Greetings and thank you for this opportunity to come to you today, spend a few moments in God’s word and pray with you. This week, we have been talking about an interesting topic, marriage preparation, just reminding us of what the word of God teaches concerning marriage and helping us learn how to practically apply that. We go back to Genesis chapter 2, verse 24, where the scripture tells us, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined/ (cleave, as the Old King James Version says) to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.’ Part of being married is being joined to or cleaving to your spouse. Yesterday, we talked about the importance of leaving father and mother. Today, as we continue to look at this verse, we look at the second part of this verse which is cleaving to your spouse. Remember this verse applies to both the man and the woman, the husband and the wife because they are both entering in to be married. As you prepare into enter into being married, you should be prepared to cleave or be joined to your spouse. What is the implication? It implies that from now on, the focus of your affections and attention is going to be uppermost towards your spouse and this is very important. Sometimes, people enter into marriage and their attention is divided or sometimes on something else. Something else is uppermost, something else has a grip on their emotions, it could be a sport or entertainment, it could be other friendships and so on. You are entering into marriage while the emotions/ affections are locked somewhere else and that will prevent the individual from cleaving to or being joined to or being fully committed to their spouse. If that is the case, then that marriage is going to sooner or later have difficulties. As part of preparing for marriage, not only are we learning to leave father and mother, but we are preparing to cleave, that means you are getting your emotions and affections ready to now reprioritize themselves and make focus/ bring their focus uppermost on your spouse to be. You therefore mentally, emotionally, and practically getting yourself ready, that from now on, my spouse is going to have my undivided attention, as far as my emotions and affections are concerned. It means you should be willing to make changes in your daily/ weekly schedule as far as possible and reprioritize things in such a way, that there is sufficient time to focus your affections and emotions toward your spouse and to express that meaningfully. This is a big challenge especially in today’s world, when usually husbands and wives will be working and may even have different work schedules and work related travel and so on, all these are practical challenges but things can be worked out so that the cleaving can happen, the joining together can happen, focus of emotions or coming together of two individuals, bringing their emotions and affections together saying you are going to be uppermost in my life, as far as earthly relationships are concerned. That is important for a good, healthy marriage. Let’s pray, Father, we thank you for what your word teaches us and instructs us. We ask that you give us the grace to put this into our lives, to walk in it, to practice it, in Jesus’s name, Amen.

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