Marriage Seminar 1

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Telephone numbers 0703 03636 59, 0703 76811 98. Email address lsmedia at livingseed.org or visit our website at www.livingseed.org. Let us sit back and listen as the servant of God brings forth the Word of Life. I want you to bear it in mind that if you are going to get into marriage, marriage will either make you great or destroy your destiny.

The fifth basic truth I want you to take note of is that marriage is a good thing. The Bible said, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and has obtained favor from the Lord. Marriage is a good thing.

As we are going to be seeing later also, you will discover that marriage was specifically packaged for mankind to enjoy his stay on planet Earth and to enjoy doing the assignment of God. Never mind what the devil has tried to paint marriage in the world as if marriage is a problem. No.

Marriage is a good thing. Hallelujah. Now the next thing we want to quickly look at is what I call the preliminary steps in choosing a life partner.

All the steps you need to take before you get into the issue of a life partner properly. Again, I have five of such steps. Now, let me say to you that as children of God, if you are not yet saved and you are intending to get married, it is very important for you to get saved, to get born again.

That's the first step. Because marriage is very spiritual. Marriage descended from God.

Marriage is for God's purpose. Marriage is for kingdom purpose. It's a spiritual matter.

Even though it is manifested physically, you need to be born again. Because I know that we have had opportunity of hearing about that severally before now and during this meeting. I will not want to emphasize on that, but it is very crucial.

Because if you are not born again, if you don't have a relationship with God, you don't have a personal work with God, and you enter into marriage, be sure that you are going to have a lot of problems. Those of us that come from marriages where God was not centered, where the people involved, they don't have a relationship with God, you are alive to tell the story. So, the first crucial step is that you must be sure that you have a relationship with God, your sins are forgiven, you are no more a sinner, you are a growing believer, you are a saint.

You love God and you fear God. That is the first crucial step. We find that in John 3 verse 3 to 6, Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again.

Now, the second crucial step, ever before you venture into marriage, thank God that many many of us here, we are still young, is that you need to discover the call of God upon your life. When you get born again as a new believer, the next thing is not to rush into marriage. The next thing is to ask the Lord like Saul of Tarsus asks in Acts chapter 9 verse 6. He says, Lord, what will you have me to do? That is a passage in scripture that is very interesting to me.

Because Saul of Tarsus, as we read, was very busy persecuting Christians, he was not an idol man. He has been doing a lot of things on his own. But the day on his way to Damascus, when he encountered Jesus Christ, I was surprised that one of the first questions he asked the Lord was, Lord, what will you have me to do? And that question is not only meant for Saul of Tarsus, it's meant for each and every one of us.

Once you are now sure that you are born again, you need to ask that question, Lord, what will you have me to do? And when you ask that question, God will tell you. You know the Bible says, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, and knock and it shall be opened to you. That scripture is not only talking about asking for just physical things.

Ask the Lord about your destiny. Ask the Lord the assignment He has for you. You will notice that in Jeremiah chapter 1, Jeremiah was a prophet somewhere, but that was not the assignment that God had for him.

Later on, we discover that from verse 5, the Bible began to record for us that God now began to tell Jeremiah his assignment, that he was not just supposed to be a priest offering sacrifice at the temple, but he was called to be a prophet. Not only to the nation of Israel, but to the other nations surrounding the nation of Israel. So you need to know what God has called you to do, because that is going to have a lot of influence on the kind of person you are going to get married to.

Somebody that you are going to get married to must have the same perspective, the same vision. He or she must have been prepared for the assignment that God has for you, because I have already said earlier on that marriage is meant for the assignment of God. So it is better to discover it when you are not yet married, so that while you are praying and you begin to think about taking steps, your assignment of God upon your life will be handy for you to make up your mind on whom you should get married to.

Very, very important. The third thing is that before you jump into marriage, I said you should wait until you are grown up to a certain extent. This is because marriage is not meant for teenagers.

It's not meant for small, small boys and girls. It's meant for people that have matured. You know, several of us here, we are still in our teenage years, and those of us that are in different places, this is Student and Youth Congress, we know that several of us are still in our school.

And we don't expect that you are just 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and you are year one in the university, and you are already talking about marriage. That will not be very correct. So marriage requires a lot of responsibility.

So it is not meant for people who are not yet matured enough. I would normally say every young man, young lady, you need to grow in three dimensions before you settle into marriage. One is your home training.

You need to have grown in your character. At home, they will train you how to live, how to make a home, how to cook, how to sweep, how to clean, how to run a home, how to relate. These are all home training.

Then you need spiritual training. When you are giving your life to Christ, you need to understand God. You need to know how to work with God.

You need to learn the life of Christ that we have been taught since this cycle began. You need to grow to an extent that you can work with God. And then we talk about your educational training, which is very crucial, very strong foundation for your future.

And even if you do not have the opportunity or a higher education, you should have been trained on a skill, something that is going to help you to face the future. When you have not yet tackled this three-dimensional growth, we feel that we should not be jumping into marriage. So we say grow to a point where you can handle issues of marriage because marriage in itself has a weight.

In Genesis, the Bible told us that Jesus grew in wisdom, in stature, in favor with God, and in favor with men. And in Genesis chapter 2, the Bible says, for this reason, he shall have a man, give his father and his mother. For this reason, he shall have a boy or a young girl.

You must be grown enough to be able to be independent of your parents. That's what we are trying to say. Then the fourth point is that marriage, when it is time for you to start thinking of marriage, another thing you should know is that you take the matter to the Lord in prayer.

Take it to the Lord in prayer. Because the Bible said, houses are riches. They are inherited from the father.

But a prudent wife is from the Lord. Now, if a prudent wife is from the Lord, a God-fearing husband is from the Lord, it means that you need to ask. If you do not ask God for something, you are not likely to get it.

And I know that sometimes as young people, you know, you hear some young people saying, me, I'm not going to worry myself about marriage. But when it is time, the girl that wants to marry me will just walk up to me. Or when it is time, the man that wants to marry me must come and look for me.

And you are not praying about that. That would be very presumptuous. If you are looking for a Godly wife, a Godly husband, it is a matter you need to invest your prayer in very well.

If you are sick, fine, and you will knock. So, we want to say that if there is anything I can recommend to you at this your age, now whether you are in school, you are not yet ready to marry, you are going to get married in 2-3 years time, it is that you should invest prayers in your marriage. Hallelujah.

The next thing I want to quickly register is that you should learn how to hear from God. You would have grown, you see how we are following the matter systematically. As you became a Christian, and you are praying, and you are growing as a believer, one of the things that you should be growing along is how to hear God speak.

You need to know how God speaks because Jesus said, my sheep, they hear my voice, and the voice of a stranger, they will not hear. We have discovered that in the Christendom generally, many people don't know when God is speaking to them. And it is only when they want to get married, they begin to think, oh, I don't know, I have not heard God.

And we ask, have you been hearing God speaking to you? Well, I don't know. They will say, okay, I dream and all that. But it is one of your fundamental requirements as a believer.

Even before we start talking about the issue of marriage, that you know how God speaks. And one of the ways and the most reliable way by which God speaks to us as His children is through the scripture, the word of God. And thank God that this is the period that we were born, when the Bible is already written.

Not only in one version, in different versions, and now you can even find the Bible electronically. So we have no excuse not to study the Bible. So as you study the Bible, you begin to know how God speaks.

You begin to know what God hates. You begin to know what God is passionate about. You begin to know what God recommends, what God rejects.

And the Bible is written to cover all seasons. It is not a history book. It is not just a post-letter to the Corinthians.

It is meant to cover every activities that we ever go through in life. There is nothing about you that you will not find in the Bible. So as you study scripture, you will discover that God begins to speak to your situation.

He begins to address you. So you need to get familiar with that. And of course, there are other ways we have found in scripture by which God speaks to people, which must always be in agreement with the Bible.

Bible said in Psalm 119 verse 136, the entrance of your world, give it light. And it gives understanding to the simple. And Jesus also told us that even our nature passed away, but the word of God will remain the same.

That's why as believers, we must be very disciplined and familiar and be committed to study the word of God so that we can hear God speaking. And these other areas through which God speaks to us, even though they are scriptural, we always want to rely on them only when they agree with what is written. And you will see Jesus, when Satan came to tempt him, he simply told Satan, it is written.

And once he told Satan it is written, the matter settled. Satan could not argue. I was imagining that when Satan came to say, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.

Jesus would have said, what do you mean by that? Didn't you hear when the voice came from heaven during the baptism in the wilderness? Jesus did not say that. Jesus just simply said, it is written. So that gives us a strategy.

We must be familiar, we must study the word of God. There are other areas, other medium through which God speaks to us, through prophecies, through inner witness or what we call inner voices, through godly counsel, like we have been hearing about disciples and disciple relationship. God uses our elders, our leaders who are also following God to speak to us.

We can also hear from God through dreams. We have seen a lot of wonderful things that God revealed to mankind through the dreams. For instance, Joseph, who was the husband of Mary, it was through a dream that the angel of the Lord came to him and told him that he should take Mary to be his wife because the child that she is carrying is by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we know that God speaks to men through dreams. Even the famous dreams of Solomon, you know, that Solomon was asked to ask what he needed, it happened in a dream. So we know that God does speak.

But it is not all dreams that God speaks because dreams can be influenced by many other factors that we may not be able to enumerate here. God also speaks to us when we are listening to the word of God. For instance, we are gathered in different centers during this cycle.

Now, as you are sitting in your center, the word of God is coming. And you will see the word of God addressing a matter that concerns you as if the preacher knows that matter. You know that it is not the preacher, it is God that is speaking to you.

God also speaks to us through listening to the word of God, either during meetings like this, or in the church, or even through television. God also speaks to us through divine arrangements. Sometimes God just arranges situations, you know, to either stop us or to advance us, to show us that he is the one who is in action.

Now, the other quick things I quickly want to touch before we now talk to our other participants is that there are things we must resist in trying to find a life partner. And I want everybody to take note of these things that we must resist because they will come to tempt you. All that I'm going to be saying now.

The first is that you must not ever consider marrying an unbeliever. As a young man, as a young lady, you will always find a lady that is beautiful on the outside, a man that is handsome. But that is not what we consider.

If he is not born again, if he or she is not a Christian, I'm not saying he is not going to church, because there are so many churchgoers that are unbelievers. So who are the unbelievers? People that are living in sin. People that when they commit sin, it doesn't touch them.

People that Jesus does not control their lives. People that they can explain sin away. You know that they are not qualified to marry you.

Satan is still the one controlling them. If you marry an unbeliever, ah, somebody said, it then means that Satan is your father-in-law. So sinners, they have nothing to do with believers.

So never you consider an unbeliever for marriage. Resist it. Then don't marry anybody that has divorced his wife or her husband.

All divorces are not, ah, you cannot marry them. If you are planning to have a godly home, you cannot marry somebody who has already married and he has divorced and the partner is still alive. That kind of marriage is one of the things that Satan has arranged.

They marry, they divorce, they remarry, and so on and so forth. Don't ever contemplate that. Resist it.

Whether it's a man or it's a woman. Once he has entered marriage and he or she came out of the marriage and the two of them are still alive, no reason under heaven is allowed in scripture to go into second marriage except death. Because Jesus told us in Luke 16, 18 that anybody that does that, he has committed adultery.

Luke 16, verse 18. Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery. That is it.

No, you can't add anything to it, you can't subtract anything from it. The other people you should resist are what we those we call polygamists. Polygamists are people that a man, he already has married, he has not divorced his wife, he wants to add you as a second or third wife.

You don't do that. Don't, you don't marry a polygamist. And of course, I understand that there are some places where even women, ah, they marry more than one husband.

They call that polyandry. Those are the kind of thing that the devil has introduced. But we, children of God, who are destined with God, we have nothing to do with that.

God has created marriage institution, one man, one woman. One man, one wife. One woman, one wife, one husband.

No more, no less. We also said, don't marry a backslider. A backslider.

Somebody that has, that has been a Christian before, he has been pavent in the Lord, for one reason or the other, he, he, he is no longer following the Lord. He has backslided. So, don't say when I marry him, I will restore him.

That would be very dangerous. Some people tried before, it didn't work. So don't marry somebody who has disconnected from Christ.

And we also say, don't, don't rush into marriage with somebody who is a recent convert. Somebody who just gave his or her life to Christ, he has not yet known his or her, his, his left from her right. Don't rush to marry such a person.

Wait, and let the person grown up. Resist the temptation. We have also seen some of these things practically and to confirm this basic fact.

People that just rush and marry somebody who is just a new convert. And before you know it, they start fighting and the marriage started having issues. I'd like to read Proverbs 14, verse 14.

Ah, the backslider in hearts will be filled with his own ways. But a good man will be satisfied from above. So you can see that the backslider is full of his ways.

His ways are no longer subject to the law of God. So resist it. Now, I also said, you should not discriminate when you want to choose a life partner.

Don't say, I must not marry this person because of tribe, tribal difference, or race, or mix of color. Say this person is not white, is not black, or is black, or is white, or culture, or language, you know, you don't choose on the basis of that. Because this does not guarantee a successful marriage.

When you are going to get married, just look unto God as we have been saying. Whether the person is white, or is black, or is from different culture, if he or she is in Christ, that is the first consideration. And closely related to that is what we call yastic, physical yastic.

Sometimes you see people, they're looking at, is he tall? Especially, I have had some very interesting experience with some ladies. They are not going to consider somebody for marriage because the person is too short, or the person is too, is not tall, things like that, or is too thin, or is too fat. So, we say that beauty is vain.

And the Lord, like we have been reading the story of David and his brothers, here the Lord made a profound statement. He said, the Lord look into the inner heart of a man. He doesn't look at the outside.

Look at how God rejected Eliab and his brothers, even though they were very tall people, handsome, and so on and so forth. So, I want to strongly appeal to brothers and sisters, when you want to get married, don't be looking at whether this person is tall, or is fat, or is slim. Anybody that is slim today can become fat tomorrow.

I've seen sisters that married, they were very slim. After one or two children, they became fat. So, it is not the criteria for choosing a marriage partner, or using carnal indices like material wealth.

Say, I must marry somebody that is wealthy, or people marry on the basis of popularity. Nowadays, we talk about celebrities. Somebody is on the news all the time, that's why you want to marry him or her.

No, this is not what to do. As a child of God, you should not use such indices. When the paper gets to you, you will see a lot of scriptures to back up.

Lastly, before we begin to talk practically, there are other important factors to consider before you venture into it. There are four of them that I have here. The first one, I say, is divine timing.

Divine timing. There is a time that you must get married. And I said, wait until that time comes.

When that time comes, like we read in Genesis chapter 2 verse 18, Adam was busy walking in the garden. It was the Lord that said, it is not good that the man should be alone. It was not Adam that asked for a wife at all.

It was the woman that said, create me so that I can be a wife. So, wait until God begins to lead. God begins to prompt.

God begins to inspire you. I know that in our society, many times it is your parents that are putting pressure. Or it is friends.

Because your friends are getting married, therefore, you jump into it. No. If you are going to have a marriage that is purposeful, Christ-centered, wait until God says it is time.

Don't succumb to such pressure or environmental factor. Then I said, be sure of God's leading through confirmation from several scriptural passages and through the unseen hand of God. I am very interested in that because many times I have listened to a lot of testimonies of brethren.

You will discover that there is a leading hand of God that you don't see. So, be sure. Wait for your time.

That God, you can be sure because it's a story you are going to be telling many, many years to come. Like I said, we have been married for almost 29 years. If I start the story of how I met my wife here, ah, you will like me to tell that story in the next one hour.

Because there was a leading hand. So, I want you to wait. When God begin to prompt you, when God begin to lead you, you will know it because God wants to give you a testimony.

And there will be confirmation from scripture, God will begin to speak to you, and so on and so forth. Then another factor is that you should seek to be guided by those who have spiritual oversight in your life or your church authority. I think that fact has been explained even since yesterday and today.

If you have disciples or there is a church authority that has, that has set off eh, the process of getting married, I want you to subject yourself to it because it is for your own good. I see people, sometimes young people just take unilateral decision and they jump into the issue of marriage. Ah, that is very dangerous.

Don't do that. And lastly, I said, when it is time for you to get married, deal with the issue of doubts, fears, and anxieties. Because sometimes we find people that are afraid to get into marriage because of eh, the experience they have had from their eh, parents.

Maybe their, their parents' marriage did not work. Maybe the, the, in their environment, marriages they are seen there, they are, they are not working, husband and wife are fighting and things like that, and then they are afraid. No, no, no, no.

The fact that somebody else is married did not work doesn't mean that your own will not work. So I said, because marriage is a good thing, like we have said, you need to, to deal with the, that fear, that remove every doubt, remove every anxiety, because your marriage is unique, your marriage is special, and your marriage is going to serve God's purpose. May the Lord help us to follow these guidelines in the name of Jesus.

Now we, we would like to stop here, tomorrow we will continue with the guidelines, but at this juncture we want to put some practical eh, eh, expression to it. And eh, we are going to be handing over to my wife to talk to our brethren in Liberia, and the couple that is sitting beside us here. Over to you my wife.

Thank you very much sir. Blessing Taylor, you are welcome. Success and blessing Taylor.

They are coming to us from Monrovia, Liberia. And we have Musibao and Shaya Lasisi, you are welcome also. They are coming to us from Lagos, Nigeria.

So we would like to ask these brethren how these principles have worked in their lives. First we would like to start from Musibao and Shaya Lasisi. Would you like to tell us about yourself? Just introduce yourself to us, and tell us, were you born again before you met your, your life partner? As has been told to us during the introduction.

Okay, let's hear from. Thank you very much. Praise the Lord.

I'm Musibao Lasisi, and this is my wife. We have been married for almost eight years now. And we are blessed with four children.

Yes. We have three boys, and one beautiful baby girl. I was born again.

I actually got born again in 1999. I used to be a Muslim, and I met the Lord while I was in secondary school. And of course, the journey started.

There was a lot of persecutions. However, I think the turning point for me started when I started encountering discipleship. And the first experience, one of the first experiences was when I attended a program at the university, and I thought I was born again actually, because I was a Muslim convert.

And I was a firebrand. But after that message, and I came to understand the old man, I came out. And I gave my life to Christ again.

And I went for counseling. During the counseling, after he finished counseling me, he just assigned me to a brother. He said, go to that brother.

Whatever he tells you to do, do it. I went to meet the brother. Now take note of that instruction.

I went to meet the brother in the peace house office after the meeting. The brother was about to travel. He assigned me to another brother in the office.

He said, look at this brother. Go and meet him. Whatever he tells you to do, do it.

And that was how I was handed over to the second brother. And it was progressive like that. And the journey has been following and listening and also learning of the Lord.

I would like us to hear from my wife. Praise the Lord! I'm from a Christian background. What's common to most of us anyway.

So, I've given my life to Jesus several times. But then I went for Student Congress in Grupo in 2007. And that was where I made a firm commitment to Christ.

And I have not looked back since that day. Thank you. I thank you Musiba and Shaiola Sisi.

Can we now hear from Brother Success and Sister Blessing Taylor? Can you tell us about yourselves? Praise the Lord! I want to be grateful to God for the privilege. I'm so grateful that God has really done me well. We'll start from there.

Now, before marriage, I got born again in 2007. But I was an orphan also, not understanding discipleship. It was 2010 when I encountered discipleship that I really understood what it means to be born again.

And I was an evangelist in my church, youth president, Bible study teacher, teaching baptizing class, but yet a struggling sinner. But when I encountered discipleship in 2010, the first major meeting they had, and we used a church in our city. And I went there, and it was Sister Shade that preached on the life of Moses.

How he was with Jethro, with the Lord of Geras, and he did not defy any. That was my major, major struggle. You couldn't trust me with Geras.

So, so desperate. But when that message came, it struck me so hard. And with my evangelistic tie in that meeting, I was fooled to the utter.

And I couldn't, I couldn't hold myself, you know. And I surrendered to Jesus. When they shared the slips, I took that and wrote my major challenge, you know, fornication, even though I was this big evangelist in my church.

So, I was turned over to Brother Tayo, and he counseled me, you know, and I already had a gear that we were moving together. And he said, if you want to do well with God, that's not how to be a Christian. So, all of that was checkmated, and God helped me, you know, and I desire discipleship.

And I even told him, oh, I want to live with you to really understand and grow to be a Christian. So, after some time, as he discussed it with his wife, and prayed, and made, you know, accepted me in their house as their own son, and processed my life, you know, in discipleship. My first major meeting outside Liberia was the Student Congress in 2012.

I also went to Nigeria. And so practical, you know, apart from what I was learning back home with my disciples. You know, I saw serious teaching on marriage, how to start, you know, you don't just jump up and say you want to marry, and all of that.

And one major thing before I turned over to my wife, I don't know what I'm jumping. But before we got married, when I was with my disciple, not following the guidelines, like Uncle Moses just, you know, mentioned the line, let us to guide you, hearing the voice of God. But I jumped ahead and approached her, you know, and when I was going to tell my disciple, I said, go and tell her you don't want to.

Because that's not how to start a married relationship. You know, it was so, I said, ah, what is this? So, but because I want to grow where I took my phone, and I called her, I said, please, what I told you. And I'm here, so I turned over to her.

All right. Thank you, brother. Success.

Can we hear from Blessing? Praise the Lord. I am grateful to God. Before marriage, I was born again.

I accepted the Lord Jesus at an early age in 1999, around 12, and I did it again in 2000, because I wanted to be sure of what I was doing as a child. And I relocated to a Christian home where my brother, who became my dad, you know, a pastor, and I've been following God, you know, learning Christ at a very young age. And from there on, going to university and coming into discipleship in 2011, you know, again, I saw God in a new dimension, opening my eyes to see that some of the errors I've had, even though I said I was a Christian, you know, my cancer in discipleship at that time in the youth, it was very serious.

And it turned a new page for me altogether in my work with God. And then I began a discipleship relationship with Beretaya and Mr. Tumuke, even before the issue of marriage came about. Christ, thank you very much.

Blessings. Because of our time, I would like to combine two questions in one. I think as success and blessings, we take this question next.

During the instruction on the principles, we are told about divine timing. We would like to tell us, when did you sense that it was time for you to get into marriage? Was it when we were told that we should grow up? Was it when you were in high school or when you were just entering university? When did you sense that it was time for you to get into marriage? That's one. Secondly, I'm sure that these young ones would like to hear, how did you meet your wife? They would like to hear that.

Thank you very much. Because of my background, you know, not having direction, this four-year program at the university, I had to spend seven years at the university, coupled with some other national classes while I was at the University of Liberia. But divine timing, you know, as I mentioned earlier, that when it sparked my heart and I felt that I was in a university, you know, I stayed a very long time there because of not proper guidance.

You know, so when it came to my heart, and as I heard instructions from meetings I've gone to, how to, you know, marry, allowing God, I actually prayed that this person that is coming to my heart, is it the word of God? And God spoke to me through the word of God, the scripture, that anyone who is born of God, you know, is a child of God. So that was the first aspect. So I jumped.

But my disciples helped me, you know, guided me that this is not the time. So when that prompting came and, you know, I shared with them, they told me to go and pray, and I prayed, you know, I received the word of God. Now, somewhere in 2012, when I went to Ghana, I was privileged to be in a Ghana discipleship meeting, and I was in one of the hostess, and the word of God that came to me was from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 3. I tell you from the living Bible, it says, for God wants you to be holy and pure, and to keep clean from all sexual sin, so that each of you will marry in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion, as they either do, or in the ignorance of God and his ways.

You know, it was so strong that in Liberia, all we knew about marriage, you must be sleeping with them together, born your children, and the day you think you want to go to church and do formality, you can go. So even pastors will not force you. Some pastors are already pastors on the pulpit.

It's the members that are saying, pastor, he's bringing sin to all, please marry and murder. You know, so that's the kind of orientation we've been having. But when the scripture came strong to my heart, that God will want you to, you know, be pure, so that your marriage will be honorable to God, you know, it was so striking.

So when I shared with them, and they also guided us in the process, and they were able to release us, you know, in that process. All right, thank you for your success. I would like to ask Shaiola Sisi, you are a very fine sister.

Was Moses the first brother that approached you? And how did you know that he's the person that God has for you? The Lord. Okay, so I would say, well, he was not the first person. I remember clearly that during my service here, there was someone that approached me.

And honestly, it's okay to me. Primarily because the person was quiet, and seems like someone I can easily undo. So I was thinking, okay, that, oh, this person, that this person will not give me much of a problem.

Because I had seen lots of troublesome marriages when I was growing up. So I called my disciple, and I was like, oh, there is someone who are the person he said to. He only gave me a single reply.

He was just like, you are there for service. Finish your service and come back to Lagos. Then we can talk more.

After that, that was the only thing he said on that. After that, I noticed that more often, that him or his wife would call, trying to find out, trying to make sure that I'm engaging in activities that would deepen my relationship with God. The end product was that at the end of the night, I already knew that it was not part of God's plan for my life.

Because by then, I was having a better understanding of what God, of the kind of life God would want me to live. So, if I would talk about how I knew that it was the plan of God for my life, I would just want to point to different things that happened. Yes, though I had known him through in the discipleship cycle, but I had never had any personal discussions with him, really.

However, there was a day in Abuja, and as I was going downstairs to receive the document, I had an impression in my mind that this is the person we are going to marry. But I didn't like his name, because I was like, he's a Muslim, and I didn't like that name. But I had the same impression.

The second thing I had was, almost a year later, while I was doing my devotion, over three days, a particular scripture, Deuteronomy 31, verse 6, kept reoccurring. And then the third thing for me was also, after I now started discussing with my disciple, he also gave some guidance. These are the three things that formed the foundation of my choice in marriage.

We would like Ramusiba to just say in one statement, tell us what helped you to know that she is God's wife of your life. What helped you? Praise the Lord. I think the help would be the fact that I had had three failed attempts.

Three failed attempts. And those three failed attempts, the first one was so heartbreaking that I couldn't eat. I could not eat.

The food, I lost taste of food throughout that night. And that was one of my best meals, but I could not eat. The heartbreak was serious.

Then the second one, it crashed. It just did not even take off. Even the third one, the third one was that I had a very close friend that I just liked.

We were just close. We were just friends. But every time I presented the matter before God, the Lord was not speaking.

Every time I brought it before God, God was just not in it. But when the impression for her came, it only kept growing. Then when I took it to God in my private, quiet time, also even in retreat, I kept having a series of revelations and instructions.

And it was so clear and it kept growing. And when I brought it in the presence of God, it remained. But I have learned to fail.

So I have learned to succeed and know when God is really in a matter. Alright, before we... Alright, so maybe because of time, I will ask Musiba or Shaya to tell us that tomorrow we are going to continue the seminar. But what we have tried to do, you can see that for these two couples that have spoken to us, they've already spoken about how they prayed, how discipleship has helped them, how they were guided into it.

And that is what is expected that those of you that are coming behind, you will do that. And as you do that, God will help you. Shall we pray? Father, again we want to thank you for this issue of marriage that you have brought to us.

We are very grateful to you. We are praying that these principles that you are laying before us will prepare us for the years and the days ahead. The Holy Spirit will explain them to us deeper in our hearts and cause us to keep them when it is time for us to choose our life partner.

It will become handy in guiding us to choosing our life partners and we pray that you will never allow Satan to trick any of us out of them. And that we will all have a reason to give testimonies in the years ahead of how you have guided us. As we continue tomorrow, you continue with us.

Thank you Father, for in Jesus name we have prayed. Amen.