THE OTHER WOMAN IN MARRIAGE- PROTECT YOUR MARRIAGE

 PROTECT YOUR MARRIAGE

(1 Thessalonians 5:22-28)

The Bible says abstain from all appearances of evil!

Anything of value deserves to be protected and your marriage is definitely valuable. Even when things are rosy in your marriage, it’s wise to keep your eyes wide open, pray constantly with your spouse and put some “guard rails” in place to keep your marriage on track and safe always.

Every marriage has different circumstances and challenges, but we’ve to stand firm and protect our marriage the most important bond in our family’s life from crumbling and damaging.

How can we achieve this?  There are several ways.  It takes a lot of hard work-but it’s up to you to do it for the sake of a healthy marriage.

• Be romantic with your spouse; flirt with each other, date, hold hands, kiss as often as possible
• Always appear presentable so that you remain attractive to each other.
• Encourage, admonish, and support one another.  Give each other words of affirmation;  how proud you are,  how you love,  adore each other and so forth
• Spend adequate ‘intimate time’ together – Attend drama nights, play games and do sports together.
• Pray together always –family that prays together stays together.

 The two institutions that the devil is fighting are the church and marriage I repeat.  Satan is out to destroy your marriage and ministry.  But God has given you the tools to defeat him.

Sarah was a waitress. Timid and a little naive, she spent most of her time thinking about her job and her friends. The last thing on her mind was being involved in a war.  

The local news was filled with stories of people getting killed, but Sarah didn't know these people, so the news had little or no effect on her. But soon the violence got closer home and several of her friends were killed. Finally, for reasons completely unknown to her, a stranger walked up to her and pointed a gun right at her forehead. 

These scenes are from the 1984 film, “The Terminator”.  The heroine of the movie, Sarah Connor, did not realize that she was in a key position. Her unborn son was destined to become the hero of an unseen war of the future, so the enemy was out to destroy her.  If he could destroy Sarah, the battle for human freedom would be lost before it ever started. 

Sarah was nearly destroyed because she didn't know someone was after her.  Her character illustrates the point that what you don't know will kill you.

A lady got married in her early 20s, bright-eyed and ready to serve God.  She and her husband worked in a church and saw thousands come to the Lord.  But she didn't realize she was in a key position.  Because she didn't know someone was after her and her marriage- she was nearly destroyed.

She and her husband have worked for that ministry since early 1980s. Tens of thousands of people have heard the gospel through the bus ministry and Sidewalk Sunday schools.  As a result of this success, the ministry has been instrumental in changing the way people look at urban ministries around the world.  But there has been a price to pay. 

Through the years she has been cursed at, threatened, rocked and egged. She has seen people beaten, robbed, shot and killed. She has awakened to sounds of breaking glass and screaming people trying to escape burning buildings. She has attended too many funerals to count. 

She and her husband have been caught in the cross fire as drug dealers shot at one another. One night a bullet came through the window of a van her husband was driving-missing him by mere inches.  She has had to teach their children to look both ways not only when crossing the street, but also before coming out of a building so they won't get hurt. 

But these are not the things that have almost destroyed her-these are only the physical attacks.  What has almost destroyed her, her husband and their ministry was the spiritual attacks on their marriage.

The real enemy is not the drug dealers.  The real enemy is the one behind the drug dealers, the fires and the shootings. He is determined to destroy your marriage and ministry. 

Satan's strategy is simple: He knows that by destroying your marriage, he can destroy your career, business and even your life.  Therefore, you are a target. Your spouse is a target. Your marriage is a target. She didn't realize this until she felt like her marriage was nearly destroyed.  What you don't know will kill you. 

How To Win The Battle

God wants you to take your rightful place-to live and move in the strong position in which He has placed you.  From this strong position, you can see your enemy clearly, and you have the power, through Jesus Christ, to stand against and defeat anything he throws your way. 

But you have a choice to make.  You can sit back and let the devil have his way. Your marriage can get walked on; your ministry, business, career etc. can be stomped on. Or you can say: "NO Satan- You're not taking me out. 

You're not taking my spouse out. You're not taking our ministry, business or career out."  The battle is raging against your marriage, career, business, health and ministry. You must take your place and fight.  Protect your marriage.

I pen down below three ways to do this: 

1. Pray Using The Word.

God's Word is powerful – His Word works wonders and by His Word the whole world was created including everything you see in it.  He says it will not return to Him void but will accomplish that which He sent it to do (Isaiah 55:11).  

For the first several years of my marriage, I can honestly say I hardly prayed for my marriage at all.  If I did, it was something like: "Lord, bless me...uhmmm...I pray that you’ll help me...and uhmmm, that I will have a nice day."  That wasn’t enough, it was not a prayer for the marriage. 

Then I learned to pray the Word of God over my wife, our marriage, myself and the children after attending Word oF Faith Bible Institute (WOFBI).  That made all the difference in the world. Instead of feeling defeated, I felt empowered. I saw real growth in my marriage now and a steady forward progress in all spheres of my life. God will give you discernment as to what to pray about and what verses to use. He will give you the authority to invite in the good and send away the bad. 

He will also give you the fierce anger of the Lord.  In Genesis 3:15, God said to the serpent, "'I will put enmity between you and the woman'" (NKJV). The Hebrew word translated "enmity" has to do with hostility and fierceness. So the enmity, or anger, that God put between the woman and the serpent is a fierce anger. This fierce anger that started with Eve and the serpent in the garden lives on in us today. God has placed it in us to use as a powerful weapon against the enemy. 

When you see the work of the enemy in your marriage -whether it comes in the forms of discouragement, Strange Woman, strife, pride, confusion or anything else, you don't have to just stand there helpless-watching it happen. Let the fierce anger of the Lord rise up in you and pick up the Word of God and fight. 

Beware-Satan will try to get you to blast your spouse with the fierce anger that rises up in you.  But your spouse is not the enemy. Even when the worst problems arise in your marriage, the battle is not against your spouse. 

It is God, you and your spouse against Satan.  Make sure you aim this fierce anger at the right foe. Otherwise its power may be used against you. 

2. Walk In Obedience.

Another key to fighting for your marriage and to protect it is to walk in strict obedience to God's ways, even when the world and your own feelings disagree. Satan wants to get you out of your marriage and strong position. He is afraid of the power that is in you through Jesus Christ.  He fears the fierce anger God has placed in you, and he knows what you can do to advance the kingdom of God by taking your place next to your spouse.

Satan has no authority to take you out of your marriage or the position God has placed you in, so he tries to get you to leave it yourself.  How does he do this? He does it like he does everything else through deception. Gideon's wife we previously read about left her marriage without anyone asking her to – that is exactly what the devil wants. Ruth took to her heels after Gideon’s wife left the marriage.  People thought that Ruth was going to marry Gideon. But rather, she refused seeing Gideon because her mission was accomplished and began to mock Gideon scornfully. 

The devil has worked for centuries to set up a World System (WS) that says a strong woman must never submit to a man. 

 It says, "submission means getting trampled upon." God clearly commands, "Wives, be subject-be submissive and adapt yourselves-to your own husbands" (Eph. 5:22).  

The truth is that when you submit to your husband, you will not be weak, you will be strong, for whoever obeys the Lord is strong. 

As the saying goes “respect someone only if you think he is worthy of it”.  Many times Christian wives go along with that standard. But that's not what God says. God says, "And let the wife see that she respects and reverence her husband." 

When you commit yourself to obey God's commandments along with praying for your spouse, it actually makes more power available: "The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available-dynamic in its working" (James 5:16).

 

But disobedience and unrighteousness will keep you from receiving God's power. Disobedience makes it easy for you to be deceived. Unrighteousness gives the enemy a foothold. You must be determined to obey God's commandments. Only then will your marriage succeed. 

3. Stand Strong.

Keep standing tall and strong in the face of opposition even when it looks like your marriage or ministry is over.  The word ministry here could be your business, career etc..

As a son and daughter of God, your spouse will go through times of darkness. These struggles may be more intense and more often than what you would consider normal. This can bring confusion ok. "If we're living for God, why are we experiencing so many problems?" - most people will ask. 

The fact is, it is actually part of the position God has put your spouse in as a pastor, leader, business mogul or motivator of his people.

 It's good to know that God will not give you more than you can handle, but know that He will bring you right to the edge.

 

1 Corinthians 10:13 says “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

Sometimes you'll be the only one to see it.  At the church, everyone seems just fine and "on top," there are no hungry people-only smiling faces.  We all are instruments- matching in a common band, playing songs of peace, hopes and freedom while at home it is not so.  It's OK. With God's help, you can handle it. 

God wouldn't have put you in the position of being his wife or husband if you couldn't handle it.  It helps to understand that your marriage will go through trials. Your marriage will experience certain situations and hardships so that it can be strong afterwards. 

Also, for a husband or wife to be used by God in a great way, he or she must go through times of testing and breaking. God will search him/her, expose what doesn't belong and require him/her to die to self. It won't be easy. During these dark times, it's important that we do not get discouraged. Our job is to pray because Satan wants to bring down your marriage in order to bring down your ministry.

Know that your marriage is subject to attacks of the unthinkable- atrocities such as adultery, abandonment and various addictions which are very destructive.  If the devil can cause one of these things to happen, he will. Then he'll tell you things are so bad that you might as well give up. Don't do it! Hold your position and keep praying and doing what God tells you to do. God intends for you to have victory.  

What has God promised you and your spouse? What "land" has He assigned you to possess? Whatever it is, when you take your place as a couple, you are in a strong and key position to tread down the adversary and possess the land. 

God is calling you to be that husband, that wife he has ordained you to be in your marriage. Take your place, fight and protect your marriage. You were chosen for this strong position, for such a time as this, so that the Kingdom of God will advance.  I see you wining this battle in your marriage, career, business etc. in Jesus name, Amen!

The book “The Other Woman In Marriage” is a touching life stories of alarming crumbling marriages put together by the author Israel Onoriode Ugbo.  It stressed on the followings; 1. Knowing Who To Marry 2. Protect Your Marriage 3. Strange Women and Men In Marriage 4. How God Feels About Divorce – the divorce cases on the rise in Africa and the rest of the world.  How Politicians, celebrities, business moguls, anointed men and women of God are increasingly divorcing.

It also prepares singles for marriage - Read the book “The Other Woman In Marriage” on www.okadabooks.com