One Flesh: The Secret to a Blessed Marriage

By Roberto Hernandez

If you go out and ask ten married couples the secret to their marriage, you will probably get ten different answers. Someone will say, Love is my secret, while someone else will declare Our secret is love. Still others will say the secret to a happy marriage is being best friends with my spouse, showing respect, Others will shout out, communication, intimacy, or some other factor is the key. There is no right or wrong answer to this question; all of these people have found what works for them and have become strong in their marriage by utilizing their own secret. Each and every one of these couples has found a secret to a blessed marriage, but in this book you will discover the secret to a blessed marriage.
But what about you? What is your secret to a happy marriage? If you are not yet married, what do you think the secret to a blessed marriage is? In this book, you will find the secret to a blessed marriage and how to use it to build a strong family and become what God wants you to become. You will discover the secret of one flesh.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449784324

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 Roberto Hernandez.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1-[phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Unless otherwise indicated, Bible quotations are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Petersen, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Inc. Carol Stream, Illinois 60188 All rights reserved.

Names and details of some stories have been changed in order to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8431-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8432-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902290

WestBow Press rev. date: 2/13/2013

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1   One Flesh

Chapter 2   In the Garden

Chapter 3   For Better or for Worse

Chapter 4   Commitment and Vows

Chapter 5   First Love, True Love

Chapter 6   Polygamy

Chapter 7   Covenant and Noncovenant Child

Chapter 8   All In

Chapter 9   Authority

Chapter 10 Man Up

Chapter 11 How to Obtain Favor from the Lord

Chapter 12 The Day I Will Never Forget

In Conclusion

Notes

Acknowledgments

F irst, I would like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His words in John 10:27 came alive to me once I came into total submission to Him: My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. Thank You, Lord, for giving me the ability to hear Your voice. I thank You for giving me this message and granting me the ability to put it into writing. I could not have done it without You. I love You more than words can express. To You I give all honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

God, You know all things. You knew I was going to need a helper, a wife, and You went to work and made just the right one for me. You are indeed the divine matchmaker.

To my beautiful bride of thirteen years, thank you for loving the Lord the way you do. Watching you love Him has made my own love for Him sparkle! Because of it, we are both on fire for Him. You make my life complete. Thank you for loving me the way I am. With God’s help, we have come a long way—we have become one flesh—and I love you.

To my little princess Krystin, as always you are my joy and treasure from above, and I love you so much. You are the fruit of that oneness between your mom and me. Thank you for offering to help with the transcribing of this book from a notebook to the computer. I love your own writings; keep up the good work!

To all those who have shared with me the intimate side of their lives and allowed me to share their stories, thank you, and may God continue to bless you, your families, and your marriages.

A special thanks to all the staff at Westbow Press. Thank you for supporting this message and for your professional, kind, and endless help.

To all who are engaged to be married, to all who are thinking of marriage, and to all who are already married, may the Lord God continue to guide and empower you to become one flesh.

Introduction

The ideas I stand for are not my own. I borrowed them from Socrates, I swiped them from Chesterfield, I stole them from Jesus. And if you don’t like their ideas, whose ideas would you rather use?

—DALE CARNEGIE

A very familiar saying goes like this: Experience is the best teacher. This is a common expression, but there is actually a second part, one which many have never heard. The second part goes like this: … when it is someone else’s experience.

Wisdom is learning from someone else’s mistakes, but a lot of time, we act not in wisdom, but in foolishness. We feel and want to experience whatever we ourselves are doing. We want to walk in our own steps rather than follow in the steps of others.

The Bible, however, is filled with much information and many stories from the lives of other people that we can see and learn from. If we are teachable and attentive, we can learn from their blessings and disappointments, their condemnation and forgiveness, their punishments and rewards. Any situation that you might be going through right now, someone else has already gone through it; and it might actually be recorded in the Bible. In that holy book, we see a myriad of mistakes and deceptions that all kinds of people have experienced, and they are all recorded so we can learn from them and not make the same exact mistakes.

I was talking to one of my friends about God and the Bible, and he said to me, I was wondering, Rob, why the Bible has all this negative stuff in it. There shouldn’t be examples of killing, adultery, sorcery, and other such things. He added, I think the Bible should be clean and have only positive encouragement and happy stories.

As I was listening to him, I said to myself, I don’t believe what I’m hearing. This guy has a lot of learning to do! Although he was a person who read the Bible occasionally, a church member and leader at his local church, I realized he was a babe in the understanding of God’s Word and mysteries.

Speaking aloud, I said, I understand where you are coming from. Yes, it’s true that when we think of the Bible, we expect to see wonders, revelations, encouragement, uplifting stories, and all kinds of positive things. But that is only part of what makes the Bible so unique. It also includes real characters struggling with real defeats and disappointments. It is the perfect Word of God.

In the Bible, you will find out all about life and what it has to offer, as well as the mistakes made by the people who came before us. Both good and bad are there so that you can learn and gain wisdom no matter the situation you are going through. The Bible is orchestrated in such a way that it makes sense from beginning to end. It is truly a masterpiece! It is the very word of God to us, designed by Him as He inspired regular people to write it.

There are sixty-six books in the Bible, written by approximately forty different authors. Every writer, every character, every chapter, and every word all point to one thing, and that is the way Jesus showed us to live. It is the living truth of God Almighty and reveals the life He wants us to live. It is a guide, a map, a lamp. It is the Word of God and ultimately the life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the main character from beginning to end.

You may wonder why we need to read about Abraham’s having a son outside of his marriage, Samson’s disobedience, King David’s adultery and murder of Uriah, or the abuse of Solomon’s great wisdom in his later years. These events are all so negative, and the list of similar stories goes on. Yes, they are negative, but they are there for us to learn from them. Like the characters in the Bible, we are only human, and no matter our position in life, if we are not connected to the Lord, we can easily fall into temptation, desolation, or depression. This in turn leads to sin, which ultimately leads to death, because the wages of sin is death. In the Bible, we read that we are all sinners, that God looked down to the earth to see if He could find at least one person who does good but found no one.

Everything started in the Garden of Eden, so I’m going to take you to that magnificent day of creation when God created Adam, the first man. God loved Adam and placed him in a special garden, giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle and other livestock, and all the wild animals. God gave Adam dominion over everything He had created on the earth, making him ruler and keeper of all His creation in the garden.

After seeing Adam all alone, the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him (Gen. 2:18 NLT). Then the Lord God took a rib from man’s side and fashioned from it a helper for Adam. He introduced her to Adam, and holy matrimony was established. After that, God left them in their nest. This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

The key word here is become. In this book, we are going to concentrate on this journey of becoming one with our God-given spouse. This book is designed to provide you with stories of Bible characters and real-life people that point out their falls, recoveries, and victories in life so that you can learn from them. My prayer is that the Lord will open your heart and mind to grasp and learn from others’ mistakes so that you can avoid making the same ones. But if you decide to disregard the lessons that others have learned and choose to go down that same path, you are on your own. That, of course, is your decision, but I will tell you this: it will save you much time and money if you will allow yourself to learn from others.

Be blessed on your journey to becoming one flesh.

Chapter 1

One Flesh

O ver nine months ago, I found myself writing the book My Reencounter . At the same time, I was translating into Spanish my first book, Reencounter with Jesus . Along the way, I noticed that the Lord was giving me a lot of information about marriage, putting another book in my heart. I started to write down all the new instruction He was giving me on that topic, and let me tell you, it was amazing. On a daily basis, whether I was at home, on my way to work, or at work, He taught me, even putting people in front of me that I could learn from. Though I was excited with all this new information, I was determined to complete the books already mentioned.

The morning of February 29, 2012, at exactly 5:36 a.m., marked a change of heart, however. It was Monday, the beginning of a new week, a week I fully expected to be powerful. I had dedicated this week to the Lord in fasting and prayer. Some days before, I had been working on the two previously mentioned books and found myself quite overwhelmed with the prospect of not only finishing those two, but also taking on the task of writing the new book on marriage. I felt I needed to focus on just one and finish it.

I came before the Lord in prayer and asked Him to guide me. As I was going to sleep that night, He began to give me lots of instruction, insights, and deep information on marriage. He even gave me the title for the new book: One Flesh. I concluded that God was telling me to start with the book on marriage. I wrote down everything the Lord had said and then went to bed, absorbing all the information and meditating on it.

The following morning, after meditating on all He had said the night before, my question was not which book to begin with, but where I should start on the new one. I had a great deal of information collected over