How to choose a right marriage partner

How to choose a wife from a Godly family background

Proverbs 24:3-4: Through wisdom is a house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

The place of wisdom, understanding and knowledge in building godly biblical homes is stated in the texts above.

A knowledge and understanding of the role of genealogical hereditary and nativity factors/ background of ones spouse will provide the wisdom and understanding in handling the negative issues that arise in the course of attempting to build Christian godly marital and home relationships in this end-time generation of ours.

In LAMPSTAND LETTERS  ISSUE NO 32 (JANUARY TO JUNE 2003), we considered the topic YOUR NATIVITY AND THE GODS OF YOUR FATHERS, asking “…But is it possible that the gods of the fathers can pull back a child of God like me, who even has a ministry calling, back to idolatry if such a  one is not wary?

Does the spiritual history of a place/setting affect the inhabitants thereof, even after the people have given their lives to Christ?  Do the ancestral gods and idols of one’s family have the potential to negatively affect one spiritually, even after you have been born gain? The answer is YES, and the example of Gideon (Judges 6/8) and Jerusalem/the Israelites (Ezekiel 16) were used to illustrate.

THE CASE OF JERUSALEM
Then another message came to me from the Lord. Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her loathsome sins. Give her this message from the Sovereign LORD: You are nothing but a Canaanite! Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite!  (Ezekiel 16:1-3).

The city of Jerusalem was initially an Amorite city. Joshua fought against Adoni-zedek and five other Amorite kings (Joshua 10). The children of Judah also dealt with Adoni- Bezek (Judges 1:1-10), while it was the King David who finally subdued the city and made it the eternal capital of Israel (2 Samuel 5:6-13).
But by the time of Joshua, even though the Jews had inhabited the city for centuries, God had to send the prophets to confront the land and her inhabitants about their detestable practices (Ezekiel 16:2).

To point to the origin of their present loathsome abomination, the Lord told Ezekiel: “You must say to Jerusalem: look at your history. You were born in Canaan; your Father was an Amorite, your mother a Hittite (Ezekiel 16:3 Easy-to-Read version. Emphasis mine).

Two historical factors therefore contributed to the present situation of ‘redeemed’ Jerusalem

i. Her Nativity (or place of birth)
ii Her ancestry

Nativity = Canaan

Canaan was the son of Ham who gave his name to the land Canaan. The Canaanites were a wicked people because they descended from a wicked Father. (Cruden’s Complete Concordance of the Bible).

I was reading a newspaper article (Saturday Guardian, 11^th January 2003), in which the writer was commenting on the vocational patterns of Nigerians in Italy.

According to the writer, while Nigerians from Edo and Delta States were into prostitution, those from the Igbo speaking areas were into hard drug courier and trade and the Yoruba were into fraud and other ‘419’ activities. Clearly their nativity followed them to even outside the sores of Nigeria!

Your Father an Amorite
Amorite, meaning bitter, rebel was a generic name for the tribes inhabiting Canaan. At the time of Abraham, they are introduced as a wicked generation for whom the LORD was willing to wait for four hundred years for the iniquity to be full (Genesis 15:16).

Joshua fought against five kings of the Amorites (Judges 10) and at his valedictory speech gave the Israelites the choice of worshipping the Lord or the gods of the Amorites that lived in the land (Joshua 24:15).

By the time of Elijah, Ahab was recorded as having continued in the abominations of the Amorites (1 Kings 21:26), as did Manasseh after him (2 Kings 21:11). So that by the time of Ezekiel, the whole of Jerusalem/ Israel followed after the disgusting idolatry of the Amorites.

 
Between Abraham and Moses, the Amorites had lived four hundred years of Abominations. Between Joshua (circa 1240 BC) and Ezekiel’s time (circa 592 BC), was 648 years of Israelites’ conquest of Jerusalem, Yet the sins of the original Amorite settlers still caught up with the Israelite after more than one thousand years!

Your Mother a Hittite.
Hittite means one who is broken or fears. The Hittites were descendants of Heth, the second son of Canaan. Like their father, they were known for their idolatrous wickedness.
The first mention of the Hittite was in relation to Esau who married two Hittites girls who brought grief to Isaac and Rebecca (Genesis 26:34). The  land of the Hittite was part of the land promised to the Israelite and rather than exterminate them, the Israelite settled among them, intermarried with them and worshipped their gods (Judges 3:5-6, 2 Chronicles 8: 7).

The negative influence of daughters from idolatrous backgrounds has trapped men of all generations, including Solomon, acclaimed the wisest man that ever lived (1 Kings 11:1-8).

“Like Mother, like daughter”
“The Lord said, people will use this proverb about you, “like Mother, like Daughter”.

You really are your mother’s daughter. She detested her husband and her children. You are like your sisters, who hated their husbands and their children. You and your sisters had a Hittite mother and an Amorite father (Ezekiel 16: 44-45).
What lessons are applicable to us today from Jerusalem’s experiences?

1. LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP

Look well into genealogical issues of your intended spouse before you leap into marriage. Luke 14:28-30. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

As my father used to counsel, ‘if you want to know how your wife will relate with/ behave to you, then check how her mother related with her father’ (the converse is also true for husbands i.e. ‘if you want to know how your husband will relate with/ behave to you, then check how his father related with his mother’).

2. I KNOW A MAN

I know a man that suffered satanic afflictions for years. Knowing his own idolatrous genealogical background, he focused with the prayers of brethren to handling the negative spiritual background to their roots.

Yet the afflictions persisted, even when there was obvious spiritual surrender of the forces of his household enemies. A stubborn unidentified ‘horse and rider’ feminine spirit refused to surrender, pledging a ‘fight-to-finish’.

Later, the Lord mercifully revealed to a company of intercessors that the afflictions also had a source from his spouse’s genealogical root. It was revealed that a generation before, a progenitor of the spouse has refused to take responsibility for a pregnancy and the victim had cast the resultant baby into the river, invoking a curse upon forthcoming offspring of daughters born to the offender.

The curse had manifested in various manners to three generations of daughters, ranging from unmarried status, early demise of the married, early demise of spouse, divorce/seperation and other marital conflicts.

1 Peter 3:7 “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge”, certainly involves a good knowledge of your spouse’s pedigree.

3.DELIVER YOUR OFFSPRING

Isaiah 49:24-25. Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered? But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contended with thee, and I will save thy children.

Genealogical issues are usually generational matters, pending into off-springs and descendants, making them “lawful captives of the mighty” through no faults or sins of their own. Blessed be God for his assurance that the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered.

We therefore have the responsibility to contend for the deliverance of our off-springs, that these genealogical issues do not transcend to their generation. Amen.  Blessed be He who is able to keep to the outmost all that is committed into his hands. Blessed be the Lord who gives us victory in all things through our Lord Jesus. Amen

By the Lampstand,  2006

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