In Today’s Disciplers Convocation, we want to look at an aspect of life that we must be victorious. This month is our month of Victory and in our ‘Leadership Fellowship’ meeting some days ago, we were exposed to the Secret of Sustained Victory.
It is not enough for a man to be a very fantastic soldier and yet a failure in his marriage. Your influence in life and wherever you have been placed, if it is not sustained by the stability and security of your marriage, it will not last. Whoever you could imagine or try to become, if your marriage does not have sustained victory, that will not last. So, while you are striving to become a great man or woman, you must understand that your marriage must become the foundation for your greatness otherwise, whatever you build on it, it will crumble. I pray that will not be our experience in Jesus’ name.
So, we want to look at Safeguarding your Marriage: Delivering It from The Enemies of Your Peace, Progress, Prosperity and Posterity. I want us to go very quickly to Genesis 1:26. The Bible says: “Then God said…” And I am sure we are familiar with the word ‘then’, when you have the word ‘then’, it connotes there had been series of events and subsequently, then! After all these, then! The word of God introduced us to what God begin to do. In Genesis 1:1, the Bible says “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So, we saw that we were introduced to God as the one who creates, and He created the heavens and the earth. So, in verse 26, we were been launched further into the creative works of God. It says: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
“Let us make man in our image and let them have dominion…” Of course, before the dominion, it says: “according to our likeness.” So, we know that God had a plan, He had created the heavens and He had created the earth and then He created the earth for a purpose and He had an intention of who would “man” the earth. He had created territories, He created the territory called the earth and then He created the man, who must man it. And so, in verse 28, the Bible says: “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
When you go through this chapter one, we were exposed to all these, and then in chapter 2:7, the Bible says: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” We are just exposed to the different workings of God, both on earth and in heavens. In verse 8 of the same chapter 2, the Bible says: “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.” Then verse 15 says: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” We were exposed to how God created two territories: The Heavens and the earth and then how God ordained that He would not directly rule over the earth but the earth would be ruled over directly by man under His own control. Do we understand? So, God was clear about His own intention. In Genesis 2:7, we were told how God created that man that He had intended to create. Genesis 1:26 showed us the intention of God. Verse 28 further explained it, chapter 2:7 further showed us how God started the creation of that man; forming him and making him to come into existence. After being brought fought, in verse 8, we were told how God put him in a place where he will rule on behalf of God. Then in verse 15, God now did not just put him there with the intention that the man could tend and keep the garden.
At this time, responsibility has been put upon his shoulders and he was expected to function. So, I don’t know, if God could deal with Adam like this, I don’t know how God intends to deal with us. So, when God wants to make a thing happen, He declares it before He does it so that when the thing is done, you will know that it was God who did it. Why? Because He said He will do it, and now He has done it. Now, let us go to Genesis 2:18: “And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” So, at this point, should we admit that man was alone? God didn’t intend man to be alone, but he was alone. The intention of God is that there should be a help for him, but at that moment in his life he was alone. You know we said that there will always be a time when God declares His intentions for your life and there will always be a time when God actualizes it. And so, God said “it is not good for this man to be alone, I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
Verse 19: “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.” So, while there was not found a help comparable to Adam, Adam was not alone. There were other living creatures inhabiting with Him. If he was alone, who would God tell him to rule over? He was there as a ruler and he had the creatures of God to rule over. And one thing we mustn’t forget is that Adam was not alone, and Adam was in the company of those who were innocent and some who had ulterior motives. So, while you are living your life, in the midst of people God had given responsibility on the earth, in the same midst and in the same location God expects you to be fruitful, there could be other people who have ulterior motives that you must be discerning enough to safeguard your marriage from; so, that you do not make a shipwreck of your marriage and faith.
God put him in the garden to rule: he said to him to tend and to keep. And the question is: to keep it from what or who? The same creatures that he was expected to keep the garden from were the same people/creature that he was expected to safeguard his marriage from. So, it is like the same grace God has given to him to do the work he has been given to do, it’s the same grace God expected him to use to protect his marriage. And so, God brought all the animals to Him the living creatures and he gave them names. But let us go to verse 20: “So, Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.”
There were people around him but none was like him, none shared his nature, none had his purpose, none was created by God and in the same manner he was created. So, they couldn’t help him. There was a gap in his life that they were not able to fill and so God seeing the gap; decided to fill it up. If God concludes that there is a gap in a life and God decided to fill it up, is it not foolishness for a man not to consistently, throughout the course of his life, guard what God has created to fill the gap? There is a gap in your life and God has fill it up, is it foolishness or wisdom to treat the gap with levity or treat it anyhow? There is no wisdom in that. So, let us go to verse 21: “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.” 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
When God had finished making the man, the Bible says God put the man in the garden. So, when God had finished making the help for Adam, God also brought her into the garden, the same way God also brought the man at the beginning. The same process. But when he saw the one that God had created, see what he said in verse 23:
And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones
So, it means all this while, Adam had been confronted with bones that were not his bones and flesh that were not his flesh. So, it means there is your own bone, there is your own flesh, there is the creature of God that God has created that you must live your life with. If many creatures were brought to him and yet, none was the bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, that is to tell us that even though we could be 1 billion or more as a people on the earth, there is only one bone for a man or a woman and there is only one flesh. So, a man in marriage must come to a point to realize that there are no “they are” bones of my bones; but “this is the bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” It says further:
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”“Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
Now, I found three things in the last three verses that we must meditate on before we move further. Don’t forget we are dealing with safeguarding marriage on one side and then delivering it from the enemies of your peace, progress, prosperity and posterity. There is a portion of the Bible where Jesus said New wine must be put inside new wine skin, which is the appropriate thing to do. But when New wine is put inside an old wine skin, Jesus said there would be a tear, in other words, there would be crisis. So, if you don’t want break up in that situation, let the new wine be put in a new wine skin and old one in an old wine skin. Now is it possible for a man and woman who have become one flesh to have a tear? He has already accepted her and he has known that there is nothing conflicting about us, we have every reason to agree. There is no difference and there is no disagreement.
So, when there is no disagreement, no differences, when we agree; what do we say reigns? Is that not PEACE? So, when we are dealing with the enemies of your peace, we are dealing with people or entities that want a tear to occur in your marriage. You have to deliver your marriage or safeguard it from them because in reality, if there wouldn’t be a possibility for crises, there wouldn’t be a mention of peace in this place. If there is no need or possibility for rejection, when there is an acceptance, there would be no need to celebrate it. Why will the Bible show us how a man and a woman accepted themselves when there is no need for acceptance to be? If there is no possibility for the man and the woman to accept themselves or reject themselves, the Bible wouldn’t show the need for acceptance from the man.
When you have divorce and battles in marriages, it means the husband or the wife has come to a state of saying “this is not the bone of my bone.” A state where the man is saying “this is not the flesh of my flesh; she shall not be called Mrs. Lambert.” As long as enemies are around in the garden, that peace is the first point of attack when the enemies come. The Bible says “when the enemies shall come like a flood the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against them” that shows us that enemy coming to your life is a matter of time. In this context, the peace of your marriage is the first thing the enemies would want to attack when they come around.
So, in case your marriage is at peace don’t sleep, if there is anyone who wants to dislodge you in your authority on the earth, because for those of us who are students of the Bible, we know they have lost their dominion, the man and his wife who were ruling, ceased from ruling and the question is: Were they not ruling when there was peace? At the time they stopped ruling, was there peace? If there was peace, will their son kill his brother? So, it means when they were chased out of their authority, when they were casted out, it also connotes that they lost their peace. So, when you have peace in your marriage you should guard it, it’s the first point of attack in your marriage, guard it if you don’t want to lose your marriage dominion.
The second point is in verse 24. The Bible says: “Therefore, a man shall leave…” and I want us to note the word ‘shall’. What is the other word for ‘shall’? So, it means that a man will of necessity “leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” When you join three things together, what happens? They become one, right! The word ‘join’ is a strong word, it is a word that makes as many things or people to form one. Bible says “a man shall leave his father…” this is the way to it, there is no magic about it; “and be joined to his wife…” another word is joined to his flesh or bone, “and they shall become one flesh.” You know we are referring to a necessity, something that must happen in time, in the future right. This is what is represented by your progress here. The question is: Why must the husband and wife become one flesh? Are there benefits to you as the husband and the wife that you have become one with your wife? Is there any benefit to God or the earth that you have become one as a couple? If there are benefits, it means there are enemies against it. Anything that as to benefit humanity, benefits God, benefit the people of God, benefit the earth, anything that has benefits has oppositions against it.
So, the second thing the enemies want to do is that they prevent you and your husband/wife from becoming one. Don’t forget, becoming one is not instant. The pastors can’t bring your hand and join it to become one. They can make it appear so; it is you two that must make yourself one. And so, if you and your husband are journeying towards oneness and you have enemies that are threatened by your oneness, then they stop the process or they delay it. You are asking questions: I have been married to my wife or husband for several years, but I can boast that there is oneness. Then it means there is a problem. So, it means the process is truncated, the process is affected and being prevented from taking place.
You are expected as a people in marriage to progress. Thank God you were a child to your parents before, but now that you have come together to become married, you must abandon the things you were before and you must form oneness in time. The earlier you become one in your marriage/take responsibility to secure your oneness, the more and the earlier you are able to lay hold on to your eternal life/your inheritance and your dominion without loosing it. God brought the woman but the Bible says “the man shall leave.” So, if the man fails to leave then the process will be affected. The woman has been brought, but has the man left?
The other thing that the enemy deals with is that they deal with your PROGRESS. And how do they deal with progress? Simple! The prevent your unity. Just look around at any marriage that is admirable, that the husband and wife has done so much together on the earth and then they are not united? You can’t find any greatness or anything worthy of emulation from a marriage when the husband and the wife are not joined. The Bible didn’t say the woman should join the family of her husband, the responsibility of the wife is that she should join her husband and the assumption is that the husband has left. So, if there will be successful joining, then it means there must be successful departure from the husband. The husband must have left, making it easy for the wife to cleave.
When people report your wife to you, they are preventing you from being one with her. Marriage is principally about that man and woman and God. That is all! God is the one who has great intention on the earth, God is the one who has chosen that man to do it and also brought the woman to make it happen. And so, there is no time you should say “I want to go and report my wife to her people or my husband to his people.” You are complicating your unity; you are delaying the chances you’ve got to become one with your husband or wife. If you have issue with him/her deal with him/her on it, he/she is the one that you should talk to when you have problems with him/her. Report your husband to your husband, and report your wife, that’s not gossip. Your wife will not prefer that you go and report her to her family. If you have any complaint talk together about it. Something is not working, talk together about it. If you must talk to any other person outside that man/woman, then it must be God. If there will ever be any possibility for an outsider to know what is happening between you, then it must be the union interacting with the outsider as one.
So, when your wife or husband is not there, tell the person to hold on. The best thing that can happen in your marriage is to limit your communications as separate entities in the marriage with an outsider. Nobody is closer to a man than his father or mother; and instead of God listing so much, He limited it. Jesus eventually listed so much. The marriage is not about your parents, it’s about you and her and me. It’s about you two becoming one, and then getting married to me; your God. So, it’s a relationship between me and you as one. And so, every time we say, “and God made man, and God blessed them”, and then you are confused and asking what’s going on, the husband and the wife are both seen as one. So, this is God relating with the oneness of the marriage. If that marriage must progress the unity must be sustained.
Don’t report your wife to anybody, because nobody deserves to no anything that she is doing, no human, no pastor; except as a union you agree to take yourselves and then when you get there you speak as one, you listen as one, you talk as one. So, if you will remain in authority and remain there, then you relate as one. Become one, keep your oneness, then work assiduously, work tenaciously to sustain your oneness in your marriage. Give it all that it takes, anything can go but your marriage must remain one, you cannot trade it for anything. People will make jest of you because you are not trending for evil, but soon you will trend for good. Nobody eventually disagrees when they see good things happening in your marriage. People struggle initially thinking that something else would work, when nothing else works; they come to the good. That is why, in case you are the only one doing the right thing, don’t get afraid or discouraged. Continue, and over time, every other person will come and emulate and copy you. Why? Because it is working. Your marriage must remain throughout your life, as long as the couple remain on earth, people must never be able to come between two of you.
Now in verse 25, the Bible says: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife [his flesh], and were not ashamed.” I call this posterity in marriage. You know, the matter of nakedness was so important that if you read the entire chapter three, it came over and over, that is to show the importance of that word, ‘naked’. And just to show the nature of their nakedness, the Bible says there was no shame in it. At what point in time will a man not be proud of what he is doing again? At what point will a woman want to hide her actions from her husband? Can you do good and not want anyone to find out? So, in chapter 3 the Bible introduced us to a character, a creature of God who came on the scene, he was not a part of the marriage, but he came around, the creature was not a part of the marriage, God was. The creature was not the founder, the originator of the marriage, God was, and so, he came in.
What was his intention? He knew that if he could affect these three things that were enumerated from 23-25, he could replace them. Don’t forget, the man and the wife are expected to be one, they are one, and as one they rule over the earth. So, when you are able to tamper with things that keep them as one, to the extent that they are not able to function in their authority on the earth, what happens is that you replace. It is like having an opposition party in government, what are they there for? The opposition is always lurking around, waiting for the opportunity to become the ruling party. So, when the serpent was lurking around, he was lurking not as one who wants to keep them in authority, but as one who wants to supplant them, who wants to take over from them. And so, not knowing the true intention of Satan, they were careless in dealing with the Serpent, to the point that the issues like their peace, their progress, their posterity was tampered with and they were no longer able to remain in authority.
Now if a man is very rich, you can even say “stinkingly rich”, and then the man has a health issues that would require that he spends like a million dollars daily for him to be alive, tell me, how long more will the wealth remain? So, there are variables that must be put in place for a man to call himself a wealthy man. If you must become the president of a country, there are variables that must be constant. Why do the government spend so much to pain a picture of who they are not in public? Why do they spend so much to prevent the media from intruding into their privacy? Do you know the moment a president is found to be committing adultery and all manner of things, there could be impeachment against such? But what do they do? They try as much as possible to cover it up.
Anywhere a man is in authority, anywhere a man is succeeding or anywhere a man is making waves, there are factors around his life that must be kept constant, if he or she must remain there. Satan knows this very well and he made all the efforts to tamper with the constant factor making them vary. He made them variable factors that change and therefore, changing their destiny. So, if God calls you and gives you a responsibility and God makes your name great, the constant factors around your life ordained by God, you decide to change any of them, then you are able by that change to change your own destiny.
What would have happened to the earth if Hagar had never given birth to a child for Abraham? What kind of generation would we be if there were no children of Ishmael on the earth? You see, by the virtue of the child Ishmael, there was already a problem declared on the earth. So, if you want peace you wouldn’t want the story of Ishmael and Hagar to repeat in your generation. The peace of the humanity has been tampered with because the unity, the peace and posterity of a couple was tampered with. Nobody, is able to research into why Sarah suggested that are husband should get a child for her through her housemaid. But something happened. The Bible didn’t give us the details but there must have been a voice that she has given attention to. She has heard and see things, not knowing that if she gets carried away the way she is being carried away, the future of her children will be affected eventually. That is what we mean when we talk about POSTERITY. It talks about the succeeding generation.
When Adam fell, the Bible says “by Adam we fell/died and by Jesus we have life.” Even though we are in present tome now, we are in the future of Adam. We were the future. So, our future was altered by the decision of the husband and the wife. If the future of your children will not be altered and the future of your generation after them, then it means you and your wife/husband must keep and safeguard your marriage at all cost. Sometimes the enemy doesn’t really have serious plans for you, but has plans for your children and their future children. So, in order to frustrate them, because sometimes, some fathers are not the big deal. David wanted to build temple for God and God says “you won’t do it, your hands are dirty, your son would do it.”
So, there are sons that will build temples for God. So sometimes, because of the sons, the enemies of God who don’t want the sons to prosper in their enterprise will frustrate the kind of sons the sons become, the kind of environment they are born in, and the kind of works they are able to do. Just look at us in Nigeria, who would we have been as a people if we didn’t have bad Government in the past? Imagine ‘Ajaokuta’ producing; all the refineries in Nigeria producing and many companies and organizations are functioning, will Nigerians be out there protesting palliatives? No! So, the posterity of Nigerian youths has been altered by the decisions of the elders, those when in their own prime, they were not careful about the posterity, they were only careful about themselves.
If Eve and Adam had thought about their children, those of us who would be born, they would have been much more careful. It was just a man and his wife then, but who are we now? We are over 7 billion in the world today. A man and his wife looking at themselves as just one and they made a decision as one, and the decision has brought billions of people into a state that is less than stellar. So, don’t look at your wife and think we only have two or more children and that is just it”, no! There is so much at stake and so much must never be tampered with. If God has ordained it to be in the calm state, don’t scatter it thinking it will only affect you and your wife, no! It will definitely affect your posterity; it will affect your peace and it will affect your progress. And you see, when your posterity is affected, your peace is affected, your progress is affected, it will affect your PROSPERITY. You can’t be rich; you can’t be happy and joyful.
So, they ate the fruit God said they should not eat because an enemy came and deceived them. Even the woman said to God “God is not because I really wanted to scatter the constant in our marriage, but I was deceived.” The reason she said she was deceived was because her husband has been approached by God and God said “what is this that you have done”, and he said “it’s the woman that you gave to be with me, she gave me and I ate”, you told me not to eat but she gave me to eat and I disobeyed you because of her.” So, the husband disobeyed, the wife was deceived. So, the deception of the wife, led to the disobedience of the father. Who responsible for the whole thing? The devil!
So, the devil deceived the wife making the husband to disobey God. So, as a woman, tell yourself I won’t be deceived because some people can say the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ has covered us. Be careful! You can neve be more woman than Eve. Because you may be tempted to think you are a fantastic woman, I tell you, you cannot be fantastic than Eve because she was your mother. But despite her resourcefulness, despite her originality, and her fulness she made mistakes. You must learn from it. And you can’t also be more manly than Adam as a man. There are certain mistakes he made, he disobeyed God because his wife was deceived. And since they are one, but not working hard towards their oneness, they fell together.
As a man, don’t disobey God’s will for your life, the instructions of God are clear. There is something that God expects to be done on the earth that God created you. And if that thing must happen, God made sure that you get married. If you tamper with those instructions in your marriage, even though you are now one, two of you will be punished by God because you won’t be ablet to rule in a disobedient state. So, for men, every instruction that God has given to you before you got married, make them the laws that your life is governed with. Be governed by the word of God. Don’t be governed by another person’s word but your own word. Don’t tamper or thinker with it, Do not reason with the law of God. The law of God is not debatable. God cannot be wrong.
Now, the concluding part is this because there are a few things that I really want to mention. If you look at verse 16-18, you would notice that there was no pain on the earth for the children of men until the marriage institution was tampered with. And so, God said “in pain as a woman you will give birth to children, man, in pain you will produce fruits, work and reap your harvest.” And then God said to them: Lets this couple that have messed up last forever, Bible says “God sent the Cherubim with a flaming sword and stood at the gate preventing them from access into the garden.” So, they were sent out with flaming sword. The responsibility of the Cherubim was to guard the garden, the same responsibility that Adam was given to do, guard your marriage, guard your ministry, guard your business. He refused to guard the marriage and now, God not took on that responsibility to guard them against accessing that place.
I pray that God would not guard us against accessing prosperity, against accessing peace in our marriage in Jesus’ name. Why? Because we would guard our marriage against any element that will intend or aspire to truncate the fulfillment of God for our lives and so shall it be in Jesus’ name.
