How I got my Wife

How I Got my Wife

House and land are handed down from parents, but a congenial spouse comes straight from God. Proverbs 19:14 The Message

This weekend we'll be at Shagamu for GMI MINISTERS MARRIAGE CONFERENCE we are expecting a great outpouring of God's grace to impart ministers for eternal Impacts in their lives and in the lives of those they oversee.

It's been a wonderful journey this year sharing on marriage for the first time in GMI. God led us that way this year 2016 and every meeting has been great both as invited and as organised.

On the day of my wife's 24th birthday, we got engaged as led by the Spirit and that day God spoke to us in clear terms that He will use our marriage to reach other people's marital lives and to heal them. That was almost 17 years ago. It's just this year He permitted us to do that officially and testimonies have been great just these few months.

The pathway God led us through from then till date has helped others too as we share. It has been a journey with God, into the making the choices and through marriage till date.

I'd tried getting into relationships while at the University and after graduation, some never started out at all, some started and didn't go anywhere. These were wonderful Christian ladies, well brought up and definitely, wife materials but they weren't meant for me. After a while I got so frustrated and gave up!

But God kept teaching me throughout how He would that we go about it to have success. One day, I left my place around Raji Oba Street, Iyana Ipaja to go see a senior friend at Tapa Street, off Adesina Street, Ijeshatedo, Lagos back then mid nineties. On my way the Lord spoke to me in clear terms that my wife was in that place I was heading and she described some features about her while sitting in the bus, that was specifically at Cele bust stop on Apapa Oshodi expressway, about 2 busstops away.

On getting to our pastor's place, it was only pastor Mrs that I met. I wondered through the night if I had heard God. I was disappointed but not discouraged. But God insisted on what He told me and that gave me hope.

I began to use my head to calculate. Pastor Mrs trained as a veterinary doctor, so somehow I concluded God was telling me my wife was going to be a veterinary or a medical doctor and I had marriable sisters in that category. So I set out looking for my 'Dr' wife.. I visited a couple and I kept knowing they weren't. I was able to talk to one last one, she decided to pray about it and gave me a day to come back to receive my answer.

On that day, I got UCH Ibadan and went to her room, she in her ever cultured and descent manner told me God hadn't allowed her to go ahead. It wasn't God's will. And I knew too but disappointed.

All these were beautiful and attractive sisters, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, ready to do ministry and somewhere there may not mind marrying pastor Toks but were spiritual enough to know God's not permitting it.

That day, I left my sister's room and went to a brother friend's room in the male hostel. I crashed on a bed, and expressed my disappointment to God. While laying down there, I felt the urge as usual to read my Bible. I pulled out from my back pocket my Gideon's New Testament Bible. I felt like reading the whole of the book of Ephesians..and I started till I verse 11 of the first chapter...

[My Offline Bible] Ephesians  1
11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

It was as if I'd never read that scripture before. God spoke in clear terms. He would have to be the one to work this out after the counsel of His will. I would have to follow Him step by step to get to where He leads... I won't be able to work it out by myself. I soon discovered that His plan for our lives is so complex that even what He tells us in small phrases are snippets of whole books He had written concerning those aspects of our lives and it will take Him ordering our steps in serendipitous and unconscious ways to arrive at the full picture He had in mind. It's always a journey of submission, yieldedness and absolute faith to arrive at His pleasure.

We work out our salvation through fear and trembling by allowing Him to work in us both to will and to do of His own good pleasure through obedience.

[My Offline Bible] Philippians 2
12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

[My Offline Bible] Hebrews 13
20 Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

It became very clear to me that it'll take God to work out what He told me that night about who to marry.

Yet I struggled with that. I kept looking around until one day He told me that I couldn't find her just like that on the street and that I would have to be patient.

So I decided to go on with my life.

One day, I felt led to visit a friend at Akure, Ondo state, Nigeria. A friend who had grown to be closer than a brother since those days in school. It's amazing that most of my friends have ever been like that...always a family.

That day as I stepped into the sitting room a lady stepped in from the kitchen into the sitting room and the Lord said, that's your wife I told you about. That was a little above a year earlier.

It was hard to believe. How can that happen? Meanwhile, earlier in the day, they'd had a glorious fellowship where God had spoken about something about to happen to her that day and that she should wait, since she was to leave that morning. She obeyed and waited and we met.

On discussion, I discovered she was at Ijeshatedo that day I was there. Her family house is on airways Street a little distance from Tapa Street where I went to visit 'our' Pastor that day and at that time she had a reason to be home.

The relationship never seemed plausible but I knew what God told me and held to it. A few months down the line following strictly God's leading and openings, I proposed and she agreed to marry me having been prepared by God. That was on her 24th birthday.

I'd learnt some concerning the power in dedicating things to God... That day in her school we went to the place where Christians normally go to pray, it was on a basketball court. And we prayed dedicating our lives together and relationship to God, handling things over to Him...and there and then He began to speak to us and between then and now, we've seen so many of those things He told us that day come to pass...

We've had a stress free relationship in spite of the challenges of life and ministry which are common to man... It's been an exciting journey so far.

We now have the go ahead to begin to share so many things God has taught us to others beyond those one on one mentoring we'd done with people over the years.

We believe God that it'll be a blessing to many.
We are open for one on one counselling if you are too far away or indisposed to be at our meetings just send questions inbox and we'll deal.

This is our story and it isn't peculiar to us. It may not be exactly the same, it can't be, but the principles are divinely universal and God will be faithful to those principles. Those principles we teach!

Blessed art thou!

Good morning!