UNDERSTANDING THE MARRIAGE COVENANT – PATIENCE AND TOLERANCE

A man of God once told this story. A young lady who had newly married came to him asking him to help her because she just discovered she had married the wrong person and wanted out of the marriage. She was a member of her church’s prison evangelism team and had been visiting and witnessing to this inmate for a while. Later a friendship developed because this inmate had no family and she became the only “family” he had. When he was to be discharged from prison, he had no body and nowhere to go and so she decided to harbor him. To cut a long story short a romance ensued and not long after they were married.

The problem was that she was brought up to eat with cutleries and on a table with proper table manners and all that it entails. She was also a very neat and proper person who was almost impeccable in her habits. He husband was completely the opposite; he had no table manners, ate with his fingers and will fling his clothes anywhere; on the couch, chair, ground to the annoyance of this lady. In short she discovered that she was completely “incompatible” with this man.

The man of God told her that he was only empowered by God to join people and never to separate them. Pastors and clergymen were never mandated to separate or divorce couples and so he told them to do an experiment for the next two months which he called “one week in, one week out”.
What he simply told them to do was live the way it suits one partner for one week and the next week switch unto the way of the life of the other partner. Your guess is as good as mine that the couple did not separate but found marital live very blissful because they found a way to be patient with each other and to tolerate each other. One week they ate without cutleries and did not observe any table manners and the next week they ate with cutleries and observed all table etiquettes. The man learned to live like his wife and the wife learned to live like the husband and their quarrels completely disappeared.

Anyone who is determined to make his marriage work must imbibe these two principles – patience and tolerance. If you are an impatient person, please pray for the grace to be patient. If you are intolerant, you also need to ask God for grace to tolerate people.

As Christians, Christ is patient with us, tolerating all our misdeeds and shortcomings yet loving us in spite of the fact that many times we are unlovable.

You ought to demonstrate the same token to your partner. Try the principle behind “one week in, one week out” because it will work for you.

God bless you.

Femi Imevbore
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femiimevbore@gmail.com
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www.elshaddaicovenantchurch.org

 

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