In the previous post, I talk about 3 Reasons Why You Should Never Divorce. I am going to propose a five steps formula to help you save your marriage. These steps will help anyone in one these situations/cases or any other;
- When where both spouses are willing and interested in saving their home and avoiding divorce.
- In the case where only one spouse is willing and interested in saving the home while the other spouse simply wants divorce – probably for selfish reasons.
- In the case where one spouse is being abused by the other spouse who may not necessarily care about the future of the marriage.
1) Determine Within Yourself to Save Your Marriage
The very first step to saving your marriage is determine within yourself to save it. This means you are willing to do anything rightly possible to succeed. At this point, it is longer time to point fingers at anyone but rather to acknowledge the challenge at hand, focus on the solutions and take responsibility to executing those solutions.
2) Get Help from Authorized Dealers on Marriage
Marriage is a product manufactured by a manufacturer and like any other product when it needs repairs, you must take it back to the manufacturer or authorized dealers. Marriage is the Creator’s product. God designed it and He can best repair it. Our personal subjective point of views are not important. The Creator’s manual – Biblical scriptures is the only reliable source of information to repair your marriage. Authorized dealers here are those who give you advice based on the manual and have proven to have understood the principles therein themselves by their own successful marital life. These could be marriage counselors, pastors etc. Your marriage adviser must have their own marital life to show for it.
It is somewhat foolish to get advice from someone with a PhD who has been married 4 times. It is important the couple attend the counselling sessions together as they practice openness and willingness to take responsibility instead of push blame.
3) Become a Student in the School of Marriage
Marriage is so delicate that it demands proper preparation before embankment and all the way through it. However, very few prepare for it, we spend more time preparing for wedding than for marriage. We assume just because we love another, we are going to make it through a lifetime relationship – well love never keeps marriage together, wisdom, understanding and knowledge does. To save your home, there are things you must do. Adequate study and comprehension of the truths about making marriage work will provide the right wisdom to effect positive change. Read books based on scriptural principles written by people with proofs to show.
Once you start studying, you will begin to see the mistakes you have been making and steps on how to overcome them and save your home. Out of ignorance many get complacent, negligent and bad habits creep into their marriage. For example, the right kind of love to make marriage work is Agape – love without expectation or reason. When you can find a reason why you love your spouse, then that means there is an expectation. If you love them because they are slim that means you expect them to remain slim. But expectation generally births disappointment and eventually separation.
4) Engage Fervent Prayer
Prayer is a powerful tool to overcome the mental and spiritual forces fighting our nations and communities from its marriage roots. This step is critical for cases b & c not excluding a. You can’t control the will of your spouse to join you in the mission to save your marriage, but you certainly can implore the Creator to influence them because He has that ability and willingness if you would just ask fervently.
5) Keep Away from Bad Friends and Negative Influences
Like the saying “birds of feather flock together”, it is inappropriate for a married person to spend most of their time with singles or divorcees. Every prolonged un-monitored interaction will plant wrong seeds into your mind and subconsciously you begin to act on them. Some love series movies based on fantasies could be quite inappropriate. Sometimes people believe the fantasies created by the film director to be reality and they tend demand the same from life, or their spouse. Guard your environment jealously from ideological poisons.
In conclusion, there is always a better and cheaper way to solve marital issues if we just understand the stakes and are willing enough to pay the price. Divorce is bad, God hates divorce, He didn’t create any remedy for it. So we must stop putting it on the table of options for solving marital crisis.
Choosing divorce is not solving the problem but rather exchanging the problem for a more complicated and traumatic one.
