Spiritual side of marital problems
God bless Joy FM for your program on marital problems. It was very good and I believe many will be better off after listening to you and the panelists.
I do not wish to take anything away from what the resource persons contributed. They were great, and I just wish to add the spiritual dimension.
The marriage institution is good and was set up by God Himself when He decided that "It is NOT GOOD that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him", Gen. 2: 18.
This relationship was meant to be beautiful and to last a lifetime. "For I hate divorce, says the LORD the God of Israel, and covering one's garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts." Mal 2:16
It is important for all to note that there is no perfect marriage because there are no perfect people. We should therefore not rush into divorce.
The ultimate solution
Every manufacturer leaves a handbook or manual for the users, as a guide for getting the best results from the manufactured item. Similarly, God 'manufactured' marriage hence marriage is kept at its best, or protected or repaired only according to the 'Manufacturer's' manual, which is the Bible. Marriages contracted or operated not according to the standards in this 'Manual' are bound to run into trouble.
One likely cause of marital problems
Marriage is such a committal relationship that it is used to describe God's relationship with man. In the Old Testament, God referred to Israel as His wife; and referred to Israel's turning away to other gods as adultery.
In the New Testament the church is referred to as the wife of Jesus. "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her,..." Eph.5:25
Marriage is very important because the survival of society hangs on it. The family is the basic building block of society hence the decay we see in society today is a direct result of the collapse of marriages.
Broken homes result in unfulfilled lives, confused and bitter adults, and insecure and badly brought up children who grow up into adults who are a problem to society. These 'new adults', because of what they saw in their parents, end up in bad marriages themselves and the vicious cycle continues.
The Spiritual Marriage
One very common enemy to 'good' marriages is the spirit marriage. The first case of spirit marriages is in Gen.6:1,2. "When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God (spiritual beings) saw that the daughters of men were fair (beautiful); and they TOOK TO WIFE such of them as they chose."
Sadly, this is still going on. A man can have a spiritual wife or wives and a woman can have a spiritual husband or husbands. Spiritual marriages manifest in the actual by disturbing physical marriages. Some of these are listed below;
a. No Desire for Marriage
A young man or woman who grows up and feels no attraction to the opposite sex or has no desire for marriage could be spiritually married.
b. Cessation of monthly period
Women who are spiritually married could find that without being physically pregnant they stop having their monthly period. This could be because they are spiritually pregnant.
c. Impotence in men
Sometimes energetic young men are unable to have erections because their jealous spirit wives do not want them to have sexual relations with anyone else.
d. Marriages that don't last
Many marriages end abruptly because either or both spouses are married spiritually. The marriage could end by one partner dying suddenly or one of them packing up and leaving the marital home for no apparent reason.
e. Childlessness or repeated abortion
A lot of marriages are childless because one or both spouses have spiritual marriages. They may have spiritual children and hence can't have physical ones. Some wives do not become pregnant at all while others miscarry anytime they take seed (often preceded by a sexual dream).
f. "Stormy" marriages
In some cases, a person who is spiritually married, is able to marry physically and have children but these children are sickly or retarded. Additionally, this marriage is plagued by strife. Husband and wife are always at loggerheads for no or very trivial reasons.
g. Unhappy sexual life
Some married people are unable to enjoy sexual relations with their spouses because of spiritual marriage.
Some marriages are held together by very thin strings. In such cases, even though the marriage is over, the couple stays together because of public opinion.
The most common symptoms of one with a spiritual spouse are dreams of having sexual intercourse with someone. At other times, the dreams depict a whole marital life; such as being in a marital home with a partner, getting pregnant, having children cooking for a husband or being served by a wife, receiving money from a husband or giving housekeeping money out to a wife.
Spiritual marriages are often contracted when people are dedicated to family gods, stools or shrines or when women seek the fruit of the womb. A child born as a result from a visit to a shrine is very likely be spiritually married.
The above show how life in the spirit world affects that in the physical. 'Deliverance', the expulsion of the spiritual spouse, resulting in the dissolution of the spiritual marriage needs to be carried out, for the marriage to be saved.
People seeking deliverance should seek it from genuine Christians and not from ministers who use holy water, holy candles, or perform any rituals that are not prescribed by the Bible or they would end up worsening the situation.