REVEALED: How couples can have successful marriages —Pastor Tunde Bakare

The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare has counseled couples to ensure their marriages bring pleasure to God who ordained the institution.

Bakare gave the admonition at the launch of a Bible-based book titled ‘The Proverbs 31 Couple- A Balanced Approach To Building A Kingdom Marriage’ written by Pastor Morin Osunmakinde.

The book, which the author described as ‘the breath of God on the marriage institution’ was launched in Abuja, Lagos and Leicester, United Kingdom.

Speaking at the launch, Bakare who attended the book presentation with his wife, Olayide commended Osunmakinde for coming up with the book.

Advising couples to bring pleasure to God through their marriages, he said: “When I saw the book, I said for the first time, somebody is getting it right. Proverbs 31 is not just about the virtuous woman, it’s about the couple. It’s about the children, the family the race. And i don’t have entitlement mentality to rise up to praise. The father praises the woman, the children praising the women. It’s about family, it’s about women. It’s about Kingdom dynamics operating in the lives of married people.

“To be honest with you, it will take a faithful man to marry a virtuous woman. And please, don’t write yourself off because of your past or the challenges you faced as a child, someone raped you or abused you. Don’t write yourself off because the author of Proverbs 31 is Bathsheba and you know what happened to Bathsheba and David; how both of them stood before God and repented and they produced godly saints in the face of the earth.

“The question I like to ask people is ‘is your marriage bringing pleasure to God? It doesn’t matter how close you are, if it’s not bringing pleasure to God, it’s a disaster.”

Why I authored book on marriage–Osunmakinde

Speaking on why she authored the book, Osunmakinde said: “The couple book is not your regular marriage book. You really have to be hungry for the unusual because it is not your regular book about Seven ways to keep a man and so on. You are not going to find that in the book. We are going back to the truth. We are going back to the basics, to the real intent and purpose of marriage.

“In my few years of counseling people and having conversations about marriage with people, I have noticed a few things and this creates a kind of burden in my heart. That is the fact that a number of times, a lot of people, even core believers don’t even understand what the marriage institutions stands for and what it represents. A lot of us don’t even have a full grasp of the expectations, why you should get married and when you should.

“Another thing that has scared me a lot in this marriage, relationship space is that we have brought in a lot of philosophical ideas into addressing the issues of marriage. So, we have mingled the word of God with traditional well-packaged ideas. They throw in a bit of spirituality and Scriptures and then they present it to people as the whole counsel of God concerning marriage.

No! We have to be very careful. “Like the Apostle Paul said “Finish in the flesh what you started in the spirit. Marriage is an institution ordained and created by God and it has to be sustained by God. It can’t be sustained by your ideology, philosophies and even past experiences.”