RECOVERING CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES – PART ONE
Beloved friends, this is your pastor Pastor Amara Uwaeziozi. I’m glad to meet you again today on this platform. I plead with you to continue to listen to these messages. They have the potential to transform you into the very person GOD desires.
Today’s message is titled, Recovering Christian Marriage.
RECOVERING CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES
My desire is to bring a challenge to families, to bring a challenge to youths, so that we will recover our marriages conducted as Christians: because Christian marriage has come under stress like other institutions. It is suffering serious breakdown, and requires to be recovered. The recovery process involves reuniting the fundamentals of marriage. Marriage is most critical to the success of any society. It is more of the product of teamwork. It is a demonstration of synergy. It is the marital teamwork that GOD designed to foster the upbringing of children in our Communities.
Let us state ab initio that there is no perfect marriage, just as there is no perfect human being. But no person will use that man’s imperfection as an excuse for failure in marriage. We have in the Bible enough guidelines and then enough guard rails to avert failure and make our marriages a success. We have enough guidelines in the scriptures. If you have had them, these will make our marriages a success. It has become a generational responsibility for any person, and it’s also a personal responsibility – generational responsibility: in that each and every one of us has a responsibility to showcase to the present generation that marriage works. Marriage works.
Some people are already bad examples to their generation. But it is not late, because GOD is also in the process of repairing cracks in our marriages. And I want to state that through this message GOD is desirous to bring change: to bring transformation, to bring repair to marriages that are cracked, marriages that are breaking down. If you believe what GOD is saying, you will experience a repair. If you practice what GOD is saying, you will experience a repair.
The first thing we want to state is the reasons – the reasons for marriage. The reasons for marriage. And we go back to Genesis, The Beginning when GOD brought this particular institution into place. Genesis 2:18.
Genesis 2:18
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
I want to read another passage in Proverbs. Proverbs 18:12:18
Proverbs 18:22
22 He who finds a wife finds a good thing,
And obtains favor from the Lord.
He who finds a wife finds a good thing. It is amazing that when people have found wife of which the Bible says they have found a good thing, after some years, the good thing transforms to a bad thing. That’s not the will of GOD. What happened? Why will a good thing become a bad thing? Why will it do so?
Let us pray.
PRAYER
Our FATHER and our GOD, as we give consideration to recovering Christian marriages I pray that you will use these words, O LORD GOD Almighty, to prepare those who are yet to marry – so that they’ll get it right. Those who are already married – bring repair, bring success in their marriages, O GOD our FATHER…in JESUS Mighty Name we pray. Amen.
Let’s go through the reason for marriage. In Genesis 2:18 the Bible says, it is not proper: it is not right for man to be alone. That’s GOD saying, that it is not right. Invariably what GOD is saying is that he needs a companion.
- The number one reason for marriage is companionship.
Companionship. We want to state that in most cases you can’t fulfill your destiny alone. You need a companion. If GOD says it is not good: then it is not good. Notice that GOD was specific. GOD says, I will make a helper comparable to him. GOD proceeded to give Adam Eve. GOD did not give Adam Steve; HE gave him Eve.
Christian churches must resist the distortion of marriage as being imported from the Western Nations and The USA. Marriage is between a man and a woman, not man and man or woman and woman or human being and animal – as is common in some Western Nations. The companionship GOD made for Adam was a woman for the man. And that is GOD’s plan – that we have companionship.
- The number two reason is for friendship.
Every human being needs a friend to listen to. Every human being needs a friend to relate to. The Bible says, there are some friends who are even closer than brothers. That’s the plan and will of GOD that we should have friends. Marriage provides the platform for proper friendship. This has been driven very far in our time. And some young people have been deceived by this. Yet marriage provides the platform for friendship: friendship between spouses.
- The third reason is for accomplishment.
Accomplishment. Success is multiplied within the context of marriage. It is in the context of marriage that things are accomplished, and they become trans-generational: it can be passed from one generation to another – from one generation to another.
- The fourth reason is intimate sharing.
Marriage takes friendship to another level. It takes it to the level of sharing intimately. The Bible tells us that when GOD created man and gave him a helpmeet in the person of a woman Eve, they were both naked and were not ashamed. It is on the basis of marriage that nakedness by the spouses is proper. But what is happening in our time is that people go far into sharing nakedness yet they are not in intimate relationship. Soon after they had exposed their nakedness to each other they desert themselves. An abnormality when it comes to marriage!
- Number five is fellowship.
Fellowship! GOD desires that each person will have a person to have fellowship with. As a matter of fact, it is a man and a woman that forms the smallest unit of a church. And GOD desires that a man should have fellowship; the woman should have a fellowship. Marriage creates the platform fir proper fellowship. And the reason for fellowship is for them to grow together: to share things together, to support each other, to persevere together, to demonstrate the love of GOD and experience the grace of GOD and learn forgiveness, learn tolerance, begin to acquire the character of tolerance, forbearing, consideration. These are things we learn when we have fellowship with one another. Marriage provides the platform for proper fellowship.
- Number six is decent sex.
Decent sex. This area is now a problem in our land. The whole place is polluted with indecent sex, premarital sex and extramarital sex, which of course, the Bible calls fornication and adultery. The modern people are now calling it “cheating”. All kinds of perversions are available now. I read recently or sometime ago in a magazine about animal prostitution in Netherlands. And people visit there to have sex with animals. Animal prostitutes! What a perversion! What a perversion!! Today our young people even live together. They live together outside the home. They are married outside the home: married in school, but single at home. A strange development in our time! A strange development in our time! And of course the consequences are there in the society. The consequences of these perversions are there in the society.
It’s only marriage that GOD has desired decent sex. In 1st Corinthians Chapter 7:1-5, the Bible tells us that, the bed of marriage is on undefiled. It’s undefiled. And any other bed that is not for marriage is defiled. That’s the standard of GOD.
- Marriage is also put in place by GOD for procreation.
GOD has created the first man and woman. And GOD now partners with we human beings to continue procreating other human beings.
Malachi 2:15, GOD says, that is the platform for bringing up GODly children. GODly children. Children that are GODly. It is only in marriage that GOD has made provision for procreation – to continue to create even as HE created.
- Number eight reason is, divine destiny.
Marriage offers people the opportunity to actualize their destiny in CHRIST JESUS. Family harmony encourages us to pursue our destiny in CHRIST together. There is a destiny waiting for each child of GOD. Marriage is not the ultimate; but this is an avenue that can enhance the achievement of our destiny. It’s important that we note these reasons why GOD put in place the marriage and return to it as Christian people. And when we reinvent these fundamentals we will begin to appreciate GOD and we will begin to appreciate our marriages because we are in it alone.
We will stop here for today, and continue the second segment of this.
PRAYER
But let us pray that our GOD, who by HIS determinate will and wisdom, put in place the union of a man and a woman in order to achieve purposes – HIS purposes. And this says that they live together, and have companionship, and have intimacy, and have friendship, and accomplish things, and enjoy their life together, and procreate. We begin to bring changes in our society and reduce the incidence of breakdown of marriages, even in a Christian church, and bring to pass the purposes of GOD for instituting marriage.
I pray for people of GOD whose marriages are broken. I pray for people who are in search of spouses that the GOD who nothing is impossible with will make a visitation for each person in this season and bring the necessary changes and transformation that will return us to the purposes of GOD…in the Name of JESUS CHRIST we pray. Amen!