Today we are continuing on our series on marriage. Last week (Maximizing Your Spouse's Potentials In Marriage Through Christ Jesus) was a time in the presence of God and today, I believe the Lord has packaged something for us. We are considering The Law of Rest in Marriage. For those who studied science related courses in their years in school, they understand that the scientists believe in many laws. In fact, there are scientific laws, in Chemistry, even in Biology there are some laws too. The law of gravity is a law that many preachers love to talk about because it is the easiest one to remember; whatever goes up must come down. Even if the thing is praying while it is going up, it must still come down because the law has been put in place.
If you jump up, it is only a matter of seconds, you will definitely come down. So, just as there are laws that have been keenly observed by scientists, there are also laws we who have been called disciples of Christ are also discovering that governs humanity and us, whether you are a believer or not. But today we are looking at a law that the Holy Spirit has opened us to, The Law of Rest in Marriage.
One thing about laws are this: they are very close to rules. And so, if there are seventeen (17) laws of something, you could also say there are seventeen (17) rules of something. Another way you can put rules is to say “principles” because these things, they bind on anybody, whether male or female, young or old, as long as you follow and obey them, you will experience whatever they predict. There is a Bible portion, talking about the way of holiness, which says: even when a fool walks on that way, the fool will not miss the way. I am sure we understand that once a way is defined, two things are already defined: the origin, the destiny.
So, once a man, a woman, a boy or a girl finds the path and then follow it, it leads to a predetermined or predefined destination. That is why the Bible says, "there is a way that seem right unto a man but the end of it is death". So, whether you will die or you will live, it depends on the laws that you obey and the ones that you disobey. Your life and death are a function of the principles that govern your life and today, we are looking at a way today, that is called a way of rest in marriage. Because when we are looking at a law, it is like a way and every way has a point of origin and a point of destiny, and there is a path in between. In between the beginning and the end of every way is a process. So, irrespective of where you are, what can be guaranteed ahead of you ahead of time, is rest.
Once we call it the law of rest, it means you could have started it, you could have been at the middle of it, one thing you must not miss is that you are on a journey or a process that guarantees you rest at the end, that is what we are looking at. I want us to go to the book of Jeremiah 6:16, from there we will go to Genesis and other verses in the Bible and as the Lord guides, I will start the message and my wife will end the message as the Lord guides her as well.
Thus, says the Lord:
“Stand in the ways and see,
And ask for the old paths, where the good way is,
You remember where we paraphrased in Proverbs: “there is a way that seems right to a man, but it does not have a guaranteed end of life, but death.” Another word for “right” that we could use is “that seems good” to a man. So, it means every man is always in search for the right way even though not every man finds the good way. It says “stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths where the good ways is.” That is where we are all looking for. It says when you find the good way, walk in it. Another word for “walk in it” is “follow it.” Obey the law, let that law that you have found become the determinant or the definer of your life. Let your life be patterned after what you have found. It is not enough for you to know something, what you know should be evidenced in the things you do and say.
How do we know you are a wise man, and knowledgeable man if you do not demonstrate your knowledge by your words and actions? So, when you find a good way, you must walk in it yourself, and this is important. Because one of the things that we must not forget is that we are dealing with marriage in this month and we are dealing with fruitfulness. Why do we have men and women who know God and have been in the work of God before some of us were even born, having divorced along the way in their marriage? What is it that they did not know that led to their divorce? Is their divorce or disunity or their lack of productivity or fruitfulness in marriage, primarily because of lack of knowledge?
Do you say a General Overseer does not know? Now, this is not at the realm of does not know, or knows. This is at the real of not walking in. The problem is not about knowledge. The point is: Is she building her life, is he building his life on what he or she has known to be right? You will never find a man of God who divorces his wife who does not know God hates it. The point is haven known, have they walked in it? A term used before is “irreconcilable differences”, you can even hear it among men that call themselves believers or who are actually believers. They believe there is a difference between them and their wives and because of that difference, they should go their different ways. But does it mean they do not know what could solve their problem in the marriage? They know!
Somebody will say “it is over my dead body for me to tell you sorry.” Does the person not know the meaning of sorry? Who does not know that when you say sorry to a man or woman the person’s anger will calm down. The person knows. Some people will say “I will rather die than tell you sorry.” So, the person knows but the person has refused to walk in it. Let us go back to verse 16 of that Jeremiah 6. It says: “Then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”
It is only when you have walked in it, not only knowing the way. Knowing the way is step one, the step two which complete your rest and your freedom in marriage is this. It says “then you will find.” So, rest is not on the surface. REST is something that must be revealed to you deep beneath. So, if you must find it, it must be because you have found the ways that others have abandoned, called old way, archaic way, old law, archaic law that’s no more trending, nobody does it again on social media. There is an ideal or some old ways of doing things, they have been abandoned by recent marriages and this causes calamity in the marriage.
“But they said” connoting more than one person, “we will not walk in it.” So, we must look at these old ways that the men and women said they will not walk in. And God who was, who is and who shall be, their maker said “it is then that you will find rest.” But they said they will not walk in it. Please, can they blame God for their lack of rest in marriage? “No.” God is not the cause of their unrest. It is their refusal to follow the old ways that God has put in place. So, if you must find rest in your marriage, it is important that you go in search for the old ways. Enough of us telling ourselves that the new is always better.
Do the new ways have the guaranteed future for you, a rest? So, to make things easy for us today, we will consider that R.E.S.T in four acronyms today. The first letter is letter R. If you must experience rest in your marriage, if you are a man, a woman, this number one thing you must follow. You must be a RELIABLE man and you must be a RELIABLE woman. In our previous message, we discussed that there is a possibility for a man to be a presumed man, so we identified that there are men and there are presumed men. There are women, and there are presumed women, and we realized that the difference between a man and a presumed man is the maturity and the responsibility.
When we talk about being a reliable man and being a reliable woman, the number one thing if I must experience rest in my marriage is that I must become a reliable man, I must become a reliable woman. My husband must rely on me, my wife must rely on me. Even though it is easy to want to cry on somebody’s shoulder, the one who owns the shoulder bears the responsibility. Is that not true? It is responsibility for you to bring your shoulder for somebody to cry on. But if you continue to make your shoulder available for somebody to cry, there is a tendency for you to tell yourself you are doing too much.
The fact that two animals are yoked together means they must go together, eat together. But the ideal thing is that even though it is expected that the husband’s shoulder should be big enough and strong enough for the wife to cry on, the husband must not enter that realm where he thinks: “must I always be the only one to bear your burden for crying?” The question is, “who will do that?” So, if the man is thinking this way, the question is should it be me? So, you must always be reliable as a man that your wife should trust you that you are always there to carry her. That’s reliability, it is responsibility. You must be responsible to be reliable because being reliable can be difficult.
Usually people can fake something, but once they get tired or once they are not appreciated, they get tired. When you show love to your wife, you want her to reciprocate and appreciate. But when you are not getting it you get tired. When you get tired the things you used to do, you will stop doing. And then for her, she considers you to be irresponsible and unreliable. If you must experience rest in your marriage, whatever you say you will do, you must continue to do. Because when you were giving your marriage vows you said “I do.” Now, the people of this generation are no longer saying “I do”, they are now saying “I will.”
Once you have said “I will”, shouldn’t you be committed to your “I said I will?” that is why the Bible says “let your yes be yes and let your no be no.” Whatever you say you will do, do it. Do it in the morning, do it in the afternoon, do it in the night. Do it when you are tired, do it when you are not tired, do it when you are happy, do it when you are not happy. That is what brings you to a place of trust that your partner can trust you. I am not saying these things are easy, but it produces rest. If a man expects food at its season, and he doesn’t get it, and the wife said is she the only one that is meant to cook in this marriage. With that attitude, won’t there be a shock in you? The man will not be happy.
But you want your husband to be happy with you, to be satisfied with you but you must understand that the secret to it is you being reliable. Whatever you promise him do. For example, before I got married, my wife gave me 7-points agenda several months before our wedding and I still quote it till date. That is why I said being reliable is difficult, sometimes it is not always easy. Now, that place we read said “stand in the ways and see, ask for the old paths where the good way is and walk in it.”
When we talk about reliability, we talk about something that has started and continues to continue. So, if we are talking about the old ways or the old path, we are talking about something that has been available in the days of our fathers and is still available. What has happened? Those ways are reliable! For them to be considered worthy of been followed by the new generation, it means it worked for the old generation and is working now. Because God said “it is when you work in it that you will find rest” telling you that you will find it, it didn’t say “you may find it”, it says you will find rest, which means it is reliable. The second thing is EXCHANGE.
I want us to see in the book of Ecclesiastes 4:9. The Bible says: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour. 10 For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up.” Another word for help him up is “exchange” here. In the days when there was no Naira, Kobo, Dollars, Pounds, Euro and the rest, we used to do “Trade by Barter” in the world. You produce yam in your farm, I rare some animals. You bring your yam and I give you animals commensurate to what you have brought, “value exchange” “value for value”, you give me something, I give you something.
But woe to that farmer who has yam but has no one to exchange animal with or ingredient to cook. What will happen? The person might still feed on something but it will be unhealthy. So, if you want to experience rest which represent health in your marriage, you must understand the law of rest that has in it exchange. There is something of value that God has deposited in your life, and God so wonderful, decided to also deposit certain values in your wife, and then when you are in need of those values you go to her and when she is in need of your own value, she comes to you. You are not independent of her, and she is not independent of you, there is exchange.
If I have certain dollars, and you have Naira and I need Naira, even though I have Dollars what do I do, I bring my Dollars to you, and you give me your Naira, in proportion to the value exchange. Based on the exchange rate, isn’t it? There is always a rate of exchange, and that could be driven by communication. Communication might become the currency of exchange in marriage. You must be able to talk to yourselves that’s how you exchange value. But then, through communication you must then be able to transfer value to your wife, and she must transfer value to you. And, if you must experience reliability and everything in your marriage which produces rest, you must be a woman that must have something and you must be eager to exchange for your husband, knowing fully well that you are not better off alone and he is not better off alone.
You know the Bible says in that Genesis 2 that we read. It says: “for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall and shall cleave to his wife, and the two salle come one flesh.” And one thing you must not forget from there is that there is a place for the man and the woman to come together that’s number one, and number two, what binds them together is that exchange. There is an attitude that a man must have in marriage, there is an attitude that a woman must have in marriage.
Where I was originally going to, and the Holy Spirit has redirected, is this: The Bible says “the two shall become one flesh.” It’s a mystery but that’s the reality. But when the two has become one, if something happened that prevents the two from remaining as one, can they ever go back to becoming two? If the marriage must become such a matter, you know John said “God must increase while I decrease” so, God is glorified in your marriage and individual member in the marriage decrease, from one that you were before you came to 0.5 and you joined your wife 0.5 and both of you became one. If something happens that prevents the marriage from remaining, can you now go back to that increased state of one? No!
You are now 0.5, you are now less than who you were even before. So, if you must become complete again, you must remain married. So, you bring your 0.5 and I bring my 0.5 and we combine the two together we produce oneness. So, if you keep what you have from her, what happens is that your marriage which is supposed to be one, will be less than one. There are marriages where husbands have reduced from 0.5 to 0.1 and what have you, and the same for the wife too. When you combine those things together, some marriages are less than half in marriage. They have so reduced, nobody is adding value to anybody, and there is no value exchange. There is something that you have that she doesn’t have, there is something she has that you don’t have. If you remain on your own, then the marriage will remain in lack, inadequacy, in imperfection.
If the marriage must remain complete and united in wholeness, then it means the two must come together to add value to themselves, to exchange value among themselves. To give value, to collect value, to supply value, to deploy value.
God gave an advice, He said “find the path”, look for it, and in fact, He said “ask.” So, it’s possible you don’t know, you shouldn’t remain in your ignorance. He said “Ask.” So, you could be in a marriage, or you could want to enter into a union because you don’t know the old path, you don’t know the old way there is no excuse for walking in error. That’s why God said “Ask for the old path”, find the good way then work in it, then, you will find rest” and the process completes. What you will get as a result is rest, and that rest, the number one thing is being reliable. Are you a reliable husband, are you a reliable wife?
Proverb 31 talks about a virtuous woman it says “the heart of her husband safely trust in her.” Her husband relies on her, she is a reliable wife. So, when we are talking about a virtuous woman we are talking about a reliable woman. When we are talking about a faithful man, the Bible talks in Proverbs it says “where can we find a faithful man?” A faithful man is a reliable man. And that is one of the paths that is missing in our world. There is a trend going on, you will ask single ladies, they are in a relationship with this guy, he is not reliable, no commitment, what they want is friendship with advantage, no commitment. So, what we have going around is trends that leads to death. And God is saying go back and look for the old path.
You want to get married, go and look for the old path. Go and look for the ancient paths. Find out, you cannot find rest in this relationship. You can’t find rest in this marriage if you are not reliable. And the second one, you must be willing to EXCHANGE. Marriage is built on the platform of exchange, you must exchange submission for love, you must exchange love for submission. You can’t say your marriage is at rest and at peace and as a woman, you are not submitting. That’s your platform for exchange when you submit, that’s how it works in marriage. You bring submission, he brings love; he brings love you bring submission.
Without that exchange there cannot be rest. Submission makes leadership easy because that’s the truth. There is no trade without exchange there must be a meeting point and that meeting point is that place of exchange. Where you bring your submission as a woman and the man brings his love. Then you will experience rest.
In Ephesians 5, it’s clearly stated there, that platform for exchange. So, we are going quickly into S. What is S – SUFFICIENCY. You must understand that in marriage for you to work in rest, you must know that you are not sufficient of your own. My husband was describing how that “the two will become one flesh.” The truth is this, until the two become one flesh they are not complete. Sufficiency talks about completeness, wholeness. There is no wholeness. Wholeness is a critical part in marriage. Many marriages are not whole, that’s why they are not healthy and that’s why there is no rest.
So, you must know you are not sufficient on your own. The two shall become one flesh, because God said it is not good for man to be alone, I will make for him a helper comparable to him, that will make him to be whole. So, don’t ever feel you are alright by yourself. Don’t ever feel “without this woman I can achieve so much. Without this man I can attain anything I want to attain.” There can’t be rest in that marriage. You must understand that your husband is an integral part of your wholeness. You must understand that your wife is an integral part of your wholeness, that’s when your marriage can be sufficient.
Sufficiency talks about been enough. The Scriptures says in Proverbs 5: “drink from your own cistern”, be satisfied with the wife of your youth. Be satisfied with your wife don’t desire another. There will not be rest if you are desirous of another. Be satisfied, she is enough. Tell yourself “my husband is enough for me”, “my wife is enough for me.” You must be satisfied; you must know that your spouse is enough. That’s when there can be rest in marriage.
The last one is the T, TEACHEABILITY. In marriage, you must remain teachable. I want us to see Genesis 2:24-25. The Bible says: “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.” There are two things we want to learn about teachability from these verses. Number one says: “therefore a man shall leave.” When you are leaving something, you are forgetting it. When you are leaving something, you are unlearning it. So, a man is unlearning where he used to be, where he used to live. Where he used to source his knowledge, his inspiration, his confidence, he is unlearning it and he is coming into a different learning atmosphere called marriage.
Marriage is another learning atmosphere where you come in to cleave. You are coming to cleave to the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of marriage, which makes you teachable. You don’t tell me “see how you are talking to me; my mother does not talk to my father like that.” You should unlearn and relearn. You are coming into that marriage to learn that woman, you are coming into that marriage to learn that woman. So, you must submit yourself to been teachable, you must learn who your husband is, he is not your father.
You must not carry the picture of who your father was into your marriage. Your husband is not your father. He is your husband! He is a new school that you have just enrolled in and you must learn from him. Your wife is a new school that you just enrolled in. Marriage is a learning curve. You must remain teachable. You are learning that woman, you are getting to know the kind of woman she is. You are getting to know her strength, her weakness. You are getting to know what he likes, and what he does not like, what gets him upset. You are getting to know the things that you would do to him that will make the king in him to come out. So, you must be schooled, and you must be teachable.
That is why the learning and cleaving process is a schooling process. Any marriage that leaves it out, is leaving rest out. You must learn, you must remain teachable. You are in a relationship; you should sit down and get to know that person. That’s why communication is like an engine oil for relationships. You must keep talking. It’s a new school and if you want rest, you must know. Rest is tied to knowledge, so you must be teachable. You must have wisdom and knowledge to be able to apply it correctly. Rest is tied to understanding, you must learn to understand and apply. You must learn.
That’s why when you look at divorce, it starts when people become frustrated of being reliable, thy become frustrated of giving exchange, they become frustrated of been satisfied that they are sufficient with their partner and they become frustrated in learning. And you see a marriage that is hitting the rocks and at a verge of divorce. But when you decide to be a reliable spouse, when you decide to give exchange in your marriage; that no matter how the pressure coming, you will continue to exchange value in your relationship, and you decide that your spouse is enough for you; no matter how old, no matter how her stomach is coming out after two three children; no matter how big she has become, you are saying to yourself “my spouse is enough for me” and you will decide to subject yourself to been teachable in marriage then rest is guaranteed.
That’s why the law of rest that we are looking at is so important. This is something you can apply to your relationship as singles, as married people, this is an on-going thing; you must keep them going. You must keep the reliability law going, you must keep the exchange going, you must keep the sufficiency going and you must keep the teachability going; and you will see there will be rest in that relationship and marriage in the name of Jesus.
I believe you have learnt something.
