Have you ever met friendly but naughty people at the same time? Children are very good at playing nice but at the same time be naughty, and so the joy and pleasure given for being nice are wiped away when naughtiness sets in. We have not seen these types of scenarios in life where at an exact point an item can be cold and hot at the same time. It explains the complexity of human nature and interaction.
Many people have gone into a relationship because the person asking their hand in marriage or the one that professed to love them was considered a nice man or nice woman. Do you know that being nice is not listed as a fruit of the spirit?
I am yet to see a person who deliberately married someone who was not pleasant to them when they met. Marriage is a test of our character, our faith and our morality. Many husbands and wives would have been the best friend forever, best employee, best uncle, best aunty, best brother, or sister until marriage show their true self. Marriage has shown repeatedly that a nice man or woman will not necessarily become a loving partner.
Marriage was God’s idea, and He created it to bring Him glory and honour and show how two completely different people can live together in love and harmony. Some people profess and prefer to love the God they cannot see and people from afar rather than the people they can see closely. The test of truly loving the way God wants us to love, is when we can love our spouse who is the closest to us, we are more open and vulnerable to our spouse than anyone else. Loving people who constantly upset or annoy us is possible by a supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit, and that is why it seems marriage is hard. We cannot love without the help of the Holy spirit.
The Holy Spirit helps us be a loving spouse, especially when our husband or wife is hard to love. The fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22-23 states:
“22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things”
Let us look at the fruit of the spirit – Joy! a deep-seated feeling that is not affected by our circumstances, and it is a knowing that we are Gods and no matter the situation around us, we have joy or find joy. Most people lose their joy in marriage because it really wasn’t joy, they had in the beginning. What some had was a feeling of love, euphoric love that wanes over time and pleasures that come with loving someone, especially sexually. These and more are what many counts as joy. No wonder when the passion fades, they can’t find joy in their lives and marriage anymore.
What about kindness and patience? Many people naturally lack these characteristics, but the Holy Spirit produces these in us when we allow him.
I hope today; you can look at yourself as I would myself and check that being nice or called nice alone cannot help us be the best spouse we could be. Are you allowing the holy spirit to cultivate the fruit of the spirit in you? Remember, like any tree that would bear fruit, we must be buried like a seed, which means dying to self, ego, flesh, and then sprouting a new shoot and reaching out to the sun while deepening our root into the ground.
Submit to the holy spirit and be the best version of yourself, bless your spouse and enjoy marriage.
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