Marriage...

 

A couple of months ago, one of my favorite pastors said something that stuck with me.

 He said ‘I’ve met couples here who should never have gotten married in the first place’

The more I speak to young couples and this generation of eligible bachelors, the more I understand what he meant when he said that.

I’ve heard men who just got married saying ‘my wife already knows not to expect me to come home on this particular day of the week. That’s my day to hang out with the boys’

There are a lot of people getting married without fully understanding what that commitment is supposed to mean. 

There are the ones who are not quite ready to give their partners all access into their lives, in the name of privacy. The ones who are not quite ready to ‘forsake all others’ like their vows said they would. Then we’ve got girls walking into marriages knowing there’s a 90 percent chance they’re going to be miserable in it.

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of what marriage really means. What that union is supposed to represent. 

Here’s how I see it…

If you’re not ready to give your husband/wife all access into every area of your life, don’t make that commitment.

If you’re not ready to forsake all others…there should be no male or female friend in your life that does not also chat with your significant other. Any friends of the opposite sex should be friends with both of you as a unit.

Your partner should be the number one priority in your life. The hierarchy goes God-Spouse-Children-Rest of the family-Friends. It is never OK to put your friends above your spouse. Ever.

The thing about marriage and family is that it is so important to God, that it has become the very thing that the devil has attacked and broken down. Look at what has become of it. We have compromised the standard set by God, added gray areas to an otherwise black and white standard and then made that new low standard, the norm.

You need to understand the importance of not making room for the enemy to walk into your marriage and tear it apart. The minute you start keeping secrets, deleting messages from friends of the opposite sex, entertaining ‘harmless flirtations’ from people, you’re making room for all kinds of things to walk in.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine and asked him if I could meet with him for a chat, to get his perspective on whatever issues I was dealing with, he said ‘could you please talk to my wife first, let he know that you want to meet with and confide in me, and make sure she’s ok with it’….

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a man who is not willing to let anything/anyone walk into his marriage and wreck it. The doors are closed and guarded. I’m not sure if expecting the same from my future husband would be unrealistic lol…

He is so aware of the damage even the smallest secret, the smallest entry can do to his marriage, that he will do whatever is necessary to protect it.

During a chat with a friend of mine a few days ago, he said ‘I would not be comfortable with my ‘future’ wife going through my phone and I wouldn’t want to go through hers either’

He’s not married or engaged. He does, however have a girlfriend. 

There should be nothing on your phone, email, Facebook, Instagram that would make you uncomfortable if your significant other saw it. Nothing!

You partner might not go through your phone, but whether he/she does or not should not make you jittery.

I said to him ‘if that’s the case, then you’re either not ready for marriage or you’re with the wrong woman’

Let me explain the last part…the way I see it, if a man is in love, he knows for sure that this woman he is with is the one, there is no room in his heart for anyone else, there is nobody else he wants to flirt/sleep with; there will be nothing inappropriate from any woman on his phone. A man who is still entertaining flirtations from women, having inappropriate discussions (that would upset his girlfriend if she read them), however innocent he might claim them to be, keeping his options somehow open…that man is not sure about the woman he’s with.

Let me not say too much though, I am after all…not married yet…lol

This is just the way I see it.

Shallow Christianity and Demonology

I need to talk about something that bothers me about modern Christians; this whole idea of looking at Gods character and seeing only what we want to see. There are a lot of Christians who memorize scripture like they’re going to write exams about the Bible, but they never take the time to consider, ponder and try to understand the deeper things of God. The way God works is not a concern, as long as they know enough to believe in Him. 

In Exodus 33 v13, Moses expressed an interest in knowing God more intimately. He said ‘If I have found grace in your sight, show me now your way that I may know you…’

You see, the children of Israel knew what God did, but Moses knew why God did it.

 

 There are people who never study the Bible beyond miracles, blessings and good fortune. They never take the time to learn about Gods character. Unfortunately, those people also spend a lot of time listening to pastors who tell them what they want to hear. There are ways in which God operates that run deeper than blessings and His laws. 

What if I told you that God is more interested in getting you into heaven, than He is in making you happy? We read verses that tell us that God will grant us the desires of our hearts. What we’re afraid to say out loud, even admit to ourselves is that Terms and Conditions apply. There is small print, for every desire you seek, every blessing, every promotion… there is small print. And somewhere in that small print, you will find God working according to His plans. God doing things for His glory; which He will not share with another. We’ll find God doing things that will build faith and character in a person before those blessings we seek are handed to us.

Then there’s this demonology that is running wild in churches. You walk into a church service and the pastor spends the entire time rebuking the devil. Every problem a person mentions is traced to demonic activity. Don’t get me wrong, I am not denying the presence of spiritual warfare and generational curses. Those are real and very Biblical. What I am against, is tying every bad thing that happens, to the devil.

Have you noticed that people go for deliverance every church service?  They are told the devil is attacking them and so they must be delivered and bind the enemy. They pray in the name of Jesus and then a week or two later, they’re back seeking deliverance and more enemy binding. You’d think the name of Jesus wasn’t good enough to work the first time round so they’re coming back to see if it will work this time. These are also the same people who will say ‘the devil was defeated at the cross’ and then follow that with ‘the devil is attacking me’. How are you being attacked by someone who was defeated and you were delivered from in the name of Jesus just a week ago?

If there is one person in the Bible who was afflicted, it was Job. He lost his wealth, health and children. Job was not there when the devil and God had that conversation about testing Job. He had no idea why he was going through so much pain, and yet nowhere in the book of Job, will you read that he blamed the devil for his misfortunes. If anything, he said since he accepts good things from God, he should also accept the bad things. Even in the worst situation known to mankind, Job looked for Gods hand in it.

We are so quick to blame every bad thing on the devil and his little minions. I would like to see people being more open minded about their afflictions. There are several reasons for pain and suffering in life.

1.       God is breaking you and molding you for His purposes

2.       You are being punished for a sin you committed

3.       God is testing your faith, trust and commitment to Him

4.       Spiritual warfare.

Nine times out of ten, we jump straight to reason number 4. We will spend hours in prayer and fasting, rebuking the devil, binding and loosing, and all sorts of similar activities. Meanwhile God is just trying to do something in your life. Is it possible that maybe there is a sin in your life that needs to be dealt with? Maybe, you are being disciplined by God in some way. And you’re all up in arms asking God to deliver you from His own discipline.

Imagine a child doing something his parents forbade him to do. Then (if he’s African) his parents decide to smack him. And he stands there asking his father to protect and deliver him from the beating his father is giving him. Sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it? And yet that’s what we do. Rebuke, fast, pray, bind, loose, prophecy, and attempt to deliver…from Gods discipline and work in our lives.

 See, there’s a Bible verse that says ‘all good and perfect things come from Him’. That verse does not say bad things cannot come from God. All it means is that if you have anything good, it is from Him and Him alone. The enemy cannot give you good things (well, they might seem good at the time). There are also verses in the same Bible where God talks about bringing destruction and calamity. In our shallow mindedness, we deliberately skip those parts and jump straight to the feel good verses.

There are deeper things of God. The depth of Gods character is such that we will never get to a point where we know God so well, that nothing He does will surprise us. That is why we must seek Him, and after we find Him, seek Him some more. Get to know Gods character, so that maybe you too, like Moses, will begin to learn His ways. I can assure you that once God sees that you really are committed to seeking Him and truly knowing Him, He will move closer to you and maybe even reveal some parts of Himself that you did not see before. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God….and all these things; Not some of the things…ALL these things shall be added unto you.

BLESSED…WITH LIQUIDITY PROBLEMS

About a year ago, there was a certain pastor I met through a friend. One day, this pastor called me and invited me to go for a meeting, saying he had a message for me from God. Well, colour me intrigued, I immediately jumped out of bed and drove to his home/office place thing.

He sat down and started talking to me about giving. He gave me various examples of people who had given and how God had solved all their problems almost right away. I sat there in silence and I listened as he told me that God had woken him up and told him that I need to give. I needed to give whatever I could and my deepest prayers would be answered. 

You should have seen the look on his face when I took MWK 20 out of my purse and gave it to him.

See, I was in that weird place where I was blessed but had liquidity problems. I had a roof over my head, food on my table, clothes on my back, even petrol in my car but my purse was not quite in on this ‘being blessed’ thing. 

And as I gave him that 20 Kwacha, which by the way, was all I had, I figured that the same God who told the pastor that I need to give, also knew my purse situation…right? Unless of course the god he had heard from was not the same omnipotent and all-knowing God I served.

Either way, I gave.