Practical Knowledge for a Fulfilling Married Life

By Gerson Francois

The best way to learn is not from someone's point of view and their good achievements nor from a logical formula but from the experiences and honesty of someone who is able to expose the bad and good they experienced before getting to where they are.

As I myself have understood this truth, it pushes me to take the time to share with you my mistake and all the factors that lead to the knowledge that has produced harmony in my home and that has allowed me to use my problems as opportunities.

I am Gerson Francois.

As I live my life, I sometimes fall and make mistakes, but I have learned to seek to understand my mistakes and to use them as a catalyst to serve as guidance not only to me but to you as well because falling and making mistakes are incidents that happen to everyone. However, no one wants to fall nor make mistakes because these things are in no way favorable to the image that we want to project to society while the real concern should be only to get up after falling and not to make the same mistakes.

Thus, I invite you to discover in this book the importance of practical knowledge in everyday life, which will allow you to repair your mistakes and know fulfillment in your conjugal relationship.

If you do not read, you will know almost nothing; if you read a little, you will know a little; if you read half, you will know half; and if you read everything, you will know perfectly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886161267

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Practical Knowledge for a Fulfilling Married Life

Gerson Francois

ISBN 979-8-88616-125-0 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88616-126-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Gerson François

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

My Story

Marriage

The Origin of Marriage

The Purpose of Marriage

Why Get Married?

For Better and for Worse

The best

The worst

What Is Love?

Commitment

Divorce

The Consequences of Divorce

Forgiveness

The Benefits of Forgiveness

Forgive in All Circumstances

My answer to the Facebook question:

Conflict Management in Marriage

Manage and Keep Your Problems between You Two

Managing Your Indifference

Beware of Discontent

Ignorance

Knowing How to Recognize Your Imperfections

Disrespect and Rebellion

Anger

What to Do about Anger

Avoid Cutting the Bridge

Two things to emphasize and that must be avoided:

Sexual Restriction

Selfishness

Jealousy

Money in the Home

What you need to know

Growing Together and Adapting

1—Spending time together

2—Prioritizing quality over quantity

3—Taking part in the course of the other's life

Balance in the Relationship

Communication and Its Importance in Marriage

You Are Different

The Role of Spouses

The role of women

The role of men

Frequentation

Don't Wait until It's Too Late

Conclusion

For Anne Marie Josée, Moarvy, Gersh, and Eryn

Because they believe in me more than anyone else.

For Sherly, my lovely wife, without whose help and support I could never have completed such a wonderful book.

All my thanks go to the Eternal God, the God of Israel, from whom come knowledge and understanding; to Him alone be the glory.

Preface

This book presents and describes the danger of divorce through my experiences and personal history. It also provides some advice on the conjugal relationship by highlighting some knowledge about love, marriage, and divorce; therefore, I can say that the subjects developed are very necessary for the management of conflicts and the duty of spouses.

In this book, I promise neither the power nor the easiness to deal with the indifference between spouses because the power and the easiness depend totally on the ability to practice or use the advice and knowledge received.

So it will be of no use to you to know the things that I will tell you if you are not going to exercise them and finally practice them, because I have discovered what I share with you through observation and by the fact that God is the center of my life and the center of my marriage. Thus, these are not ideas that I share with you but my experience and my life that can therefore help you keep the balance in your marital relationship.

Also, I want to say that this book is the object of my repentance and of the new way that I commit myself to fully live my conjugal relationship.

I decided to share my experience because I can clearly see and understand how knowledge, understanding, and a good relationship with God have made my marital relationship stable.

And I know that just as the practice of this knowledge has helped me to know fulfillment in my relationship, so it will help you to repair mistakes and to give a new direction to your married life.

Also, I must add that the understanding in this book will help a lot to get back up and to escape divorce. But also, it might not be convincing enough for some others to prevent them from ending up in divorce; nevertheless, let me tell you that marriage, whatever it is, is fulfilled only by the fear of God and the understanding of commitment. For the fear of God brings wisdom to all, and understanding is a natural skill that helps man to live in rationality. Moreover, it is perhaps for this reason that the Bible exhorts in the book of Proverbs, Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, And apply your heart to my knowledge (Proverbs 22:17 NKJV).

Introduction

Ichose to start with the story of my divorce because that is the basis of this book; this is what pushed me to write to transmit my experience and the wisdom that God instilled in me after this great sin.

I know that the word sin arouses curiosity in many in relation to the explanation I will have to provide on this subject. I can already reassure you that I will take care to elaborate on this because I know with the ideologies of religion, divorce is not only seen as a great sin but above all a condemnation that hinders the life of the divorced and which very often pushes them to never seek or believe in a socio-spiritual restoration and in the balance of a new, fulfilling married life.

By my story, you will quickly understand that I have committed a grave sin, and by the knowledge I will have to share with you, you will also understand that this sin does not lead to perdition.

Certainly, God judges, chastises, and condemns since in his righteousness and immutability, He cannot associate Himself with evil, but at the same time, He is above all a restorative God. He will never repel the one who repents and returns to Him, nor does He hasten to condemn the sinner and the wicked. For even in the system of human government, with forgiveness and pardon, exoneration from a serious misconduct or crime is possible when the president of a country decides to exonerate a convicted person.

Do you think God doesn't have that right? Do you believe that man has more goodness than the great Creator God?

The answer to these questions is developed in the knowledge shared in this book, and true stories with examples from the Bible provide us with the necessary understandings about it.

I now invite you to share my story by taking care not only to read but to understand each point and each chapter developed in this book because my story is not only the narration of a lived experience, but it also extends to my experience of each day that I transmit to you through the knowledge of the facts that follow.

Chapter 1

My Story

The story of a being is simply what he has lived; it remains a personal experience, but it can help other people in their life journeys and in the perfection of their destinies.

—Gerson François

My history is horrible and shameful, but I know that it is able to free many people who let themselves be harassed by the thoughts of the devil to the point of falling into the sins that eat away at the life of a couple, stealing the modesty and values of a person, stifling love for God, and destroying the relationships and virtue of a being.

Indeed, in my deep reflections, I found a lot to highlight for fear of reliving the same nightmares of divorce and not knowing how to live in the blossoming of the new relationship. I simply want to say that it is important to learn from your mistakes and to avoid committing the same nonsense every time because if we fail in a relationship, it is because something has escaped us. In other words, either at the beginning, which means before the marriage or at least during married life, we have been in ignorance of reality. This is what happens to all those who have divorced since no one builds a house with the idea of demolishing it or letting it collapse without fighting to prevent the collapse.

No, no one gets married with the idea of breaking up or divorcing afterward, but it happens over time through mismanagement and ignorance of commitment.

It is commonly said that it is never too late to get it right. Yet, in reality, we must admit sometimes that we can do nothing and that it is completely too late because although some couples have had the opportunity to repair their mistakes, others have missed out, and since they are stubborn in the decision to break their relationships, their conscience is only open to drift.

I belonged to this category of people at one time because of the foundation of the values that were instilled in me from a young age. I should be among those who have repaired their mistakes and who, despite marital difficulties, remain a model only for having taken the best with the worst.

Speaking of the foundation of my life, let me briefly share with you a part of my life that describes this period.

From my childhood, I had been taught one thing that was crucial to the life of every child of God, and this thing is none other than prioritizing the precepts of the Bible above all else, which had helped me to have a very good relationship with God in my youth.

I loved God with all my heart, and I began to take a strong interest in Him from my childhood, being seven or eight years old, because I was born into a Christian family where my mother made us read the Bible every night. She also woke us up very early in the morning to pray and read the Bible. It was the greatest gift she could give us although for us, still children, waking up very early at half past four in the morning was torture. But today I fully recognize and understand the benefit and value of this act, which may have marked the lives of each of my siblings, especially me. At the same time, I believe that it has contributed to the sharpening of my personality and the essence of virtues or qualities that I do not want to lose, and that in a way reminds me all the time of the right path every time my soul turns away from the good. I remember that I was frightened by the book of Revelations and attracted by the book of Proverbs, and I also remember growing up, although I was not perfect like any other young person of my age, I at least had a strong passion for God and His Word. Between the age of fourteen and seventeen, I already had my personal time with God without understanding what it really meant. Every day, at nightfall, I had to go to the roof of my house to worship and pray with a guitar.

Although I was a teenager, I quickly entered Sunday school by taking responsibility for teaching the children the things that the Spirit taught me and that God Himself had put in my heart; it had become my passion.

Out of modesty and the desire to live in holiness, I decided to marry at the age of twenty-three, just to avoid exposing myself to sexual temptation. Frankly, I thought I understood what I was doing because I was really in love, and the advice of some friends and close family could not persuade me otherwise. I was determined and stubborn; thus, I embarked on this adventure by a false conviction, full of ignorance and without maturity.

Remember that I lived as a child of God, so I didn't do this without consulting my Lord, and I believe I was like one of those children who approach their parent and say, Dad, I'm mature enough. It's time for me to leave your house. I feel ready to face life, and I am about to accept all that I will have to meet without coming to complain to you.

To explain, when I consulted God, it was not to have His confirmation since already I believed that God was not going to come down to choose me a person. Moreover, my conception was I choose and God approves by the only fact that the person is Christian and that she shares the same faith as me. So my prayer was Lord, You know my heart, You see that I love her, and I feel able to assume the full responsibility of marrying this girl since we love each other, and I do not want to sin against You by committing sexual impurities because already she attracts me strongly and the longer we wait to get married, the more difficult it will be for us to resist sexual temptation.

This was my prayer, and for me, God understood perfectly well because His will for us is that we live a holy life, so His approval was certain. This is to say that no prophecy was necessary.

Thus, I threw myself without reservation with a crazy confidence in married life. The first three years as far as I remember were peaceful with few problems, and the only reason was simply because I was very hung up on God, so the enemy of marriage could not easily influence my life. I must say sincerely I did not know that I had an enemy at that time. Certainly, I knew that the devil exists, but I did not care about his attacks, which are primarily spiritual. I simply loved God in ignorance, and that's why He didn't deliver me to death, because the devil's goal was not only to push me toward divorce, but also he wanted to destroy my life.

In the third year, God gave us a son. He is a gift, and his birth is another story. But right after the birth of this child, things took a different turn; on the one hand, I started spending a lot of time with single friends, which made me forget sometimes that I was married and that I had a priority, which was my family. I remember that this was repeatedly a subject of argument.

Indeed, I would like to advise you that whether it is the man or the woman, in marriage, you have a priority, which is your family; it comes first, even if it is sometimes necessary to take a time off personal relaxation. Be careful not to make this kind of mistake, which consists in leaving your wife and child out of habit to spend time with your friends in the idea of relaxing. Even if it is with a few brothers in the faith, it will always be in your disadvantage because the Bible tells us that our adversary, the devil, prowls like a