Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

I was listening to a marriage counsellor describe some of the tools he uses when helping married couples try to reconcile their differences. He explained there would need to be compromises made by each spouse during the marriage to make the union work. Some of the questions from the audience were interesting because of the diversity of issues. Where one couple had no problems in a particular wife-husband role, another couple could not come to terms with the same scenario. They could not arrive at a deal they could live with. Money, emotional support, and children were the main subjects of contention, that were leading some to file for divorce. Compromising to help save a marriage at the point of contention had become difficult because the personal slights, imagined or real, had become a battleground to be fought over. Prov. 18:19 An offended friend is harder to win back than a fortified city. Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with bars.

There were many other problems, like infidelity, dysfunctional inlaws, and life-changing addictions that were reasons for calling it quits, but suffice it to say the human stamina and grit it takes to find a resolution a couple can live with has become a challenge in this difficult and contentious world. Unless we appropriate the promises of God by faith and use our faith to heal our marriages, there will always be destructive behaviours within unions and the need for marriage counsellors. What so many Christians have forgotten, is that the curse that was proclaimed in the Garden of Eden is still part of the problem couples have been fighting with their whole lives. The question is, what made this part of the curse such a problem? Gen. 3:16b Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

When God said, “Your desire will be for your husband,” this statement resulted in a terrible place for Eve to find herself. Whatever God had fulfilled in her heart and soul by His love and presence before sin, was now going to be looked for and expected to be filled in her husband. The assurance, and affirmation that came from God through true love, would now be sought after in her spouse. How could Adam or any husband fulfill what God had perfectly provided for in the deepest part of a human’s soul? Plus there was the added part of the curse that Adam would be under. Cursed was the ground or system that would provide for them. Gen. 3:17 And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

So now, this poor sap of a husband has to work under the curse of a hard life – from having a terrible job, poor management, and being underpaid to CEOs raiding his pension funds and working in a world-rigged financial system. And on top of it, he is carrying the burden of his wife’s physical, emotional, and maternal needs that only God can fulfill. Talk about the weight of the whole world on his sholders. How cursed is that? Some translations say that she will desire to control her husband, but he will rule over her. All these desires to dominate the situation is all part of the curse. A wife’s desire to control her husband is not all her fault. In most cases, she is only trying to find the lost fulfilling friendship she had with her creator’s ability to meet those deep needs, and it falls short when her husband comes accros as someone who can barely get to work on time to meet up with his own curse.

I’ve been asked by a few women, “Why is my mother trying to control my husband? This is causing trouble in the family.” Again, this is one of the tentacles from the same curse at work. Whether a mother-in-law is widowed or divorced the same seeking of soul-peace is now being looked for in her daughter’s husband. What a cycle of unattainable fulfilment. The only way to have that monumental emptiness fulfilled is to find the way back to the relationship that was normal and natural in the Garden of Eden before sin had corrupted everything wherever man existed. This cursed earth that humanity is trying to find peace in is groaning over the sins of mankind. Rom. 8:22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Is there hope? Yes, yes, yes there is! Thank God the scriptures point out that this warfare is not with our spouses or inlaws but we are wrestling demonic forces, and it is those forces that are provoking all the angst and scrambled inner feelings. Eph. 6:12 For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. One of the gifts of salvation in Christ that we have been given is restoration in fellowship with our heavenly Father through Jesus Christ the Son of God. What we men need to do, is to use our faith in Christ, and with prayer, find our fulfilment in the one who created us and knows exactly how to heal the inner man of our being.

As men in Christ, we can now declare gratefulness, offer prayers for company management, and allow God to protect our future and make whatever we do prosper unto the Lord. In Christ, we can ask for insight into creating companies and inventions that are needed on this earth. Through our faith, we can become satisfied and thankful for what we have and can sit with God asking for His leadership in this precarious world. By faith in Christ, the men can move out of the curse’s reach and become husbands and fathers who rule justly in home life, work life and citizenry. The women who accept the Lord’s fulfilling love and the presence of their Saviour in their hearts can now be at peace in their souls because their faith is at work submitting to God’s loving and fulfilling will. Now, the married couple can be helpmates to each other and not competitors of power. Eph. 5:31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

As the expression states, a family who prays together stays together. A husband who thanks God for his wife, will have God sowing the deep-hearted love his wife needs to be and feel complete as a woman. A wife who comes to God interceding for her husband will be given the words of wisdom that will confirm the family is whole and wholly righteous through Christ unto God. Will there be trials and tribulations during the married couple’s life? There will be hardships to work out. However, if God is the center of their marriage and honest hearts are submitted to God and each other, then the world will have a hard time trying to break them up. Now that is a deal I can live with.