Okay Mike...this IS my favorite Mike n Laura blog ever!  Okay, maybe I will say the dinner blog after I am at your dinner table :)  I tried to star it twice.  I thought maybe you starred really fast on that one women's blog to have to two stars show up, but no can do!  But you certainly deserve two stars for this one. 

Yet another Holy Ghost conviction via Mike's  blog!  I am going to stop reading your blogs if you keep doing this to me....I get enough conviction just praying and reading the Word on my own!

You know I am kidding :)  Conviction, we hate it....but we just keep coming back for more!

(blush) Thanks Sue, you are too kind. And a treasured source of encouragement! After revisiting this today, in retrospect I plead forgiveness for the harsh title and conclusion. But I admit that I am once again in a place of struggle as I pray pessimistic prayers for no less than 3 Christian marriages which repeatedly go through cycles of anger, emptiness, hard-heartedness, neglect, selfishness, etc., each time worse than the time before. Lord, please give me hope!!!

Excellent point Angie. I'm impressed with how you always bring your A-game!

Natalie, thank you for pointing that out. You are correct, it is tradition that has given MM that reputation, not scripture!

You have a good point, and I agree with you, God has given each of us the ministry of reconciliation, but I wonder how a Christian that has been divorced would respond to your blog.  You see, I've never being divorced, but as a pastor's wife I seen the pain and struggle couples face before they make that final decision. So, how a believer, born-again Christian facing divorce look at forgiveness and reconciliation?  Only a person in this situation can answer this question. And how can we help our brothers, sisters, ministers contemplating or going through a divorce, come to a point where they can offer their spouse the very forgiveness and grace God has extended to them?  This is a question that we all need to answer.

Lourdes, thank you so much for your honesty and wisdom. I would hate to think that what I've written may have hurt someone deeply, and I would delete this entire blog in a heartbeat if I found that it was doing just that. When these thoughts tumbled out of my head, the target audience was people struggling with resentment, bitterness, anger, and hopelessness. Basically anyone walking down that road of contemplating leave the spouse who appears to be the source of pain in their life.

What I've found is that Scripture gives us tremendous hope(!!) for every relationship in our lives, when we fully embrace it.

Yes, there are exceptions. And of course, I'm not addressing cases of physical abuse here either. I certainly never intended to judge or shame anyone. Mainly just to share a great hope mixed with a pinch of conviction. Am I on the right track?

M&L right - right?  Everyone is in a different place.  We have to encourage people to seek God.  You may write from a perspective of coming from a marriage, ordained by God, that was healed - that is fantastic and a great testimony. 

Suppose a couple of strangers got married when they were drunk in Las Vegas and all they knew were each others name - somehow that does not seem ordained by God and not built to last.  Your writing will help some - but - possibly to the exclusion of others, which it looks like you just addressed above.  I have learned that the Bible holds a mystery and we are always seeking to unveil it - there is alot to consider when you look into marriage according to God.  Taking pieces of a puzzle trying to make it whole will not complete anything.  When God is fully embraced - the pieces are taken care of. 

Mike,

I am a divorced believer and your thoughts did not offend at all.  Of course I am married a second time and my wife and I will celebrate 28 years together in May.  We have 3 children and two grandsons and I honestly feel that God blessed me with Sharon.  My first wife deserted me when I was stationed in Okinawa many years ago.  Now that I look back I honestly feel that the first one was not who God planned for me to share my life with.  In fact in those days I can honestly admit that I decided more things for myself than seeking God's wisdom before acting.  I know that there a lot of people who do not agree with my thoughts, but as I have discussed with my pastor, I truly believe this second marriage is from God.  Had I sought God's wisdom when I was younger, the first marriage probably would never had happened. 

To also echo your thoughts, Sharon and I are as different as night and day.  Yet in our years together we have grown to love many shared things and we truly enjoy our lives.

Thanks for the blog and keep putting things out there.  I may not always comment, but I have received much encouragment and blessing from reading your words.

Randy

SSTR, great comment. I know some, perhaps many marriages will not last no matter what the God-fearing spouse tries. If that's you, please forgive me and don't take what I've written as being directed at you. But I can say that God is all powerful in all situations, and there is absolutely never a complete absence of hope where faith lives. I've heard too many testimonies of dead marriages coming back to life to the glory of God. The fact is, God specializes in bringing dead things back to life!!  It's even conceivable to me that there are times when God lets things go beyond the "point of no return" for His children, just so it's clear to everyone that He was the One who brought it back to life!

Randy, it is such a blessing to hear that this didn't offend you, thank you for letting me know, and thank you for your encouragement! I certainly wouldn't have shared these thoughts if I didn't think they would be helpful/encouraging to some, I'm always humbled and excited when I hear that the Lord has used me to bring blessing to someone.

Mike,  I am sorry if I sounded preachy... It was not my intention :-( 

I think your blog is good and it touches a very important aspect of ministry "marriage", "forgiveness", and "reconciliation".  I was just trying to look at it from a different perspective.  Hope you still let me comment in the future ;-)

Lourdes

Lourdes,

Absolutely no apology necessary, I am very thankful for what you brought to this blog. You opened my eyes to a perspective I totally overlooked, so I value your input!!   ~mike

Ditto for me, Randy. Not offended at all.  

Lourdes, the key here is realizing that we live in a society where it takes two to get married but only one to get divorced! No-fault divorce has totally changed the way things play out. Now, more than ever, it takes two willing folks to keep a marriage intact.

And SSTTR, I've known some couples (married in their pre-Christian days) who looked at this

and figured that there must be more at work than just what they could see. They realized that wo were becoming one long before the Law or the Cross. To borrow your words, they fully embraced God and in so doing, they saw Him redeem even their ill-advised marriage.

As one who went through a long and painful divorce, Lourdes is absolutely correct.  Unless you go through it, you have no idea how deep the pain, how hard the struggle, and how hopeless the situation is sometimes. I read Virginia's blog...Breathe, Breathe...and it reminds me of how I felt in the middle of it all. Although I was very much a Christian and very much rooted in a church, I was an outcast because of all the scriptures stated above.  PastorDan, it still takes two to get a divorce. Both have to sign the paper. Both have to agree to dissolve the marriage.  In all my years of counseling, both receiving and giving, I have yet to see one "problem" that both spouses were not a part of the cause.

Regarding the Las Vegas thing...I firmly believe there is a difference between what the state calls marriage and what God calls marriage...we tend to make them one and the same.

I know God can heal the broken hearted, but sometimes He doesn't. I know that God can heal the sick, but sometimes He doesn't. I know that God can heal a marriage, but sometimes He doesn't. God's ways remain a mystery to me.  Although we would all love for it to be text book in nature, this life we are given isn't.  It is for us to walk out, encouraging one another to do the best we can to walk with God, and in the end, God remains the judge of it all.

To further highlight the demographic I had in mind with these thoughts, today in American around 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and this statistic doesn't change whether you look inside our churches or out! I personally know couples who could easily go down the same road, and there doesn't appear to be anything much stopping them. This breaks my heart. It breaks on behalf of my dear friends who endure tons of pain of the deepest kind, and it breaks my heart for God, who has created this precious thing called marriage and who HATES divorce (says so in Malachi 2:16).

Thank you for your such thoughtful comments, friends. ~mike

Rosie, what an incredibly amazing testimony to God's strength. As one believer to another, I want to thank you from the very bottom of my heart for honoring God in such a completely selfless way. Your perspective MUST be an eternal one to keep going in that relationship. If I could star this thing I would, but not for anything I wrote, it would be entirely for what you shared!

DC, I believe your observation about the Vegas marriage was accurate. And furthermore, to you I again apologize if I've opened wounds, this was all meant to give hope to the struggling along with just a pinch of conviction. No intentions to judge those who've been through it already. However I repeat from above, there is absolutely never a complete absence of hope where faith lives. Never. And this isn't a call for us to "do" anything as it is a call to let God do. We must learn to step out of the way.

You say...there is absolutely never a complete absence of hope where faith lives...this is truth, yet the "hope" is not always what we understand it to be.  You didn't "open any wounds" in me.  My point is that sometimes we make things too textbook and not real.  Marriage is a struggle, a daily toil that has some of the richest blessings when a couple works through it...whether they are Christian or not.  In my opinion, it isn't divorce that is too easy. It is getting married that we make too easy.  If I had as much training about getting married as I had about getting my pilot's license, I would have the tools to fly through the storms.  Most of us have no clue what we are getting into when we apply for that marriage license and that is so sad...we are set up for failure from the beginning...then when we get in a tailspin and we look around for help, our Christian brothers and sisters patronize us with scriptures that do nothing to help with the situation.

To those in struggling marriages like Rosie, I say keep fighting the good fight. Go to every meeting, every seminar, every counseling session you can to get the tools you need to enhance your marriage. Even if your spouse won't do it, you should. Stay in the Word. Pray. Don't find friends that are struggling, too. Find friends that have strong marriages and watch. Learn everything you can and apply what you are able.  Each marriage is different. Each person an individual.  At the end of every day thank God for every good thing about your spouse. Thank God that He is doing a work in both of you. Even when you don't see it, that is the hope you have.

Regarding the whole Vegas thing, I also believe that what God calls marriage is not the same as what the State calls marriage but I suspect not in the way that you do. What God calls marriage existed before and apart from government. 

The funny part of all this is that this was how he started off his Marriage Preparation sessions with couples. He challenged them to read those "Local Couple Celebrates 65th Anniversary" articles and notice that these interviews almost never fail to express the thought that divorce was not an option, that "I just decided I wasn't going anywhere." I’m told that today, the number one indicator of whether a marriage will last is “Is divorce an option?”  To the extent that it’s not, a couple is more likely to make it.

The hard part is to express all this with grace to a world that very broken and hurting. Our Enemy doesn't want any of this to become an expression of redemption and hope and works very hard to ensure that a Godly, Biblical view of marriage is perceived more as bondage than as an expression of our Father's love, care, and provision. As several have already alluded to, if you think marriage is painful, try divorce.

PastorDan, Good words all...and regarding the Vegas thing...I am in total agreement with you.  The betrothal period would be equivalent to our dating period, only not without supervision, then the feast, then the consummation. In today's world, people jump from the first item to the last far too fast without understanding the dire circumstances of all nor the willingness to take the responsibility of their actions.

To the extent that "divorce is an option" it is unfortunate that it seems to be so easily an option.  There is no doubt that it surrounds us in our daily walk...many of my kids friends have alternating weekends, for example, and they just accept it as "normal" just as they accept mom or dad's sleepover as "normal".  I have had the same reaction as you with the pre-marriage counseling.  I had one couple show up, look at me and my wife, laugh at us and said "what are we going to learn from you?" and walk out.  They figured they knew everything they needed to know.

My heart cries out for wisdom to know how to support people in this lost world where we walk.  If I sounded harsh in my words earlier, I didn't intend to be. I do have an opinion that the Church makes divoirce, abortion, and homosexuality greater sins than any other. I don't think God intends it that way.  All sin separates us from God and my sin of coveting is just as bad as any other - although the world we walk in is built on coveting through advertising - a totally different subject.

I can chime in with my thoughts on the subject also, I suppose, as a guy who had his wife leave to go sew her wild oats and file for divorce.  I can attest to the absolute pain and deep stress that such an ordeal can place on a person, as about 5 months into the process I had a minor "shutdown" of sorts, where physiologically my body just could not take any more stress.  No, I didn't go visit a rubber room or anything like that...just in the middle of doing some regular daily computer-based tasks, my brain told my body "shut the box down, we're calling it a day".  Thankfully I had people in my life at the time who cared about me who kept me uplifted before the throne of Grace in prayer...I know from counseling others that not all are quite so lucky.

The event took me by surprise, since we had had several struggles in the past but I can honestly say that by outward appearances (obviously what was cooking under the surface was different), everything in our marriage appeared to be the best it had ever been, but alas I come home from work one day and there's no wife, just a note.  A few months later I get served -- paperwork from a lawyer who was paid with the money from my Jeep my wife sold without telling me -- and was assured by my wife and her lawyer of the same thing that PastorDan said: "You can contest it all you want, but in the end the court is going to award the divorce with or without your signature; if you sign at least, you can write our own settlement and avoid the 50% community property issue."  I don't even want to go into that whole ordeal.

So yeah, even though I contested it for months, I got bullied back into a corner by some sheister lawyer-lady, and then -- go figure -- when I finally DO sign the papers, my wife starts crying.  By this time though, I had already discovered that she had been involved in relationships with several other guys, and that she might have been pregnant by one.  Talk about something to really screw you up in the head... oye vay.

Anyways, back to subject:  I thank God for the people in my life who, throughout the whole process, were more concerned with giving me solid Scriptural counsel than with giving me warm fuzzy pillows to make my whooped behind more comfy.  And I would have to say the same goes for this blog...the truth is absolutely more necessary to hear than warm fuzzy platitudes and pseudo-Scriptural cultural quotations.

As for the statistics, last I had heard, the church actually has a higher rate of divorce than the world does now....so many people saying "we're not under law anymore but under grace" that they trample the Word and the Lord underfoot for nothing better than their own pride and convenience.  There has never been a divorce that was not rooted in selfishness, and I pray the Lord makes me less and less selfish everyday.

Towards the end of that whole ordeal, the Lord brought me a woman He had been preparing for me, a woman who has been absolutely amazing.  I can honestly say that I made my share of selfish moves and bad choices in the previous five-year marriage...all I can do from today forward is be thankful that God restored me and pray that He would make me more like Himself that I can be a better example of His love to my beautiful bride than I ever have been.  This past March we celebrated our first anniversary, and I can say that even though we butt heads every so often over ridiculously stupid things, we both remain reconcilable to each other and to the Lord, and it makes all the difference.

For those of you who like quotes, consider this one from Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Billy Graham:

[interviewer]: "Has divorce ever been a consideration in your marriage with Billy?"
[Ruth]: "No, divorce was never an option.  Murder a couple times, but never diorce."

They both shared a laugh and it just goes to show you that if Billy and Ruth Graham -- perhaps the most admired Christian couple in the world -- can joke about how even their marriage has had apparently some tense and sore times, certainly our marriages will contain no less.

In His grateful grace and service, and yours,
-pj

Special thanks to Pastor Dan, DC, Jason (THTmotorsports), and yes, Rosie too(!) for investing your time into the subject of this blog. Stars on this blog from here on out are yours as far as I'm concerned, your input has easily exceeded the original content in heart and wisdom!!

DC, I don't pretend to counsel you, you should probably be mentoring me. Although the lovely Laura and I will have been married a year longer than you guys this September! :-)

Jason, your post is nothing short of incredible, I feel horrible hearing what you went through, yet you maintain such a Godly perspective -- wow, what a testimony! I pray that your new marriage will be a thing of neverending joy until death do you part!

Dan, nothing I write in praise of your contributions will do them justice. Thanks for the great wisdom!

I feel unworthy to have written on this subject to begin with. Laura and I have been married for 18+ years. Yes there have been a lot of ups and downs, but nothing ever brought us to the brink of divorce as far as I know, largely because God has been merciful to us. So what do I know about adversity??

I would agree with you that my message is overly simplistic, but I believe it with ALL of my heart -- there is absolutely never a complete absence of hope where faith lives. And since God says clearly "I HATE DIVORCE" (yes, those exact words) then I do not see the "d" word as an option at all, no matter how bad it gets for me. And if I have friends who profess faith in Christ and who see their marriage go sour, I will do and say just about anything to help them find hope and to completely rule out the "d" word. My love for the Savior, who took me as His bride, compels me to.

I had read the orginal blog when it was first posted and had the honors of giving this blog it's first star!  And tonight I had the time to read the rest of the comments.  Wow, there is a lot of wisdom on this page.  I only had a few to comment on.   

PastorDan:  I just wanted to add a New Testament verse to his point well made about marriage.

Rosie:  Without giving any details, you and I have more in common than you know.  I feel led and called to wait on the Lord as well.  With these promises from His Word:

Rosie, you bring up a good sub-subject for this post: family.  One thing I have noticed both in my own experience and in counseling with other couples is the role that family pressures (and lack of pressure, as I'll mention in a moment) play in the life-changing decision of divorce.  When a person chooses to hand the reigns of their heart and life over to Christ, it is more possible to go against any compromises a family may have, but this is unfortunately not always the case, and many times newer undiscipled believers allow the compromises of others in their family and of close friends to be "ok" in their outlook as well.

In my ex-wife's extended family, literally everyone had been divorced at least once (some as many as six times) except her mom and dad, though they did "visit" divorce court when the kids were little but they thankfully gave it another go.  In my extended family the only person who I know of who had been divorced is an "uncle" who isn't even my uncle but my cousins' uncle, and in his case also it was his wife who got antsy after 6 months or so and bailed, and that was 25+ years ago.

The natural observance is that the families with strong histories of divorce are not very likely to "condemn" themselves by saying divorce is absolutely wrong, and will be more likely to allow more and more obstacles to be "reasonable" reasons for divorce.  Adultery waters down to what one may perceive of as flirtation; abuse waters down into the psychobabbled realm of personal speculation, incuding just about anything a person doesn't like (I've even had one lady tell me she felt she was being abused by her husband because he would never cook for her).  I have yet to read the verse that talks about physical abuse being grounds for divorce, but before anyone picks up stones against me I will say that I think it would go against God's character for me to say that a person being physically abused did not reserve the right to seek shelter and protection for themselves.  That being said, while allowing people to divorce for reasons of physical abuse is generally a good thing, it also has opened this pandora's box of wide interpretation as to all the different ways a person can be abused, and the subsequent "well is this any less damaging than that?" debate and rationalization that ensues, soon resulting in the pathetic "irreconcilable differences" check-box on the divorce paperwork.  I know this is a sensitive area for some people, so I'll belay it for another time.

But back to families.  In families where it's "strange" to be divorced, I think it puts a lot more pressure on thoughtful individuals to really be sure on the front end if this is really the person they want to marry, or whether it's some emotional fling that has grown larger than it should have.  Granted, you'll never know for sure what a person is going to be like after marriage, but regardless of what the Lifetime channel would have the average Joe or Jane think, 180-degree changes before and after the wedding bells are really pretty rare.  I know in my family, the question was like "Divorce, what?"  It's just not the mature thing to do.  Grown-ups don't play the divorce game; that's something for childish, selfish "me-me-me"-ers to play.  There are the exceptions, but as a general rule -- last estimates were well over 90% -- divorces among Christians are because of selfishness and "MY rights" mindsets.

That oft-forgotten part of the Ephesians 5 description of Christian marriage is right at the beginning of the section, BEFORE you ever read of wives submitting to their husbands and BEFORE you ever read of husbands loving their wives as Christ loves the Church...

God is no dummy...He leaves no place in marriage for selfishness, because selfishness has no place in Agape.

Anyone else have experiences or comments about family roles in the decision?

-pj 

Wow, thanks for your great comments, Jason! Speaking of family in the realm of divorce, it says numerous times in scripture that God "brings the punishment for the fathers' sins into the laps of their children after them" or variations thereof. (Not to put it all on fathers, I am sure we can read mothers into that equation as well.) When parents split, not only does it drop a mountain of pain and emotional burden on the children involved, but we also know from research that those very children are then more likely to consider divorce an option in their own marriages later on.

Regarding the root cause(s) of divorce and its spread, DC and Jason suggested selfishness and I'd agree that is one of the deepest roots. Consider the 1st commandment, "thou shalt have no other gods before me." I am fairly convinced that to obey that command is to NEVER divorce your spouse. Considering God's injunction against divorce in Malachi 2, it is clear that to keep God in His proper place in one's life is to never see divorce as an option. (I know I oversimplify somewhat, but for the sake of this discussion I don't want us to get distracted by abuse, Vegas, etc.)  To the couple who truly makes obedience of the 1st commandment a major priority, they always find a way to reconciliation!!!  ~mike

There's a guy at my work who's going through some serious stuff with his wife (very similar to my situation), and after talking to him a few months back about what happened in my life, he now feels very comfortable talking to me about all of what's going on in his life with his marital issues.  The best part is (if there could be a "best part" in a topic like this), he's not a Christian, at least so far as I can tell.  But the Lord uses a dificult time in my own life to build a bridge of commonality to an unbeliever over which His love and gospel can go forth.

His wife had filed for divorce, and then a few weeks ago -- when they were all actually in the courtroom having the proceedings -- she told the judge she didn't want the divorce anymore.  The funny thing about this was, I had told him a few months back to keep an eye out for that, since from what he had told me it sounded like she might have chosen divorce out of spite, anger, (pick your emotion), which is NEVER a good way to make such a dramatic and life-changing decision.

Anyways, I just thought about him when reading this last set of replies, and I'm sure your prayers for him in his situation are greatly appreciated, at least by me. :)  I just thank God that He has showed me so many times, over and over again (and seemingly since very early on after my own situation), that He allowed it to happen in my life so that when other hurting and broken people cross my path, we'll share that same bridge of pain, and we'll be able to walk together for a time.  You might wanna take a look at my profile page to understand why exactly that brings me so much joy...after a time of walking with them, I get to back away slowly and let them walk and talk with Jesus, who's much better at helping them than I am. :)

All for the Kingdom,
pj

Father, we ask You to always remind us that there's nothing like the power of Jesus' Name to overcome these "impossible" circumstances and "irreconcilable" differences.  By Your Divine Power destroy those strongholds, those sources of false security, that we and the people we pray for run to when we should be running to you.  Show us the weakness of our arguments.  Let them ring hollow in our ears.  Let them bring doubt and self-examination instead of supplying that false self-assurance that drives us to dig our heels in.  Father, especially make us aware of those things (cultural assumptions; dogmas; inherited attitudes) that pretend to be true but that really are only interfering with our ability to see Your Truth, those things that keep us from knowing You.  By the power of Your Spirit, take our every thought captive and make it obedient to Your Son, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

I get calls from folks who want to know what they should say to someone considering divorce or some similarly drastic action. I tell them that the only words I've ever found to be effective in those situations were spoken in prayer. I then take them to this passage and teach them how to pray it. The testimonies are amazing.  To that prayer let me add this one from Thomas Cramner:

Almighty and most mercyfull father, we have erred and strayed from thy wayes, lyke lost shepe. We have folowed too much the devises and desyres of oure owne hearts. We have offended against thy holy lawes. We have left undone those things whiche we oughte to have done, and we have done those thinges which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us: but thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offendors. Spare thou them, O God, which confesse theyr faultes. Restore thou them that be penitent, according to thy promyses declared. unto mankynde, in Christe Jesu oure Lorde. And graunt, O most merciful father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sobre life, to the glory of thy holy name. Amen.

Pastor Dan, that post was nothing short of amazing. NOT to exalt you, but rather to exalt Christ and the Spirit who inspired those responses. I feel confident supplying a link to this collection of wisdom to anyone I know struggling with an apparently irreconcilable marriage....

Jason (or is it pj), THANK YOU for your testimony!! And yes, count on prayers for your friend, at least for a time. Message me anytime you like if there's news to report.

Thtmotorsp.....Jason......Pj  i have lots of nicknames some ii like some not so much my real name which is much longer than rosie my brother gave me bless his little heart lol