The Sunday News
Pastor Kilton Moyo
I have heard people say that experience is the best teacher. This is a general statement that people talk about and try to apply in every facet of life. I am not trying to rubbish this ancient slogan but I want to put it to you all that as much as this might sound true it does not apply to marriage.
Marriage is a life journey that does not require experience as an entry qualification. It is a union starting with two ignorant but loving people in a desire to grow and learn life together. Anyone requiring experience in marriage is applying for disaster. Do not stay out there waiting to gain experience about marriage, but get in there with a pure heart to learn and grow as you take the journey together.
I want to help young people who are caught up in this humanistic lie of experience not to waste their time dating so many guys in order to gain experience in relationships. This is a deception. Marriage requires agreement and not experience. It’s a journey of two people who are in agreement with a particular destiny. Can two walk together unless they are in agreement? Marriage is about agreement. It is about the two ignorant, loving people walking together to become one flesh. Every new couple is brand new with no background or experience.
Your marriage is not like the other one. Your only reference point is the two of you. That is your history. Challenges come when young couples begin to compare themselves with guys who have been in marriage longer than them. I think what you need to be doing is to be working at yourselves and not counting your encounters for your experience.
Marriage beloved begins with agreement. The two agree to marry and then there is leaving. The man leaves his father’s house and his mother’s also so he can embark on a new journey, joining his wife as they become one. The unfortunate thing about many marriages is men who do not want to leave. Leaving your father’s house does not denote negligence but a 100 percent change of priorities. It also denotes physically leaving the house to start yours with your wife. Try joining your wife while you are in your mother’s house and see how difficult it is. Many mothers will not allow that. They become intruders and will cause you to fight your spouse instead of joining them and becoming one.
Your parents’ experience in marriage might not be what you need in the early years of your own marriage. Those formative years require your full concentration and focus on your spouse without anyone detecting the pace to you. I need to be clear here that you are missing a foundational principle if you are not leaving but staying with your parents in the formative years of your marriage. How they did theirs then might not be relevant to your day. The two of you should go out, learn each other. Transition together from personality to character. Deal with your characters together alone and when you are settled and ready to compromise and cover each other, then you can make references.
Let me get back to my point here. It is hard to join with your wife while you are in your father’s house. There is too much interference. Everyone wants to become your teacher or your informer. Everyone is a critic of your spouse and playing the two of you against each other. The best environment for becoming one flesh is when you are out of such an environment. Listen, in your father’s house, they will always see you as their boy or little brother etc. You are trying to be husband but somebody is constantly reminding you that you are little brother or my boy. In order to mature quickly into your husband role, you need a completely new environment that will challenge and inspire you and motivate you towards your new office.
God is not man and does not lie. When He says that a man shall leave his father’s house and join his wife and the two shall become one flesh, He means that. This is one principle that we violate to our own peril in marriage. I want to end today by suggesting to you that you empty yourselves of your experiences with your ex (s) before you tie the knot. That experience will be a disturbance to your marriage. Go in ignorance with a heart to learn something completely new. I have seen many kill their marriages because of their so-called experiences.
Go into marriage to enjoy, grow and learn and become what God intended for marriage. The destiny is to become one flesh. This is the reason Eve was taken from Adam’s flesh. A man and his wife are one flesh indeed.
Be as new a couple as you are supposed to be. No two marriages are the same. The foundational principles are the same and not couples. You are also different. Bless you all.
Kilton Moyo is creator of Fruitful Marriages, a renewal and enrichment program and is pastor, counsellor and author of The Sex Trap. Call or WhatsApp on +263 775 337 207, +263 772 610 103 or +263 712 384 841. [email protected]
