Online Reporter
Cuthbert Mavheko, [email protected]
Zimbabwe today joins the international community in marking Valentine’s Day. The day, which is also known as St Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. On this day confectionery, flowers and gifts are exchanged between lovers all over the world, all in the name of St Valentine. The day is held in high esteem and celebrated by millions of young men and women across the globe, particularly those dating towards marriage.
The question that is boiling in the hearts and minds of many single young people today is: What prudent steps should a person take in selecting a suitable life partner for marriage? Many marriage counsellors are unanimous in their assertion that in order to find the right person with whom you can blissfully share the rest of your life, you should base everything you do on the laws of God: “Despite the struggle you will have in this world when you set out to obey God, keeping God’s laws ultimately produces every joy and reward you could desire. Many people, who have decided to live God’s way, can heartily validate this incredibly good news. Living together without a formal marriage agreement and sexual experimentation before marriage violate God’s laws and often lead to trouble. On the other hand, obeying God’s laws; caring for and serving one special, beloved person can lead to a wonderfully happy and lasting marriage,” said Dr George Nkiwane, a marriage and family therapist.
It is crucially important to point out that the basic foundation for a strong, happy family is the right dating that precedes it. Love is the key to a successful romantic relationship. However, if truth be told, love is lacking in most romantic relationships nowadays. In these modern times, many men and women have not learned the true meaning of the word love. Because of the music they listen to, the TV movies they watch and the pornographic videos they view on social media, they confuse love with lust. They seem to think that having sexual relations with someone of the opposite sex is love. Nothing could be further from the truth.
One insightful observation that I have personally made in my career as a journalist is that the lives of many men and women in the country are a tangled web of resentment, malice and bitterness because, driven by the scourge of lust, they rushed into marriage and tied the knot with the wrong people. Lust and love are two different things. True love is a beautiful connection that goes beyond mere attraction and infatuation. True love is about respect, trust, empathy and the sharing of plans, hopes and dreams between two people of the opposite sex. Every man should cultivate the habit of sharing his innermost thoughts and desires with his mate. This will make her feel deeply a part of him. If you are not yet married, but dating towards marriage, before you make that commitment, be sure you choose someone with whom you can share your thoughts and feelings.
You should marry a person who will be your best friend. But if you are already married to someone who is not your closest friend, you need to start building that friendship. Friends share their innermost thoughts and feelings. A friend is someone you turn to in times of need. And what better person is there for such intimacy than your husband or wife? Real love has to include complete and total concern for the other person without regard to one’s own feelings. When a couple ties together the romantic attraction, the deep feeling of care for the other person and the sharing together of their time, emotions, feelings and concern, they are building the foundation for a successful marriage.
It is the considered opinion of this scribe that many marriages are breaking up these days because most married couples don’t apply Bible principles that are guaranteed to straighten out difficulties before they become complicated problems. Many couples are not cognisant of the fact that marriage was designed and created by the Eternal God. The Creator established immutable spiritual laws that, if obeyed, will produce happiness and love in marriage and other human relationships. Adherence to these laws ensures joy and happiness. But breaking these dynamics, living laws results in marital unhappiness and misery.
It is instructive to point out that when a couple ties together the romantic attraction, the deep feeling of care for each other and the sharing together of their time, emotions and feelings, they are building the foundation for a truly happy marriage. Married couples should face the reality of marriage.
They need to come out of the fantasy of Hollywood romance and come into the real world of marriage, where people through hard work and perseverance, build successful marriages. People should be realistic about marriage. There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage in this world. Most, nay all, marriages are riddled with adversities, but it is through overcoming these adversities that married couples grow and learn to build successful marriages.
To overcome adversities, married couples, as well as those dating towards marriage, should build the spiritual value of love into their relationships. In prayer, they should ask God to help them do those things that will bring happiness in their lives. Over and above this, they should ask God to give them the spirit of forgiveness to enable them to forgive their mates when they do wrong.
This brings to mind something that happened in Gwabalanda suburb a few years ago. A couple, whom I will call Peter and Sharon, were deeply in love and were dating towards marriage. They were financially stable, and they knew and liked each other’s families. Their families also knew and highly approved of the Peter and Sharon relationship. Both families were of the United Methodist Church. As a Christian, Peter knew that he had done all that he could do to wisely choose a suitable marriage partner. In studying the Holy Bible, he had read Proverbs 19 verse 14 which says, “Houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.”
Peter and Sharon felt they had involved God in their relationship and they decided to step out in faith and get married. They attended church regularly and prayed to God, asking him to remove their rose-coloured glasses and allow circumstances to occur that would reveal to them what they didn’t know about each other that could negatively affect their future life together. The next few weeks were rough ones. Everything seemed to go wrong. Two or three times before they got married, Sharon saw Peter drunk to the point of passing out. The sad result is that the two found themselves disagreeing in ways they had not even considered. Disillusioned, Sharon confronted Peter one day and told him that she had decided to walk out of their relationship.
Peter loved Sharon very much and he pleaded with her not to leave him. He asked her to forgive him for drinking too much alcohol. He told her that he had been counselled by a church marriage counsellor and had decided to stop drinking alcohol to save their relationship. Sharon accepted his apology and forgave him. Peter and Sharon have been married now for several years. If couples involved God in their relationships, as Peter and Sharon did, and seek his guidance when they face problems, they will be able to overcome any problems that they may encounter in their relationships.
That said and done, it is crucially important to state that the greatest challenge facing Zimbabwe today is sexuality. Most young people who are in romantic relationships, including those dating towards marriage, are more interested in sexual intimacy than using the courtship as a platform to find a suitable, lifelong marital partner. Sex can be a powerful positive force for enriching marital commitment.
But outside the bond of marriage, it can be a powerfully destructive force. The consequences of sexual immorality can be shattering for the individuals involved and the community at large.
In this age of sex stimulation and lust, sexual promiscuity, called fornication in biblical terminology, is becoming epidemic among young men and women in today’s society. Those young people who are engaging in illicit sex before marriage are woefully ignorant of the fact that sexual promiscuity cheapens and damages their future marriages. Sex is not a toy to be played with and experimented with.
“Sex should be regarded as a God- given blessing in the holy and sacred marriage union, which the Creator himself ordained. God is the author of sex. He designed our bodies with the capacity of giving and receiving sexual pleasure. The God-given sexual impulse is neither vulgar nor evil and is solidly built into human nature. It is a gift from God for recreation and was designed to deepen the bond of commitment between husband and wife,” said Pastor Lewis Moyo of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
It should be noted that the marriage union also serves as a model or reflection of the union of Christ and his church (Ephesians 5 verse 31 to 32). Marriage is an earthly echo of that divine — plane relationship.
Conversely, sexual relations outside of marriage are a perversion of the divinely established model.
Adultery is used figuratively throughout the Scriptures to express humanity’s unfaithfulness to God. Yes, God made us sexual beings, but he gave us clear guidelines for sexual behaviour. Those guidelines are encompassed in the overall admonition to avoid sexual immorality, which is defined biblically as fornication. The Scriptures admonish us to abstain from sexual immorality. Hebrews 13 verse 4 says, “Marriage is honourable among all, and the bed undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”
It is pertinent to point out that marriage is, in God’s sight, a precious and sacred institution that must not be defiled. The meaning of marriage and its great purpose in God’s plan needs desperately to be understood in this age of unhappy marriages and broken homes. But it is impossible to understand the true meaning of marriage without first understanding that sex and marriage are God-given and God-ordained. To leave God out of the picture, as this modern age is doing, is to degrade the marriage union to mere animalism.
*Cuthbert Mavheko is a freelance journalist and theologian. He can be contacted on 0773963448 or 0775522095.
