Lifestyle: The work called marriage - Counsellor Adofoli

Not everyone knows that marriage is work. The undeniable truth is marriage is work with God as the Chief Executive Officer. He blesses you when you do it well.

Often when people want to get married, their focus is on someone who will provide for them, meet their needs and make them happy. As soon as these expectations are not met, they are quick to conclude they married the wrong person, and that the right person might be somewhere. Divorce then becomes the necessary evil. Sadly, however, people get into second marriages but things remain the same or worse. Others even get into third marriages with the same results.

At this point, most are forced to stay in because of the stigma, shame or fear of what people will say about them.

A lot of enterprises and businesses collapse because most of its employees are just there for salary. They are only there to get paid for coming to work and closing within the stipulated time or period. They have no love for what they do; some can pay deaf ears to new ideas which will make the enterprise better. Others just sit back and watch things go wrong because it doesn't belong to them or their parents.

You will be surprised that some actually steal from the same company which pays them at the end of the day. They assume they have the right to salaries and benefit and yet they shun some of their responsibilities. Even when the company is not doing well, they still want to get paid. They can go on strike without bothering to find out what is delaying their salaries or benefits.

This is exactly the picture of how some marriages are ruined these days. The purpose of marriage is to please God, to do it by His standards, and one of the requirements is to fall in love with the one you are going to serve and work with in the same office; this is your spouse.

You go into marriage to serve your spouse. Because you have fallen in love with them, this process becomes easy, fun and exciting. You look for new ways and means to serve them. You are not in because of what you are getting from them and since your CEO is God, when you do it well, HE being faithful looks at the heart and rewards.

In the same way when the behaviour or actions of your colleague, which is your spouse, makes your job difficult, confront them but also report them to the CEO and trust Him to fix things; He does the fixing not you. In the meantime continue performing your duties. Your spouse may hurt you but because your ultimate goal is to please God, it doesn't become so difficult to accomplish.

Because of this, you never compare your marriage to that of anyone. What others think of your marriage is not important, but what you think of it means everything. If you trust God to fix and bless you, He will and it won’t be because of what others thought.

Just like how a butterfly is drawn to the beauty and scent of a flower, continue to do what is right and your partner will draw towards you. In conclusion "It is because of the Lord’s loving-kindness that we are not destroyed for His loving-pity never ends. It is new every morning. He is so very faithful" - Lamentations 3:22-23 (NLV).

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