MARRYING THE PERSON YOU LOVE

From time, we have through the indoctrination of television and romantic novels, been told that to marry the person you love is the guarantee for the “happily ever after”.

How deceitful this has become over time. The rate and spate of divorces and separation show that when love dissipates, the union disintegrates and the marriage crumbles.

It was a man of God who said we have been told a lie that you have to marry the one you love for your marriage to work. However, the gospel truth is that you have to love the one you marry. I want you to notice the sequence; love comes after the choice not the other way round. The second reason why believing that love is the answer to all marital problems is a lie, is because it is not just possible to marry everyone you love. I loved my mother but could not marry her. I love my two sisters but cannot marry them. So it is possible to love someone you cannot marry.

This idea is revolutionary and unless we understand the core meaning we assume that one is saying that love is not an important factor in choosing the one you wish to spend the rest of your natural life with.

I take my reference from the Bible in Genesis 24, which is the story of how Abraham, the father of Isaac got him a wife. 

“And Abraham was old and well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had. Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh. And I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell. But thou shalt go unto my country and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.” Genesis 24: 1-4.

“And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he LOVED her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” Genesis 24:67

There are some things we can learn from this account. It is interesting that Isaac did not meet his wife Rebekah until the day she was brought to him, yet the Bible says he was comforted by her. Why? Because he followed the Bible’s principles on marriage and I will like to outline them one after the other in the next few blogs.

The first principle is that marriage is an act of faith. This is a profound truth without which many have suffered shipwreck. It takes faith to make your marriage succeed. The first thing to consider in marriage is whether you are ready to take this step of faith. This is not a blind leap of faith but one that is founded upon you absolutely trusting in God.

Faith in the case of Isaac was to completely trust his father Abraham to make the right choice for him. I find this amazing because this completely negates our modern style of finding the right partner. Isaac was not looking at the physical attributes of the woman or whether she could cook and take care of the home, things that you and I look out for but his first concern was to entrust his search to his father.

As a parallel we as Christian are called to completely trust God to make the choice for us. There are many who say that God no longer makes choices for us as concerning who to marry because Adam blamed God for giving him Eve but they failed to realize that Adam was only passing the bulk and in any case the marriage did not break in spite of what happened. Some even quote Proverbs 18:22 “Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the LORD" to justify this position.

Unfortunately, we often misquote the Bible and fail to realize the salient message the word of God conveys. We must realize that Proverbs does not say whosoever finds a wife BY HIMSELF but just whosoever finds a wife. Also the same proverbs ends with God showing us that finding a wife without the active participation of God ends up in disfavor.

It is not love that should be the first consideration but faith.

More next time.

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