divorce and remarriage cancer worse than corona

[BeauJangles]

4 hours ago, Josheb said:

Msg me a shorter version if you like. 

From the length of 99.9% of your posts, I wasn't aware you were into "quickies". 

 

 

[Fidei Defensor]

6 hours ago, Josheb said:

Yes, Jesus would permit divorce on the occasion of recurring unrepentant abuse. 

 

As a Christian, I have expounded upon the idolatrous/adulterous nature of infidelity and its inherently covenant-breaking nature. As a counselor I will tell you unequivocally this truth: Adultery is the second hardest thing to repair in a marriage. It is not the most damaging, nor the worst in which to effect change.  That title goes to battery. 

Just to give you all some secular and personal stats. Statistically speaking the short-term success rate for treating adultery is about 35%. That means of those couples who engage counseling consequent to sexual adultery a little more than a third of them will still have their marriage three to five years after discontinuing counseling. The long term success rate (more than 20 years after the fact) is only about 15%. Of those adulterers who divorce their spouses and marry their paramours only about 4% of them will remain married. Adultery kills marriage. 

I happen to specialize in the treatment of adultery. I didn't start out that way but that is who God brought me. Literally half of all the couples with whom I work  one or both of the spouses have been sexually adulterous. The stat varies between 48% and 52%; that's 50% +/- 2%. I haven't been counseling in my current capacity quite 20 years so I can't lay claim to long-term stats of the couples with whom I've worked 

84% of them still have their marriage 5+ years later, and many of them have reported being more in love than they have ever been. Now I want to be clear about something:  do not take credit. I give all the glory to God and attribute clients' success to the Biblical model of grace, mercy, redemption, forgiveness, and reconciliation..... and the practical application of prayer, obedience, repentance, etc. Sex is not the most intimate thing two people can do. Prayer is. The reason those couples saved their marriage is because they did the homework.

Sadly, I wish I could say I have seen that kind of success with battery. I have gone to court with a team of pastors, elders, and counselors to advocate on behalf of the couple and i have spent many hours mining the terrain of intra-marital battery individually and in tandem but it is very difficult to effect the change once that kind of worthlessness has been communicated by one spouse to another. Most of it occurs male-on-female, but I've seen it the other way around, too. Guess what the stats say works?

Incarceration. 

 

In terms of adverse effect and likelihood of recovery battery way out scores sexual adultery as more destructive. Why doesn't scripture spend more time on physical abuse? Because the Bible is not a marriage manual any more than it is a cosmology or biology text book. I speaks in principle to all aspect of life, and authoritatively so, but it is not a marriage manual.

 

 

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Indeed, once a spouse gets beaten, they live in terror at eaxh subsequent rage or fir of anger, that a reprisal will happen. The same for adulterey, the cheated on spouse wonders from niw on if on a new businesss trip or late work day or 2hr phone call is a relapse into adulterey. Trust being broken. 

[Kristin]

You cannot say Christians that are divorced and remarry are not saved. Let God deal with them. Jesus died for everyone and everything. Believers are attacked by the evil one almost exclusively. Don’t fool yourself. Satan let’s his own thrive. Don’t sweepingly condemn the brethren, because we live under constant spiritual attack that the goats never experience. God knows and is gracious and merciful. Lies abound and everyone gets caught up. Marriage should last, but it doesn’t half the time for believers and unbelievers alike. We forgive the heathen but not the believer, who has been spiritually attacked relentlessly. We put on the armor of God, but that happens with maturity in the faith. Of course marriage should be once, but sometimes you marry someone you cannot bear. Is constant arguing a way to live?  What about hatred of your family and exclusion of them?  What if they are just really weird and everyone knows it?  On and on. Some people make a huge mistake in who they marry. I’m all for trying to keep it together, but if your spouse isn’t your other half, it’s hard. Let’s try always to stay married, even if it makes us weep daily. Great. 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Kristin

[Fidei Defensor]

40 minutes ago, Kristin said:

You cannot say Christians that are divorced and remarry are not saved. Let God deal with them. Jesus died for everyone and everything. Believers are attacked by the evil one almost exclusively. Don’t fool yourself. Satan let’s his own thrive. Don’t sweepingly condemn the brethren, because we live under constant spiritual attack that the goats never experience. God knows and is gracious and merciful. Lies abound and everyone gets caught up. Marriage should last, but it doesn’t half the time for believers and unbelievers alike. We forgive the heathen but not the believer, who has been spiritually attacked relentlessly. We put on the armor of God, but that happens with maturity in the faith. Of course marriage should be once, but sometimes you marry someone you cannot bear. Is constant arguing a way to live?  What about hatred of your family and exclusion of them?  What if they are just really weird and everyone knows it?  On and on. Some people make a huge mistake in who they marry. I’m all for trying to keep it together, but if your spouse isn’t your other half, it’s hard. Let’s try always to stay married, even if it makes us weep daily. Great. 

True, salvation is certain for us believers: 

“But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” (Romans 10:8-10) 

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:26-30) 

i do not read Jesus saying if you divorce, you aren’t saved or are excommunicated from the church. 

Thanks for bringing this up Kristin. ?

[BeauJangles]

6 hours ago, Fidei Defensor said:

i do not read Jesus saying if you divorce, you aren’t saved or are excommunicated from the church.

Another affirmative amen from me on that.

How unfortunate is the situation in where a woman is beaten senselessly and her husband abandons her and her children after several years of this tri-weekly drunken tirade. Leaves and never returns home again. The spouse and her children are then virtually penniless and unable to keep up the house payments. They do not receive child support, neither does the wife obtain alimony.

The church they have attended does not excommunicate her or the children, but does nothing in spiritual support. Does not call on the phone or make a visit to the home either. Therefore also abandoning his ministerial pastorship duties as is stated in the word of God to do. I am one of those children. And let me tell you something. While that church and their congregants ignore their needs - 

The Lord NEVER left nor abandoned them! 

[David1701]

7 hours ago, Kristin said:

You cannot say Christians that are divorced and remarry are not saved. Let God deal with them. Jesus died for everyone and everything. Believers are attacked by the evil one almost exclusively. Don’t fool yourself. Satan let’s his own thrive. Don’t sweepingly condemn the brethren, because we live under constant spiritual attack that the goats never experience. God knows and is gracious and merciful. Lies abound and everyone gets caught up. Marriage should last, but it doesn’t half the time for believers and unbelievers alike. We forgive the heathen but not the believer, who has been spiritually attacked relentlessly. We put on the armor of God, but that happens with maturity in the faith. Of course marriage should be once, but sometimes you marry someone you cannot bear. Is constant arguing a way to live?  What about hatred of your family and exclusion of them?  What if they are just really weird and everyone knows it?  On and on. Some people make a huge mistake in who they marry. I’m all for trying to keep it together, but if your spouse isn’t your other half, it’s hard. Let’s try always to stay married, even if it makes us weep daily. Great. 

Here's an appropriate Scripture.

1 Cor. 7:10,11 (VW)

10 Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to leave her husband.
11 But, indeed, if she is separated, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to send away his wife.

If there is a separation (and, sadly, sometimes this is unavoidable), then the two options are singleness, or, if possible, reconciliation to the spouse.

[David1701]

1 hour ago, Josheb said:

 

 

The underlying problem here in many cases is a lack of relationship outside of the marriage. Couples in trouble are most frequently living in a marital "bubble" in which little fellowship is had in a way that provides growth, healing, or accountability. Each spouse needs what I call a "same sex confidante." Christian women tend to call them "prayer partners," and men "accountability partners," but whatever they are called they should be people to whom we can speak the truth of our lives with openness to both encouragement and correction (followed by meaty prayer). The bubble marriage leads to isolated individuals who live in secrecy until things erodes so severely that divorce seems normal and just.

Congregations don't always practice this concept but every single individual should be connected to one or two others where truth-speaking, encouragement, and accountability are routine. Every member knit together twice over: once through marriage and family and again with a same-sex confidante. This solves a lot of problems that institutional leaders then never have to address. Sadly, like views on marriage, divorce, and remarriage, views on accountability and discipleship can be legalistic and thereby controlling. 

 

 

And as to the idea divorce does not preclude salvation we must remember Jesus opened up the definition of adultery way beyond sexual intercourse and one should give thought to this, 

1 Corinthians 6:1-12
"Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?  Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts?  Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life?  So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church?  I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren,  but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?  Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?  On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren.  Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,  nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.  Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.  All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything."

Adulterers will not inherit the KoG. Now we can debate the meaning, application, and limits of that admonition but before doing so we should face up to the fact any divorce remotely associated with adulterous infidelity they way whole scripture defines it is a matter to be taken seriously. 

 

 

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Yes, these are all good points.

[brian100]

It shows you that people are only getting married to obtain more wealth and not really for Love. I lost my Wife for discovering the Shroud secrets 22 years into the future..(a punishment by the devil)  I never got involved in her divorce nor did I remarry.  But I will only tell God I love her and to give her back to me since he brought us together by marriage in the first place.

My Love is worth something to God. 

 

Its sad that Marriage now is just about what they can milk from you.

 

I believe in Mark 10:6-9, 1 John 4:7, and Matthew 22:2. That will be my Heaven with my True Love.

 

Its Mark 10:9 --- that tells me God is on my side.

“What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
 

 

 

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Edited July 23, 2020 by brian100

[Kristin]

It humbles me that the men on this thread care for their marriages and their women. I believe women have been duped and beguiled by all manner of media etc to be unsatisfied. I’m glad and strengthened by the men’s care on this thread. Thank you. 

[brian100]

If God brings you together like Predestination (selecting 2 people for Heaven) then nobody can undo if you had Wed. Even if she leaves and marries another. God can snap his fingers and undo those changes like it never happened before in the Courtyard of Happiness. I saw such a place. 

Say the Devil sent another man to alter your future on Earth. Changing time,  or changing your future.

Well God can alter it too.

 

The devils plan is to separate you from your True Love (Mark 10:9).  He calls its divided hearts.

 

If you don't love anyone, then how do you make it to heaven?

 

Love conquers all.

Edited July 23, 2020 by brian100