Dr. Robert and Pastor Ruth Johnson recently celebrated 45th wedding anniversary. Aside the usual feasting with family, friends and associates that usually glamorizes such milestone celebration, the amiable couple chronicled their marital experiences in a book titled: 12 Pillars For Fulfillment In Life and also hosted some couples and intending partners to a dinner where they took their guests down the memory lane of their 45 years of partnership in service to God as an ideal Christian couple.
Dr. Johnson, a former university lecturer, author, publisher, entrepreneur and Lead Pastor, Kings Mission Centre, held the guests emotionally-bound as he shared profoundly his 45-year-marital odyssey with his delectable wife, Ruth. He began with the essence of the special dinner with the married and the intending at the Dopemu-based Kings Mission Centre. Lagos. “The Lord told me to put this meeting together for the married and those intending getting into marriage. We are here to tell our story to encourage the married, and also to help those going into marriage in making the right choice as their life partner.”
He then recalled how his path crossed with Ruth at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, Kaduna state. “We met as undergraduate students at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in 1977. Somewhere along the line we decided to get into a relationship. We entered into courtship to know and understand each other. I was 24 years old while she was 23 when we met. We started praying together for our marriage. From age 13 till 24 I prayed for a suitable life partner and God answered the prayer when I met my wife at ABU in 1977 and we got in 1980.”
Earlier before their meeting at ABU, Robert was counseled to start praying for a life partner as soon as he gave his life to Christ at age 13. He discloses: “As a young boy of 13 years old I had the privilege of being brought up in a missionary school. They taught us that after you are born again, the next is who you should marry. We should start praying for a life partner. That was funnily exciting to a small boy of 13 years to begin praying for a wife that will love me and be a help mate. God cannot be silent to the prayers of the little ones. He gave me a wife that will love me and be help mate. It’s not the year you want to get married you start praying for your marriage.” he counseled youths.
Based on his experience of praying for a suitable life partner from a tender age, Robert counseled whoever wants to make a marriage decision, must make it a joint project with God as early as possible. He however confessed that despite praying for a wife from a tender age their marriage still contended with severe challenges.
“As marriage takes place you watch out because the devil you have escaped by marrying a right spouse will come with full force to attack you both. We went into early challenges because of our Islamic background. We fought this early battle and won. In those times when a girl wants to get married, there were usually lots of distractions. My wife’s Islamic family cut her off for her decision to get married to a Christian brother despite that she had already given her life too, to Christ from Islamic background before meeting each other. So our marriage was unapproved. We had to face that reality that the family support wasn’t coming. Some of our friends in a similar situation or circumstance have ended very badly. In our own case we thank God we survived this early battle and here we are to tell our story.”
The former university don also recalled Satan’s attack on his wife with a terrible sickness which he said almost claimed her life when their marriage was barely five years old. “After you get married and escaped the devil’s plot, he will start waging war against your marriage. We already had three children by 1984. After our third child, the devil hit my wife with some mysterious diseases. We visited hospitals. Doctors and nurses were at our beck and call. They prescribed all manners of drugs but they were having bad effects on her. I told myself if the sickness will not kill my wife, the drugs will kill her. We were just getting established in faith.
“One day I looked at my wife in the terrible condition and cried. Our marriage was ordained by God but our parents were waiting for it to fail. The spirit of the Lord arose in me. I gathered all the drugs and flushed them in the wash room. I told God if He can’t heal my wife then let her die. That was the end of the story. She started recovering. The doctors gave her one year to live and now it’s been 40 years. If the devil is going to wage war against your home, he can do that to your health.”
The veterinary doctor-turned preacher also shared the pains of losing his job and successful entrepreneurship too in the course of their 45 years of marriage. “When I went to England I didn’t find fulfillment as a place that I could work without compromising. After returning from post graduate studies in England and my wife starting her doctoral programme in ABU, I decided to resign my lectureship position to what I felt a new challenge God was calling me into. I joined team with a young minister when we moved from Zaria to Kaduna by name David Oyedepo in 1986.He later became Bishop in 1988.
“I bore my part of the burden of this budding ministry, following its establishment from Kaduna to Lagos where I already have a business office. I served there as a lay leader till about 1997 when I was asked to start a campus ministry to University Students. By 2001 the Lord led us to start Kings Mission Centre with a church base and an outreach ministry, GRACE TOURS. The Divinity Bible College came on board about 2010. When God beckoned me to full time ministry a trailer from our church came to carry our loads.
He continues: “That was another phase of our lives. I asked my pastor how much my monthly salary. He said N10, 000. I had issued a cheque of N100,000 to my wife for exigency. Imagine a successful entrepreneur with a whole building complex as office close to Chief MKO Abiola’s residence on Toyin street, Ikeja with over 20 staff members now being offered a monthly salary of N10,000 as a full time pastor.
“At this point we started coming down. We didn’t allow money to determine our joy, happiness and peace in our marriage. We sat with the children to serve God together. We couldn’t afford any more the luxuries with which we raised them. We couldn’t afford sending them abroad for their education as we had planned. God helped us through that phase. Today, all our three children are where God has placed them doing very well. God made a way for them to acquire the best of quality education,” he gladly expressed with joy and fulfilment.
Dr. Robert Johnson counseled couples and those going into marriage never to build their marriage on material things. His words: “Don’t make material things the guide to whom to marry. Don’t allow material things to form the basis of your choice. Your life partner must be someone that must serve God with you with the same mind and the same love for God. When I see people zealous for God, I’m not quick to mark them as spiritual. Your decision to serve God and live for Him will make you accept God’s choice as your life partner As much as you serve God make sure you connect with the church that God had already pre-ordained for you,” he counseled.
In her our account of their 45 years of marriage Pastor Ruth Johnson expressed profound gratitude to God for keeping her and her amiable spouse alive these 45 years together. She also recalled the rejection she suffered from her family over her marriage decision and how the devil aimed to kill her barely five years in marriage. She counseled the married to sue for peace in their homes, particularly wives, with total submission to their husband and the intending to marry correctly to secure their future.
“How you marry will determine the love, joy and peace in your marriage. That’s why you have to make the choice correctly. Those who chose correctly God will give us grace to sustain it. To you young ones it’s good you start praying for your life partner early. It can never be too early. As parents encourage your children as they get born again to start praying for a suitable life partner. As married women, let us know and play our roles rightly in our homes. I was able to know my role as wife. I know and do what I have to do .My in-laws always thank me; telling me well done how I trained my children. As married women we have the major part to play in raising our children in the way of the Lord and to serve Him together with us their parents. Let us have a clear definition and understanding of our roles at home as wife to our husband with total submission and as mother to our children.”
Pastor Ruth Johnson also shared the experiences of their wilderness. “During the wilderness time, I always encouraged our children to look up to God for provision. The entire family, including the children looked up to God to pay school fees. Before going to school I would tell the children to go to the store with faith; calling those things that are not as though they were. When they return and ask, mummy how far now, I will sing “come and see the Lord is good.”I always told them to remember the children of Israel; how their journey of 40 days became 40 years because of murmuring. I told them not to complain or murmur to avoid stretching the days of the wilderness, and they never complained. From bags of rice, we came down to buying Derica of rice which I never knew until the wilderness days.”
Pastor Mrs. Johnson attributed the success of their marriage to God’s backing and her absolute submission to her husband. She said any woman that is not ready to submit absolutely to her husband should not marry. “God created us women to submissively be by the side of our husband; not on their head. This demands our submission totally to our husband to support and enable them be the man that God created them. Any woman that is not ready to submit totally to her husband should not marry. With the help of God my submission absolutely to my husband these 45 years brings joy, peace, love and harmony in our marriage, home and ministry.”
