By ’Dunni Orioke
At the Strategic Leaders Retreat, January 19, 2019
Lead Bible References: Prov. 4:7, 24:7; Matthew 7: 24-27;
Introduction
Depth is a good thing. It suggests strength, soundness, seriousness, and stability. Securing depth for your marriage is working on yourself and your marriage to make it sound, well grounded, strong, stable and unbreakable.
During wedding services, the pastors always pray for couples when blessing their rings that “May your love and faith (in one another) prove true in the test of times as gold does in fire and may they endure all the days of your life together.” Marriage is made to work. You must work on your marriage until it is able to stand the tests of time. Every effort you put into making your marriage get deeply rooted is worth all the trouble. It will protect your marriage against the evil winds, storms and floods of life. It will bring your marriage to the point of being unbreakable.
Practically speaking, securing depth for your marriage is to make it stand the tests of time is doing things on daily basis that will make love, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy, understanding and togetherness to be very deep, very consuming, and profound or of great intensities.
The church worker and his/her marriage
As a church worker and a member who counts yourself to be very important to the wellbeing and growth of your church, you must take the affairs of your your life, marriage and home very seriously. You are not an ordinary member. Your life and marriage must not be ordinary. Your life and marriage are very important to God because they affect the effectiveness of your witness for Him and his church. Your marriage can make or mar your service to God.
You must therefore be particular than others on-
- How to keep your marriage strong, stable, vibrant, very happy and unbreakable
- How to maintain a wise balance between the high demands of marriage and ministry or your service to God.
Wisdom for securing depth for your marriage
Wisdom for securing depth for your marriage starts from the time of choice and courtship. The earlier you started to work on having an unbreakable marriage the better. The bible gives us wisdom for securing depth in our lives and marriages.
- Start off in a very sound, wise and positive way
- Wise choice
Choice of who to marry is a crucial decision.
Involve God.
Remember 2 Corinthians 6:14-16.
Has very strong effect on your Christian life and service.
2. Positive courtship
Courtship must be positive, purpose driven, Spirit driven and pure Psalm 11:3 .
2. Marriage vows
-
- Hold your marriage vows to be sacred and commit yourself to being true to them all the days of your life. There are about 11 of these vows. Our points below touch all of them
- Be deeply committed to your marriage. Give it all that that it will make succeed.
- Rule out divorce completely.
3. Prayerfully document in black and white your commitments to making your marriage great or better than the best. Luke 14:28; Hebrew 2:2
4. Keeping love growing from strength to strength
-
- Hold your spouse as your own flesh.
- Make your spouse the number one and the most important person in your life. Cease every possible opportunity to do things that will convince him or her of this.
- Consistently and continually express your love to your spouse. Learn from Solomon and his lover in the book of Songs of Solomon.
- Honour your spouse a lot.
- Show a caring attitude at all times.
- Forgive offences without delay. Keeping offences in your mind will make it impossible for the roots of your marriage to grow deeper and stronger.
5. Promoting intimacy and making it grow from strength to strength
- Create time to be together to ensure an ongoing and ever growing physical intimacy and companionship.
- Share your deep feelings. This will help to create deep emotional intimacy.
- Share positive and negative parts of your day.
- Be involved in your spouse’s life. In spite of your individual differences, be genuinely interested in things that your spouse cares about- be it career, sports etc. ask questions and express support.
- Carry your spouse along in all that you are doing especially in ministry. Let him or her have a clear picture of everything. Avoid holier than thou attitude.
- Express your needs and emotions without directing blame to your spouse or attacking him or her.
- Make important decisions together.
- Study the bible together, pray together and have days of fasting together. This will enhance spiritual bonding that deepens marriage relationships.
- Have positive mind about sex. Have time for sex. Make it a great fun. Adjust to one another’s sexuality in very dynamic ways.
- Avoid nagging and hash criticisms. They make it too hard for the roots of your marriage to grow deeper and stronger.
- Express gratitude for everything your spouse does to keep the marriage going, no matter how small. This promotes the growth of intimacy and is very potent in making the ground soft for the roots of your marriage go deeper and from strength to strength.
- Faithfulness and responsibility
Forsake all others. Avoid undue closeness to the opposite sex.
Play your part excellently well all the time and in all things.
Faithfulness and responsibility are very potent in making the ground soft for the roots of your marriage go deeper and from strength to strength.