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One of the things we know is that Marriage is about two people. Marriage is about two people, a male man and a female man coming together under God to become one, two people coming together to become one, male, and female. And I believe we know that there is no where in the world that we have seen where a single person makes a Marriage. When we are talking about Marriage, it is not an institution that is built around one individual. It is an institution that is built around two individuals, a male man and a female man, coming together under God to become one. So, no single individual can say “I am married to myself.” No man can say “I am married to myself or a woman saying I’m married to myself.” No.
Listen to Podcast: How to Defend the Destiny of Your Marriage as Husband and Wife
So, when we talk about Marriage, it’s about a man and a woman coming together to fulfill the destiny of Marriage. There is a destiny that Marriage has and it is a specific design of God. When we are talking about the destiny of this Marriage, no matter how beautiful you are as a single man or as a single woman, you cannot fulfill the destiny of Marriage until you are married. Now let me put it this way: You cannot enjoy the blessing of Marriage until you enter into it. There is a special kind of blessing that comes upon Marriage. And so also there is a special kind of destiny that Marriage carries. So, if you are going to fulfill that particular destiny under God, even though your life may have been beautiful as a bachelor or as a spinster, it is of necessity that you come into that union of Marriage for you to be able to fulfill that destiny.
So, you cannot fulfill marital destiny in a nutshell, as a single brother, or as a single Sister. How you fulfill the marital destiny is when you legally enter into that marital institution. And that is why because there is a destiny of Marriage, God when he was instituting Marriage says “a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Now why is it of necessity that the two become one flesh? Because the intention of God is that the two becoming one flesh will present a unified force, so that the Marriage destiny can be fulfilled.
Because as a man or your own, you can’t fulfill that Marriage destiny, or as a woman on your own. So, when the two of you come together under God and you become one, it is in that instance and in that arrangement that the marital destiny can be fulfilled? So, there is nothing like, “okay, I’m your husband, I can fulfill this destiny in our Marriage by myself.” No, it’s going to be an error. Or you say, “well, I’m a woman, I am capable. I can do all that God wants me to do in this Marriage by myself.” That is not the design. The design is that you and your husband become one and the two of you present a unity, a unified force, in order for you to fulfill that marital destiny.
So, there is a Marriage destiny that a man on his own or a woman on her own cannot fulfill until he or she steps into that Marriage institution. Do we get that? Now let’s open our Bibles to Judges chapter 13 and we are going to be using the words in that passage to corroborate what we are talking about in this piece: How to defend the destiny of your Marriage as husband and wife. Now the Bible says:
Again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years. 2 Now there was a certain man from Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had no children. 3 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Indeed now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. 4 Now therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not to eat anything unclean. 5 For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. And no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”
Now, I want us to pause a bit in that particular place and take a beautiful look at the story we just read. Now the Bible says there was a particular man, his name was Manoah and Manoah was married to a woman who is unknown. The woman’s name is unknown, but the destiny that she’s about to carry or the destiny of her Marriage is known. You know, I was meditating and it was only this woman out of all the barren women in the Bible that her name was not known except by the nomenclature of a woman. But we know her husband to be Manoah and the Bible says the angel of the Lord spoke to this woman about the fact that she’s going to give birth to a son.
Now, this is a Marriage that we are examining in this piece in the light of fulfilling your marital destiny as husband and wife. Now the first thing you will notice is that the message came to the woman, not to the man. The message came to the woman, and not to Manoah. But under no circumstances can the woman birth this destiny without the efforts of her husband. Because she’s not known, but the angel came to her. Now I was meditating and this particular thought came to my spirit. You see, one thing that we must realize about our Marriage is in the fact that our Marriage is bigger than us. One of the errors that we make on the face of the earth, when it comes to Marriage is that many people have assumed that the Marriage is about themselves. Many people have assumed that my Marriage is about my husband, my wife, and my children.
As beautiful and politically correct that may sound, that is not the agenda of God for Marriage. Your Marriage is bigger than you. The destiny of your Marriage is bigger than that idea of me, my wife, and my children alone. Manoah was married to his wife, in a beautiful Marriage, so to say. But God was about to do something with that Marriage concerning a whole nation. Not about Manoah or the woman herself, but about a whole nation. Now what does that tell us? It is an error or a selfish disposition for us to assume that I am getting married for me, and myself and my family alone. No, when you look at Marriage, begin to look at Marriage from the point of view of God, and not from your own purview.
Now, of course, it is beautiful. One of the reasons why God instituted Marriage, first and foremost was for companionship. Right? The Bible says “it was not good for the man to be alone. So, God fashioned out Marriage so that Adam can have a company. But much more than companionship, the destiny of your Marriage is beyond you. So, our Marriage is all about the big picture. Now, the big picture in this context is the destiny of your Marriage. Now, what exactly is the destiny of your Marriage? Let me show us something that I wrote, when you are hearing the destiny of your Marriage, what exactly does it connote? The destiny of your Marriage is what God has raised your Marriage to accomplish.
When we talk about the destiny of your Marriage, it is simply what God has raised that your Marriage, the reason why God brought your husband and brought your wife to you is for a greater picture. And that greater picture is actually the destiny of your Marriage. Now, if you look at that story, God may have brought Manoah and his wife together, but there is a greater purpose, beyond just companionship. So, as you are entering into the marital institution, one of the questions you want to ask yourself is: What exactly is the destiny of this Marriage? What exactly would God have myself and my husband do in this Marriage? One of the strategic intents of God for Marriage is so that we could raise godly offspring to God, not just about you having children; it is beautiful to have children. But what kind of children are you having? Are they godly?
So, Marriage is not just about me wanting to fulfill my loneliness or my sexual satisfaction, there is a bigger picture to Marriage, and that is the beginning of your search in destiny when you are looking for a life partner. You don’t go into Marriage because you are bored. You don’t go into Marriage because you are tired of loneliness. When you see Marriages collapsing, you know, I read something recently, by Charly boy, he said, he was tired of his 45 years old Marriage. You know, when you see such statement like that, you begin to see why many people fail in Marriage. Marriage is about the big picture, not about the number of years; your Marriage could be three years and then you fulfilled all that God wanted you to fulfill. If there is a big picture, even though you may have been married for 70 years, it will still look like yesterday because that Marriage is fulfilling the purpose of God.
So, Marriage is not about me wanting to suit my emotional desires, my body, and all of that, no, it is about the picture of God. What exactly is God looking for in this union? That is the starting point. So, the big picture is the destiny of your Marriage. And that is where you begin from. Now let’s go back to that place in Judges 13 from verse 6. I just felt that I should quickly let us see what I just shared with us earlier. Now, the Bible says: “So the woman came and told her husband…” You see, when you understand the picture, or the destiny of your Marriage, there is no way God will be telling you something and you won’t reveal it to your spouse. Because you know at strategic times, God can speak to either the husband or the wife in the Marriage. Now, when God speaks to you as the husband, for instance, that is not the time you tell your wife “Do you know God just spoke to me but I will not tell you.” You don’t understand yet the destiny of your Marriage.
There may never be occasions that God will speak to the two of you at the same time. But when you know that God communicates something to you, and you know that you cannot birth it by yourself, then you communicate with your spouse. So, the angel came to the woman, we don’t know where the man was. A man may be strategically misaligned in destiny but it is dangerous for the man and woman to be misaligned at the same time, you will be treading on the paths of misalignment. Sometimes the husband can stray, but your wife should not stray. Sometimes, if the wife strays, the husband should not stray. The moment the two of you stray together, then something is fundamentally wrong with the picture of God concerning that Marriage. The man was nowhere to be found. But the woman was somewhere strategically located to be found by the angel of the Lord.
The Bible says:
So the woman came and told her husband, saying, “A Man of God came to me, and His countenance[a] was like the countenance of the Angel of God, very awesome; but I did not ask Him where He was from, and He did not tell me His name. 7 And He said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. Now drink no wine or similar drink, nor eat anything unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’ ” 8 Then Manoah prayed to the Lord, and said, “O my Lord, please let the Man of God whom You sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born.” 9 And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the Angel of God came to the woman again as she was sitting in the field but Manoah her husband was not with her.”
The angel of the Lord came again to the woman, and still the man was nowhere to be found. He prayed to God let the angel come again, but he was still not strategically located where the angel could meet him. Now I’m driving at a point but we are going to get there. Don’t forget, we do not know the name of the wife, the Bible called her “The Woman.” Of course, it is not wrong. That was the name Adam gave to Eve. The Bible says “she shall be called Woman.” Now look at it.
Then the woman ran in haste and told her husband, and said to him, “Look, the Man who came to me the other day has just now appeared to me!” 11 So Manoah arose and followed his wife.
The woman assumed the leadership position, the man followed. As a man, don’t be ashamed to follow your wife in destiny. God have mercy. You know, there is this ego issue with men. “I’m your husband, I’m the leader.” You know, sometimes some men could even say “let me stay in front and come and stay behind.” For the very first time, the woman who was unknown was the leader, and the man followed. Don’t be too arrogant to follow your wife. When it comes to this marital destiny, because it is about the two of you fulfilling it.
“When he came to the Man, he said to Him, “Are You the Man who spoke to this woman?” This was a condescending statement. Now, I was just thinking, I was just being wild in my meditation. I was thinking like, why will Manoah say “are you the one that spoke to this woman?” If you try it in our contemporary times, that’s not a good way to address a wife. Like, “are you the one that spoke to this woman?” Now that shows something and that actually showed again another thing why I believe God was not speaking to Manoah. You see, this was a man who, so to say; does not regard his wife. And that could be the reason why he was not hearing anything from God and it was only the woman. He could have said: “Are you the one that spoke to my wife, sir?” Or “are you the one that spoke to my sweetheart?” How can you say: “Are you the one that spoke to this woman?” Who is this woman, this unknown woman.
Now, that brought me to a particular phase in this piece. You see if you are going to defend the destiny of your Marriage as husband and wife, one of the things that you must never joke with is honor. The reason why we don’t know the name of that woman is because the husband has not been honoring her. He never mentioned it to anybody. He never mentioned the name of that woman, to anybody and that shows dishonour. You can’t defend the destiny of your Marriage if there is dishonour in your Marriage. I want to show us some things. It looks like a very big statement, but it is not that hard. You see, if you don’t honor your wife, as the husband in Marriage, if you don’t honor your wife, you are going to lose her to another. I’m going to give us biblical principle for this. As a man if you refuse to honour your wife in your Marriage, you are about to lose that woman to another man who honors her.
Example: How did Nabal lost Abigail to David? Dishonor! Have we read that story before? It is because of dishonor. The Bible calls Nabal a fool. The wife once said to David: my Lord, don’t mind him. As his name is so he behaves at times. He is a foolish man. For a woman to say her husband is foolish she must have seen some level of dishonour. But at the end of the day, what happened? Abigail became the wife of David. If you don’t honor your wife, you are quarter to losing her to another man and it is the truth. Look at many Marriages in the world and come back and give us a summary of your research. Let me read to us Genesis chapter 20. Abraham was about to lose Sarah, do we know, because of dishonor. Now look at Genesis chapter 20 from 1-2, we need to understand this because we must understand the place of honor when it comes to defending our marital destiny. The Bible says:
And Abraham journeyed from there to the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and stayed in Gerar. 2 Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.
Please, if Abraham had told them: she is my wife, because the Bible made us to understand that that King feared God, he wouldn’t have dared to want to have her. But the very first impression that Abraham gave concerning Sarah was that of dishonor and that woman was almost going to become another man’s wife. If not, that God intervened. If you don’t honor your spouse in Marriage, you will lose them to another. As a wife, if you don’t honor your husband, you will lose him to another woman. I just felt like sharing that.
Now do you know how the Bible says Sarah treated Abraham? The Bible says “she called him lord.” If honor is absent in Marriage, there is no way the marital destiny can be fulfilled. That’s what the Bible says. If you read 1 Peter 3:6-7, the Bible says: “as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. 7 Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”
As the husband if you don’t honour your wife, the Bible says your prayers will be hindered. As a wife, if you don’t honor your husband, you are about to lose him. Queen Vashti, we know she was very beautiful. Why did she lose her throne? Dishonor. It wasn’t as Esther was prettier than Vashti, no. Why she lost that throne and her husband to Esther was because of dishonor. So, how can Manoah say: Are you the one that spoke to this woman? Let’s read the other part of the Scripture; Judges 13 from verse 13. Let’s look at what the Bible says further. The Bible says: “So the Angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful.” Now notice something, the angel did not communicate with Him. Go and meet your wife. God is not partial. God sees everything. The angel still did not speak to him.
“She may not eat anything that comes from the vine, nor may she drink wine or similar drink, nor eat anything unclean. All that I commanded her let her observe.” 15 Then Manoah said to the Angel of the Lord, “Please let us detain You, and we will prepare a young goat for You.” 16 And the Angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Though you detain Me, I will not eat your food. But if you offer a burnt offering, you must offer it to the Lord.” (For Manoah did not know He was the Angel of the Lord.)”
He did not know so many things. He was not a man that was close to God. If you are a man that honors your wife and you love God, how can your wife be the one in the threshing floor you are sitting somewhere enjoying? You are not where God could reach you. You are not where God could speak to you. You are not with her. Did we see that?
“Then Manoah said to the Angel of the Lord, “What is Your name, that when Your words come to pass we may honor You?” 18 And the Angel of the Lord said to him, “Why do you ask My name, seeing it is wonderful?” 19 So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it upon the rock to the Lord. And He did a wondrous thing while Manoah and his wife looked on— 20 it happened as the flame went up toward heaven from the altar—the Angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar! When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell on their faces to the ground. 21 When the Angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah and his wife, then Manoah knew that He was the Angel of the Lord. 22 And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!” 23 But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had desired to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would He have shown us all these things, nor would He have told us such things as these at this time.” 24 So the woman bore a son and called his name Samson; and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. 25 And the Spirit of the Lord began to move upon him at Mahaneh Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.”
Now, the point is, at the end of the day, it was still this woman that was schooling the husband, Manoah said we have seen the angel of the Lord, surely, we are going to die, and the wife said: young man calm down. If the angel wanted to kill us, he would have killed us. Now, let me show us three lessons from that story. Now, the reason why I read those Scripture to us is because of these three points, so that we can understand that if we are going to defend our marital destiny, it must be done unison as husband and wife.
Lesson number one, and I believe I’ve said it: The destiny of your Marriage is bigger than any individual in the Marriage. Please, I don’t want us to forget this. When it comes to the big picture about our Marriages, it is not about any individual. If it was about one individual, then the woman should have remained with that information. If it was possible for Manoah’s wife to fulfill that destiny by herself, I believe she would. But it was not about her alone, it is still about herself and her husband. So, the destiny of your Marriage is not about any individual, whether the husband or the wife. The destiny of your Marriage is about what God is set to accomplish on the face of the earth through your Marriage.
So, what exactly is God planning to accomplish on earth through your Marriage? It is something that you must settle even before the Marriage. What exactly will God have me do in my Marriage? If God reveals it to you, then you share it with your wife. If God reveals it to the wife, then the wife shares it with the husband. It is not about any one of you. It’s about God Himself. So, if God is speaking to either the husband or the wife per time, both of them must come together to ensure the realization of what God is telling them. So, the first lesson, your Marriage destiny is not about any individual in the Marriage. It is about both of you coming together under God to fulfill that destiny.
Lesson number two. Mutual honor would propel both the husband and wife towards the fulfillment of their marital destiny. If there is dishonour from anywhere, what it usually does is that it drags the Marriage down. So, when there is mutual honor, it propels the husband and the wife towards the fulfillment of that marital destiny. Even though Manoah was a dishonourable man, thank God that the wife understands what it means to give honor in the Marriage.
Point number three. on two different occasions the angel of the Lord appeared to the wife of Manoah and not Manoah himself. Why? Why did the angel of the Lord appear to the woman and not to Manoah? Maybe because the man was not given the due honour to his wife. So, the angel did not speak to the man because he was not honouring his wife. Now I remember something, as I am rounding off, a story about Moses. How many of us know there was a time God wanted to kill Moses before he started his ministry. There was a time God wanted to kill Moses even before his time. Now I was just thinking about that story and I felt like, if not that Moses was not doing anything contrary to his wife at the time, maybe Moses would have died because Moses was supposed to have died but thank God for the wife who rescued him. And I just thought about it this way and I remember the story of my dad and my mom. And I thought, like, if, if there was this mutual honor between my dad and my mom, I felt maybe my dad would still be alive.
Now, I was thinking about that, because of this story. I’m about to read to us. As a man, if you don’t honour your wife, you have given that woman an opportunity not to care for you. Now, what does that mean? In essence, if you are going to fulfill your own destiny, as the husband, in that Marriage, as the leader in that Marriage, then you must honour your wife. If you don’t honour your wife, you will find it very hard to receive submission. Now, let me read that story to us. Exodus chapter 4. Let’s look at what’s happened. Let us read from 18-26 (AMP).
Then Moses went away and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him, “Please, let me go back so that I may return to my relatives in Egypt, and see if they are still alive.” And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.” 19 Then the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life [for killing the Egyptian] are dead.” 20 So Moses took his wife [Zipporah] and his sons [Gershom and Eliezer] and seated them on donkeys, and returned to the land of Egypt. Moses also took the staff of God in his hand. 21 The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders (miracles) which I have put in your hand, but I will harden his heart and make him stubborn so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Israel is My son, My firstborn. 23 So I say to you, ‘Let My son go so that he may serve Me’; and if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.”’” 24 Now it happened at the lodging place, that the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him [making him deathly ill because he had not circumcised one of his sons]. 25 Then Zipporah took a flint knife and cut off the foreskin of her son and threw it at Moses’ feet, and said, “Indeed you are a husband of blood to me!” 26 So He let Moses alone [to recover]. At that time Zipporah said, “You are a husband of blood”—because of the circumcision.
Now, this is the point I want to make. Moses would have died, because there was something he was supposed to have done, that he did not do. If Moses had care less about his wife Zipporah at the time, maybe there was no mutual honour or mutual understanding, Zipporah could have said, “well, good riddance to bad rubbish, if he wants to die, let him die, after all, he is not useful.” Do we understand? Do you know many men wouldn’t have died if they treated and honor their wives well. You know, I’m speaking from a true-life story, but I don’t want to go into in-to-to.
As a man, if you don’t honor your wife in Marriage, you will not fulfill your own destiny and that marital destiny will not be fulfilled. Had it not been the intervention of Zipporah, may be that would have been the end of Moses, he will not even have started yet. Because this point, if you read from Exodus chapter four verse one, he was still arguing with God, he was still saying God, I don’t want to go, this and that until God decided to send Aaron with him. He wouldn’t have even started that assignment at all. Now, what’s the point I’m trying to make? The point is this: in your Marriage, do not allow dishonor to take place because the moment there is dishonor in your Marriage, that marital destiny is as good as not going to come into realization.
So, those are the three points I want to share with us from that story. Honor in Marriage will propel you and your husband towards the fulfillment of your marital destiny, the moment you begin to give in to dishonor, then it means you are spoiling the work of God, the plan of God concerning your Marriage. If you look at that Malachi 2, it says: do not deal treacherously with the wife of your youth.” Why? Because the moment you begin to do that you are opening a door to not fulfilling your marital destiny. So, honor is very important, mutual honor in the Marriage, and don’t allow the devil to creep into your Marriage through dishonour, it is very important.
I don’t know why I am emphasizing it. Maybe one of these days, we’ll get to share real stories about some of these stories. Do not allow the devil to truncate the destiny of your Marriage. The reason why God has brought you to that union is so that you can fulfill your marital destiny and I pray that the Lord is going to help us in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
[Centre for New Dimension Leadership]
