Minister: Pst. Magdalene Fasan
The church is a liberation center. We all come to church to be free. The church is our father’s house, so we should be comfortable in church. People who get offended and leave the church have an identity crisis. Nobody should offend you to the point that you leave your father’s house. Your father’s house is full of joy and pleasure forever. God will not bless you outside where He has kept you.
A lot of people prepare for their weddings but have no clue what marriage entails. Marriage is not in how grand your wedding is. However small or big your wedding is does not translate to your marriage working.. A marriage ceremony coordinated on a Sunday morning may do better than someone who rented a 500-seater hall. God putting a man and a woman together is not for external things that really don’t matter; it is for two people aligning and growing into God. It is not in the figure or beauty of a woman.
Every woman must desire to be like Jesus; likewise, the man in marriage. Marriage is work. Jesus would not have ended the way He did if His parents were anyhow. God had to go far to find a woman who would birth Jesus. He went far to find a heart that would raise Jesus. God had wrought a work in Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus. Scripture called Joseph a goodly man. That was the texture of his soul. What will Jesus call your soul when he comes? To Jesus, we are not known by our name alone but more by the configuration of our souls; this is what he knows us by. People who had encountered Jesus were called according to their nature or configuration. Our soul is the one that responds to God. What bears a record is what we do in our souls. God wants us to be truly blossoming men and women.
Blossoming is not in the names we call our children but in teaching them how to indeed blossom. God wants our marriages to take root downwards, then sprout and have flowers and fruits. Nobody will do marriage well if you are alive; you must die to your identity. For example, a man should die to how his mother cooks soup. Parents, as children grow, we should train them very well. A good mother will raise her son and leave her son. Parenting should be such that you raise your children before the Lord and leave them. What we sometimes see are husbands who are still tied to their mothers. A good husband does not compare his wife to his mother because he did not get married to his mother. Husbands, in leaving father and mother, should also leave taste buds behind. Your wife should be able to condition or culture your taste buds to her own cooking. For wives, it is good to cook. Do not always order food so you can culture his taste buds to your cooking; only do that once in a while. A family that survives by ordering food is not good because the husband’s taste buds would not be stable but distributed. Your husband should be able to identify your cooking when he eats your food. Likewise, the Lord wants to culture our taste buds towards the things of righteousness so that when we hear some truths we can discern them apart from righteousness, even if they sound revelational. This is why the training of the culturing of our taste buds is necessary.
The intention of the Godhead is to gather us, not to leave us scattered. The ultimate purpose of marriage is to become one flesh; this does not happen the day you get married. It is possible to be married for 50 years and not become one flesh. Some marriages were simply sustained because they had children. They build their lives around children and have nothing together once children leave.
The church is for redefinition. A woman’s place is not for bearing children; this is not all that marriage entails. Couples must effectively communicate and befriend each other. Effective communication and friendship in marriage is important. Some men don’t know how to talk to their wives. They can be jovial to everybody but not to their wives. To everybody, they are the life of the brethren, but to his wife, he is a stranger. Both must seek to understand each other. A man’s mind can do many things, so a woman should not be that wife who doesn’t have anything to discuss with her husband as they get older. There must be joy in the house. Our children should see that marriage is pleasurable and beautiful in our homes. Our marriages should make them desire to marry. They should not grow up seeing quarrels, shouting at each other, etc.
Couples should know how to talk to each other outside of the children and family upkeep. Everyone should not be uptight in their home. Some did not grow up in laughter. It is not good. We should be able to dance in our homes. Women should play with their children because if they don’t, the deficiency shows when they become teenagers. That playing breaks down something inside a woman. She begins to see who she is supposed to be in Christ because we have been called to be children. Children show us how we ought to be.
Our homes should be a place of high pleasure. It should not be tense. A man should not be tense in his home even if he is tense in other places. The home should be a life center that can absorb everything the devil throws at us. Every man should look forward to going home. We don’t need too much money to do this; intentionality and the heart are needed to do this. A man should not travel and return to see no food at home. A man should be able to return and find rest in his home. The home should be a place where prayers are answered by heaven because both couples are under heaven.
Why God will give us a partner, or why He has given us a partner, is for them to be an aid to run faster to get to God. The home ought to be like a triangle where both parties are running upward to get to a point, which is God. Once they meet that point, they attain one flesh. But when just one party is running upward while the other is running sideways or downward, it becomes shapeless, and they will never meet.
God’s purpose and plan for us is to have Godly homes; He wants it. When a family is well raised, the church will be healthy. Pasture increases when everybody is well aligned under God. The grace upon the house increases, and everybody begins to do well; we have fewer losses. But when people refuse to change, it shows Satan is around.
Marriage is life-changing. Nobody comes into marriage and remains the same. Marriage alters a person. Anyone who is not ready to be altered should not marry. A sister should be sure that the person she would be getting married to is worthy of her alteration because she will be deformed if he isn’t. We are supposed to be altered into another sculpt which is more beautiful than our former estate. So when a pastor says to wait, it is good to wait. Marriage is beautiful, and God has great expectations for our marriage. God wants blossoming homes where both parties die together and live together. Dying is a good experience; it is not referring to physical death. Dying is to die to a nature that is anti-God.
Our parents did well in raising us according to the light they had. According to Pastor Tayo Fasan, every man is a product of his family background, his upbringing, life experiences, and exposure. Some people walked through these four but never met God. To die is to die to all these four: his family background, his upbringing, his life experiences, and his exposure. We all have different exposures, and God expects that both parties give up their exposure whilst inviting God’s own exposure. In doing that, you might cry and say the other party does not love you. But many times, the crying is as a result of seeing a demand and not wanting to die. When we see marriages doing well, both parties have died to many things. In marriage, there is no reputation. The man should not be mentioning that he is the head of this house; he should die to his ego.
A woman should be able to take orders from her husband; this does not mean she should be spoken down to; neither does it mean the husband should be impulsive. A woman who does not take orders from her husband is not ready to be a fruitful vine. A woman must be malleable to adapt to her husband’s demands. It is not about your husband but about the Lord. The more a woman sees the Lord, the more she is able to come under her husband. Likewise, the man would be able to love more as he sees the Lord.
In conclusion, for us to really blossom, both man and woman must keep seeing the Lord. To blossom in marriage is to become more and more of what the Lord wants you both to be. The Lord designed marriage, and he wants to reap fruit from our home. (Psa. 128:1-4) This is the summary of what the home should be. A man must fear the Lord. The reason a man should love his wife is because of fear. We should have fear, and we should teach our children to fear God, to remember that there is one watching them. Wives should have fear. Women should not treat their husbands with bitterness because of the fear of God.
If we keep the order of the home, everything about us will be fine: children’s health, business, e.t.c. We won’t need a breakthrough seminar. We just have to obey the Lord, and our life and that of our children will just align. For those of us who are hurt, He wants us to let go and forgive. God wants to heal. We should let go and forgive one another. Husbands should forgive their wives and vice versa. Parents should forgive their children too.