By Pastor Okokon Ating

Ecclesiastes 4:9 says “two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour, For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not ano-ther to help him up”.

wedding ring

Sometimes, we are forced to believe that it must have been because of one challenge or the other that prompted God to join two of you together so that one can be a succor to the other. Matthew 18:19 says “Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father which is in heaven”.

Where there is a challenge faced by the couple, God gives them the right to agree as one entity and it will be done by God. A couple who faces cha-llenges together succeeds to-gether and have story to tell others.

There was a time in my ma-rital life that I was faced with many marital challenges, we were just three years old in our marriage experience, we where thronged with:

• Economic challenges
• Financial challenges
• Social/political challenges
• Psychologically, we were pressurized by my in-laws and my own family
• Unpredicted future which resulted from lack of emp-loyment.
• Also we were faced with how to answer the divine call into the full time ministry.
• We were faced with problem of how to cope with the first pregnancy of my wife.

All of the above and many unmentioned challenges were serious, so much that people started counseling us to return back to the village to stay until things improve. To us, it was as if we were going back to Egypt where God had delivered us from. Then, my wife and I saw it as a battle which we must fight to win together.

We decided to take the following steps:

• We cut off communication links from both in-laws.
• We resolved looking to God alone as the only source of our lives
• We paid deaf years to every side-talk either from the neighbours or even our church members.
• We refused our minds and attention on what God said about us as a family.
• We saw beyond the parti-cular suffering we were going through by achieving success while waiting for the actual success to arrive.
• We forgot about our health and every other palatable thing in life.
• We decided to live as if we were not in this actual planet earth. That is, we lived contently with whatever condition we found our-selves at that time.
• Our relationship with God of heaven was so deep that we heard from him audibly from time to time words of comfort which comforted our souls.
• Despite the challenges we faced, God honored us so much that people with similar challenges were coming to us for solutions of which they received.
• It was in that time of our predicament that God gave us a lot of promises of which some are fulfilled and others are still fulfilling in our lives beyond, today we are more than conquerors through him who loved us and gave his life for us.

People thought we would opt for a divorce because of the challenges but today the story is different. It depends on how you present your case before God and stands to iron it out with your partner. Of course, it is man-datory for the challenges of life to come. But how we manage or handle them with our partner is another ball game entirely.

SPIRITUAL SITUATION:

This may sound funny to you who have not had this kind of an experience that spirit-ual can cause divorce among couples is incredi-ble. You know, there are many people who can be very spiritual when they are single. These are people who got their time, money, wealth and energy commi-tted into the things of the Lord. They pay their tithes regularly in the church. They keep on fasting and praying consistently.

Indeed, they serve God at their best level. When one talks about backsliding and lukewarmness, it is not in their agenda. They are born again to the core, as the case may be.

In a situation where one decides to marry such a committed and functional individual who has the praise of everybody in the congregation, and discovers that the person who was seen as an angel is not what he or she thought to be, what do you think would happen? In this situation where the expected good spiritual character seen earlier is no longer avail-able there could be a regret that may lead to a con-templation of divorce.

Conclusively, I would advise our youth not to go into marriage without seeking God’s face for directions, before getting married, every individual should pray and ask for signs, some people have ignored God’s signs to direct them on their de-cisions.

And the married men and women should not write off their marriages too because there is always solution to every problem. God bless you.

*For enquiries contact: Apostolic Church, 3, Tree Power Avenue, Itire, Lag-os. Or call: Pastor Okokon Ating on:

08054121355, 08179072635

[email protected]