Taking Care Of Your Lover/Spouse Okay, so you are in love. Butterflies are flying in the tummy, your heartbeat accelerates, and there are twinkling little stars on your face. How do you take care of each other? Or you are married, somehow the butterflies have decided to rest, the heartbeat is stable and the stars have hibernated. How do you take care of each other or probably rekindle this love?
Here are some ideas for singles and married couples.
1. Communication Stay in touch. Words are powerful; use them to your advantage. As singles, don’t let your courtship season be a memory of fights, quarrels, and arguments. Be mature with each other. Avoid being incommunicado.
Make it a rule; we must keep talking. That can also be a powerful principle to live by as a married couple. The devil feasts on silence; assumptions will persist and complicate the issue because assumptions are the lowest form of knowledge.
What is a man looking for? Respect! What is a lady looking for? Love! If you learn to communicate this, there will be less tension!
Singles should however note that it is wrong to say you are showing respect while you are disobeying God’s injunctions! More aptly put, you are not showing respect to your fiance by cooperating with him when he asks for pre-marital sex.
2. Spirituals Oh, pastor, what has this got to do with being romantic? It’s got a lot to do! Somebody said, to be romantic, read the book of Romans! Your spiritual life as single or married can determine the success of your relationship or marriage. There are two elements to your spiritual life: reading God’s word (which also includes study and meditation) and praying to God. If you can make this regular and consistent, some order will enter your relationship/marriage.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:24 KJV)
Here, we see God giving an instruction once marriage is in view. There must be “leaving” and a “cleaving” before any marriage can be successful.
A lot of people leave without cleaving. It won’t work. A lot more try to cleave without leaving. It won’t work either.
It has to be a “leaving” and a “cleaving.”
The word “leaving” is very interesting. There are two particular words or meanings I am interested in. They are the words ‘relinquish” and “commit self”
Pastor, you mean I must relinquish relationship with my parents? It doesn’t mean you disconnect from them or cut off from them, it only talks about where your focus should now be as a married person. After God, the next most important person in your life is your spouse. It doesn’t mean you should not take care of your parents any longer, it just means there should be more emphasis on your spouse.
And then the word “commitment!” Leaving to cleave involves commitment! A person that goes into a relationship or marriage without the willingness to commit to the relationship is just playing around. You need to pray as a single that your path will not cross with such people because they would waste your time, energy and resources. Yorubas call such people “alawin”
It is not God’s concept to have several people on your list that you are dating at a time. If God wanted some form of double dating or polygamy, He would have created Eve, Eva and Evelyn for Adam. Remember Adam still had ribs remaining!
But God created only one person upon whom Adam should focus on. And that is the biblical standard! In that one person is packaged everything you need to be complete. Couples who constantly fight and quarrel are missing out a lot because they are never complete that way. Their agreement would be broken and prayer would be hindered.
Some people are deeply spiritual. So spiritual they probably wanted God to help them propose or answer a proposal. Well, it is not as complicated.
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. (Genesis 2:22 KJV)
What God will do is that He will present you with opportunities and guidance, but He will always allow you to make up your mind. That is why the scriptures says:
Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord. (Proverbs 18:22 KJV)
Whoso findeth… this is talking to men. Men are the ones that do the finding, not the ladies.
Right now, look around you. Your friends, church folks, classmates, relationships around you, those are all the people God has presented to you. You are to prayerfully choose once you are at a marriageable age. You are to be led by God’s Spirit, because when you ask Him, He will lead you and you won’t have to be proposing to several people. God still leads. You don’t need to have a dream or vision or hear a voice, it could just be inner witness or even circumstantial leading.
I am very certain that God’s design for a good relationship is not to start having boyfriends or girlfriends all over the place and be toying with your emotions in experimental relationships. God certainly wants to lead, if you allow Him.
And do you know one thing? God will not lead you wrong!
Now to the couples. If you are already married, presentation opportunities are over. Stay with your spouse and enjoy the wife of your youth, the scripture advises. Focus on God and then on your spouse. That is the secret to a successful marriage.
You can only admire people after your wedding, you should not desire them. In other to enjoy God’s blessings and favour maximally, you will need to focus on your spouse with all your heart! After God, the next person is your spouse!
Take a cue from Adam, it was when Adam slept that God was able to perfect the presentation of his wife. You have been too noisy and too mobile, go and sit down somewhere and let God do His work! Think about it, upon all your sweet mouth and relationship skills, where is the loved one?
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; (Genesis 2:21 KJV)
Learn from Adam, and go to sleep.
The responsibility of God is to cause a deep sleep to fall upon Adam; the responsibility of Adam is to sleep. Adam could say, “No way, I am not sleeping!” But the scripture says he slept!
When he slept, God went to work.
No wonder the scriptures say:
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalms 46:10 KJV)
Yes, be still. Stop sampling around! How can one brother propose to seven sisters in the same church? Who is leading you? Each time, you keep saying, “God said..” Are you sure God said?
Be still, then you will see God in your relationship or marriage. Ladies, stop being suggestive and stop spending your money to buy things for him. Let God help you by calming down! How I love the Message Translation:
“Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything.” (Psalms 46:10 Message)
Yes, step out of the traffic. Focus on God and you will surely see His salvation in your relationship and marriage!
To married men, you are not only to sleep, you are to die! The Scripture admonishes that you are to love your wife as Christ loves the church. How did Christ love the church? He died for her. In the same way, loving your wife appropriately involves dying to your preferences sometimes, dying to your desires sometimes, and prioritizing her needs! May God give husbands understanding!
I started yesterday on this topic. Will continue this morning.
2. For man, work came before marriage And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (Genesis 2:15 KJV)
God gave Adam work before ever giving him a wife. God’s order is not coincidental. It is a deliberate order that is meant to communicate wisdom that work is the first thing to get before getting a wife. Speaking in tongues alone will not feed your wife; you’ve got to work. If you are jobless, you can create work for yourself.
To be without work is to resign yourself to fate. While you are busy waiting for that dream job, find work to do. Volunteer somewhere, and that might even get you a job!
Without work, your wife will not likely show-up! Don’t let your life stop because you haven’t gotten that job. There is a creativity packaged inside you that needs to be discovered. Joblessness is an opportunity to discover work; the gifts of God embedded in you that will bring you to your wealthy place. Discover your gifts, develop them, and simply deploy them.
3. There is a difference between aloneness and loneliness And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. (Genesis 2:18 KJV)
Man was alone, but not lonely. When you are lonely, you are not ready for marriage yet. When you are alone, you are ready!
Marriage or courtship will not cure loneliness. If you don’t agree, ask some married people ‘is it possible to be married and be lonely?” They will give you a resounding Yes!
Many wives see their husbands daily and yet very lonely! So, as a single, you need to understand that loneliness cannot be eliminated by marriage or by sex. You increase the emptiness by trying to fill it with sex. Only Jesus can fill that emptiness.
Signs of loneliness in your life are an indication that there is still a void to be filled by your maker. It is an indication that you need to pay attention to your spiritual life and you need to go on a journey of identity discovery in the scriptures! Don’t ignore it, rather go on a spiritual adventure through reading, studying, and meditating on God’s word. You will come up stronger and better and ready to face life!
