Hope in the Wilderness was founded by Tapera Chivhaka out of a clear calling: to strengthen marriages and restore covenant understanding in the Church. Combining disciplined theological study with structured psychological insight, Tapera brings biblical authority and pastoral sensitivity to every session.

His teaching bridges spiritual conviction with emotional intelligence, equipping couples not only to believe rightly, but to relate wisely. This is a calling to restore covenant strength in this generation.

https://www.hopeinthewilderness.org/

Hi, I'm Angel.

This mission starts right in our home.

So for my wife and three sons, thank you for standing with us.

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God chose for us to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Was it challenging protecting your dialect, your language while in the United Kingdom?

Not necessarily, because there's not much stereotype or maybe you feel like my accent is out of order.

There's not much like that.

So you just feel comfortable remaining who you are and continue to use your own accent as it is here.

How did you meet Jesus, Taperea?

A long time, because originally my parents were also Christians, so I was brought in a Christian home, but different denominations, you know, back home there are a lot of mushrooming churches, so I was brought in my father's church, so very religious.

Yeah, but with time I had also to figure out that this is the kind of denomination maybe I want to follow, or this is how I want to follow Jesus according to my understanding of the Bible.

So I then had to move from my father's original church that he enriched me into what I am doing now.

So that's about it briefly.

Was there a specific encounter that helped you with your decision?

Yeah, I think so, because my father being very, let's say poor, could not send me to school,

so my uncles, that is the brothers of my mother, they took me to their home area where they had

sent me to school, pay school fees for me, and it is in my uncle's church where they used to read

the Bible a lot, then I had to discover some gap between what I had been growing up believing

and what I understood about the Bible now, and by that time I think that is the time when I

discovered Jesus and I decided, no, I must then get baptized.

I think that was 1994, that's when I really decided to commit myself.

How old were you then?

I think 16, I think.

Wow, so you're a young old man back then, were you?

Back then, yeah.

I get it, I get it, that's amazing.

When you look at the work you do, of course, I'm privileged to know that marriage is your strength in terms of the space you work in, yeah?

When you look at the work you do in marriages and you look at that encounter relationally, Christ being the bride, yeah?

Yeah.

Do you see a connection?

A very big connection, because what I've discovered is that Christ wants to be in an intimate relationship with us.

As a result, he demonstrated it by putting marriage on this planet.

So marriage is as close as resembling God's ideal or understanding God as much as possible.

And here's the reason why I had to find out that.

I discovered that God in his wisdom operates as a twin God, that is the three God that we understand.

Some will want to call it Trinity, some will want to call it Godhead, some will want to call it the twin God.

But in that order, they are perfectly equal, they are perfectly one, because here you are Israel, the Lord our God is one.

But they operate differently.

Christ said to come to die for us.

God the Father remained, God the Holy Spirit was then sent when Christ ascended to heaven.

Now, if you look at that, there are four things that I discovered there.

One, God is one, they are one in purpose, even though we can call them three.

They also perform different functions, despite that they are one.

So there's no confusion that can God the Father also go down or can the Holy Spirit remain here?

No, there's not that confusion.

So when God created men and women to form what we call a marriage, we are different, but we are one, one in purpose.

Just as God the Father, God the Son are different, but one in purpose.

Therefore, we are perfectly equal, because we are all bought with the priceless blood of Jesus.

But we perform different functions.

The husband is the spiritual leader, that office was given by God.

The wife is a helper made for the husband, and also children perform a different role and function.

Therefore, one in nature, but different in our functions, different in our roles.

That you even see it in scripture.

Jesus said, I and Father are one.

Then he says, the husband and wife are one.

What God joined together, let no man put asunder.

Then when Paul, in Ephesians 5, when he was discussing the issue of husband, wife be submissive to husband, husband love your wife as Christ loved the church.

He then goes ahead and says, I'm talking of a mystery.

I'm talking of mystery of Christ and the church.

Therefore, when we are in a marriage, we are representing the ideal that God intended even in heaven.

For God to come from heaven and say, look, this is how I operate.

He cannot do that.

He put a husband and a wife and say, the husband is going to be a representative of Jesus.

The wife is going to be a representative of the church.

You are all equal in worth.

No one is above the other, but you should perform different roles.

So no one should be found refusing to perform those roles.

So that diagnosis led me to say, that's why we have serious issues because the devil then attacks this only institution which reflects the image of God.

By the way, that's what I call the image of God.

Why?

Because in the garden of Eden, God says, let us create a man in our own image.

Let us.

So it's the twin creating an image.

So Adam could not reflect the image of God.

There was already this God is in three because he is discussing, let us.

So how can one Adam then reflect the us?

But if you go with the verse, it says, in his image created he, them, male and female.

In other words, the image of God was put in them, the two.

Yes, one person can reflect the character of Christ.

We are saved individually.

But for the image of God to fully reflect, he put it in the them, in the two.

And it makes sense.

Let us create.

Then they are us also.

They are them also.

So the two will reflect how God functions.

He has order.

There's a husband with the head.

There's a wife who is submissive.

Okay.

But we are also one.

We operate on one.

No one should separate us.

Just as God operates as one.

We have different functions.

Wife must do his function.

Children, their functions.

Husband, his function.

Jesus also does his function.

The Holy Spirit does his function.

If you look at that chain for you to prove it biblically, you can see it in 1 Corinthians 11, verse three.

He says, for God is the head of Christ.

Christ is the head of the wife, I mean of the husband, and the husband is the head of the wife.

So you cannot break that chain right from heaven down to the family.

That order is so paramount for things to function.

So I blame all these evils, all these catastrophes, all this degeneration, all these kids going astray because we have sought to come up with an ideal setup of a marriage which God did not design.

And as long as we want to dwell on something that fundamentally was not designed by God, it's not going to function.

It's not going to fulfill its purpose.

It's not going to reflect the image of God.

People are not going to see how God is.

I even further went to say, the husband, these issues of abuses and everything that is happening is a result of the fact that husbands have failed to take a sacrificial role which Christ took.

Therefore, they have misrepresented Jesus.

Therefore, if we start the family, what it should do?

It's salvific.

It's meant to deliver a salvation message to this dying world.

This world was supposed to rush to our families and see how they are organized, how our children are organized, how husbands are organized, what is sacrificial headship, what is submission, what is this?

And then God was supposed to be preached that way.

We were not even supposed to preach tense or to do this, to do this.

Our families were supposed to be contagious on their own in the way they were run if they were set up according to the ideal.

I'm sorry, I talk too much because I've got a passion in that area especially.

Five years from today, you're listening to this message.

From my calculations, you're going to be around 47.

So five years from today, you're listening to this, you're around what?

52.

What's a message you'd leave for future you?

I am looking up to reach as many people as possible and I have envisioned to really look at my organization as interdenominational because I presume and assume, which I think most people do, that family is nothing to do with a denomination or a religion.

A Muslim can get married, an atheist can get married, all denominations can get married, Jews can get married.

But in the process of trying to reach everybody with this message, I'm also trying to bring even those different ethnic groups or different groups to Jesus because I believe that the message of this actually is preeminent in the fact that it really points to God as the creator, to Jesus as the one who sacrificed for us.

So apart from explaining this family, I would then be able to bring Jesus to all these different groups in our Christian community and other communities.

And probably I would be, if God willing, I would be having a center where I will create a real seminars will be happening there, counseling sessions will be happening there, and I'll be working to train a lot of groups of people that will be doing these things.

That is in the short term, I think five-year period.

It will be a big thing for me to be able to achieve that.

Again, a pleasure.

I treasure it up here.

Thank you for being on what is inspired by 12 Mile Converse.