Marriage Before Ministry

"It is tremendously hard to balance a relationship," said the Rev. Cynthia L. Hale, pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church. "If you happen to be more successful than your spouse or make more money or have greater prestige that is where the challenge comes in. There are many men who are secure in life, but there are also men who are insecure and they have struggled with having their wives [or girlfriends] excel in ways they don't."

This quote is taken from an article about Juanita Bynum being assaulted by her husband Bishop Thomas Weeks. First let me say that I hope and pray that Juanita Bynum and her husband can both repent, put God first and their marriage can be healed and restored. "With God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26)

"It is tremendously hard to balance a relationship," That is true, and that is why God wants us to always and in all things put Him first. Second should come your family; spouse and then children. Thirdly is your ministry, and last but not least, the community, including your home church. "Who answering, said to them, Have you all not read, for he that made humans at the beginning, made them male and female? and he said, for this cause a man will leave father and mother, and he will cleave to his wife: and they will be two in one flesh. And so they not two now, but one flesh: therefore a human separate not, that what God has joined." Matthew 19:4-6.

It is wrong to neglect your marriage to build your ministry. It is also wrong to neglect your marriage to raise your children. Children need to see a healthy relationship, with God put first. When women submit to their husbands and men love their wives as Christ loves the church it creates a beautiful thing, a God centered marriage. And in case you are wondering, this is tried and true because it worked for my husband and I. God can take a mess, and when you follow His principles and put Him first, He can make it beautiful!

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Marriage and Divorce...The Real Truth

Matt.5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
32. but I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

1Cor.7:10 And unto the married, I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband.
11. But and if she depart, LET HER REMAIN UNMARRIED, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.

Mark.10:11 And He saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her.
12. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and marrieth another, she committeth adultery.

Mark.10:9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Nothing could be plainer than these statements. Anyone who divorces and remarries committeth adultery by doing so, for Jesus DOES NOT authorize the DIVORCE. Once married, ALWAYS MARRIED: till death do you part. This is EXACTLY how Jesus Christ sees it, and describes it.

1Cor.7:12 But to the rest, speak I, not the Lord: if any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.
13. And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.

Once again, there is NO PERMISSION to either get divorced AND remarried in any of this. Paul simply states that if the UNBELIEVER wants to go, you may let them go. The one who is left is still divorced, and whosoever shall marry her (or him) that is divorced COMMITTETH ADULTERY. Paul takes this fact; that marriage is BINDING as long as both partners shall live SO MUCH FOR GRANTED, that he uses it as an illustration of the permanency of the Law over a man until that man has realized and embraced the full significance of the death and resurrection of Christ:

Rom.7:1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law), how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
2. For the woman that hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
3. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
4. Wherefore my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that ye should bring forth fruit unto God.

1Cor.7:39 The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; but only in the Lord.

Okay, I know that this is going to be a tough subject. Marriage and Divorce... This is something I never really dug real deep into the scriptures about until recently. I was raised in a Christian home, so I always knew in my heart that God does not take marriage lightly. I knew it was a covenant in His sight. I knew that when you marry someone you are making a vow, that it is supposed to be forever. These beliefs are what kept me from walking out on my marriage years ago when the going got tough. Of course "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence". My husband and I "made it" through the rough spot because we turned to God. We let Him fix our marriage. He took what was a "mess" and has made it into something beautiful. Aside from "knowing" all of these things about the sacredness of marriage and its importance to God, I wanted to know what does the Bible really say. Not what does the preacher say or what does the "church" say, but what does God say?

The above scriptures say a lot. They say a lot more than what is being taught. After reading these scriptures one should ask, "Why are churches and pastors marrying people who have been previously divorced?" It plainly says, "Mark.10:11 And He saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. 12. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and marrieth another, she committeth adultery." I didn't make it up. That is what the Word of God says. If you are divorced and the person you divorced is still alive, to remarry is to commit adultery.

1Cor.7:39 The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; but only in the Lord.

How have WE foreshortened marriage? By not AGREEING WITH and TEACHING the SAME THINGS The Bible says about the conduct of marriage and sexual sin; we have UNDERMINED the PERMANENCE of marriage. We make EXCUSES for divorce that The Bible does not give; we make REASONS to justify both DIVORCE and REMARRIAGE in flat out contradiction to Jesus Christ, Who said: Whosoever shall marry her (or him) that is divorced, committeth ADULTERY (Matt. 5:32).

Who among you will now show me how I have misrepresented what the Bible says about these things?

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More On Marriage

Here is more of the teaching on Marriage from Richard Baxter, a Puritan preacher.


Direct. V. It is your solemn duty to live in quietness and peace. To avoid every occasion of fierce anger and discord.

[I. Directions showing the great necessity of avoiding dissension.]

1. The duty of your marriage ­union requires unity. Can you not agree with your own flesh?

2. Division with your spouse will pain and upset your whole life ... Just as you do not wish to hurt your own self and are quick to care for your own wounds; so you should take notice of any break in the peace of your marriage and quickly seek to heal it. 3. Fighting chills love, fighting makes your spouse undesirable to you in your mind. Wounding is separating; to be tied together through marital bonds while your hearts are estranged is to be tormented. To be inwardly adversaries, while outwardly husband and wife turns your home and delight into a prison. (11)

4. Dissension between the husband and the wife disrupts the whole family life; they are like oxen unequally yoked, no work can be accomplished for all the striving with one another.

5. It greatly makes you unfit for the worship of God; you are not able to pray together nor to discuss heavenly things together, nor can you be mutual helpers to each other's souls. (12)

6. Dissension makes it impossible to manage your family properly.(13)

7. Your dissension will expose you to the malice of Satan, and give him advantage for many, many temptations. (14)

[II. Directions for avoiding dissensions.]

1. Keep alive your love for one another. Love your spouse dearly and fervently. Love will suppress wrath; you cannot be bitter over little things with someone you dearly love; much less will you descend to harsh words, aloofness, or any form abuse. (15)

2. Both husband and wife must mortify their pride and strong self­ centered feelings. (16 ) These are the feelings which cause intolerance and insensitivity. You must pray and labour for a humble, meek, and quiet spirit. A proud heart is troubled and provoked by every word that seems to assault your self ­esteem.(17)

3.Do not forget that you are both diseased persons, full of infirmities; and therefore expect the fruit of those infirmities in each other; and do not act surprised about it, as if you had never known of it before. Decide to be patient with one another; remembering that you took one another as sinful, frail, imperfect persons, and not as angels, or as blameless and perfect. (18)

4. Remember still that your are one flesh; and therefore be no more offended with the words or failings of each other, than you would be if they were your own. Be angry with your wife for her faults no more than you are angry with yourself for your own. Have such an anger and displeasure against a fault, as will work to heal it; but not such as will cause festering and aggravation of the diseased part. This will turn anger into compassion, and will cause you to administer care for the cure. (19)

5. Agree together beforehand, that when one of you is sinfully angry and upset the other shall silently and gently bear it until you have come to your sanity. (20)

6. Have an eye to the future and remember that you must live together until death, and must be the companions of each other's lives, and the comforts of each other's lives, and then you will see how absurd it is for you to disagree and upset each other.(21)

7. As far as you are able, avoid all occasions of wrath and quarreling, about the matters of your families.(22)

8. If you are so angry that you cannot calm yourself at least control your tongue and do not speak hurtful and taunting words, talking it out hotly fans the fire, and increases the flame; (Do not ventilate your anger as you only feed your fleshly vengenance) Be silent, and you will much sooner return to your serenity and peace.(23)

9. Let the calm and rational spouse speak carefully and compellingly reason with the other (unless it be with a person so insolent as will make things worse). Usually a few sober, grave admonitions, will prove as water to the boiling pot. Say to your angry wife or husband, "You know this should not be between us; love must put it to rest, and it must be repented of. God does not approve of it, and we shall not approve of it when this heat is over. This frame of mind is contrary to a praying frame, and this language contrary to a praying language; we must pray together; let us do nothing contrary to prayer now: sweet water and bitter come not from one spring", etc. Some calm and condescending words of reason, may stop the torrent, and revive the reason which passion had overcome.(24)

10. When you have sinfully acted towards your spouse confess to one another; and ask for forgiveness of each other, and join in prayer to God for pardon; and this will act as a preventative in you the next time: you will surely be ashamed to do that which you have confessed and asked forgiveness for of God and man.(25)

Direct. VI. One of the most important duties of a husband to his wife and a wife to her husband is to carefully, skillfully, and diligently help each other in the knowledge and worship, and obedience of God that they might be saved and grow in their Christian Life.

1. This is not love, when you neglect each other's soul.(26 ) Do you believe that you have immortal souls, and an endless life of joy or misery to live? Then you MUST know that your great concern and business is, to care for those souls, and for the endless life. Therefore if your love does not help one another in this which is your main concern, it is of little worth, and of little use. Every thing in this world is as valuable as it is useful. A useless or unprofitable love, is a worthless love. It is a trifling, or a childish, or a beastly love, which helps you but in trifling, childish, or beastly things. Do you love your wife, and will leave her in the power of Satan, or will not help to save her soul? What! love her, and yet let her go to hell? and rather let her be damned than you will be at the pains to endeavor her salvation? Never say you love them, if you will not labour for their salvation.

What then shall we say of them that do not only deny their help, but are hinderers of the holiness and salvation of each other! [1Kings 11.4, Acts 5.2, Job 2.9] And yet (the Lord have mercy on the poor miserable world!) how common a thing is this among us! If the wife be ignorant and ungodly, she will do her worst to make or keep her husband in the same state as she is herself; and if God put any holy inclinations into his heart, she will be like water to the fire, to quench it or to keep it subdued; and if he will not be as sinful and miserable as herself, he shall have little rest. And if God open the eyes of the wife of a bad man, and show her the necessity of a holy life, and she resolves to obey the Lord, and save her soul, what an enemy and tyrant will her husband be to her ( if God does not restrain him); so that the devil himself will do no more to prevent the saving of their souls than ungodly husbands and wives do against each other.

2. Consider also that you are not living up to the design of marriage, if you are not helping each other's souls.(27)

3. Consider also, if you neglect each other's souls, what enemies you are to one another, and how you are preparing for your everlasting sorrows: when you should be preparing for your joyful meeting in heaven, you are laying up for yourselves everlasting horror.

11 Pro 19:13
12 Mat 5:23; 1Sam 15:22
13 Mat 12:25; Mar 3:25; Luk 11:17
14 Jam 1:13; 1Cor 7:5; Job 2:9
15 Lev 19:8; Psa 133:1; Pro 15:17; Rom 12:10; Rom 14:19; Rom 15:1; 1Cor 13:4­7
16 Luk 9:23; Psa 101:5; Prov 16:5; Prov 21:4; Prov 28:25; Mat 23:12; 1Pet 5:6
17 Psa 10:4; Hos 7:10; Prov 13:10; Prov 28:25
18 Jer 17:9; Rom 7:24; 1Joh 1:8
19 Eph 4:26; Eph 4:32; Jam 1:19
20 Eph 4:2; 1Cor 13:4
21 Ecc 9:9; Rom 7:2
22 Gen 2:24
23 Gal 5:15; Jam 3:5,6,8
24 Pro 15:18; Mat 5:9; Psa 85:8
25 Eph 4:32; Jam 5:16
26 2Cor 2:4; 2Cor 12:15; 1The 2:8
27 Gen 2:18 1The 5:11; Eph 4:16; Heb 12:15; 1cor 7:5; Col 2:19; Gen 35:2; Gen 35:4; Lev 19:17; Num 16:27; Num 16:32


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Marriage...Keep God In It!

Over the next few days I am going to post some excerpts from a teaching on marriage by Richard Baxter. He was a Puritan preacher. I have been married for almost 17 years now and I can tell you that most of these things, for my husband and I are tried and true! God must be at the center of any marriage that is to be successful and full of life. We have went through some rough spots and it was putting God first that saw us through! After 17 years one thing I do know is that love is not ooey gooey and that tickly feeling in your stomach that you feel when you think you are first "in love". Love is an action word, not a feeling! Maintaining a healthy relationship with your spouse requires work and self sacrifice. Worrying about yourself and not all of your spouses "problems" is another key for a successful marriage. God is much better at changing people than we are! He does it in His time and in His way.

Direct. I. The first duty of husbands is to love their wives (and wives their husbands). Eph 5.25,28,29,33. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.­­So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies; he that loveth his wife, loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.­­Let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself." See Gen 2.24.

Some directions for maintaining love are as follows:

1. Choose a good spouse in the first place. A spouse who is truly good and kind. Full of virtue and holiness to the Lord. (2)

2. Don't marry till you are sure that you can love entirely.

3. Be not too hasty, but know beforehand all the imperfections which may tempt you to despise your future mate. (3)

4. Remember that justice commands you to love one that has forsaken all the world for you. One who is contented to be the companion of your labours and sufferings, and be a sharer in all things with you, and that MUST be your companion until death. (4)

5. Remember that women are ordinarily affectionate, passionate creatures, and as they love much themselves, so they expect much love from you.

6. Remember that you are under God's command; and to deny marital love to your wives, is to deny a duty which God has urgently imposed on you. Obedience therefore should command your love.

7. Remember that you are "one flesh"; you have drawn her to forsake father and mother, and to cleave to you; (5)

8. Take more notice of the good, that is in your wives, than of her faults. Let not the observation of their faults make you forget or overlook their virtues. (6)

9. Don't magnify her imperfections until they drive you crazy.

Excuse them as far as is right in the Lord. Consider the frailty of the sex. Consider also your own infirmities, and how much your wives must bear with you. (7)

10. Don't stir up the evil of your spouse, but cause the best in them to be lived out. (8)

11. Overcome them with love; and then they will be loving to you, and consequently lovely. Love will cause love, as fire kindleth fire. A good husband is the best means to make a good and loving wife. (9)

12. Live before them the life of a prudent, lowly, loving, meek, self ­denying, patient, harmless, holy heavenly Christian. (10)

1 Luk 6:31­32; 1Cor 10:24; Gal 6:2; Phil 2:4; 2tim 3:2; Jam 2:15; 1Joh 3:17; Gen 4:9; 1 Sam 25:3­11; Esth 6:6; Isa 56:11; Joh 6:26
2 Pro 18:22; Pro 19:13­14
3 Pro 18:13
4 Mat 5:32; Mat 19:9; 1Cor 7:39; Col 3:19; Gen 2:24
5 Mat 19:5; Mar 10:7
6 1 Cor 13:7; Phil 2:3
7 Psa 103:14; 1Cor 13:7
8 Pro 10:12
9 Rom 12:21; 1Pet 3:9
10 Eph 4:1; Col 1:10; 1The 2:12; Pro 11:30; 1Tim 4:16; Jam 5:19­20; 1Pet 3:1­2

Direct. II. Husbands and wives must live together. 1 Cor 7:2­5

Direct III. Abhor not only adultery itself, but all that leads to unchasteness and the violation of your marriage­covenant. [Mat 5.31,32; 19:9; John 8,4­5, of adultery; Heb 13.4; Prov 22.14; Hos 4.2­3; Prov 2.17; 1 Cor 6.15,19; Mal. 2.15; Prov 6.32,35; Deu 23.2; Lev 21.9; 18:28; Num 25.9; Jer 5.7­9]

Direct. IV. Husband and wife must delight in the love and company, and lives of each other. When husband and wife take pleasure in each other, it unites them in duty, it helps them with ease to do their work, and bear their burdens; and is a major part of the comfort of marriage. [Prov 5.18,19]

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The Truth About Gay Marriage

The truth is, it is wrong! I am so tired of it being said that it is hate to speak against homosexuality. Why isn't it considered hate to speak against murderers?. The Bible says that both are wrong. If God said it is wrong, then it is wrong. I don't care how much "times have changed". God has not changed. We do not have to be tolerant. We are not tolerant of murderers and child molesters. Homosexuality is just as wrong. Why is it that society wants to change the rules to what suits them the best?

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. That tells me He was not very pleased. He does not hate gay people, He hates the sin of homosexuality. Just like He does not hate the sinner, He hates sin. God is a God of love, but He is a just God. He does not lie and He does not go back on His word. If it was wrong in Sodom and Gomorrah, then it is wrong today. He created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

When man tries to start setting his own standards based on what he thinks is right, it will cause nothing but trouble. God had a perfect plan and He let us know what was right and what was wrong. People are not born gay. They have chosen to live that lifestyle. They have been deceived by the devil in to thinking they were made that way or that it is O.K.


"Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, noreffeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God." (I CORINTHIANS 6:9-11)

"And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God." 1 CORINTHIANS 6:11....This scripture shows us that some people in the church at Corinth used to do these things, they used to practice homosexuality, but because of their salvation and relationship with Jesus, they no longer practiced these things. They were made new. This happened when they obeyed the gospel from the heart.. This obedience involves those who have come to believe in Jesus repenting of their former conduct and being baptized in the name of Christ (ACTS 2:38). Thus they had beenwashed(baptized), sanctified (set apart from their old manner of life and dedicated to a new purpose) and justified (declared forgiven and made righteous by God's grace). God took people who were headed toward eternal destruction, and by His power and grace had altered their direction. He continues to do so today. Those who live according to His purpose shall inherit the kingdom of God.

God said it! That settles it!







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