How to Build an Enviable Marriage

in an Unsettled World                                                          

PROLOGUE

No One Has a Marriage Problem – People Only Have a Wisdom Problem

In February 2014, I had the privilege to speak and be a blessing at an annual international conference of a church in Los Angeles, California. I was getting ready to leave for Canada the following day, when I was approached by a precious sister. She said, “Please pastor, I’m here to see you. Would you share with me the secret to a stress free marriage?” That was heart touching request for me. The following month I was preaching in the United Kingdom. After a glorious night of signs and wonders, I was taken back to my hotel. As I was entering my hotel room the protocol officer of my host church who was escorting me said, “Pastor, my wife told me to ask you for the secret to a stress free marriage.” One time after a meeting, a woman said to my wife, “Please pray for me that I will enjoy my marriage the same way you are enjoying your own.”

My wife, who I affectionately refer to as “Honey,” and I have long desired to put the wisdom God’s grace has made available to us in this area into a book. As we have shared this wisdom in several nations around the world we have also heard the groaning of many and seen their tears. People of God in different cities and nations, clergy and lay people alike, are crying for relief and rest in their marriages and the cry is getting louder and louder. We can feel your pain and know that God also sees the deep longing of your souls. We wrote this book for you – the longing souls and crying hearts trapped in stress-filled marriages.

This book is about building marriage God’s way, and God’s way is found in God’s WORD and His WORD alone. The Apostle Peter declared, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee…” (Acts 3:6). We know what we don’t have but also we do know what we have been given. And what we don’t have is not as important as what we already have. There is one thing that is crystal clear today for my wife and I and that is: we have enjoyed and are enjoying a stress free marriage. Grace has made this possible and this is what we are sent to share with you. I have said it times without number that should God “change” his mind and allow marriage in Heaven, I would still marry my wife. It has been days of Heaven on earth for us.

What redemption has made possible for us is also available to you. The season of your life is about to change. Please understand this: Revelation and obedience determine the seasons of our lives, not a calendar or a month of the year. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever….” Whatever God reveals, He equally releases! Whenever Heaven shows us something, it has already been released from God’s Throne Room to us. Our responsibility is to lay hold of it. What we see determines what we believe; and what we believe we are supernaturally empowered to become.  

We had our own struggles in marriage for a while until the light of Heaven dawned on our hearts. Then our eyes were opened to secrets in the WORD that put an end to our struggles. The turning point came when the secret of God was delivered to us. Our words and world changed and we were ushered into this glorious bliss. Today we can, by His light, walk without stress through every form of darkness the enemy throws at us (Job 29:3-4). No more stress!

Please open your heart to a fresh revelation that is about to be shared through this medium. Get rid of the “old wine skin” for it cannot hold this new wine that Heaven is bringing your way. The old wine skin – old ideas and the worldly system – that holds tight to some myths about marriage must be discarded and replaced with the truth of the WORD. This is a strange book with a strange unction. It may not be conventional, but I trust the Holy Spirit to release life through it into your life and marriage. The light of His WORD carried in this book will shatter every form of darkness in your marriage and enlighten every dark place in your life.

God’s original purpose of marriage, which is blessing, still remains today. Marriage is to be enjoyed and not to be endured. Marriage is too good to become something we are enduring. No! The greatest thing that happened to man (Adam) after his creation (and before the fall) was the establishment of the marriage institution. This blessing provoked the devil so much that Satan immediately sought for man’s fall (Read Gen. 2-3).

When Adam was in the Garden of Eden his existence and faithful service didn’t matter to the devil until the establishment of the marriage institution. That shows us how significant marriage is. Satan couldn’t be bothered with Adam’s activities in the garden. There was no reference to the existence of the devil in the garden until God established marriage.

Immediately after God established this enviable institution, Satan showed up (Gen. 3:1). Nothing provokes anger from the pit of hell like a godly marriage. I wish the church would understand this truth; then many would not walk the aisle unprepared. Nothing triggers an attack from the devil like marriage because he understands the power and blessing that reside in marriage.

After contacting some deep insights in the WORD and walking in those insights, with the supply of the Holy Spirit, the devil has been put at bay in our marriage. Some have mocked these statements in unbelief.

Others couldn’t wrap their minds around them. Some have embraced these insights and are enjoying the same blessing that we are enjoying today. “All things are possible to him that believes” (Mk. 9:23). What you don’t believe, you can’t enjoy. Whatever your heart can’t conceive, your life can’t experience. The eternal rule of the kingdom is “According to your faith be it unto you” (Mat. 9:29b).

A precious friend related this amazing testimony with me sometime in 2013 and it blew my heart away. He came to share with me some of the great projects that the Lord laid upon his heart for Canada. During the course of our discussion, he said, “Man of God, when I met you the other time (the previous year), during the course of our conversation you said ‘We don’t argue in our marriage.’ When I first heard those words from you, I thought, ‘Could that be possible?’ That was because I had never heard any one in my entire life say those kinds of words before. At that time we used to argue in our marriage. But today, I can tell you that we have entered that realm also.”  

This precious man of God has also entered that rest...the realm of a stress free marriage. I strongly believe that God did not design marriage for stress. I have seen people around me, who opened their hearts to this revelation and are walking in the same peace and rest that the Prince of Peace offered us. This realm is accessible to all that will believe and receive His WORD. The writer of the Book of Hebrews says, “For we which have believed do enter into rest...” (Heb. 4:3a). You can enter that rest by believing what the WORD reveals about marriage.

Faith grants you access to this realm. Let me make this clear to you. It is not God Who is depriving you of a glorious marriage! It is people’s ignorance and disobedience that have brought them sorrow (Hos. 4:6; Isa. 5:13-14). No! It is not God, so stop screaming at Him.

It is the revelation of the WORD that you have and walk in that determines what you will enjoy in this life. It is not God who determines who has a great marriage or who does not. It is your faith and obedience that determine it. It is God’s ultimate plan and desire that marriage should reflect Heaven on earth. That was His purpose in the beginning and that is His purpose today.

God has already made provision for your stress free marriage. I am not saying that He is going to make provision. No! The provision is made already. There is nothing He needs to do for us that He has not. The Apostle Peter put it this way, “According as His divine power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue” (2 Pet. 1:3). First Corinthians 3:21 says, “All things are yours....” And all those things include stress free, peaceful marriages and they are made available through knowledge.  

The Lord once told me, “If your heart is big enough to conceive it, I, your God, am strong enough to perform it.” From that time I discovered that it was my faith and obedience that limited me, not God. From that moment, I no longer saw prayer time as a time to convince or force God to do for me what His Son shed His precious blood for. “Whatever you can believe Me for, I can surely perform. I don’t just give things; you have to build your faith to receive them,” is a statement I recently heard from the Holy Spirit. God honours faith because faith honours God.

We strongly trust the Lord that this book will build and strengthen your faith to be a partaker of a stress free marriage. “For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Ps. 84:11). “Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good…” (Ps. 85:12).

I believe marriage is good and God is not the one preventing you from enjoying that which is good. Don’t blame Him – and give no place to the devil either.

To think that what is not working in your marriage is the Lord’s fault is a slap on His face. And pointing accusing fingers at the devil as the sole cause of your marital woe all the time, without examining yourself, is also a contradiction to the work of redemption. Remember Jesus “disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by His victory over them on the cross” (Col. 2:15 NLT). It is your depth in God’s WORD and your disobedience or obedience to His instructions that determine your pain or pleasure.

Many have experienced untold hardships in life because of their marriages. I have seen many believers in the Kingdom crying in pain because of marital agony. This was not so from the beginning. What God originally designed as a good thing has become a nightmare, heart-breaking to many today. God wants you to have full joy and rest in your marriage. This may sound too good to be true, but if you will open your heart to this fresh insight from the throne of grace, you will experience a turnaround in your marriage. Yes, I know this message may not be popular, but I know there is an inner crying in you for rest in every area of your life – especially in the area of marriage. That’s the reason you are reading this book.

Let me challenge you today! Don’t let your experience define the WORD OF GOD. Let God’s WORD re-define your experience. We are presenting to you through the pages of this book the truth of the WORD that Honey and I have learned, walked in and enjoyed. If what I am teaching or writing is not working for us, it would not be worth listening to or reading. But I say unto you in the words of the Apostle John, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life,” (1 John 1:1 NIV). The WORD of God works! A stress free marriage is possible. This is your season of rest.

It doesn’t matter what you may be going through today in your marriage. We are sent to bring you this life liberating message and put an end to your years of marital stress and woe. It is our earnest prayer that the truth shared in this book will revolutionize and transform your marriage. And if you are unmarried, the secret revealed here will become a solid foundation for your marriage in the future. Could it be that you are separated or divorced, we pray that you will have strength and receive vision to dream again in Jesus’ name.

Surely, the enemy will fight this revelation; he does all the time. Religion will call it heresy, the rational mind will think it’s unachievable, but I also know that darkness cannot overcome light. The supremacy of light (God’s WORD) over darkness is eternally settled. May you be able to say like that precious brother in a short while to come, “Man of God, when I read this book I also thought, ‘Could that be possible?’ That was because I had never heard any one in my entire life write these kinds of words before. But today, I can tell you that I have entered that realm also.”

May your testimony be the next one to celebrate – in Jesus’ name!

Only believe and obey!