A FULFILLED MARRIAGE IS POSSIBLE

It is worthy to note that without a good marriage there is no good church, and without a good church there is no good nation. The best way to learn in marriage is when you talk with others. Our experience may differ but the base line is the same. In the world over, many marriages are going through crises and many people do not talk. God expects us to enjoy our marriages, not just endure them..

The moment you give your life to Christ every step you take should make you better for God, for the society and for yourself. If you get married and after marriage you are sad, then its not worth it. If you get married and after marriage you are worse off as a Christian, then it is not worth it. Or even if you have children and after having children you are worse off, then it is not good.

Many marriages are not giving glory to God. Many marriages are an offence to the faith we profess. When we take any step in life it should make us better vessels of God. God should be able to beat His chest and say I am happy that I am involve in your life. In other words, God should be able to look at you and say: “ am happy I give my daughter this husband. I am glad I gave my children this home.” That is what makes God glad. That is what advances His purpose and His kingdom.

A fulfilled marriage is possible. Most marriages fail before they are even contracted. Many homes fail because some see marriage as a necessary evil, something that, “well you have no choice”. I interviewed some people on why they want to get married? Here is there sincere responses:

“well my dad has been troubling me that I am getting too old and I am getting irresponsible so I want to get married.

All my friends are getting married and it is embarrassing, so I want to get married too.

Someone said, look the next man that comes, whether he is good or not I will just go for him!”

You will notice that from so many indices marriages fail because whatever is not built on a good foundation cannot stand. We need to realize that it is the will of God to have a fulfilled marriage and to enjoy our marriages. It is never the will of God for us to endure and to manage.

A look at most broken homes shows that often times the problem has to do with the foundation, or with what is built on the foundation. Two things should be kept in mind by every couple either at the onset of marriage or in the course of marriage itself. And they are: we desire to have a happy marriage; secondly, we desire to have a successful marriage. I used to think the two were the same but I discover later that the two are not exactly the same. I discover later that a marriage can be successful and not happy. It took me time and a lot of heart and mind searching to arrive at this.

Now what is a successful marriage and a happy marriage? A combination of happiness and success makes for fulfillment in marriage. A successful marriage has to do with marriage as others see your marriage. Let me paint a picture. A couple is getting married and everybody comes around, and a flamboyant wedding takes place and all that. By the time their marriage is five years, they have three children. The man and the woman have good jobs that they can boast of two or three cars and possibly have a decent home of their own. Anybody looking at that marriage from the outside will conclude that it is a successful marriage. But does it follow that is is happy? Of course it doesn’t!

Success in marriage has to do with how others see your marriage. You may have people, who talk about such a marriage and say: Oh, I thank God for them. I just want to be like them. But you only need to hear stories about what goes between them to know whether they are actually fulfilled or not.

On the other hand, happiness has to do with how the two of you perceive your marriage. Because I believe that when you are talking about happiness there is no other person that can judge for you except the two of you. The wife is the one that can really say whether her marriage is a happy one or not, irrespective of the externalities. And the husband is also the one that can say whether the marriage is happy or not. So it takes the two of you to know whether your marriage is happy.

But I want to say that regarding success and happiness, God wants both of them for our marriages. God wants us to be happy within ourselves, and to judge our marriages to be good. When the two of you can judge your marriage to be good, and you are happy, contented, then it is happy marriage. God also wants our marriage to be successful. God does not take pleasure in backwardness. God wants us to advance and make progress.

So when you get married it gives God good pleasure to see that you are progressing. And I discover that there are even times, and I have witnessed it so many times, when two people are happy between themselves but because certain basic things of life that can be considered as necessities are lacking somewhere along the line, the marriage gets into a hitch. I have seen that you can have a couple who are able to manage through a hard time, but it is not always good for the hard time to be prolonged. Somewhere along the line it is good for the hard time to be converted to good time. So both the happiness and the success make for a fulfilled marriage. You can understand now that we are talking about a fulfilled marriage is possible. That means a marriage that is both happy and also successful.

Now there are four elements that have to do with fulfillment in marriage. One is determination, the second is hard work. The third is co-operation between the couple. The fourth is the blessing and the grace of God. This is because you can have all these and if the blessing of God is not there it won’t work. Now, let us go over them one after the other.

The first is determination. It must not be sided. It must be two sided. For example a husband may be determined to make the relationship work. But if the wife is not as determined as the husband, it may be difficult. It would only result in the fact that one of the two is sweating it out. That is not God’s desire. Now, it would be an unequal yoke if one is very determined and the other is not. That is not God desire and this will an unequal yoke if one is one is very determined and the other is not. And you find marriages where one party goes through a lot of pain, and keeps managing. While the other is content with what happens: if it works out, fine; if it doesn’t it makes no difference. So determination is very important and this has to do with having a readiness of mind and a good focus.

Then hard work is very important. Hard work has to do with diligence, and there must be a measure of readiness too because if you are determined and you are not ready to work hard, it may not work. So determination is good, but hard work must backup the determination in order to be able to work towards a fulfilled marriage.

Now, there must be co-operation between the couples. This is very important. Let me give the old time illustration of plowing a field. Before the advent of tractors what was used in plowing fields was yoking two oxen together. It is believed and known from experience that the two animals to be yoked together must have many similarities including height and strength. The speed and even the temperaments must be the same. This is because if one of the two animals is patient and the other is impatient, you will discover that it will not work, and that is what the Bible refers to as unequal yoke. If the height and the strength are not equal, the yoke cannot work very well and the field will not be well plowed.

Let’s call that field the marriage institution. The two people that are involved must be well yoked, properly yoked. And there are so many similarities they must have. We all know that those of us who are married that most of the difficult times we have are as a result of dissimilarities between us. It has to even do with your growth in grace. If one person has advanced so much spiritually and the other has not, it causes so many problems. If one is more temperamental than the other, it causes problem. So you discover that co-operation between the people matters so much.

And then the fourth one is the blessing of God. Now, let’s at Psalm 127. This Psalm tells us something which is very significant. It is a key that applies for all times! Let’s read verses 1 and 2:

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is in vain for you to rise up early , to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrow, for so he giveth his beloveth sleep.

The emphasis here is on the fact that the blessing of God, at the end of the day, is really what matters. That is why I often tell people that the God factor in marriage is really the base line that makes every marriage to work. It is often said that the family that prays together stays together. You must recognize the hand of God. I have come to discover that there are so many complex reasons and situations why many families have problems.

Now there are some marriages that have no reason not to succeed. All physical indices are right. But there may be an ancestral force, an ancestral power, pulling a string somewhere. There may be even somebody who has just decided to cast a spell on the marriage and it will not work! You can put all things together, the woman may be determined, the man may be determined but at the end of the day you just discover that things are not working. So the God factor is very important because when you have done all you know to do, when you have played your role, it is that God factor that will really get things working. You cannot remove the God factor.It is God that makes the marriage to work to work. Except the Lord builds a house…., that house is home.

I welcome your questions, comments, remarks, criticisms, corrections, contributions etc. send them to jobiorah@yahoo.com,

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