Christian blog posts

Just as i was discussing how disagreements can be healthy in the church yesterday, a thought just came to me of how God works in families, yet those are places man\wife disagree most. God compared his church to a marriage. What happens in homes has deep connotation to what happens in church. God calls himself our father, just as the daughters and sons of a home call their parents father and mother.

If you try to imagine what happened in your home during your childhood, you realize in most of those circumstances, if you were to be honest, you sometimes wished to have been born in another family. Many times you would disagree with your brothers and sisters but at the end of the day, you would still walk home, regardless of your wishes to stay away from home. For you to be in harmony with everyone, in some cases, your mum had to settle a dispute between you and sibling and if it was a hard one, dad had to be called in. It’s not children who disagree in homes alone, but parents do, but in closed curtains and publicly as we have seen in our days,  as tempers flare openly between husband and wife that the church and those close are called in to help. In our African culture, the parents played a great role in re-uniting the couples that you never thought would never seat on the same table, to reconcile their differences.

It’s not ungodly homes that face issues in marriages alone, but if Christian couples were kind enough to share their experiences under one roof, you will realize that all that glitters is not gold too, even in the best of Christian marriages we admire the most. The bible, my favorite book in history, has never hid the issues that happened in the marriages of its best of clergy. Such happened to the family of Moses. Regardless of his spiritual mantle, his home i believe was not a haven of bliss. If you listen to exodus 18, you realize he had sent the wife away. The bible says  “When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father in law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel his people, that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt; Then Jethro, Moses’ father in law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after he had sent her back, And her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh: And Jethro, Moses’ father in law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God: And he said unto Moses, I thy father in law Jethro am come unto you, and your wife, and her two sons with her. And Moses went out to meet his father in law, and did obeisance, and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they came into the tent. [Exodus 18:1-7]

We may never know why Moses sent his wife a way but if you are a keen reader of the scriptures, you realize in chapter four Zipporah was dissatisfied with the husband. Moses seems to be slow in circumcising his son, a thing that infuriated the wife. Actually, the Lord was also not happy with Moses. It’s written, “and it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband you are to me. So he let him go. [Exodus 4:25-26]

I keep wondering, “Might that instance and many other things that we are not told directly in scripture about Moses’s life, as he ministered be the reason why he sent his wife a way? If you happen to be an African, you know very well that when a wife comes back to her home a accompanied by her father, then for sure there must be something burning to be solved, but that did not make Moses not to re-unite with his wife and children. Disagreements in homes always signify maturity. We are independent individuals and very much different in character, and the moment we set up a home as husband and wife, your facts and mine will collide in many occasions and it’s only mature people who can seat and reach a compromise for the sake of their marriage. Running away might not be a solution. Work things out and if it goes beyond you, then call for help from your parents, if not the church. No home is immune to troubles and fairy tales of great marriages only exist in movies and soap operas, but on the ground, you may find yourself agreeing to disagree. That’s why God’s word must be our guiding light always. He has a solution for every marital problem because he is the foundation of marriage.

Saints of God, what struggles might you be facing in your marriage or relationship? and what truth from God’s word are you going to apply to fix the burning issues in your home or relationship?

Disagreements in homes are normal, but if we follow the Lord’s command to love and submit, we will make a great marriage that glorifies him. Moses may have disagreed with the wife and separated for a while, but that didn’t break the marriage. Always work to make your marriage glorious and better for the glory of God, and if anything is beyond you, cry to him for help. He knows what you are going through as our heavenly father and in his timing, things will work for your good. God bless you