Sister Sade Akanni once told a story of an occasion when herself and Bro. Gbile Akanni had a form of quarrel. He had an urgent preaching engagement to attend to and so while she expected that they were going to settle the issue before he went, he felt he didn’t have the time since he was guest minister somewhere and it was almost time.
So he travelled and had gone over a hundred kilometers when the Lord reached out to him in his car and asked where he was going. “To preach Lord. People are already waiting to hear from you through me.” The Lord told him to turn back and go back home. “Your wife is asking of you at home.” As he got home, the wife looked at him and said, “I know you will come back.” It turned out that the moment he left, she had gone before the Lord to submit a complaint.
They have shared severally that this is how they handle disagreements. Each person talks to the Lord to talk to the other. And so issues that could have become serious quarrels are easily resolved as the Lord steps in each time to do the talking on their behalf. After all, there is always a third party constantly present in every relationship as a “witness”. (Malachi 2:14). Why underutilize Him?
What a blessedness to relate with a partner who has an active relationship with the Holy Spirit. When you marry a man or woman who has no active personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, you marry someone who has no control. You will suffer to high heavens.
The head of every woman is the man and the head of every man is Christ but if your man is headless, you are defenseless; you will have no one to cry to in the days of trouble.
I have found from my own personal experience that if I want to stay mad with Iyebiye I needed to avoid the place of prayer. It’s pretty difficult to have deep communion with God and while you’re at it, for the anger in your heart against your partner (which you thought was so immovable) not to melt away.
Countless are the times when I have had a disagreement with Madam the previous night (I thought she offended me actually and ought to be the one to call me first and apologise) and then in the morning I had approached my normal prayer time with a heavy burden of heart and an urgent matter of prayer but as I sought to utter the first word, the Holy Spirit comes quietly in my heart to whisper Mathew 5:23&24.
It reads, “So if you are about to offer your gift to God at the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you (even if you thought you have done nothing wrong – as long as you have reasons to believe he or she has something against you which you are aware of), leave your gift there in front of the altar, go at once and make peace with your brother, and then come back and offer your gift to God.”
It is actually a waste of time to try to offer a sacrifice of praise or prayer or money when your partner has something against you. God won’t accept it.
Maybe you should be afraid then brothers and sisters of people who have no communion with God. That’s why they can stay mad at you and keep malice for a whole week. For months even. She can do the most egregious wrong without the slightest sense of remorse.
The question is do you daily have intimate communion with the Holy Spirit? If you don't you will be a bad person to get married to. You will be difficult. Impenetrable. Without control. Think on this! Click To Tweet
It is a true saying then and worthy of all acceptation that a stable marriage is a marriage where communion with the maker is constant and active.
But worse still, there are those who even choose to date folks who are not born of the spirit at all. Whereas the first and most important point of joining that a husband and wife (fiancé and fiancée) must seek is the joining together of their spirits. It is a joining of spirits that produces a deep spiritual communion between people. Once your spirits touch each other, you seem to see with each other’s eyes. You seem to flow together in a basic oneness of heart.
It is most impossible for a recreated spirit to join with one not recreated. One is dead, insensitive and unresponsive to God. He is carnal and does not savour the things of God for they are foolishness to him. The other is alive, tender and sensitive to the slightest move of the spirit of God. She is able to see spiritually. She discerns the things of God and hears His voice very distinctly. She is easily convicted of God’s instructions. She abhors sin so sternly and has a very enlightened conscience. While the man has seared his conscience with hot iron, because of the Flesh that rules and reigns within him. Look, the disagreement will be endless. Their spirits are parallel lines that can never meet. They can never have spiritual agreement.
Hear me well, the first step on your journey to a fulfilling marital life is to be sure you’re with a man or woman who is not a vagabond. Who is truly born of the spirit. And it is not in your marriage that you’ll find this out. It’s before and latest during courtship.
I have been amazed when I hear stories of people who married a vagabond and claim to only realise it after marriage. I don’t understand it. What happened to courtship where you both ought to be friends in the true sense of it. How can you befriend someone closely for months or even years and he will be able to successfully pretend to be born again when he’s not? What about his friends? He got all of them to perfectly act the script too? Or you never met them? He isolated you from everyone around him? That’s a sign in itself. If you saw bad signs with his closest friends, shouldn’t that raise a red flag? You know people always move with their kind.
What of unscheduled visits? There was none? Really there was no background check. Some of you who are careless about background check of a man or woman who you want to risk your entire destiny with are not so careless if you want to purchase a land that is just five million naira. Would you allow the sellers to rush you? Your hard earned 5M? Won’t you pay unscheduled visits to the land to find out the real owners? You can’t imagine how far we lawyers go to investigate a piece of land our clients want to buy. And that’s a land you can discard if you end up getting it wrong. How much more diligence in thorough background check is required regarding a marriage partner that you can’t change like items on a menu list.
I know the problem; you allowed the guy to pressure you into quick marriage. From the third week of your interactions he already gave a date when you MUST be married. So everyone started acting seriously and formally from that point. You couldn’t access the little child behind the bold masculine face before you. Since a day had been picked for the wedding, every action, discussion, interaction was focused towards the wedding day but unfortunately inadvertently, there isn’t much thought about the marriage after the wedding.
You jumped the process of courtship- the process of friendship. You were too inundated with the idea of getting married that you eventually missed marriage. You asked him to show you his Pastor whom he had submitted to before you met, he explained it away. Again, everyone else in his area, church and family have a different testimony about him but you ignore their opinion. You think you know him more than his siblings and parent?
Why were you so insensitive? Even in his words you ought to be able to catch the manner of spirit he carries no matter how he pretends. Every man’s word is tinctured, impregnated by the nature of the spirit within him. That’s what the bible meant when it said, “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
And what about the fact that anytime you guys are alone together, the first thing he wants to grab is your breast? Oh, you think that has nothing to say about whether he is truly converted or not?
Let me stop here and recommend to you a previous talk for those of you who want to hear more on that last point. The title is, “Dating Your Type”. Go to the column on “Sex” on the home page and you’ll find the article there.
We will continue the series, “Making Courtship Count” next week. Thank you for your time.
Your Brother,
Peniela Akintujoye.
hello@lovestraighttalks.com
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Hmm! I feel pained to realise most of these things at the late hour, but then, it is all worthy of thanks to God that the only late our is when we are dead, not when we still have air in our lungs and could effect changes in our lives and others’, thanks Sir Penny, may your source of strength not run dry in Christ Jesus name!