A WORD FOR PASTORS -

MARRIAGE RESTORATION- GOD'S OPTION TO DIVORCE

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Genesis 2:24

With the trauma of divorce attacking fifty percent of all marriages, even within the church, it must happen to you often. A hurting spouse makes an appointment and comes to your study for counseling. What do you do? Do you listen to the circumstances, and then tell them about the attorney in the church, and pass along information on a divorce recovery class, or do you share the hope for hurting marriages that can be found in the scriptures?

In the early 1980's my wife, Charlyne, found herself sitting in many pastors' studies, sharing her story of nineteen years of marriage and three children. She shed tears as she told her story of a husband's unfaithfulness and abuse. Instead of asking the Lord how He saw me, she was taking surveys of every pastor and counselor who would listen. The answers she heard were all the same; "Get a divorce." One minister added, "Leopards don't change their spots." That may be true, but she was talking about her covenant husband, and not a leopard.

It took our family going through a divorce, and all the associated damage to our precious children, before the Lord touched this prodigal, in response to the faithful prayers of a wife, standing with Him and praying for marriage restoration. Two years after our divorce, on July 7, 1987, I drove 100 miles from where I was living, knocked on my wife's office window, invited her to lunch and remarried her two hours later. The healing of our marriage was a process, but on that day the Lord washed the spots off of this leopard.

Recent studies have demonstrated the disadvantages that follows children of divorced parents for their entire lives. They will make poorer grades, have less chance at graduating from college, make less money, have a better chance of being arrested, and have increased difficulty keeping their own marriage together.

Divorce is said to be America's number one socioeconomic problem. Much is now being said about divorce, but what is the solution? It is not to make divorce more amicable through divorce recovery classes, where both spouses go on to find new spouses, in marriages that have an ever higher chance of failure. It is not in teaching our hurting children how to cope.

God designed the family to be a man and woman, loving each other, and raising children together, so that each member of the family serves God. Is that even possible any longer? Yes it is!

The men and women you counsel need to hear there is a better option than divorce, and the accompanying lifelong problems. They need to find an altar, not an attorney, and enter into a personal relationship with the Lord, allowing Him to first change that individual, and then to change the prodigal spouse. This process is not instant, but neither were the problems.

The true answers are found not in court, but in the Bible. God has made His people thousands of promises, and He has kept every one of them. May wounded spouses who turn to you hear there is an alternative to divorce.

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Bob and Charlyne have been ministering to hurting spouses for thirteen years. Authors of nineteen books on marriage restoration, their story was dramatized and broadcast worldwide on the radio program "Unshackled."