Why Christian Marriage Has Problem -Pastor Bisi Adewale
Pastor Bisi Adewale is a sought after, marriage counselor, relationship expert, conference speaker and author. He was born and brought up in a Christian home, but have personal encounter with the Lord and got born again in October, 1992 after reading a book “Forces of Darkness” by Victoria Et’oo. God send that book to get me to know Him personally, it got into my heart and that was the beginning of my pleasant journey with Christ. He is the President, Family Booster Ministries International and College of Marital Success (CMS). In this encounter, he bears his mind on Christian marriage, home and children upbringing with PROVIDENCE.
Tell us about your calling and ministry:
I received the call in 1998 while in the campus and came into the ministry in September 1999. God called me into the ministry to heal, renew, revive, restore, repair and rejuvenate. Also, to bring all the daughters of God into holy matrimony and prepare His people for the end time revival.
The ministry is clear, it is not home based, but to churches all over the world. I saw myself in a dream with Pastor Adeboye, Bishop Oyedepo, Pastor Olukoya and other ministers of God I could not recognized, they sat down and I was serving them bread. They were happy to see me and were collecting it from me with joy. That proves to me the ministry will be nondenominational and now, to the glory of God, they all received our ministry.
Describe your journey into the ministry and what prepared you?
I wanted to be a journalist. I went to University of Jos to read Mass Comm., but something led to another, I found myself in accounting. The moment I finished, I wanted to work in the bank, the Managing Director of a bank was already waiting for me to join their bank. But while writing my final paper on campus, one night, I was reading financial account and managing account with my friends, normally they do not usually joined them together, but one way or the other the two courses were joined and we are to write the two the following day. An average account student knows, that night is always a serious night. That was the night the Lord choose to speak to me, saying, meet Me in the field, I left for the field and He said, “you will not balance any account, you will balance family life”.
After speaking to me in that direction, I thought, I would be allowed to work along the line, so I can raise some money, but God told me, “If you do any accountant work, your finger will get burnt”. After graduation, I went for my youth service, which was another experience. I was based in Lagos and was posted to serve at UAC, Lagos. Getting there, they said, they only need two corpers out of seven of us posted there. The Manager was thinking of whom to pick, but I went to him and asked him to reject me, he was surprised and later gave me a letter of rejection and I went back to NYSC officials who asked me what would I do? I told them am going to look for any church to serve, but there is a Christian organization, NIFES, fellowship of Students, I went to them requesting to work with them, they told me they don’t pay corpers and I said, no problem, am ready to serve.
Immediately NIFES accepted me as corper training secretary, they made me to be in-charge of almost all the South-West campus and students. So I have to visit all the students’ fellowship and minister to them. It was actually a training ground for me. When they want to choose their leader and send money, they sent for me, I was like their pastor then.
Though, I was given two thousand naira (N2,000.00) and another one thousand, eight hundred naira (N1,800) for transport every month. But I enjoyed myself in that place. God was directing my steps and took me to the midst of youths to make them better and also prepare me for the work.
What advise do you have for young people going into the ministry?
They must first know their calling and understand the ministry, know the worth and when. Like me God made it clear to me and told me specifically when the program will start, He said two days for “Singles and Marriage’, and we have been doing the programme for about 21 years. It started in 2001.
You must know “when and how”. Not everybody must be a General Overseer, your own may be to start a church or to support a church and to some, you may not need to start a church, but work with a church? God knows what He wanted and how to use people in the body of Christ.
You must know the “worth, when, where, how and whom”. You must know to whom to make the message clear.
As a minister, you must know where and how, He told me specifically and it is still the same today. Knowing the worth makes me focus. No matter any matter you bring, God leads and knowing what God called me to do, is why I am never tired of talking about marriage. When I came into the ministry with purpose, passion and drive, some said I have a drive for ministry, but I told them, I have a calling for ministry and the wisdom started coming for singles and marriage counseling. When you know your calling, it makes your source sure.
What is your relationship with other ministries and churches?
Our relationship with other ministries and churches are cordial and we are accepted because churches got to know, we are not planning or desiring to start a church. There is a programme we usually do every last September of the year at stadium. Churches rent buses to convey their members to the venue. We ministers at MFM, Winners, RCCG, Foursquare, CAC, Anglican and other churches with testimonies of lives, homes and marriages been touched and blessed.
The church knows we are focus and faithful. Many Nigerian pastors now recognised there is power in specialty and area of specialization. Though pastors can preach on marriage, but there are people God has endowed in that area, there is no how you see it, they are going to see it from different perspective. Nigerian churches are beginning to understand this and we celebrate them.
Why couples are requested to go for medical test before marriage?
It is long overdue. For churches to say, go for medical and fertility test, is to let you know before now such things exist and for churches to have it made compulsory now, it a good and welcome idea, people should imbibe and abide with it.
Why Christian marriages are having problems?
Sure there will be problem in Christian marriages, the only marriage that does not have problem are Christlike marriages.
Christian marriage is just a marriage of Christians. People are called Christians and attend churches, but are not Christlike in attitude and manners. There are three types of marriage; non-Christian home, home of Christian and Christian home. Non-Christian home do not know Christ, home of Christian are people who claimed to be Christians and Christian home, is not just a Christian home but Christlike home. Where the husbands understand, husbands love your wives and wives understand, wives understand submit to your husbands and they are ready to build and rebuild; check themselves and cross-check themselves. No husbands showed any of this but because of Christ. That is why every Christian marriage surrounded by Christ supposed to be Christlike.
All marriages will be tested, God never promise us it will be rosy, He promised us tribulations i.e. wind, flood and rain.
Rain will come, it stands for ‘blessing’; cars, promotions and materials will test any marriage.
When more money comes-in some traits they never knew will start manifesting. Floods stands for ‘trouble’; miscarriage, instability, poverty, sickness and many more. Anybody on earth will have a flood taste of this and will test the marriage. Wind, there will be a lot of storm around the marriage; adultery, technology, association, environment, phones, whatsapp, facebook, pornography those are doctrine of wind. But a house built on the rock will stand during the test of marriage. Every marriage is a work-in-progress.
What are the things that cause broken homes and marriages?
(1) Sex
(2) Misunderstanding
(3) Finances
(4) Inferiority Complex
(5) Too much money
Anything you want to do or you are doing, let God be the foundation of the marriage.
No matter the state of the marriage now, W. B. Kumuyi said, no marriage is irrepairable in the workshop of God, no matter the state.
What you need to do? Take it to the workshop; do not take it to your supporters club, your parents or friends, but to the counselor.
In Chinese, when their wife is guilty, the husband is guiltless. Action reaction is reaction in action, reaction will lead to action and action will lead to reaction
What is your advise to couple who married in the church, but not as Christlike?
Get back to the manufacturer; do not rely on philosophy or ideology. We remove religion from the school and the moment we remove religion from the school our value began to fall. We should take religion back to the school because since there is no more value in the school our moral begin to fall and it is not going to stop anytime soon. That is why we are hearing about youths living wayward life.
What is parenting?
Compare to our society where our values changes and the country start losing it. Parents are not helping at home, that is another area God is leading us to focus now. The major problem of parenting is in the area of raising children. The problem we have today is that we have quack parents; they know nothing and are racing mysterious children. They know child bearing and and rearing, but do not know child training and upbringing.
Child training and upbringing makes a total child; child rearing and bearing make the children legal animals.
When I have puppy and dog, my dog bear a kid and I feed the puppy and play with the puppy but they do not train that dog and that is why we take our dogs to vent doctors to train them for us. In the area of training our children, we are failing God. If parents should train their children, there will be peace tomorrow, the bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, when he grow, he will not depart from it”.
What is your take on single parenting?
Those women and men that raises children single handedly may look happy in the surface but they are suffering inside. I am not blaming anyone for being a single parent. At times single parent may not be palatable especially in the eyes of the widows.
There are some single men and ladies who think because they have money and a home, they can just meet any man or lady to give them a child and raise them on their own. It takes a man and a woman to raise a total child or children. The man brings amnesty and the woman brings fearless into parenting.
The voice of a woman look romancing, when a mother speaks and the child still remains where they are, the mother starts shouting. But the father has a natural commanding tone, the child obeyed once the father speaks. Fathers have a natural commanding tone that is the way God created it. Amnesty and fearless when mixed you will have a total child.
Another area we are failing is the church, there is no school of parenting or parent-parenting, that is why everybody uses their instinct. And you cannot use instinct to raise a child. Rather you will be using the method of your parents and will later discover, things you hate in your parent are what you are doing to your own children. They are never taught what and how to do it, that is why the church must come in.
People getting married, should be trained in the area of parenting, but there is nothing like that. Many thought they are young and do not have to worry about parenting. The older parents should be of little assistant to younger parents.
Once in a month let’s talk about family in our churches, most Pentecostal churches, do not preach about family, if you do not know about the family, call on experts to come and talk about it. Because no family, no church, and that is one area the church in Nigeria is failing.
What is child metamorphosis?
Fifty percent of the people in our society do not know what is ‘Child Metamorphosis’, we only know ‘mosquito metamorphosis.
The same way of an infant is different from a toddler and a toddler is different from a toddler and a toddler is different from pre-scholar; a pre-scholar is different from a pre-teen, a pre-teen different from grade scholar and a grade scholar different from a young teen. Young teen is different from adolescent teen; likewise older youth are different from married youths.
When you do not know these, there is no way you will not make mistake, because you will not know when you need to stop discipline a child, at times you will only guide and when you will only advice them. That is why parenting style is different, the more we grow it differs.
From ages 1-9 is total parenting, 10-13 pre-teens is pre-parenting. Teenagers don’t need a boss; all they need is a friend while 21 years and above needs supportive parenting. A child, who cannot make a decision on her own at that age, means you are a poor parent. When the child gets married you are now a shadow parenting.
How do you spend your quiet time?
I am married to Yomi Adewale, a chartered accountant and Chartered Tax Practitioner. She also a preacher of the word, we have one prophet and one prophetess. There are places I am invited to preach and cannot go, she represent me. Mondays are our off day. That day we have quiet time together, play together and go to pick our children from school.
