Sword of Democles 2

One of the prerequisites of being a minister of the Gospel, according to Apostle Paul's letter to Timothy, is that the minister must be a man who has firm control over his family. Any believer who really wants to fulfill a divine call in terms of ministry must pay attention to the kind of wife he is getting married to. In the court of decision-making among men, where things are taken literally rather than weighed spiritually, the call of God upon your life could go to waste if you end up marrying the wrong woman.

Years of preparation, prayers, fasting, Bible school, seminars, conferences, workshops, retreats, conventions, and networking could literally go to waste if one day your wife decides to walk out of the marriage. Some wives have done this unprovoked by any wrongdoing by their husbands. I remember Pastor Charles Stanley of In Touch Ministries and the senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Atlanta, waking up one day to the news that his wife wanted out of the marriage as far back as 1992. They got separated and began to work on counselling, but she eventually divorced him in the year 2000. They got married in 1955. They were blessed with two children. There was no report of infidelity or any such thing from his wife. It does not have to make sense to those of us who were only observing their lives from the outside. The consequences of the divorce were heavier on the man than on the wife, who decided to quit the marriage.

The legal right of Pastor Charles Stanley to continue as the leader of His congregation was heavily challenged after the divorce. Somehow, he was able to keep his position because the church voted overwhelmingly to retain him as their pastor, but he was just favoured. Most men, who were called into ministry, would automatically lose their ministries and congregations once their wives departed. It wouldn't matter how many degrees they had acquired, how many years of experience they have under their belt, or how many souls they have won. To give a wife that much power over her husband, if he were called into ministry, is, in my opinion, unfair.

A pastor was on the phone with me till 4:02 AM this morning. A thoroughbred minister of the gospel who was faithful as a husband and a father. He has a thriving business of his own apart from his work in the vineyard of God, and he treated his wife to all the best things money could buy for his level. The children attend the best schools money could buy, they enjoy annual vacations abroad, and they live in a very good community in their state. Their marriage would clock ten years in January 2026. This wife is a medical doctor; he married her a virgin, and he has dedicated his life to being faithful and true to her in every way.
In March 2025, an old friend of the wife's older brother, who lives in Canada, traveled to Nigeria to attend a six-month course. This friend was a medical doctor too, and the pastor's wife's older brother was the one who told him to reach out to his sister when he got to Nigeria so that she could help him settle in at the hospital where she works as a pediatrician. The pastor was aware of the development and even lent a helping hand when the wife told him her older brother's friend needed a short let apartment somewhere in the city that would be affordable to lease for just six months. He was the one who gave her the contact of one of his agents, and he also put a call through to the agent to take the price the doctor was offering for the rent. The pastor discovered two days ago that his wife had been sleeping with this doctor. He couldn't make any sense of it. The doctor had concluded his six-month course and returned to Canada. The affair was over, and he didn't even know anything about it, but he noticed that his wife would wake up at night and sneak to the other room to make long "work calls," and sometimes, when she thought he couldn't hear her, she would do nude video calls and so on with the other man in Canada. Eventually, he investigated and discovered that his wife had taken a lover. The lover had been divorced for twelve years, he never remarried, and he is three years older than the pastor. The pastor was weeping like a baby, his blood pressure was high, and he had to lie down in bed for a long while because of the sudden bout of dizziness that descended on him. His world had shattered beyond repair. I reached out to his wife and asked her why. She said she couldn't explain it. She said they got close while the man was settling into his six-month course at the hospital where she was working. She helped him sort out his apartment and did other domestic things with him, and somehow sex came into the equation. She said she still loves her husband and her children, but she loves this other doctor too. She said he made her feel different than how her husband made her feel. I asked her if her husband ever starved her of a sexual relationship at any time. She said no. She was sleeping with both of them and meeting their needs as well as hers. She said if her husband forces her to choose between him and the other guy, she would leave the marriage. She said if he told anyone else she cheated apart from me, she would leave the marriage. She said he must delete every shred of evidence he has about her cheating, or she would leave the marriage. She felt no remorse for her action. She had already packed her things and stylishly taken the children to her parents' house last September while her husband was abroad on a business trip. How can a man of substance become such an object of irrelevance to his wife? The other man, who had invested nothing but words, six months of free sex without bearing any responsibility and guilty pleasure on her, has become her ride and die! Whatever that one tells her to do is what she desires to do because she is in love with him. Her husband was begging me to help appeal to her that he wants to keep his home and marriage. He was ready to do anything she wanted, just to keep his home intact and preserve the illusion of a perfect marriage, which they had enjoyed for the past nine years and three months before this other man arrived in Nigeria in March. I have never seen a man so humiliated and defeated in my life. He kept saying she had destroyed his ministry. "This is the work of the devil and the plan of the enemy against my ministry." The church where he ministers will automatically disrobe him once the issue of marital instability becomes public. This was the dagger in his soul, while his wife's betrayal was the dagger in his heart. Why would any woman be given that kind of power over a man? The wife said, "I know once I leave, his ministry is over. That is why I am still staying, but he will have to accept things as they stand, or he will leave me no option but to leave the marriage. I have my life to live. "He deletes every evidence and stops talking about it, or we go our separate ways. He should deal with the consequences as best as he can, and that is fine." Church leaders all over the world should consider the Biblical approach to marriage in its fullness. Marriage is not a spiritual thing; it is a mundane thing. The call of God is a spiritual reality. The man who has a call answers for his call before God by himself. His wife should not be empowered to ruin his ministry in any way.

In the Bible, marital affairs were not handled by priests. They were handled by elders at the city gate. Spiritual affairs are handled by priests. Lumping the two together is unfair by any means. The only way this man can still fulfill his ministry will be for him to break out of the current denomination where he serves and start his own denomination. He does not want to do that, but what option does he have? Stay with a wife who had the sword of Democles hanging over his head?