This podcast is a repost originally published on Jan 28, 2017.

Here’s Pastor Priji and Pastor Rashmi sharing on ‘How to prepare yourself for marriage?’

Hope you would enjoy and be blessed by this conversation.

Conversation:

Pst. Priji Varghese: We have many young people yet to be married who are clueless about marriage. We were so once too.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: What you think is marriage is mostly not so.

Pst. Priji Varghese: We tend to see only the rosy side of marriage.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: Or even just the worse side of it.

Pst. Priji Varghese: Getting ideas from what we see in our parents, from television, and movies, we expect marriage to be similar to that.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: Preparation happens for something really important. But we tend to take the really important things in life for granted and one of them is marriage.
You can change the lives of people around you by your marriage.

Pst. Priji Varghese: Including (starting with) your spouse.
You have to have a constant steady walk with God. Before we come to a level of impacting others, it must first start with our personal walk with God.Prayer is not to be done because you want to get married, but it must be a key ingredient of your everyday routine.

Following that, when you are to get married, you must prepare yourself in prayer for the same- praying for your partner, for bringing changes that God wills in your life and for surrendering.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: Such is the state of life and such is the enemy that there is no person that has not been through scrapes.

You have a past and you are entering marriage with another person who also has a past. Getting them both together and still leading a wholesome life in union on their own cannot happen without surrender- to God and to each other.

Pst. Priji Varghese: This surrender starts in prayer not in a counselling session.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: Let the Word of God, the solid Rock be your foundation.
After prayer, the second most important thing is to ravage through scripture and find what God wants in marriage.

Pst. Priji Varghese: God instituted marriage, not the government or the culture. Reading the Word is the best place to receive inspiration for your marriage.

Have fellowship in a church. Do not run to church just because of marriage and the needed formalities that follow. That is abusing it for gains. Be accountable.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: I know of people who have been wronged by the church and hold bitterness against it. On behalf of them, I may ask, why must I be a part of such a church?

Pst. Priji Varghese: Because it is the body of Christ. You cannot just love Someone’s face and not His body. The church is the body of Christ as broken as it is. Jesus is coming back not for individuals; He’s coming back for a bride.

I do not talk of any church, but a church where you are fed the Word of God and taught to submit.
Men would expect their wives to submit, but would not submit to the pastor. How can you expect that? They are your spiritual parents.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: God honours that. Jesus submitted to the Father. God is a God of order. Above every man, who is the head of the family, there is Jesus.

Pst. Priji Varghese: Church is the place you get equipped for marriage.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: In the good and the bad ways.

Pst. Priji Varghese: And the ideal church would equip you in the good ways. There is no perfect church, but a Spirit filled one.

Be counselled by elder (not old) married couples who are further in marriage than you are.
People like that in our lives have let us observe and learn from them being a blessing to us.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: We are immensely grateful to them.

Pst. Priji Varghese: We are usually so blinded by what we have seen and learnt. Learn more from counselling and books.
Marriage will change your life either for the good or bad.
Do not idealise someone else’s marriage.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: Be realistic. There are two kinds of expectations- firstly, the high expectations we have out of what we’ve learnt. Every person is different. You cannot move on unless you unlearn and relearn a lot to reach a place of purpose and contentment in God.

Pst. Priji Varghese: Before marriage, I had people prophesy that after I get married my ministry would shoot up and we’ll do it together. I expected that to happen the day after the wedding.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: You cannot jump start your marriage.

Pst. Priji Varghese: When you talk to the people idealised by you, you’d realise their struggles and sacrifice.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: We do not realise how much they had to prepare for it.

Pst. Priji Varghese: We have to work towards it. It is not given to you by the laying on of hands. It is like gardening; you need to till.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: Fruits do not grow overnight.

Pst. Priji Varghese: There will be seasons of immense fruitfulness uncontainable to dryness and senselessness.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: The second kind of expectation is a negative expectation – fear and negativity. You learn them from the same role models, but not good ones.

Being mostly the only marriage we observe close, we take good and bad lessons from our parents and sometimes the extended family.

Remember that the negative examples may be warning signals, but think not that your marriage will inevitably become so because of those examples, or the influence of media and jokes.

You cannot be like your mother or father unless you’re intentionally decided on copying them.
They are all but theory lessons for learning.

Pst. Priji Varghese: Though we do intentionally do so, it is very likely that subconsciously we tend to behave like our parents.
Do not live in fear of that, but be willing to walk with God and be accountable, so you can be corrected and change.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: The Holy Spirit can really help you. Be malleable (mouldable).

Pst. Priji Varghese: When you’re malleable you let God mould you and even people who can push you towards your betterment.

Do not look always for the negative voice. Fear is worse than having unrealistic expectations.
Your family plays a crucial role in building your understanding about marriage. But once married, there is one thing you must intentionally do- disconnect the ties you have with your family (not your relationship with them) just as the Bible says to leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife and that they shall be one flesh.

When you disconnect from the ties, you are disconnecting the channel of influence you have given to your parents.
One reason for that is to exist as your own family. Secondly, (loving) parents, blinded by favouritism would be biased in their advise.

If you are looking for one, do not make your parents your marriage mentors. You can make them your models though.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: For a parent, the child never grows up.

The first physical act of disconnection starts with moving out.

Pst. Priji Varghese: Leave home, walk with God, be independent and surrender. Submit to God and your spouse and it will be beautiful.

Pst. Rashmi Varghese: Find a mentor who can advise you in the best manner possible.
You are welcome to contact us too.

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You can connect with Pastor Priji  via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and with Pastor Rashmi via Facebook and Twitter.