MARRIAGE THAT WORKS--The POWER of COMPROMISE

Text: I Samuel 1:23

And Elkanah her husband said unto her, Do what seemeth thee good; 

tarry until thou have weaned him; only the LORD establish his word. 

So the woman abode, and gave her son suck until she weaned him.

Some of the wisest people having avalanche of relationship tips today are the single parents, or even unmarried people and you will be wondering why the potentials they display never surfaced in their love life until what I called “finding yourself in Paris, France when you actually board the flight for Rome, Italy". Per adventure, they learn from the bumps, the humps, or the potholes of their broken relationship and they are ready to embrace the second chance opportunity. It is always said that experience is the best teacher, but I think the normal and befitting saying would be experience applied is the best teacher because few individuals repeat the same mistakes in their first relationship and they found themselves in the same rugged path again.

Of a truth, there is never anything called second chance in life. Opportunity comes, but once. The fact that you find yourself traveling on the same road was never an indication that you were meant to ply that pathway twice. However, it is better to let our past experiences govern our desires of today so that our tomorrow could be better. Besides, single parenthood as a result of natural occurrence, especially death, is in itself another escapade to deal with. It thus carries the same connotation that you plan to travel to Lagos in Nigeria, but you find yourself in Lagos, Portugal. Finding a better relationship for the surviving partner is not a second chance either. Instead, it is a continuum, and who feels it, knows it better. In reality, certain individuals continue to jump from one relationship to another, and that is the basis of my pen today.

Marriage is God’s first institution and it is the source of all other relationships. Marriage without purpose or with faulty and wrong purposes always ends up in chaos and turmoil’s as you can see amongst players in Hollywood, and now the church of God amongst the so-called men and women of God. The purpose of marriage is to unite a man (husband) and a woman (wife) together in a covenant relationship with God as it was in the beginning. Gen 2:18 says, And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. It should be on record here that man was created for love, fellowship and companionship.  Love is the fulcrum of every relationship, the foundation of every purposeful marriage. But the world has exchanged love for lust that you cannot tell what love is. Love is acted out in several instances and the supposed to be lovebird’s couple end up killing themselves out of foolishness and stupidity. If it is love in the first place, it will never be hurting. It was not love, but lust, no matter how long it survives, that is why the partners could not tolerate each other and make things work. Sometimes we see people loving each other in pretension, when the baseline was anchored on something else. All these lead to breakdown, heartbreak, broken homes that lead to divorce, which is on the alarming rate even in the house of God.

It is definitely difficult to figure out who is in love and who is not. Deception and pretension had become the order of the day and people are getting married for a whole lot of things. The house of God is not left out in the same menace of divorce because the people that ought to be waiting on the lord, or let the will of God prevails in their decisions before marriage already have their minds focused on something else even when they are hoping on God. To this, one cannot say for sure that every relationship is based on love, rather than lust as they pack up easily somehow.

In this series, it is good to know that even if your marriage was anchored on LOVE, there are nuts and bolts of a successful marriage. One of them is the Compromise, which comes from effective communication. The oil of marriage, like the oil for the engine of a car comes from effective communication that leads to compromise. No matter how we embrace communication, if it does not end in compromise, it is still useless. The two have to agree somehow. By this, I mean husband and wife needs to know that they are not going to engage in a certain decision brought up by the other before leaving the conversation table. No one should leave the table with ‘suppose’, ‘if’, ‘maybe’ etc

THE MESSAGE:-
If we look into the life of Hannah and Elkanah according to I Samuel 1:10-11, Hannah singlehandedly made a vow to God without the husband; And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore. And she vowed a vow, and said, O LORD of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the LORD all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head. When it was time for Hannah to redeem this vow, it was by the grace of God that her decision of a year before did not break the house. This was where the power of compromise came into play, as the husband was able to reason with her in her option to do what she already promised God. In verses 22-23,  But Hannah went not up; for she said unto her husband, I will not go up until the child be weaned, and then I will bring him, that he may appear before the LORD, and there abide for ever. And Elkanah her husband said unto her, Do what seemeth thee good; tarry until thou have weaned him; only the LORD establish his word. So the woman abode, and gave her son suck until she weaned him. In a lot of homes today, especially homes where love was traded for something else, it would be a total chaos and fiasco, as Elkanah was never part of the deal.

Another area where power of compromise was practiced in the bible was in the life of Jacob and his two wives against their fathers (Genesis 31:4-5, 14-15). The bible said that when Jacob saw the countenance of Laban, and it was no more favorable toward him as before. So, Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field, to his flock, and said to them, “I see your father’s countenance, that it is not favorable toward me as before; but the God of my father has been with me. Now arise, get out of this land, and return to the land of your family. Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, “Is there still any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house? Does he not consider us strangers? He has sold us, and also completely consumed our money. For all these riches which God has taken from our father are really ours and our children’s; now then, whatever God has said to you, do it.” Here, we saw the two sisters agreed to whatever the husband was ready to do against their dad. Any misgiving here could have spelt doom if they had not considered their husband in the place of their father. Compromise is the key to sustaining marriage, through an effective communication and that is where we are losing it today. May God give us a humble heart to see ourselves in others as we make cogent decisions, especially in our marriages.

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