriage Investment

I had promised in my last post to discuss on some gains of investing in your marriage and I hope to make good that promise in this post by the special grace of God.

It's common knowledge that men and women are built with different mindset and event different body structure. The way we think and rationalize issues as women are totally different from the way men rationalize issues and that accounts for a handful of misunderstandings in marriage. The wives are mostly consumed in their convictions that they feel they are right no matter how the situation is perceived. And the men are always "the he who must be obeyed,” so whether they are right or wrong just do it the way they want it done and there will be no troubles.

I am convinced God is so very mindful of this trend in husbands and wives for Him to provide the rules for marriage as we find them in the Bible (Ephesians 5:22:31). Though I don’t have facts to support my claim and so would not be so assertive on what I am about to write, but it is wildly postulated that women are more emotional than men. While women act based on feelings. Men act based on reasoning. So we can conclude that women think with their hearts.

From what the Bible gives us as God’s law for marriage in Ephesians 5:22-31, we read the instruction for the wives in Ephesians 5:22-24 that wives should submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, and that they should submit to their husbands in everything as the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church. Now the problem with this instruction for woman is that because they are emotional beings and act based on emotions, they need some form of emotional justification in order to obey this rule for them in marriage. A wife would want her husband to show her love which is an emotional feeling to justify her submission to him. And this is where marriage investment comes in.

When you want to invest in a thing, the rational thing to first consider is the profitability of your investment. You try to envisage your Returns on Investment before you decide to invest or not to invest. And even though some investments are high risk, you are still compelled to invest anyway before you know that the ROI on that investment is high. So you don’t make the risk factor a focus for your business decision as much as you make your ROI the determining factor of your investment. So because the ROI is high, you invest anyway.

Applying the same principle in your marriage this is what it looks like: The husband who is a logical man and acts based on reasoning and not on emotions would want a justifiable reason to love his wife, so he asks himself questions such as: can she be a good wife? Is she supportive? Is she submissive and respectful? Is she a good home maker? Can she cook? Is she making herself a good mother to his children? Is she presentable in appearance? etc and all these add up for him as reasons to or not to love is his wife. And this is eliminating the fact there might be another woman somewhere vying for his attention and love too. And if that be the case there is something called comparative analysis setting in. So he also might be considering who is better of the two woman, not giving thought for the covenant he entered into with his duly wedded wife. 

But if a wife decides to go beyond what is presumed to be normal or rather the expected limit of a woman and she stops to be just like any other woman to become an extraordinary woman who is rare and highly valued, she would go beyond the limits of emotions and make some high risk investment in her marriage making God Almighty her ROI and staking her investment risk on God. If she decides to do this, she will choose to obey God’s instructions for her marriage above any emotional feeling she might crave for in her marriage as justification to submit to her husband and her focus for doing so has nothing to do with her husband but everything to do with God. She would decide to submit to her husband obeying him in everything not because her husband deserves it or has earned that respect, submission and obedience from her, but because of her love for God and her willingness to obey God thus obeying her husband as an act that pleases God. She is submitting to her husband because God says she should and her Return on Investment on that decision comes from God. And I am a living witness to the fact that you can’t trade with God and lose. You cannot be in partnership with God and fall short. That is the only impossibility you can find in God; He will never disappoint your trust and faith in Him, and when you obey His instructions despite every opposition, you will gain much. God rewards obedience to His words.

When you decide to go beyond the ordinary, and you place yourself in the league of extraordinary women who do God’s will in every area of their lives including their marriage and so decide to obey your husband and submit to him in spite of him and all the negative outlook that seem to surround your decision, some things are bound to happen. First, because you have chosen you do the will of God above your will, God will visit you marriage and heal it. God will begin to turn things around for your good, and those problems that fights, arguments, malice, quarrels were not able to solve for you, God will solve them and all you need to do to make that happen is simply obey Him and submit to you husband.

Then the second thing that is bound to happen is that by submitting to your husband, you find yourself doing things to please your husband. When you please your husband in the bid to please God, you give your husband more than enough reasons to love you. So logically you have earned your husband’s love and respect too; and that's all because you have chosen to leave the league of ordinary women to extraordinary women who truly keep God at the focus of their thought, actions and decisions. Now your simple investment of submission to God through the submission to your husband has yielded for you returns on investment of a peaceful marriage and a loving husband. Sincerely, it just that simple. So you have the love of God over your life, you have the love of your husband because you are doing it God's way and then you have a peaceful and loving marriage. 

And the same thing applies to the husbands; now ordinary men love their wives for reasons. For them there must be something she is doing right that attracts them to her and makes them love her. But what if this wife is waiting for her husband to love her first before she submits to him?  This is where some men become extraordinary men, they go beyond what an ordinary man would do and they invest in their marriage staking their investment on God and not on any other reason to love their wives. Such men would go ahead and love their wives unconditionally for no humanly conceivable reason just because they are doing it to please the Lord. God is the only reason they love their wife enough to die for her. God is the reason this extraordinary man would love his wife despite her many shortfalls. People who know him thinks he is foolish, but he knows that he is in business with God and his reward for that investment comes from God.

We all know that God's instruction for the man in marriage is to love his wife as himself and as Christ loves the church and care for her (Ephesians 5:25-29). So this extraordinary man is loving his wife to fulfill his mandate from God for his marriage.

When a man makes this kind of decision and follows it through with persistent action of love and not giving up, things are bound to turn around for good for him in that marriage. First his decisions and actions will invite God into his marriage and God will turn around that marriage for his good. And all that his ego and muscles have not been able to achieve for him, God will begin to do them for him effortlessly. And secondly, his persistent love for his wife gives her the emotional boost she needs to begin to submit to him like she should. When her husband shows her love, it becomes very easy for her to submit to him and their marriage becomes a haven on earth for them and they will begin to know and enjoy the gains of their investment in marriage and this is just the beginning of the positive yields that they are bound to receive as positive returns on the investment they have made in their marriage.

If you have been blessed by this, and you have learned much from this eye opening marriage write up, you might want to check out more books inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by me on My Book Store here. These are books written based on the truth of the Bible, and are guaranteed to make a huge and positive difference in every area of your life. They are worth more than their money value and they will bless your life greatly. If you buy now, you will enjoy great discounts on purchase. But nevertheless, you will always have a seasoned word from God on this blog that will bless your life absolutely free.

In my next post, I will try to share a story with you on the gains of marriage investment that we are learning now, until then remain very blessed.

The Father Should Do the Training

I thank God for another opportunity to share a word with you on this blog. I know it’s been a while that you have read from me and I apologize again for the break. It’s been a year of sowing seeds for me, I am either working on a book or setting up other platforms. I appreciate your patient, your concern and I pray the Lord bless you real good.

I have been thinking on the next line of marriage discussions that we can learn from on this blog, and it came to mind that there are other aspects of our marital life that we need to look into. One of such areas is the relationship between our marriage and our assignment as parents? Well I guess if there was no relationship between marriage and parenting, God will not order our lives such that we have to get married before having children. And then we noticed in Malachi 2:13-14 that God said He made the man and his wife one in flesh and spirit because He was seeking godly offspring from their marriage union.

One of the many fruits that is expected of our marriage is the godly children we have been able to produce for God from the union. The likelihood that a godly marriage will produce godly children is high, even though there are few exceptions, mostly owing to the fact that the parents have neglected their parenting assignment for other concerns. But it is a lot easier to train up children produced in an ideal marriage unit of husband and wife than to have to train your children as a single parent.  

I don’t mean to say that single parents can’t make successful parents, but whatever work we get to do, the task is much easier when two share the responsibility than when one person has to bear the burden alone. With that said, we will take a look at who owns what responsibility as parents raising up godly offspring that the Lord seeks.

Genesis 18:19

For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised.

Ephesians 6:4

Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

It is always assumed that the training of a child is the responsibility of the mother. It is assumed that she spends more time with them and so she should be saddled with the task of training and bringing them up. And even though this tradition feels quite convenient to run with more so that the men are assumed to spend more time outside of the home working hard to make a living and cater for the financial needs of the family, but this is not the order with God. In my search of the Bible, I have not come across any portion of the Bible where God penalized or punished a mother for the sins of her children and this for me is a wake-up call for the fathers/husbands.

So while we read in Proverbs 31:15 of a wife of noble character waking up early to provide food for her family and portions for her maid servants and we also read in Proverbs 31:21 that a wife of noble character is not afraid for her household when it snows because they are all clothed in scarlet, we read in Job 1:5 of a wealthy man called Job who feared God and shunned evil and who would wait for his children’s feasting period to be over and would call them together and purify them and sacrifice to God on their behalf thinking perhaps they may have sinned against the Lord while feasting. This sounds like training to me. So from these passages we read of a wife/mother taking care of the well-being of her household and we also read of a father purifying his children and so to say training them and sacrificing to God on their behalf. 

So we understand that a wife/mother has been formed by God to have a heart of compassion and love so that with her inherent love for her children she can take good care of them and ensure that they are well taken care of on all fronts. But from the way a man is formed, he holds the authority in the home and with that authority comes the assignment to train and instruct his household in the way of the Lord. No wonder it was Prophet Eli who was punished by God over the sins of his sons and not Eli’s wife in 1 Samuel 2-3.

Job understood the importance of having his children in right standing before the Lord and so he didn't allow his pursuit of wealth or his busy schedule as a great and wealthy man to prevent him from purifying his children always and sacrificing to God on their behalf after each feasting period. And so Job had such a good record before God that God had to make a boast about him before satan.

One of the criteria to meet to be eligible to be an overseer of the church is for the man to manage his family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect (1 Timothy 3:4-5). This sounds like training your children well to me. One of your primary assignment as a man is to train your children well and when you have proved yourself faithful in this assignment, you show God your readiness to take up bigger task for Him.

But like I mentioned earlier, the task of training a child is a lot easier when both parents are involved, Ecclesiastes 4:9 says “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work.” When a husband/father is carrying out the training of the children and the wife/mother is lending her support and enforcing instructions given by the father (her husband), then they get better results for their labor over the lives of their children, and so they grow to see their children become like arrows in the hands of warriors to them.

I pray that this little piece blesses homes and marriages and set records straight for many couples and they now understand that when it comes to parenting, the father holds more of the responsibility than the mother. Just as in other assignments that the man carries out in marriage, he owns the responsibility to train the children and the wife owns the responsibility to support her husband on this task. Don’t try to contradict each other in training your children. As a wife, if you feel the pattern of training is too firm or not firm enough, pray to God first and discuss your concerns in private with your husband. Never go against him publicly as it doesn’t have good effects on the training you are trying to instill in your children. And remember, a house that is divided in itself cannot stand.

If you have enjoyed reading this and have been blessed by it, you might want to consider visiting My Book Store here for life changing books inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by me. These are books written based on the truth of the Bible, and are guaranteed to make a huge and positive difference in every area of your life. They are worth more than their money value and they will bless your life greatly. If you buy now, you will enjoy great discounts on purchase. But nevertheless, you will always have a seasoned word from God on this blog that will bless your life absolutely for free.

In my next post, we will consider some of the yields that accrue to your marriage investment and if possible get a story to learn from. Until then, remain blessed.

I Wasn't Lucky

Hello wonderful people, trust we are all doing great today. May the Lord bless us and our homes in Jesus name.

My last post drew some interesting reactions that I would love to respond to in this post, please note that these were not just the responses I got, they are just the ones that calls for a response for me. I pray and hope that we will keep learning as we make efforts to make our marriages an haven for us and our family to the glory of God.

Below are some of the comments that I would want to respond to in today’s post.

First Reaction

No offence meant, but I don't agree with this post. It's easy to give advice and counsel when we are not the ones wearing the shoe.
How do you tell a woman whose husband hates her, claims she is evil, married two additional wives, not to hurt? How do you tell her to make love passionately, like it was a lack of passionate love-making that broke the home? For all I know, the woman may have been praying when he married the 2nd and instead of a miracle, her husband married the third.
I always believe marriage is not a do-or-die affair. I would rather fear for the woman's safety in the midst of hate than try to restore the home. If there is anyone who needs to work right now, it is the man. I would rather look on how I would further empower this school teacher who has three children to cater to, than win back a man who walked outside his vows. In the eyes of God, he is the sinner not her. He is the one that needs repentance.
In addition, when we get to the judgment throne, God will not judge us a couple, but as individuals. Our faults will lie at how we trained our children. So, I will advise that woman to focus on making sure her son/s are raised well.
My personal advice to her would be: forgive him. Let go of all hurt. Move on with your life with or without him. Empower yourself. Find joy from within. It is never the duty of anyone to make us happy, they can only complement our efforts. Find a hobby. Mingle with friends and family. Save money and insure your children's future, don't make your husband next of kin. Use any of your child. Finally, go to God and let him console you. He is the husband that never fails. If that home is toxic, move out for your own sanity and good health.
One more thing, Babes. You can never compare Sarah's situation with hers. Sarah knew what she was getting into. She had her options and when her plan failed, she used her option without flinching. She didn't need to fast and pray for a miracle. She just said it and it happened! I can imagine the woman in this write up saying such to her husband. The slaps and beatings that would design her face would even make heaven reel.

Second Reaction

Babes Oluchi, you wrote my mind. It's easy to dish out advice until u experience the exact same thing. A man with free will do what he wants to do no matter what. The man is grossly irresponsible and no amount of sex will change him. Let's stop rewarding bad behaviour and laying a bad example for our kids.

Just to add, Our Lord that we should emulate never enabled bad behaviour. Its not Christianity to enable bad behaviour it's religious. Let the woman move on, she is miserable as it is, please don't add to it by heaping coals of fire on her.

Third Reaction

 "The responsibility to build the home rest solely on the wife as we read in Proverbs 14:1".....

This...and a lot of other things are untrue and the very things that are causing problems in marriages from time immemorial. We have shouted ourselves hoarse trying to make women learn to stop enabling irresponsibility in men. Two cannot work together except they agree!

2. "Ensure that your sex life with your husband is fantastic, satisfy your husband sexually and in that regard do not give him room to have any complain"

Are we for a moment...going to consider the risk of being infected with an STD? Oh,,,,we did not think about that? The man in question has 2 other woman who may or may not have other sexual partners. How many times have we seen women who are pros in bed, women who do all the things mentioned in the post and even more...yet their men cheat on them with an inexperienced woman? Do you know what this does to a woman's self-esteem? IT IS NOT HER...IT IS HIM!!! Stop ignoring the very root of the problem.

3. "Those who stole him from you did just that, beat them to their game."
NO, MA. He was not stolen. He made a conscious choice. After you've won that set of women, what of others that'll come later? What a way to live...driving yourself to a point of exhaustion because you are constantly living your life to "beat the game of the women who stole your man". Is that your God-given purpose? Is that what God had in mind when he created you? It's tiring, please.

Fourth Reaction

Permit me to say that the fact that it worked for you does not mean it will work for someone else. Not every woman is willing to spend all of their youth going through emotional torture (+ or - physical torture), praying fire prayer and basically living their lives only to please a man, just so that when he has diabetes and erectile dysfunction at 70years he can come back to her. What is left to enjoy of the marriage? And I think it is unfair to imply that the only wise option is to 'fight for the marriage because the responsibility of building a marriage rests SOLELY on a woman's shoulders'. I think it is also wise to know that everyone has a mission from earth apart from marriage and it might be foolish to remain in a miserable marriage for life because like it or not, prayers and all you listed may do nothing to make the marriage better. Let's just say you were one of the lucky few your tips worked for.

I am so sorry these comments are quite lengthy but I didn’t write them and I just wanted to ensure that I capture the comments exactly as they were written. And to say that I don’t appreciate these comments would be a lie because they give me room for further discussions on marriage issues.

Also please not that I don't give nods of approval of the evil men do in marriage. There are quite a handful of post on this blog that men have been strongly chastised, so on this blog we take a holistic view of marriage issues based solely on Bible truth. No sentiments whatsoever. 

One thing I have discovered in life is that a lot of those who advice for divorce and are always of the opinion that marriage is not a do-or-die affair are those who would do anything to keep their own marriage. A lot of feminist actually do have happy homes and when I tried checking the profiles of some of those who posted this comments I noticed they had lovely family pictures of husband, wife and children put up there. Its sad they aren’t teaching what they are doing to keep it together in their own marriages to those who are having trouble in theirs. Surely it's not that they don't have arguments and misunderstandings in their marriage, you bet they do. 

When my marriage was in trouble I had a friend who was in fact a close relative of my husband that I always confided in and she was gave me similar advice as these ones I posted above and those comments from her then made me feel so good that I would go home and put up an attitude of attack before defense towards my husband. It wasn’t making my situation any better. It was a fire for fire situation in my home any day I venture speaking to this my adviser until one day when I went to see this my friend and confidant in her home and I saw her treating her husband like a king. A scenario totally different from the picture she had painted for me and advise she had given me. That was when I realized how foolish I had been. I stopped seeing her and picked up my cross and began to follow Jesus, looking up to Him to help me heal my terrible marriage.

In response to these messages the first thing that caught my attention is the insinuation that the husband hates the wife and thinks she is evil; now its interesting to note that it wasn’t hate that was between these two people when they got married. At the point of marriage they loved each other to the point that they concluded within themselves to spend the rest of their lives together. So what went wrong along the line? How did love turn to hate between them? Wouldn’t it be better wisdom to try to address the underlining issue between these two that has now made them enemies rather than lovers and friends than to conclude that walking out of the marriage is the best solution. No wonder Jesus said in Matthew 19:8-9 that the reason why Moses permitted divorce was because the hearts of men where hard, indeed the hearts of men are still hard and unyielding till this day.

Then another comment says that it is wrong to say that it’s the duty of the woman to build the home, when its clearly stated in Proverbs 14:1 that “The wise woman builds her home, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.” It’s most likely we have different Bibles that we are reading or that the Bible is a lie. For this comment, I have no response, but a wise person is one who follows the word of God as found in the Bible and lives his/her life based on the truth of the word of God as found in the Bible.

One thing that comes to mind on an issue such as this is that when a husband leaves his wife, he is not leaving her to be with or marry another man or an animal, he is actually leaving his wife to be with another woman. So you ask, what does this other woman have that his wife does not have? What is she doing right that the wife isn’t? That in itself should be a wake-up call for the wife, that another woman can beat you to it and be better than you in treating your husband right. True the man made a conscious decision to be with another woman, but what did the wife make a conscious effort to do? 

Interesting in the case of the woman I shared her story in my last post; a couple of months ago I was lying in bed with my husband and we were looking at pictures on his facebook wall and we stumbled on the pictures of this same man with a birthday cake. It was his birthday and he celebrated it in his office with his colleagues, took some pictures and posted them on facebook. And my husband commented and said the cake he was cutting and taking pictures with was made for him by his third wife. So I thought why was it not the first and God recognized wife the one making a cake for her husband on his birthday? Well I guess she was still hurting.

But as an ordinary person is it understandable that you will gravitate towards the one who shows you that she cares for you more than the one who doesn’t. I don’t excuse this man’s behavior in anyway and I condemned it strongly in my last post and still do. But two wrongs never make a right.

It’s quite easy to say that a wife should forget about her erring husband, get a divorce and move on and concentrate on herself and children. It’s good advice, but not good enough. These children will grow and stop to be under your roof to start their own leaves. Whether you like it or not those children will leave and you will be left all alone; at that time, what happens. What happens when you are old and grey alone with no strength for women empowerment and you are all alone in a big mansion with no companion? Ecclesiastes says two are better than one, God sure didn’t make a mistake when He declared in Genesis 2:18 that it is not good for the man to be alone.

Another interesting thing I find about woman of these days, same of which we find in the comments I am sharing is that it is quite convenient to discard an erring husband, but when you have a child who is giving you troubles, do you just throw that child away like you would your husband? If you can labor over your child, why then can’t you labor to save your marriage? A healthy marriage will provide well behaved children. The assignment to train a child belong to the husbands based on God's standard and not the wife. So you are taking up a task that God assigned for your husband and leaving the man to rest on his responsibility, and an irresponsible man who go to rest and say it was your decision to take up the task so he shouldn't be blamed for it.  If you build your marriage and join forces with your husband to train your children, the burden will be easy and you will have good returns for your labor over those children.

In one of the comments, a lady wrote that the wife must have prayed for her marriage and what she got was a second wife, so rather than pray for her marriage she should go to God to console her. Now if God did not prevent her husband from taking a second wife, He should just console her at least. Isn't it? Well I am trying not to be sarcastic in my response, so I’ll just say what should be said.

First God answers prayers when you ask right. God is a God that hears and answers the prayer and cry of His children; He does not close His mind to their voices, but God does not do magic. When you pray, God answers and gives you a line of action to take, when you do as He has instructed, you will get your desired outcome. It’s important that when you pray you also pay attention to the voice of God telling you what to do. If you follow that voice you can never make a mistake. And if you are not clear with what you have heard, cross-check with your Bible. God and His word are one and the same. He will never tell you to do what is contrary to what you have in the Bible. God will not tell you to divorce your spouse when He said that He hates divorce.

But God will not bend for you no matter the circumstance. He will not change His rules and patterns for you. If you are praying and you expect to wake up and see a new man right before you who is faultless and sweet to behold without any input from you, then you are getting it all wrong. Prayers without deeds are dead. When you pray, God shows you the line of action to take, when you take it, you will succeed. If you are not sure search your Bible find out what stories or instructions are in line with what you are trusting God for and follow the instruction and you will have success. For every locked door there is a key, find the key and open the door. 1 Peter 3:1-2 says if you are married to an unbelieving husband, it is through your behavior when he sees the purity and the reverence of your life that he would be won over to the Lord without words, but with actions. So you are the tool God will use to bring about the change in your husband that you have been praying for. That is why prayers must be accompanied with right actions in direction of God's instructions either directly to you or by following what you have read and learnt in the Bible.  

When you pray for God's financial blessing you don't just sit in your house doing nothing and expect an angel to come drop billions of cash on your laps. When you want God to bless you the first thing that comes to your mind is your work. You will work and pray that God bless your work and make you succeed in your endeavor; that is just how is works in marriage, you will pray and then act based on the instructions you receive from God concerning what you have prayed for. You can't pray and not act right and expect a magic from God. Such does not yield the returns you desire. 

Then another person also mentioned that I was just lucky with my own marriage situation. My dear sister, I wasn't lucky, I was determined to make it work and it worked. I was faced with a marital challenge and I was determined to have victory of that challenge. I prayed and I followed the instructions of God and with God I succeeded. I had the last laugh over my situation. Rather than bending for my challenge, it bent for me.

And in the case of STDs that was mentioned, if God is keeping you alive and you are a child of God no matter how many times your husband sleeps with other women God will always keep you safe. It is not in the nature of God to punish a wife for the sins of her husband. Jeremiah 31:29-30 says, “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes – his own teeth will be set on edge.” It’s not unheard of that a husband would contact a sexually transmitted disease and the wife is clean and safe yet they are married and well together (remember Magic Johnson the famous basketballer). So I don’t have a fear for a wife in this case, it’s the husband who sinned and it’s the husband who will be punished.

Just to rape this up I will say, marriage is to be enjoyed and not endured. But whether you will enjoy your marriage or not is a function of how well you have built it. If you want to eat a sweet cake, you know you have to put in a sizeable amount of sugar in your cake mixture before putting it in the oven to bake. In the same way, if you want to beautiful marriage, it’s important that you begin to learn the secrets of a successful marriage and apply what you have learnt. Marriage is an investment that is worth far more than the value of what you have invested in it when you invest right.

On a final note, I will say that your marriage decisions are yours to make. What this blog is all about is to help you make the right decisions in marriage by following the word of God. Here we teach the secrets to success in marriage based on the truth of the Bible. If all else fails God and His words never fails. I pray that we all have a wonderful marital life in Jesus name.

Here is the Story of a Wife Whose Husband Has Three Wives

I am grateful to be alive and I thank God. It’s just so easy for us to take the breath of life that we possess for granted, but with a heart of gratitude I thank God for mine, and that of  my family and for the lives that are been touched by this blog.

Today I want to share a story about a wife whose husband has two other wives and we are still counting. This strong young man does not look like he is ready to stop his wife acquisition activities. I was introduced to the first wife of this man just when her husband took the second wife and she was in a state of depression. And she was asked to speak with me and that I might probably counsel her in order to help her marriage get better.

But one problem that I had with this wife which is synonymous with many other wives was that she wasn’t ready to bend. She wasn’t ready to work through the situation she was in and make it better. She was very hurt which is very understandable and she felt really betrayed which also is expected. But to counsel a person who seemed to have made up her mind to sit on her hurt and fan the emotions of betrayal, is quite difficult. It's easy to help someone who wants to be helped than to force help on someone who isn't really looking for it but just wants your sympathy. 

Till I write this piece to you, this lady is yet to get her marriage back; as a matter of fact the husband has taken the third wife and only God knows if that would be the last or we are still counting.

Naturally this has affected these two people negatively in no small measure. The husband who is just a salary earner with limited income cannot afford to cater for the needs of three wives and six children and himself inclusive. He is heavily in debt and his life is messed up literally. Because of his dysfunctional home, he is unstable on his job and he is just still employed due to the mercy of his boss who is aware of his predicament of self-orchestrated destruction.

But the wife is not spared too. She is just a teacher and we know that teachers don’t earn much in Nigeria but just a few of them. She has three children to take care of with her constrained income and there are unending bills to pay; children’s school fees, house rent, feeding, transport, just to mention a few, with the husband contributing close to nothing to the upkeep of this wife and her children. Whenever he has money, he settles the need of the second and third wife and leaves his first wife to fend for herself and her children. He has tagged her a witch and claimed she is the reason his life is messed up. How convenient!

There are many stories like this, in fact too many of them like this one. And so many of them just never recover. The wife is so bruised she never wants to have anything to do with the man anymore, and till the husband goes to his grave he will resolve in his heart that his wife is the one behind his troubled life because that is the convenient conclusion for him to arrive at. He would not want to own up to his errors or convict himself of any wrong doing in the matter. The man is never wrong.

This situation like many others like it appears to defy solution. But God said two are better than one; success in life is closely related to success in marriage. And believe me, a messed up marriage will surely reflect in other areas of the lives of individual spouses in the marriage.

I will address the wife in this post, and when I mean the wife, I am referring to the first wife, the wife of the man’s youth.  Not because she is guilty of any wrong doing but because she failed to do everything within her power to safe her marriage. True she is not responsible for her husband’s sins and wrong doings but she is responsible for her reactions to her husband’s action. She is not accountable for the challenges she is faced with in her marriage, but she is responsible for the way she reacted to the challenges. Now whether she will be victorious over that challenge or she will be swept over by the challenge all depends on how she reacts to the challenge. I have often mentioned on this blog that it is not advisable to make decisions on marriage issues, trials and challenges based on emotions but on divine wisdom. When you allow emotions to rule over wisdom in your marriage, the outcome of your reaction may not be desirable.

To the wife of this man in the story above and to many other wives who might be going through similar issues in their marriage; her mistake is that she failed to win her husband over basically because she allowed her emotions control her decision making. She allowed the emotions of hurt and hate arising from betrayal and abuse of trust from her husband to overshadow her need to apply wisdom and fight for her marriage. It is okay to feel hurt, but more okay to work past the hurt, heal and do the needful.

The responsibility to build the home rest solely on the wife as we read in Proverbs 14:1. The success of any home and marriage primarily rest on the wife because the Lord knows that based on the ability He built in her she can pull things through with His help and succeed. The home is not built on emotional sentiment, it is not built on the feelings of the wife or on the reactions of her husband towards her. But a successful home is built on wisdom, knowledge and understanding as found in Proverbs 24:3-4. A woman who would build a successful home will move beyond emotion and face the task with divine wisdom and prayer.

If you would ask me if I blame the wife for what her husband has done, I will answer a big No. But despite the careless lust of her husband and his total disregard of the sanctity of his marriage, the wife should not tow the same line of action; two wrongs never make a right.

When God looks at this erring man, the wife He recognizes with him is the wife of his youth; his first wife (Malachi 2:13-15). As the first wife to this adulterous man, you are his suitable helper from God. You are the favor career in the life of his man, and so you are not just any woman in his life neither are you just any wife to him, but by God’s standard, you are his suitable helper from God on assignment in his life to help him be better than he was when you met him and better than he is now in his adulterous state, and the Lord is willing to help you succeed in this assignment. The success of this assignment is not subject to your husband’s actions, love towards you or lack of love for you. This assignment is a God given one and the assessment is done by God and the reward is received from God and not your husband. Wisdom and prayers are the major keys to success in this assignment.

After all the hurt (which is acceptable and understandable), it’s important to let go of the emotions, apply wisdom and fight for your marriage. That may sound tough, but the end reward is a sweet marriage that people around you would be envious of.

When I talk about fighting for your marriage, I do not mean that you start to pick fights with your husband and his other wives, but that you pray over your marriage and pray for your husband. You need to pray God into his life until he becomes a totally changed and repentant man. Then you support your prayer with actions. The actions that are required of you is such that you will positively occupy your husband’s life to the point that he forgets that he was ever married to other women but you.

Ensure that your sex life with your husband is fantastic, satisfy your husband sexually and in that regard do not give him room to have any complain. Also ensure that you keep your home clean and welcoming, make sure you give your husband good food. Ensure you remember the special dates in your marriage and celebrate them with time. Send him daily prayerful text messages, let him know you are praying for him. If you can afford it get him gifts on his birthdays and on other special days of your marriage, please do so. All these are actions that will help you win back your husband and then rebuild your marriage. Those who stole him from you did just that, beat them to their game. 

If he does not respond initially, please don't stop. Continue to sow the seed because in due season they will germinate and produce fruits for you. With consistency and perseverance you will get the desired outcome. 

Given the fact that in the story above the wife appears to be the victim, yet she is the savior of her marriage. A lot of people might think it’s foolish to fight for her marriage in the manner that I have proposed, but that foolishness is the wisdom that has saved a lot of marriages from total collapse including mine. And a lot of happy homes that we see and envy today were birth from the foolishness that has yielded sweet results.

If you then ask me what happens to the other wives the adulterous man has foolishly married, I will ask you what happened to Hagar in the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar that we find in the Bible. The other wives are not the focus here, the wife of his youth is the one that owns the marriage and she needs to fight for her marriage.  

Marriage is a very beautiful thing though with many soar stories about it and with the advent of social media, it’s fast becoming an undesirable institution.

A lot of people have entered into marriage completely unprepared and in truth love does not sustain marriage, otherwise we won’t have high divorce rate and violence in marriage as we do today. And I dare to tell you that even our parents don't know exactly what it means to be married.

While they are still struggling with their own marriage and merely managing to keep it together, they have little or no idea on how to help you keeps yours. It’s a race you need to run on your own and find your own balance and haven in marriage.

With the exposure in the world today, wives of this generation cannot endure what their mothers endured in marriage, and husbands have become less men than their fathers were. This has in no small measure affected the marriage institution.

Now get a glimpse of it:

“Marriage is you swearing to God before all men present that you are willing and ready to pour out all of yourself in making your spouse a better person, all the days of your life so help you God.” This is not subject to how good or bad your spouse is, it’s a venture that only the grace of God is all your need to see you through. And it’s God who assess and rewards your performance.

Now how do you intend to pull this through? How would you accomplish that which you have sworn to do before God and man?

When you understand the basics of marriage and you have the willingness and temperament for it, you will make a success of it. “The Marriage Handbook” is very handy to help you through it.

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Love Shouldn't Make You Weak

Genesis 3:1-6, 9

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desiring for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.  

But the Lord called to the man, “Where are you?”

Hello people, I hope I have not been gone too long. In today’s post I want to share something from the Bible. I hope that the Lord will breathe on today’s post and cause it to make a big impact in your life and marriage in Jesus name.

There are huge lessons to learn from the story of the fall in Genesis 3 and it’s common to think that Eve caused the fall of mankind. Looking at this story from face value one would conclude that it was all the fault of Eve that man began to sin, but one question that comes to mind is that “what did Adam do to prevent the fall?” I have shared on this Bible passage before and my outlook to this scripture hasn't changed much.

I have seen a handful of marriages where the husband and the wife act independently of each other. But the truth of the matter is that the consequences of each action whether by the wife or husband impacts on both lives. When God said that they are no longer two, but one, in flesh and spirit, He was not making an erroneous declaration. For example, there is no way a man can commit adultery and it will not have its negative impact on his wife and in the same vein, there is no way a wife can default in her role as a wife that its impact will not be felt by the husband.

Going back to the story of the fall, the first marriage on earth; when the serpent was going to approach the marriage unit, he entered through the rear, he spoke to the wife rather than the husband who was the head. Satan knew the order of things, he understood that the man was the head and if there was anyone to meet on matters that has to do with the two, it should be the husband. But he went through the wife; the wife who was designed to be the support but totally disregarded the fact that she was the support.

When God gave his instruction, He spoke to Adam even before Eve came into the scene. All that she knew of the instructions of God to man was told to her by her husband Adam. Now an intruder coming to make enquiries on what she only had second hand information on should have earned a response like “Go meet my husband, he knows better than I do on this,” but instead she assumed the lead without full conviction on the matter at hand and we all know the end result of that.

But the bigger picture in this story is “What did Adam do to prevent the fall?” The Bible tells us that Adam was with Eve when the serpent came to speak to her. The whole scene play out before him and he did absolutely nothing. “Eve gave Adam of the fruit and he also ate of it,” is what the Bible records. So while Adam who was the custodian of the instructions from God was observing, Eve was taking the lead and he did nothing. When people say sin came into the world as a result of the sins of Eve, I say that sin came into the world as a result of the weakness of Adam.

The fact that a man loves his wife does not translate to the fact that he should stand by and watch while she makes mistakes; it does not translate to the fact that she is allowed to be the head of the home. As a man you should love your wife sacrificially and unconditionally yet be firm as the head over your wife. Love and weakness are not synonymous to each other.

I love the part of the story where God comes into the garden; when the Lord approached the couples He didn’t call Eve to account, but the Bible tells us in Genesis 3:9 that God called to the man. It was the man that God held accountable. It was the man who was the custodian of the instruction and the head over his wife that God called to account.

As couples and intending couples we need to have some issues properly placed in our minds. First, as a wife when you are going wrong bear in mind that your husband will call you to order, that does not mean he doesn’t love you but he is accountable to God over the issues of your home and marriage. He is the head and responsible for the wellbeing of his family. As a wife I understand that it hurts when your husband scolds you, but it’s good to be positive about it rather than proving points that are not healthy for your marriage union.  

As a husband please note that loving your wife is key to the success of your marriage, God’s rules to the husband in marriage is to love his wife as himself and as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25-30), but love shouldn’t make you weak. Love should make you call wrong right and then call right wrong. You are the first line of accountability when it comes to the issues and affairs of your home and marriage. I implore you to love but yet be firm and disciplined and please don't abuse your wife in the process.