Marriage: A Me Thing or a Team Thing?

I had watched the video of ‘‘Pitch Perfect’ but surprising God began to speak to me through it. In ‘Pitch Perfect’ the renowned Bella girls, A cappella group, had recorded excellence in performance down many generations. The new generation of Bella girls lifted the standard even higher; they become a three-time champion until suddenly they began to lose out. Their presentation at the president’s birthday was the climax; it earned them so much disgrace and they eventually got suspended. Despite the fact that they were highly skilled and hardworking they just couldn’t fathom why they kept making mistakes at presentations.

Determined to correct their mistakes and soar higher than they had ever been, they decided against all odds to compete and win at the international championship; but first, they must find the cause and the solution to their poor performance. The group head then took them on a retreat to a former Bella girl who took them back to the very beginning. They soon discovered that though they had greatly improved on their skills, commitment, and hard work overtime, they had stopped ‘thinking as a team’.

Thinking as a team helped them to coordinate all their efforts to achieving great success. Their work as a team could not be effective without them thinking as one. Same way in marriage, when couples stop thinking as a team, it influences their thought pattern and affects their eventual actions and behaviours. It was difficult or almost impossible for the Bella girls to achieve success because they could not harmonize and coordinate their actions effectively towards achieving their goal. Thinking as a team helps couples effectively deploy and complement each other’s strength and weakness towards achieving their goals. God, the initiator of marriage established it on the principle of being ‘ONE’.

‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall become united and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’ Genesis 2:24 (AMPC)

The mandate giving by God in marriage can only be fulfilled when couples think, see and operate as one. The moment couples begin to see themselves otherwise (which originates from the mind) it’s an indication that they have begun to shift focus from their mandate. Thus begin to see themselves as intruders, hindrances or enemies; and are unable to fulfill the mandate. God’s mandate in marriage far exceeds our selfish and limited desires and goals; his mandate is that we give him a godly seed. God released his blessings on Adam and Eve because of this at the beginning. His blessing of fruitfulness and multiplication was so they could bring forth seed according to their image, which was God’s. Though the first Adam lost it to the devil, God restored it to us through Jesus Christ. God desires a godly seed and this is only possible when husbands and wives are operating as one.

15 And did not God make [you and your wife] one [flesh]? Did not One make you and preserve your spirit alive? And why [did God make you two] one? Because He sought a godly offspring [from your union]. Therefore take heed to yourselves, and let no one deal treacherously and be faithless to the wife of his youth…’ Malachi 2:15 (AMPC)

Despite their fasting and prayers, the men of Israel’s inability to operate as one in marriage earned them very poor harvest.

‘Two are better than one because they have a good [more satisfying] reward for their labor; for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!’ Ecclesiastes 4:9&10 (AMPC)

Marriage is indeed team work!

I love you and God bless you.