NOT MARRIED AT OLD AGE

CHAPTER SIX

NOT MARRIED AT OLD AGE

“The man that is always sad and angry at everyone”. This was a description given to a lonely elderly man living in our neighborhood.

I had a goal to evangelize our entire neighborhood.  To achieve this goal, I mapped out all the houses in the environment and set targets for each house.

As the days went by, the lot fell on the compound where this “sad and angry” man lives. After a time of prayer and meditation on The Word, I took a stroll into the compound. There, I was surprised to see the mother of this “sad and angry” man.

I quickly said greetings and declared my intention. She welcomed the idea but there was an issue that threw me off balance - I needed to preach to the woman in our local language. This assignment was a difficult one not because I could not speak the language fluently, but I had not used it to preach before. At the end of my uninteresting sermon, the woman thanked me and really encouraged me. I appreciated her and was about to take my leave but she also had something to tell me.

WHY MR. “SAD AND ANGRY” IS NOT MARRIED TILL NOW

She lamented on her son’s lack of fulfillment in life. He was now old and she still had to come from her house to cook for him since all his sisters who knew how to cook the special meals he liked were now in their husbands’ homes.

He owned one of the most successful palm oil processing companies in the community and he supplied his products to secondary schools and hotels in the state. He also had buildings in the neighbouring town rented out to students and so he was far from being a poor or average man in the village.

As his mother spoke, she mentioned that she was soon going to turn seventy; I found that interesting and wondered how old Mr. sad and Angry was. His mother looked more like his elder sister and I would have honestly thought that the man himself was going towards his seventies; but his mother told me he was fifty-five. She kept asking why a boy she gave birth to at fifteen would still be single at fifty-five. When I asked some questions, I realized that the man had always had dreams of   being married from when he was a youth, but had no real targets. He just believed that “someday soon” he would be married. Well, that “someday soon” was still waiting in an undefined future, but the problem now was that all the women in his generation were feared to have hit menopause and being the strict man that he is, he could not put up with the tantrums of someone far younger than he is. He had told his mother that he did not want to be insulted by girls who are younger than his sisters.

While one would advice him to get married to anyone and hope for a child, Mr. sad and Angry was particularly against any delay in child bearing. He had received enough humiliation from his neighbours whenever he sent their children on errands and his domestic staff was sent away frequently because of his disposition. The frustration of singleness had so eaten into him that he had become a problem, even to his domestic staff.

His mistakes are still being repeated today and if many youths are not careful, they would end up with the same problem Mr. sad and Angry is dealing with. What were his mistakes and how could he have handled it differently? He never played the goal game.

PLAY THE GOAL GAME

A pursuit will never begin when there is no target, set goal and the time it is to be achieved and work towards it. Most people just live their lives as though they are in eternity where there is no need for time. We live on earth and time is ticking, the biological clock is reading and everyone is ageing. There is a time limit on everything and beyond certain periods of our lives, certain things become very more difficult to achieve, we lose the interest that was meant to make the experience enjoyable.

Eccl 3:1(BBE)

For everything there is a fixed time, and a time for every business under the sun.

There is a season for marriage and when marriage does not come during that season, it becomes very tasking to get married and enjoyment in marriage can become a fable.

It is mentioned in scripture “…The wife of thy youth…”(Malachi 2:14& Proverbs 5:18)

It is wrong and careless to keep growing in age without corresponding growth in character, goals and goal actualization is the height of irresponsibility.

HOW SETTING GOALS BREAKS MARITAL DELAY

Clarity of goal increases your confidence, develops your competence and boosts your level of motivation. Goal setting introduces energy into your system to make the marriage happen within the set time. It removes aimlessness from you and puts you “on the move” to do what you should do so as to achieve what you have to achieve within record time

The great oil billionaire H. L Hunt was once asked the secret of his success and he replied “you must know what you want and when you want them”.

The foremost rule for goal setting is that it must have a timeline and must be measurable; the next is that it must be achievable and must be challenging enough to kick you out of your comfort zone.

Goal setting ignites a burning desire. This generates internal energy and drive that reveals to you the latent wisdom energy, skills and resources that you had left redundant

“For surely there is and end; and your expectation shall not be cut off” (Proverbs 3:18 KJV paraphrased)

These days we have too many children of God that have no expectations. If you ask an average Christian today “when do you want to get married”? The answer most of the time is “whenever God decides”. It’s such a pity for someone that reads his Bible to have such an answer from .The Word declares this: “the heavens, even the heavens are the Lord’s; but the earth had He given to the children of men” Psalms 115:16 (KJV)

God expects us to set goals, set out plans and pursue them.

To terminate marital delay, put your expectation in tune and never get discouraged. If you set goals and your expectation does not come to pass, don’t give up- find out what you did wrongly and do it better next time.