The issue of failed marriages in our society, today, are growing at an alarming rate. While as many new marriages were contracted every week, old marriages are equally failing at an alarming rate every week.
The last year of 2015, I was highly disturbed reading about the marriage failure of Pastor Chris. Information had it that this year 2016, pastor Anita and Pastor Chris had finally divorced.
The failure of their marriage generated a lot of sentiments as some blamed Pastor Chris while others blamed Pastor Anita as being the cause of the failure of their marriage.
Pastor Chris is a highly respected man of GOD known all over the world, yet his marriage with Pastor Anita had failed and is now history.
In 2014, a well-known political figure in the person of the Russian’s president Vladimir Putin had a failed marriage as he formally divorced his wife of 30 years. .
The same marriage failure happened to the late president of South Africa, the popular and late Nelson Mandela. What about the failed marriage 35 years ago of the royal marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana?
Also, a popular football coach, Arsène Wenger had a failed marriage as his marriage ended the last year 2015. The same thing happened to a multi-millionaire John Caudwell as he had a failed marriage.
I am citing all these figures to show you that no matter whom you are, whether an anointed man of GOD like Pastor Chris or a billionaire like John Caudwell .
If you are not careful or toil with this basic marriage principles, you will surely pay dearly for it as all those people I mentioned above paid dearly by having failed marriages.
In this post, we shall be looking at the basic marriage principles that you should never toil with if you don’t want to see your own marriage crash as those mentioned above.
One of the basic principle of marriage as the Bible puts it can be seen in Genesis 2:24-25 which says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed”.
In other words, the first marriage principle, we shall look at is “cleaving to each other as to become one flesh”: The Bible expects couples to cleave together and be one flesh.
As a man, unless you cleave to your wife you can never be one flesh with her and if you are not one flesh with her, your marriage cannot survive. To cleave means to be in bond with each other in love, and this bond is created by their intimacy.
But where there is no intimacy in a marriage, there can never be a bond of love, and where there is an absence of this bond and intimacy, love for each other can never grow but rather will atrophy and die.
The above was the very mistake pastor Chris and the other men made by allowing their wives to live apart from them for years. For instance, Pastor Chris was living in South Africa while his wife lived in the UK for years.
As said, it is an intimacy that makes love for each other to grow, which is necessary for any marriage to survive. When love is not growing due to the absence of intimacy, it will atrophy and finally die off.
Never toil with this marriage principle of creating and building intimacy if your own marriage is to survive.
In addition, when couples are living apart or are not intimate with each other for years, their love will never grow, and you know the implication of the absence of love in a marriage.
Remember what the BIBLE said about love in 1st Peter 4:8 and above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”
In a marriage, once there is an absence of love, other negative issues will begin to take place such as lack of trust and the marriage of couples that doesn’t trust each other never lasts.
That was what happened to the man of God pastor Chris. It was because there was no trust again between them that his wife started to make the accusation.
Another issue that is causing the failure of many marriages is what the Bible calls it in 1Co 7:5 “Defrauding one another $exually”. “Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempts you not for your incontinence”.
Once a couple fails to head to this principle, other negative chain reactions will surely follow. For any marriage to survive, couples must learn and be ready to take care of the $exual need of their spouse even if they don’t need it themselves ,unless there is a mutual agreement between them.
But for a couple not to care or bother about the $exual needs of their partner, crises will surely be the outcome. Take for instance the case of Pastor Chris and pastor Anita as an example, for years they were living apart from each other, and that means they may not be having a $exual relationship as husband and wife.
So for a $exually active man (a man not impotent) and yet not to desire $exual satisfaction from his wife for years, that made his wife begin to suspect and accuse him of having affairs with some other ladies.
You remember that what brought about the initial crises that made Pastor Anita to go for divorce was that she accused Pastor Chris of infidelity.
Do you think that if the two of them were living together that the accusation will ever come up? So if you are a man, learn from what happened to Pastor Chris and never abandon your wife in the cold.
Until I come your way again, stay committed to your marriage by creating and building intimacy with each other. Also, never for any reason defraud each other $exually. Shalom
image credit: http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles
