A TOP Marriage

Is your marriage to the fullest? Do you enjoy it? I want to share with you three ingredients to enjoy a TOP Marriage.

T - Time Together
Nowadays it's so easy to keep oneself busy. It's weird to have a free morning. Even vacations are busy, that's why we come back from them tired! We take, without realizing, this lifestyle to our marriage with grave consequences.
Remember that, after God's, your time with your spouse is the most important thing. You have to understand (because we haven't been taught so) to set time apart to spend it with him/her. THAT'S PRIORITY. THAT'S URGENT. Everything else, including your children, job and the rest of your family, cannot occupy the time that's meant ONLY for your spouse.
Get a time aside weekly: a Monday night, a Sunday morning, a Friday afternoon, etc., in which he/she will know that you both will be together. That not only will strengthen the communication between you and your spouse, but also it'll make him/her feel more important.
There will be moments where there may be exception to the rule for something that comes up, but if those exceptions become often, do not deceive yourself, and recognize that you're not giving him/her the time he/she deserves. Who decides if the exception already became often? Your spouse!

O - On Prayer
A while ago I heard a statistic of divorce in the United States that said: 3 out of 5 marriages end up divorcing, but if the couple starts to attend a church, the divorce probability goes down to 2 out of 5. But if the couple not only attend the church, but it gets involved, and also take courses for marriages and seek some counsel, the divorce rate reduces to 1 out of 5. BUT if the husband and the wife pray together regularly, 1 out of 1250 couples get divorce!
And not only praying together will keep you from divorce, but also, among its many blessings, it is the key to a much deeper intimacy with your spouse and the place where our loving heavenly Father pour out of His wisdom and direction for the problems you may face, and vision for you two, as a couple, may take what He has for you.

P - Purpose to Forgive
If you want to enjoy your marriage to the fullest, you won't be able to do it if you don't learn to use the weapon of forgiveness. And I told you that you won't be able, not because I'm pessimist, but because there is a reality: as much you as your spouse are imperfect; therefore, sooner or later, and more often than you think, you two will be offending each other. That's why you have to purpose to forgive.
Forgiveness is a weapon of personal defense. It's for you. It'll take care of your heart. It'll protect it. Purpose to forgive constantly! The more you forgive, more protected you will be. If you only forgive when a big offense comes up, it'll be difficult for you to do it, you'll make excuses, you won't know to forgive. That's why you have to forgive even the small and everyday offenses.
A successful marriage is not composed of people that never hurt each other, but of two persons that learnt to forgive each other.

If you practice these three ingredients and make them yours to get a TOP Marriage, people will say eventually about your marriage: "How lucky they were to have a marriage like this!", and then you will be able to answer: "It wasn't luck, it cost me a lot of work, but my Jesus never left me."

Hope this helped you! 😉

Choosing the Right Girl

One of the women's main complaints is men's indecision. There are those that are waiting for a sign from heaven to finally choose a girl, those that are dating somebody only to see if she is the right one and those with years being a couple, but still don't decide to get married.

Dr Edwin Loius Cole used to teach: "Decision is the mark of a man."

I think that the problem resides on man's insecurity to make a wrong decision. "But, what if I choose wrong, if she isn't the right one?", they say. I think that that insecurity is based on the error of thinking that the whole relationship will be "a bed of roses", and that's why married men assume that the reason of their marital problems that they'll go through is because they chose wrong, which takes them to the logical solution of getting separated, instead of to solve the problems together.

Remember that a great marriage is not found, but built.

Principles
God doesn't have to choose for your. You have to do it, and He'll bless your decision. Obviously, there are principles in His Word by which you have to make a decision, but the decision will always be yours.

The principle that I like the most is: do not be unequally yoked together (2 Corinthias 6:14), because it doesn't refer only to not yoke together with somebody that doesn't believe in God (because of the conflicts that'll come for it), but not to yoke together neither with somebody that doesn't share the same vision and call, because you'll get frustrated for not getting the support you'll need.

Other principles are: Learn to work first (Genesis 1:18-22, before God brought Eve to Adam, He first made him work), seek for your leaders consent (Hebrews 13:17).

When you make a decision according to the principles that our Heavenly Father gives, that decision is already according to His will. You don't need to ask Him if He agrees or not because you're already doing it according to His will.

For example, when God told Joshua to take the promised land, He gave him limits in which Joshua had to conquer (Joshua 1:4). Joshua didn't have to be asking God if it was His will or not to attack any city, because His will was already given.

The same happened to Paul. He knew that God called him to preach to the non-Jewish people, so that's why we don't find record of Paul praying to know if it was God's will to preach in Corinths, Ephesus or Thessaloniki, because he knew he was doing His will.

Recommendation
We recommend in church to have long friendship time, a short period of engagement and marriage for all your life. When we say long friendship time, we mean that the guy has to choose a girl among his friends, where they both had already the chance to know each other and to be authentic. The problem is that many guys think that long friendship time means to wait for a new girl sent by God and first to seek intentionally to be her friend in order to get to know each other. That's when he starts dating someone he didn't even know. If you do that, it's almost for sure that you won't be authentic in that process of being friends, but you'll feigning to impress and, sooner or later, the mask will fall.

If you are single, choose somebody among your friends, that loves God like you, that is serving like you, that wants the same as you. Go and ask your leaders or pastors what they think, and then, go ahead and win her heart, and decide to love that woman. Start that relationship with confidence and boldness knowing that your heavenly Father is blessing that relationship because you are doing it according to His principles.

Hope it helps!