By Pastor Okokon Ating

I have been enlightened that marriage is an insti-tution established by God which no student has gra-duated from. Once an in-dividual is able to obtain admission into this sch-ool, one keeps on learning till death. In the school of marriage every student is a novice. No matter how highly educated one is, he/she has a blank knowledge compared with the normal academic attainment.

File: wedding ring

There are many mysteries embedded in marriage unknown to the unlearned heart. Couples do not know marriage but learn and study it. That is, cou-ples learn and study it when they come into the practical aspect of it.

I came in contact with a young lady who was busy attending marriage semin-ars and reading several books on marriage. Atten-ding seminars and reading books on marriage are good, I told her; but where you can know and be pr-oud of living confidently in marriage is when you enter into the reality of marriage.

This is when one is invol-ved in the very act where you are faced with chall-enges to handle, and succ-essfully resolving it with-out a crash.

Some people quickly opt out because they are un-able to face certain cons-equences and adjust to it.   Jesus said in Matthew 7:24-28 that, it is those who hear and do what God says that are being comp-ared with the house built on a rock which the storm and rain cannot bring down.

There are many people who have been in marriage and have seldom been in-fluenced positively by it.  Undeniably, it is not the day one resumes at sch-ool that one is able to ass-imilate everything. Such a one must pass through va-rious grades and styles of learning before one could attain graduation.

As it is in elementary sch-ool where a child begins to learn recognizing and identifying alphabets, how to form two or more lett-er words and so on, befo-re being able to read them, likewise it is in marriage.

There are elementary rudi-ments and rules one must learn to adapt, which if not such marriage stands in danger of falling apart.  We learn in marriage and ought to know this learning is on a daily basis. As you continue in marriage so you’ll realize some undis-covered character which was hidden at a time such marriage was contracted.

I know of a father who was a pastor as far back as 1985. He told me and other young pastors that, it has taken him and his wife much to cause their marri-age to stand for 30 years without breaking. The rea-son being that, the wife understood him soon enough and bore the res-ponsibility for his mista-kes and weaknesses till such number of years.

At the time Baba unders-tood Mama’s personality, he has become old and re-gretted maltreating Mama for so many years.

According to Isaiah 11:2-3, “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and un-derstanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord; and shall make him of quick under-standing in the fear of the Lord: he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears.’’