Why and How Marriages Fails

Somebody once said that marriage is a bed of roses, obviously that person must be a monk who has never been married before. Yes Marriage CAN be a bed of roses, but we must understand how marriage becomes a bed of roses. What most do not understand is that marriage in itself is a bed of thorns that look like roses at the begining. Most couples do not realize that when they eventually fuse together to become one in marriage,
they willl begin to see that both of them had brought something into the marriage that they had not thought of. Most couples may not admit to this, but then they begin to become aware of things about their partner that they had not seen in courtship before.


Those are the thorns that are begining to show up. Now marriage is funny in the sense that it was actually created to be something that will make both parties work. Everytime they work together on their marriage, they are actually plucking out the thorn from the bed and each time the thorn is plucked out, a rose then grows in its place and with time, all the thorns are plucked out and that's how marriages become beds of roses. How long it takes totally depends on what the couple is willing to do.


There are many reasons why marriages fail these days, but we are going to look at a few that are very common. We will look at lack of work on the marriage between the 2 partners, pride, selfiness, control, manipulation, laziness and discontentment. We'll break these down and see how it affects the marriage itself and what God says about these things. Remember, he's the author of marriages and his ways are not our ways. He has a great sense of humor. He uses marriages to develop his children to be strong, tolerant, loving forgiving, accepting and all the virtues of God the father himself.


Now let's talk about each one of those thorns that CAN and WILL turn to ROSES once we know how.


A: Lack of Work: A marriage is like a garden, it must be tended to. A garden that is not worked will eventually grow weeds that will choke the life out of the beautiful flowers and plants in the garden, thereby making it a lifeless, abandoned and ugly looking garden. Marriage needs work also. If you don’t work your marriage, it is bound to fail; it is not that God does not love you or that he does not bless your marriage. It is an agreement between you and God. God has blessed your marriage spiritually, and you through the knowledge that your marriage has been blessed will begin to work through that spiritual blessing to manifest the fruits of that blessing which are marital bliss, peace, love, fruitfulness, multiplication, abundance, joy and so on. The flip side of it is that if you don’t fulfill your side of the agreement with God, that is, you don’t work your marriage, then you begin to get “weeds” in that marriage. These weeds are the exact opposite of the fruits of the blessing. There’s no joy, couples do not trust each other, they suspect each other of every kind of evil imaginable, they constantly live in lack, they become fruitless, hatred exists, they are always at each other’s throat, there is no peace and so on. God dwells in a marriage that both couples have determined and agreed to work on together. When God dwells in that marriage, then he can perform his oaths, his side of the agreement of the blessing. You must understand that the moment you agree with your spouse that both of you will faithfully work your marriage, then you have created a space in your marriage for God to dwell in. Your agreement with each other is the spiritual space that God desires and requires to dwell in so that he can perform his own side of the agreement. Do not be deceived, everything in life requires work. The reason God actually created man was WORK. Read your bible. In Genesis Chapter 2, verse 5, it is written that “…….and there was no man to till the ground” The very first thing God did after he created man was to give a job. Go tend the garden. As time went by, God saw that this man he gave a job to in the garden cannot perform it well alone, so he created a companion to help him with the work and keep him company. He blessed both of them. Look at what happened when the agreement with God was broken, God threw them out of the garden. In other words, they lost the easy life they suppose to enjoy. Marriage exists simply because of this work, and that is why a marriage requires work. It is not about how you feel. Sorry to blow your bubbles. Love is more than just a feeling. It is a spiritual entity that must be wooed and cultivated.


B: Pride: Now this is something from the pit of hell that is being used in marriages to destroy it. You can recognize pride from some of the subtle ways it shows itself. Selfishness, control, role reversal, manipulation, laziness, dependency on the other, discontentment, uncontrollable anger, etc.Pride has a big family and it comes as any of those things. It makes you do any of those things. Whenever you find yourself acting one of those out, you should immediately know that this is pride playing you. You cannot give place to anything that belongs to the devil and at the same time expect God to dwell there. It is impossible. The bible asks what does light have to do with darkness. Absolutely nothing. When light comes into a dark room, what happens? The darkness disappears of course. Both of them cannot dwell in the same place at the same time. So also it is true that when light  leaves a place, darkness then reigns. It is called the law of vacuum. No empty space can exist, something must occupy it. In marriage, either the fruits and therefore the blessings of the Spirit exist or the weeds and therefore the curses of the devil exist. There’s no sitting by the fence.


What causes couples to do all these things. One word. Fear. Fear, because they cannot truly bring themselves to trust God and believe in each other. Fear of the unknown, fear of the things that have not yet happened, fear of their own lusts, fear of the result of their own selfishness, the lists goes on and on.


Pride is the husband of fear and their children are selfishness, control, role reversal, manipulation, laziness, dependency on the other, discontentment, uncontrollable anger, etc. As said before, pride has a big family and the way you recognize its children is when they don’t belong in the family of God.


Now all these things lead a person to do one thing. Sin, and sin leads to only one thing, death. Death, not necessarily in the physical term, although inclusive, but more in terms of spiritual death. That is sadness, fruitlessness, lack and so many other evil fruits.


Let’s examine the children of pride and fear.


Selfishness: Merriam-Webster dictionary defines this word as been concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others. Whew! That explains it all doesn’t it? How can a marriage be blessed with such an act from either spouse. The bible says that he that withhold tends to become poor, but that he that gives tends to receive more. A selfish act is withholding, only thinking about yourself and not your spouse. The proper act in a marriage is not selfishness, it is self-sacrifice. Selfish acts bring the worst out of a spouse and your act of self-sacrifice changes your spouse over time and brings the best out of him or her. This is God ordained and there’s no power in hell that can change that. Self-sacrifice brings unity and it is in unity that God commands blessings.


Control: To exercise restraining or directing influence over or to have power over. Just looking at that definition spells out failure in a marriage. There’s no where God commanded either spouse to have control over one another. God tells the wives to submit themselves. It does not mean that they become slaves. In fact submission is not powerlessness, it is the power of God manifesting through a woman. God also commanded the husbands to love their wives just as Christ loves the church and gave himself for it. Pay attention to what Jesus did. He GAVE himself for the church. There is that word again – Self-sacrifice. Husbands suppose to give themselves wholly to their wives and not seek ways to control them. Spouses must understand that you can only respect that which you love and love that which you respect, but you can’t do either unless self-sacrifice is involved. God gave us dominion over all other creations, not other humans.


Manipulation: Immediate brother to control. It means to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage. It also means to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose. Realize here and now that manipulation usually comes before control. It is a disguised form of control. When manipulation has grown fully and the other party had given in, it then becomes control.


Look again at that meaning for a moment. It says to control, not directly, but indirectly through the artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s advantage. It means knowing your spouse’s good heart and deliberately exploiting it so that you can have your own way. Or taking advantage of their weakness for your gain. The reason why you are in a marriage is to complement one another. You are the strength where your spouse is weak and your spouse is your strength where you are weak. As said before God did not ordain control or dominion over humans, only over other creations. The moment you exercise control over your spouse by any means at all, you have sinned and you are responsible for the heartache that follows in the marriage, not your spouse.


Laziness: This is one of the triplets of pride. The others are indolence and Slothfulness.


Lazy, Indolence and Slothful mean not easily aroused to activity. Lazy suggests a disinclination to work. Indolent suggests a love of ease and a dislike of movement or activity. Slothful implies a temperamental inability to act promptly or speedily when action or speed is called for. Wow. You see why they are triplets now. They all tend to promote the same thing; failure to do what was suppose to be done. When either spouse fail to do what they are called to do in a marriage, the result is trouble. A spouse that allows any of these triplets is inviting serious trouble. A woman that suppose to take care of her husband with food, sex and other things that are in her power to do, but refuses to do so because of any of those triplets is simply selling out of the marriage and exposing her husband to receive the same services elsewhere. A man that will not take care of her wife by paying attention to her emotional needs is a fool. The woman will get her emotional needs outside of that marriage. The result, both will gravely sin before the Lord, expel the Lord’s presence and therefore his blessings. What is left? Trouble. Marital death. Except the Lord built the house, they that built it does so in vain.


In our modern day society, spouses, especially women have fallen to the trap of television viewing as a form of relaxation. They spend so many hours in front of the tube watching useless programs that cannot help them. Hours that they can devote to enjoy themselves with their spouses while relaxing at the same time. Unfortunately, this has made so many unwittingly allow the triplets to control them, ignoring their responsibilities to their spouses citing tiredness as excuse without realizing they are been controlled by the triplets. Men spend too much time either playing or watching games like golf, tennis, football, etc. I am not saying all these things are bad, what I am saying though is that do those things in moderation, so you can have time left for who is important in your life. Your spouse and your children.


Discontentment: Part of the reason why marriages fail is discontentment. To be content means to be satisfied with what you have, what you possess or what you have at your disposal regardless of what perceived value it has. It means you have valued yours just as much as anybody else’s, if not better. Then obviously discontentment is just the opposite. When we perceived our own blessings as having less value than that of others. When we lust after other people and other people’s stuff. When our own no longer satisfies us or when we secretly lust for others or other people’s stuff. This is what stops God from releasing his blessings in a marriage; because then his blessings will become corrupt or value-less in our hands. That’s why when we pray or ask God for something in our marriage, we don’t receive that thing. The bible gives us as one of the reasons we don’t have stuff is because when we ask, we only ask to consume it on our own lusts.


As regarding marriages, spouses are not satisfied with their mates any longer so they start having affairs. Men start having sexual affairs with other women outside of their marriage, women start having emotional and sexual dependency with other men outside their marriage and both start bringing unnecessary problems into their marriage. Even in this modern day, some women claim to be looking at other men out of the corner of their eyes while they are with their husband and some husbands had claimed the same. No wonder there’s so many problems in today’s marriages. God is not in them. Stop lusting and start loving that which the Lord had blessed you with. Only then will you start receiving love from your mate and God’s blessings in your marriage.This list is not by any means exhaustive, this is just a few of what causes marriage to fail.


Hey by the way, if you are wondering, I have been married for 22 years and still married to the same blessing/gift that God gave me, because that's what I consider my wife as. A gift of God from God to me.


WHAT'S YOUR TAKE ON THIS?


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