My Month Of Building My Home (Part 1)

I would like to welcome you to a brand new month of, 'Building My Home'. I pray the Lord will bless your home and help you to build it. By home I am referring to all aspects of your family: children, spouse, parents, siblings and in-laws. Every force and battles, visible and invisible you are encountering in your home, as a spouse, child, parent and as in laws I pray that God will give you victory in the name of Jesus.

There is no better word to describe marriage than the words penned down by the Holy Ghost through the writer of Hebrews in Chapter thirteen verse four - "Marriage is honourable; the bed undefiled." I took time to check out the word honourable. This is what I found out. Worthy of honour. The synonyms will make you equally happy: honest, moral, ethical, principled, righteous and right minded. The question then arises, is this what we find in marriages today? Do these words describe our homes and relationships today? Let us be truthful to ourselves: the answer in most cases is capital NO.

Many of those who are yet to go into marriage are already frustrated about marriage before the start whistle is even blown!

Let us hear from someone in the marriage: "What is it then, Jab" the middle-aged woman said, sadness emanating from her eyes.

"I suppose that means I'm the reason for your irritability. You don't seem happy, and I have to dance around your moods. But when I bring them up, you say you're not unhappy." Jab didn't deny being irritable or unhappy this time. He simply let her question sit in the dense air of my office. Waiting for an answer that didn't come, Jill finally looked helplessly at me."You see," she said, now talking to me. "This is what happens. I try to talk to him about his moods, but he either becomes even more irritable with me, pointing the finger at me and my moods, or he withdraws. Either way, we end up in another blow out. I can't stand it." "Jill," Jab said, turning to face her. "You are not seeing your part in this whole thing. Look at the way you are right now. I can't get you to see you have just as many moods as I have. Why is it always about me and my moods? Why can't we talk about you?" ¹

The summary of this is that many of those in marriage are always quarrelling, fighting, abusing one another, divorcing, remarrying and yet the same cycle of marital quagmire continues instead of supposed marital bliss.

I don't need to bother you with the complaints of children about parents and vice versa or that of spouses about in-laws and vice versa, you will think God created marriage for chaos, it is very much the contrary.

What Are The Strategies For Building A Great Home?

The way out in this case which I want to plead for is what I put in these philosophical three sentences and context: wisdom is knowing what to do, skill is knowing how to do it and virtue is doing it. Friends you know what to do, nobody forced you into marriage or will force you into marriage; you know what to do in your marriage: if you don't, I will share some principles with you again, the third part is the 'doing it- virtue.' Put the little tips, counsels, sermons, nuggets you have heard about marriage into use. You said it is not as simple as I think, friends it is simple. Until you learn to do the right thing as a spouse, child, parent, sibling, in-law, that marriage will dance on the dung hill. There are three levels under which I wish to engage our discourse:

1. PLANNING; 2. SEARCHING AND SECURING LIFE PARTNER; 3. PRACTISING MARRIAGE.

1. PLANNING:

I may be wrong, but most people do not prepare for marriage. They are just hoping marriage will work out. I see a lot of people preparing hard for the wedding, a one day event but forgetting to plan for the lifelong marriage. By this simple act they are violating "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" As a Pastor for over 31 years I have been privileged to counsel would-be couples and couples. Even during counselling their body language shows they have no value for the marriage. This is manifested in the actions they take afterwards which leads them to marital disaster. If you are reading this article, mark my words: marriage is not a drive- through phenomenon, marriage is an institution that you need to plan for, pray for and practice based on the biblical principles.

Let me share some guidelines about planning your marriage:

i) Parental duty: