Romantic and marital relationships can be interesting!
When two people fall in love, they seem to lose the ability to reason.
You close your eyes to obvious discrepancies, you ignore visible faults and you even disregard counsel, all because you are in love.
Well, like they say, Marriage is always an eye-opener!
Your eyes will open!
But one needs not to wait till then.
I want to attempt to show you three areas where you need to make decisions in the midst of your romantic and marital adventures. These are also relevant to married couples.
Love Lifeline: 3 Crucial Choices
1. Happy, Fulfilled, and Scriptural
Both of you must agree that all decisions made should be scriptural and should leave you happy and fulfilled.
Anything that leaves you guilty, sad, and regretting is a red light!
Both of you must commit to ensuring you do all needed to have a successful relationship.
Be it prayer, fasting, learning, reading, abstaining from sex, or whatever it takes, the two of you should be on the same page.
As married couples, don’t do anything that will leave your spouse unhappy, sad and disappointed.
Love Lifeline: 3 Crucial Choices
2. Correction and Criticism.
If there is any correction or criticism, you should decide to work on it and not ignore what is being presented. Also, criticism should not be seen as an attack.
This is the only way you can both grow.
A relationship where there is not one single correction of expression of dislike is a fake one. It will not last.
Also to note as singles or married, there must be enough regular compliments and appreciation before your corrections can make sense at all.
Love Lifeline: 3 Crucial Choices
3. Long-term solution
If there is a problem to be solved, there should be a decision to go for a long-term solution and not a temporary one just to let time pass.
Every issue and problem that you apply a short-term solution to is invariably postponed, waiting to be resurrected in marriage.
For example, if there is a bad habit, chances are that you ignore it or once your spouse tells you that he will change later, you forget it, because you are in love.
Don’t make that mistake at all.
Go for counsel. Pray about it. Confront the issue. Don’t sweep it under that carpet.
From time to time, I am beleaguered with tales of abuse from the ones who once professed love to their wives.
As singles who are not yet married, you have to know what you are going for.
After the wedding, your choices are limited and restricted.
As singles, this is the time you need to borrow yourself “some brain” and stop holding to what is obviously faulty from the very foundation.
Before You Marry
If you are being abused in a relationship, male or female, hit the pause button.
Don’t think a wedding will change things. It will not.
A wedding will not transform anybody.
Any change you couldn’t make as a single would not be easier to make after the wedding.
So, be careful of a wilful abuser who keeps telling you he will change after hitting you.
Yes, there could be a mistake and flaring of temper, which is wrong anyway.
But when there is an angry partner, always fuming at little provocations, getting angry at everything, hitting you over and over, and then apologizing, you need to be careful before you sentence yourself to a lifetime of abuse.
The Bible did warn about such people.
Pro 22:24 (KJV) Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go:
It is a clear warning.
Don’t be friends with such people not to talk of dating them.
Why would the Bible warn you?
Pro 22:25 (KJV) Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.
Pro 22:25 (MSG) Bad temper is contagious— don’t get infected.
Before You Marry
One can quickly become hurt, bitter, nasty, and even evil because of marriage with a wicked partner.
Be careful.
Do not invite afflictions that are not supposed to be part of your life.
This isn’t a good combination. But the reality is that such men and women exist in their number.
Who is the empty-headed?
Who is the empty-hearted?
Pro 7:6-7 (AMPC) For at the window of my house, I looked out through my lattice. [7] And among the simple (empty-headed and empty-hearted) ones, I perceived among the youths a young man void of good sense,
So, this man is out there. He or she can be seen through the window.
He is all over the place.
Can even be in church. Maybe he even speaks in tongues.
He is described as empty-headed and empty-hearted.
You wouldn’t want to fall in love with such a person.
Empty-Headed And Empty-Hearted Lovers
The Message translation calls him a young man without any sense.
Pro 7:6-7 (MSG) As I stood at the window of my house looking out through the shutters, [7] Watching the mindless crowd stroll by, I spotted a young man without any sense
But then what did this young man do to warrant calling him empty-headed and empty-hearted?
That is the crux of the matter.
What’s his sin?
What’s his error?
The next verse explains.
Pro 7:8 (AMPC) Sauntering through the street near the [loose woman’s] corner, and he went the way to her house
This young man is so-called empty-headed and empty-hearted because of his direction!
He went to her house.
The house of the strange woman or the harlot. To do what? To have sex!
It was a deliberate decision of the man to go look for fun.
It wasn’t the devil tempting him, he was the one tempting the devil!
Empty-Headed And Empty-Hearted Lovers
The empty-headed and empty-hearted is the spouse who is married but is very much interested in adulterous escapes and pursues such with so much vigor.
The empty-headed and empty-hearted is the guy who plans, strategies, and goes out to bed with a lady.
The empty-headed and empty-hearted is the guy who leaves his house, despite every warning and prompting to go look for sex outside marriage.
The empty-headed and empty-hearted lady leaves her campus or where she lives and goes to spend days in a guy’s house.
The empty-headed and empty-hearted patronizes harlots and anywhere he can find sex.
If you are the one always out looking out for sex, sleeping around recklessly and carelessly, and yet claiming to serve God alongside, well, God cannot be mocked.
If you are the one providing sex, aiding and abetting the empty-headed and empty-hearted, a day of reckoning will come.
Such actions are time wasters.
Destiny distraction. Often time, destiny destroyers!
I once met a lady who was lamenting that God is unfair to her, that she is not married in her late thirties, and that despite night vigils and prayers coupled with fasting, God has ignored her. But then she was living in a guy’s house and they are having sex. I really cannot fathom that.
Make up your mind to stop this cycle, because it is destructive.
It will lead nowhere.
You can dislodge the stronghold.
You can stop the cycle of sinning and asking for forgiveness every time.
You can embrace your identity in God as the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to help you live above habitual sin and compromise.
Having done all, stand.
You can stand.
You can live right.
You can please God.
Stand out.
Stand for God in your generation.
Be counted for Him.
You will fulfill your destiny.
Your story will not end like that of Samson.
You will be of the Joseph generation.
His mercy is available for you.
His mercy reaches to the very heavens.
Make up your mind today.
Call me and I will pray along with you!
Fulfill destiny!
Psa 36:5 (KJV) Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.
Psa 36:5 (MSG) God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic,
The Answer is Yes! You can marry an imperfect person because nobody is perfect. Nobody!
We are all a work in progress.
But wait… let’s make some clarifications.
An imperfect person is not someone who is living in an unrepentant habitual sin, sinning willfully and enjoying the pleasures of sin.
In other words, I am saying, you cannot marry someone who is living consistently in habitual sin, with no remorse or repentance.
Such a person is going to get you into trouble and drag you into misery.
About being imperfect, the scriptures let us know we will get better as we stay in the Word, study the Word, pray in the Spirit, and pay attention to the things of the Spirit.
Is your lover doing all these?
Can I Marry An Imperfect Person?
Check the scriptures:
2Co 3:18 (KJV) But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Again we see here:
Rom 12:2 (KJV) And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
We are promised a change as we pay attention to the Word.
This is entirely different from a habitual sinner. He is not interested in changing or getting better in God.
He may profess interest in change with his mouth, but his heart is far from that.
He or she is not interested in God’s word, he is only religious, and he goes to church.
He is a serial fornicator. He plays sports with sin.
The Bible warns against such people.
Can I Marry An Imperfect Person?
Here are some clear instructions:
1Co 5:9-11 (MSG) I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn’t make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. [10] I didn’t mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue- or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You’d have to leave the world entirely to do that! [11] But I am saying that you shouldn’t act as if everything is just fine when one of your Christian companions is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can’t just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior.
You are not to be friends with such people and not to talk about getting married to such because of perceived benefits.
Your relationship will work out if you decide to stay with God.
It doesn’t matter where you are at right now.
Start from somewhere in God.
Take it up from there.
Focus on your relationship with God.
Let His zeal eat you up.
Be consumed with pleasing Him.
And you will end up beautifying your destiny.
God is never confused about you.
He has it all perfectly planned out.
If you follow His map, you will not get lost.
Yes, sometimes, God leads round, but He will never lead you wrong.
Committed Until It’s Completed
Take a look at this scripture we all know:
Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV) For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
So, God knows the thoughts He is thinking about you. He’s not wiping sweat off His eyebrow over it.
Perhaps, you will understand better in the Message Translation:
Jeremiah 29:11 (MSG) I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.
Hey, God knows what He’s doing!
Think deeply about it.
He has it all planned out!
His plans are to take care of you.
Not to abandon you!
Committed Until It’s Completed
He has plans to give you a beautiful glorious future and that includes a beautiful marriage!
I prophesy unto you, you will find His plan in Jesus’ name!
You will not miss it. You will not stumble.
You will not waste years!
God will restore all that is lost.
That God-ordained relationship will become a reality in Jesus’ name!
I prophesy stability. Wisdom from above. Grace to follow God and obey Him.
As we step into another month, it will be a glorious month for you in Jesus’ name!
