How To Help Other Marriages

21 Apr How To Help Other Marriages

Many marriages are struggling to stand and hold it together, challenges from within and without have been buffeting and pushing many couples to quit and throw their marriages away because they think they have come to their wits end and there is nothing more they can do. Some husbands and wives have become strangers to each other; even though they still live together, they are not together. This is very sad; it shouldn’t be so but like the enemy fights all of God’s plans and intentions, he will not give up on his attempt to destroy marriages because he senses the great potentials available to every man and his wife when they are truly united as one.

So what has this got to do with you?
I know many times we get burdened when we see other marriages struggle, nearly break up or get destroyed. But the time has come to stand and do something about it instead of staying aloof and shrugging our shoulders like there is nothing we can do about it. You have a role to play; you can place your marriage as a tool in God’s hands to help other marriages stand firm and gain victory over the attacks of the enemy. You do not have to be an ordained minister, marriage counselor or pastor to help other marriages succeed. There are so many ways God can use you to be a blessing to marriages and help them achieve success.

1. Work Hard On Your Marriage
We cannot effectively help any marriage if we are not working on ours; we cannot give what we do not have. So the first step to helping other marriages is to work hard on our own marriage and make it a good example so that others will look at our marriages and know that their marriage too can be blissful. We must see to it that if others follow our marriage they will succeed.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Matthew 5: 16

2. Choose To care
We must not be selfish or care less about what is going on in our neighbours’, colleagues’, friends’ and relatives’ marriages. We must work the love in our hearts to a point where it breaks our heart to see other marriages suffering. This pain should then drive us to want to do something about it.

For Christ’s love compels us… 2 Corinthians 5: 14 (NIV)

3. Pray for other marriages
One very great way we can help challenged marriages is to pray for them. There is nothing impossible for God, but he desires that we ask Him and intercede for a change where we need it. We must not let our pain end in just being pained, we must allow compassion in our hearts, drive us to the one who can bring every challenge to an end. Pray for troubled marriages!

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men. 1 Timothy 2:1

4. Offer Wise Counsel
When we offer counsel to a troubled couple; we must ensure that the counsel we give is a wise one. The only way we know wise counsel is to confirm it is God’s mind, God’s mind for marriage is written in The Bible. This means that any counsel outside God’s word is foolishness, and foolishness we know always leads to destruction.
If you do not know what to say to any couple or how and when to say it, it is better you keep quiet and pray rather than offer foolish and destructive counsel.

Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil: but to the counsellors of peace is joy. Proverbs 12:20

For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war Proverbs 24:6b

5. Don’t Tell Their Tale
We must learn not to tell or spread the word about what any marriage is going through. We must learn to handle challenged marriages with utmost respect and treat them as confidential. When we spread word about the challenges a marriage is facing we might end up complicating issues and we might end up ruining any chance of it being worked out. We should never allow troubled marriages to become a hot gossip from our lips or in our ears. When we do this, we help these marriages feel safe and maintain their dignity.

A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer a (tale bearer) separateth chief friends. Proverbs 16: 28 Insertion mine

We all ought to yield our marriages and ourselves as tools in God’s hands to build up and not tear down marriages; to strengthen and not weaken marriages.

Have you been helping other marriages?
Please share in the comments how you have been helping other marriages…
Or how you believe we can help marriages grow and get better.

Copyright© Ugochi Oritsejolomisan 2014

Photo Credit: Wallpapers

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