Choosing A Life Partner

Choosing a life partner is the biggest decision you'll make outside of choosing to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. I've met with scores of couples for premarital counseling through the years. And one of the first points I try to get across to them is that "desire" does not equal love. Desire may be illustrated by a young
person who tells you they can't live without you, that they're miserable, and that life seems colorless and empty when you're not around. That may be a form of love, but it's not the sort of love that will hold a marriage together through the years. While they may feel they "need" you today, it's possible that five months
from now you'll no longer meet their "need," and they'll find that they "need" someone else. What I tell these young couples is that love is based on commitment, and that everything you do is to fulfill, satisfy, and
serve the one you love. Real love doesn't enter a relationship with an expectation to just receive. It enters a relationship to give and give and give. Let me illustrate how deceptive the world's definition of "love" can be. Picture a young couple who has been dating for a few weeks. It isn't long before this young man tells his girlfriend how much he loves her and how difficult it is to keep his hands off her. Pressing her to engage in a
physical relationship, he explains that he "loves her so much" he can no longer restrain himself, he want to defile her through fornication (which many people refer to as premarital sex). The truth is, any young woman who hears that line should realize that the young man doesn't love her too much... he loves her too little. Actually, he's not thinking about her. He's only thinking about himself. He would never rob innocence and purity from one he truly loves. His insistence on a physical relationship only proves one thing: he loves himself much more than he loves her. What really brings peace to a relationship? How do you choose a marriage partner? Let me leave you with just a few thoughts.

Make sure your life partner loves God more than he or she loves you. Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Matthew 22:37-39, NIV) It is so important to observe your partner's love for God. Why? Because in time, the way he or she loves and serves Him will be reflected in the way he or she loves and serves you.

Make sure your life partner is a person of character: "Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord." (Psalm 119:1, NIV) Men and women of character are trustworthy in all they do and have an appetite for righteousness. They will keep their word no matter what the cost. Make sure your life partner is kind to others: "And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you." (Ephesians 4:32, NKJV) If you don't see your partner treat others
with kindness and grace, in time he or she will be treating you the same way.

Make sure to note the way your life partner dresses. "And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do." (1 Timothy 2:9-10, NLT) I'm not saying your partner should wear a gunnysack and combat boots to cover herself. I'm just saying the modest things she wears reveal a lot about her heart. Make sure your life partner treats his or her parents with honor and respect: "Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise." (Ephesians 6:2, NKJV) I have never yet met a young person who is truly successful or blessed who doesn't love his or her parents.

Make sure your life partner is respected by others: "Choose a good reputation over great riches, for being held in high esteem is better than having silver or gold." (Proverbs 22:1, NLT) Be wise about how you do this, but I would recommend that you discreetly ask a few people what they have observed about the person you're considering. Pay as much attention to their hesitations as to their words!

Make sure your life partner is not flirtatious: "Smooth words may hide a wicked heart, just as a pretty glaze covers a common clay pot." (Proverbs 26:23, NLT) A person's actions and looks speak volumes, so be advised, Son, and be wise.

Make sure you understand the true priorities of your life partner's life: "Don't let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you teach, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity." (1 Timothy 4:12, NLT) Watch closely to see signs of your partner's love, faith, and purity. Has this person put God first? Does this person live to serve others? Is this person selfish?

Make sure you know whom your life partner's close friends are: "Do not be misled. 'Bad company corrupts good character.'" (1 Corinthians 15:33, NIV)

Make sure your life partner is not contentious or violent: "Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred." (Proverbs 15:17, NIV) If you're picking up a lot of unhappiness or anger in this person, then be warned in advance.

Make sure you ask the Lord for discernment. "Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul... May your good Spirit lead me on level ground." (Psalm 143:8,10, NIV) "Trust in the lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6, NLT)

Make sure you pray, pray, pray: "Show me the path where I should walk, O lord; point out the right road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you." (Psalm 25:4-5, NLT)

May God help you in Jesus name.

By
Pastor Bimbo Odukoya

Before You Get Married Part 6

Whenever we have a church full, 99.9 present would have come for one problem or the other. Some may have lost their jobs; others have shaky marriages or have been driven to seek for God because of bad health or unfruitful business. Time has come for men to look at marriage the way God looks at marriage and bringing out the high points of the Bible, showing people what the Bible says and that is that a day will come in the last minute when people will have itchy ears and not be willing to listen to sound doctrines. A man that is not happy with his marriage will think of changing his partner and we are saying that the Bible is opposed to it because you don’t change your partner or your spouse 1 Cor 7:12-13 . Rom 7:3 . Instead, you change yourself because to change your partner will take you changing yourself. It is amazing how men and women try to bind others because they feel they are the proper demon they see troubling their life. If you intend to marry a woman who has no emotion, no bad attitude, no problem then we should have ordered for a robot. Therefore, do not marry a man to reform him. That is what reform schools are for, the psychiatric and the insane hospitals will help you. Boy oh boy, what counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. Do you know that it is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel because they get to know each other better? We should also know that a good marriage is the union of two good forgivers. Men and brethren, a man and his wife are one. God does not recognize a man and his wife as two entities. God sees them as one. Gen 2:24 . I have seen couples after getting married there are no more elements of surprise gifts. The last gift they gave each other was their wedding ring. We should have elements of surprises in marriage and gifts that will encourage the other person. But when people are hardly surprised, when people lose their capacity for emotion, then, they have become lepers because a leper has no ability to feel any pain and God uses pain to correct and instruct people. When your nerves are all dead, you are as dead as the dead. In marriage it is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages; we should daily desire that God will heal and strengthened our marriages. Healing is restoration. Healing is God restoring the nerves of the leper and giving him the ability to feel things and to feel pain and feel cold. Healing is God restoring the gift He gave you at the beginning which you have lost through ill-health, through wrong companionship or through carelessness and recklessness. That is what we call healing and it is restoration which translates to God giving you what you lost. Healing is God granting you creative ideas to make your marriage a heaven on earth. It is therefore interesting to note that all weddings are similar, but every marriage is different, when your friends comes and tell you how sweet her marriage is, most of us will go home to create third world war in our homes. Learn to trust your partner and trust God. Anything that causes us to turn to God and lean harder on Him is an asset, not a liability. Your wife or husband is not a liability as some people think. Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal. The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together. A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. How often do we communicate with each other, ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation. Each decision we take everyday is conceived from one of two sources; the flesh or the spirit. As such we must be alert and seek God’s guidance. The enemy may come in different guises to sidetrack us to destabilize our marriage but God will never disappoint those who put their trust in Him and have circumcised their ears and thoughts. Depend on Him in your marriage and believe in His timing, don’t rush into marriage because of peer or family pressure. He made the world out of nothing and needs no help to fix and give you a future.

Before Getting Married Part 5

You cannot love others except you have given your life to Christ. No man can be a faithful husband if he has not given his life to Christ. Only God can compel the husband to love his wife and to love her unconditionally and love her all the time and love her all the days of his life. Only a man who has surrendered his life to
Christ can love others: can honour others, can respect others. And appreciate and celebrate them.
A humble man is a man who has forgotten who he is and says I am what I am by the grace of God. A woman who knows how to give thanks to God; nothing dies in her hands, because God will turn
her decomposed Lazarus into a recomposed Lazarus. Every family must be grateful to God for his many mercies, therefore when you appreciate God, your marriage will appreciate. When you celebrate God In your marriage, you become a celebrity. In marriage your face is the black board that the other person’s
reads while your heart is the black board that God reads; so you must learn to smile and have some moment of laughter. A man should make the wife laugh at least three times a day. Every family must learn how to invest in Gods project, because God will come back and invest in your life. Marriage should be a strong
cultivation of two people who are intimate friends. Friends that can step on another’s toes without removing their shine; friends when one has messed up, will still love themselves; friends that would not leave themselves even when everyone has abandoned; friends when they are in need, will give up everything
and make sure that in one accord needs are supplied; friends that will pray first for the other even before praying for himself. The bible calls it ‘A friend that is greater and better than a brother. Prov 27:10 . Men and brethren, responsibility is the price of greatness. No man is qualified to possess what he did not
pursue. A man who desires a beautiful woman must be ready to make her body shine 24 hours a day. The scripture expects us to befriend a covenant principle In ourmarriage and you will not depend on
others for help. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people”; Exodus 19:5 In the school of marriage, every solution begins with the gift of knowing ‘how’ because God created each and every one of us on purpose for a purpose; so none of us is an accident without a unique destiny. Therefore, when the battles of life gets tough, when the enemy blocks every access road against you, when the enemy hedges you in or aims you in, when you come to a place where you sit on a particular door and cry and that door remains lock; You must learn how to call
for reinforcement by raising a song Hear this “My husband would always advised us to pray for divine favour before stepping out of the house for it will automatically make the impossible possible. As a result, I have watched my husband enjoy some unbelievable favours. While attending a Pentecostal conference in Switzerland we ran short of funds. But as we ate one morning, a stranger who could not speak a word of English walked up to us and began to shout Hallelujah! Apparently that was a way of telling us he was a Christian. He handed over an envelope to my husband, it contained $2000” Pastor Mrs P. Uma
Therefore never despise what you do not understand because it takes more than one colour to make a rainbow. It is therefore time to combine your creative thinking to creative praying and creative doing because in your marriage, your red sea is about to be turn into a red carpet.

Dr Uma Ukpai

Before Getting Married Part 4

Men and brethren, you must deal with the weakness of your father’s house before you transfer it into your marriage. Realising that only the Holy Spirit can help us with our weakness. You must be prepared to love unconditionally. Begin from your own house, a man must love his wife. You must love your husband. Your husband may be the biggest idiot around you; the bible commands you to love him. Your wife may be the worst demon, but love her. Your love can change him or her. You must learn to be truthful in your marriage, don’t use one another’s weakness as a weapon of war when you have slight misunderstanding. Ask God for grace and wisdom to deal with every confusion and problems in your marriage. Every lie needs another lie to cover the first lie; therefore we must learn to be truthful, even when it hurts. Crisis most times strengthens relationship. It tells us that we are human. Our needs are not many, therefore as much as you can let us
live a simple life. There are things that are not beneficial even though we look for those things. Avoid whatever will lure you into sin, things that can cause depression in your marriage or gossips that can ruin a relationship. In all the battles we fight in life, you either win or lose in your mind. The mind is the ultimate source of creation. When you think about negative things, negative things will begin to happen in your life and marriage. When your partner makes you angry don’t dwell on that anger. In marriage we must
cultivate the habit of saying SORRY, PLEASE and THANK you.Until you appreciate your partner, your marriage and life will not appreciate. When your husband comes suddenly and call you stupid, remind him that you were so stupid and that was why you married him. You must find a way to communicate your
feelings without creating confusion. In my days as a single preacher, after witnessing the power of God, the girl who invited me to that service said to me no other girl would marry you but me and if you say no
I will shoot you and shoot myself. So I was forced to go into one month fast, wanting to escape that trap and God delivered me. God showed me my wife in a revelation. Because we are from the same village I just told God you made a wrong choice; you should have asked me who is a good girl and it is not this girl. I
did not want to tell her. In the first place, she was young at 25 years then. I didn’t want to marry a baby. As far as I know, 25 years is what you call the end of the age of confusion. I waited for two years but I told God I would marry her only on one condition. She had written a book she called, Mother I have found a man. She walked up to me and asked me what I would do if God revealed a girl to me. I told her I will tell the girl to apply and she retorted: ‘Don’t you think you are arrogant?’ I replied, ‘No just say I have
self-respect; being a preacher if I propose to you now you’ll tell the whole world that the man of God is chasing me. Then she said what if I’m the girl? I said to her; then tell me you are the person. She wrote a very beautiful book and was very honest. She said God had revealed to her that I will be her husband. We have been married for 35 years and we have quarrelled only twice; being a confirmation, an affirmation and
attestation that she was the right choice.
By
Dr Uma Ukpai.

Before Getting Married Part 3

“Men and brethren, there are demons that won’t let your marriage function. The worst in the kingdom of marriage is to be married to someone who will turn your life to a hell on earth. Boy oh boy, I don’t know what is worse in life than marrying a man who hates you and a woman who does not like you. A woman who still prefers her old boyfriend, she still dreams about him, even though she is in your house. Every time you come close to her, she compares you with that old boyfriend and says to herself, I wish I had married that boy. And to her anything she does to you is done out of pity, not because you deserve it. Sometimes you asked for breakfast, she will ask you if you have no hand. A woman who will kill you easily is a woman who when you have come back from the day’s hard job and right at the door; you are welcomed with issues and
problems instead of water or food. A wife who cannot stop the husband from working too hard or cultivating the habit of rest will soon be a widow. One of my Pastor’s friends wrote in his will that if anything happens to him, that I should be the one to preach in his funeral! He died because he had refused to cultivate the rest culture. When I came to the funeral, I raised millions of naira for the family’s upkeep. The wife shouted please Reverend let us also go to Ibadan to raise more money? I told her to shut up, where was she when she refused to stop my friend from overworking. A woman who is killing the husband by slow motion
is a woman who intentionally and unintentionally confronts the man at the wrong time and wrong places. In the book of 2 Samuel 6:16 , the scriptures gave us an insight of a woman who fell in love with the killer of Goliath, Saul’s daughter according to the word loved David ‘but she despised him in her heart’ when he saw him rejoicing that God had granted him success. We know the results; the bible says she was cursed.
“Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death” Verse 23. Marriage is not a competition of who had achieved things more the other. Heaven can open door for the woman more than the man but she must learn to still be submissive as ordained by God. It takes wisdom to build a good marriage
that others will call a heaven on earth. Do not be deceived to choose to be an imitator of other people’s marriage, some Africa marriages you see are mostly people smiling with their teeth opened, but by the time you get closer, you will discover how badly it stinks. Marriage is ordained by God and the devil is not happy when you are happy” to be contd....

By
Dr Uma Ukpai

Ten Tips to Having a Healthy Marriage

1. Be Appreciative- Tell your spouse that you appreciate him/her and everything he/ she do for you, even the small things.

2. Be Committed- stand strong in your commitment to save your marriage and make it healthy again. If you don't stand up for your own marriage, who will? God
gives you more strength than you can ever imagine.

3. Be Communicative- Keep those lines of communication open with your spouse. Talk to him/her daily and just discuss family matters and matters of the heart with him/her. It shows inclusion and promotes openness. You should also make your requests known to God, who will hear your prayers and help you in your walk to
have a healthy marriage.

4. Be Encouraging- Say words of
encouragement to your spouse. When he/ she do something great, tell him/her that he/she did a great job or good work. It can
only encourage him/her to keep pleasing you, right?

5. Be Genuine- In your communications, have a spirit of genuineness and not sighing, pouting or complaining about
something. If you have been with him/her long enough, he/she will detect if you are genuine or just doing it for self gain. Do it in love!

6. Be Fearless- Don't be afraid to try new things in your marriage to make it more enjoyable. Go someplace new (even if it's to a new park or restaurant), try a new
bedroom move (just don't hurt yourself), try a new perfume/cologne to entice your spouse (or as the old timers used to say, a
new "come and get me sauce"). Just don't be afraid to do it. This is YOUR spouse and you are entitled to have a great time with them. And the best thing about it is "IT'S
100% LEGAL!

7. Be Fun- Did you ever have fun with your spouse early on in your marriage or during the engagement stage? I know you both
hung out and took walks in the park, went to the beach, baseball games, basketball games, plays, movies, etc. You did things
that were fun and enjoyable for both of you. So why do you think that you can't still have fun because you are married now?

8. Be Honest- Be sincere and truthful in your communications. If you are worried or hurting about something, talk about it honestly. You know when the door is opened for that honest communication
with your spouse, so don't be afraid to do it.

9. Be Humorous- Didn't you ever laugh when you were dating your spouse? Surely somebody cracked a joke or two in the relationship. You cannot tell me that you didn't laugh at jokes, movies, falling down, getting up or just silly things. But you know, those things gave you both hope and lightened the load of just being in a relationship. Remember, laughter is good
relationship medicine and should be practiced as often as you can do it.

10. Be a Listener- There are times when our spouses just want a listening ear. Don't be too busy to be a listener when your spouse needs to talk. You did talk all night
when you were dating right? The difference now is that you don't tell him/her to go home and come back tomorrow, because you are living under the same household.
Lend that ear to him/her and they will cherish it! Now I didn't mention prayer specifically
because that should be a given in any relationship. Praying about your situation and how to handle it should be first and foremost in your marriage; period! Remember this, if you are not fulfilling your role as the spouse that God wants you to be, someone else will be happy to try and fill it for you. Don't let that happen in your marriage. Take Charge of what you
need to do to keep your marriage healthy. Just put forth the effort first and allow God to lead you the rest of the way.

Before Getting Married Part Two

Marriage was designed and ordained by God for our good and pleasure. But since the fall of Adam and Eve, marriage has gotten complicated and in some cases, it has turned out to be what the couple never expected, nor what parents had in mind when they celebrated the journey of the two. Some marriages has become so
sour that the partners live in fear and tear or as enemies. Others have planned, hardened their hearts and eliminated their former ‘sweethearts’ and ‘honey’. We all, I guess must have heard or seen ‘darling’ couples who are now enemies, hating each other more than words can describe. But despite this, people get married every day. There are those who are fasting and praying, willing to go to any length to find a wife or husband. They do not take into consideration all the negative stories thy must have heard. Meanwhile, there are those who wish that God had approved divorce and or made a law permitting people to go their separate ways at the least provocation. Such have stayed married just to appease their church or their circle of friends. Left
to them, their marriage would have been dissolved years back. In retrospect, we say that marriage is like a besieged city; some who are married would wish they could rewind the clock and become free again; while some who are single are desiring without respite, that they would find the Prince or Princess and live happily ever after. Nevertheless, since God designed marriage, there are many who are enjoying it and thank God daily for His wisdom in instituting marriage and giving them the man or woman of their heart. Where do you belong?

By
Dr Uma Ukpai