Family Ark Ministries

It hurts. There is no way around it. It hurts. Even if there was abuse, the days after divorce leaves you with raw, damaged emotions. Loneliness almost immediately creeps in. This loneliness becomes salt in the wounded heart. You are shocked by people’s reaction. Hopefully, God will bless you with some people who are there for you. Most divorced people get a pat on the back, and an “ I’m praying for you”. If your spouse had died, the whole church would have rallied around you. The food, encouragement letters and cards would have been impressive. People would have come over all the time to check in on you. But after the death of a marriage, most of the time it is eerily quiet from the Christian community.

We all know the reason for this. Divorce is wrong. It is sinful. It is not what God wants. I’m sure you have been sent on that guilt trip so many times that you have had to pack extra bags and have obtained frequent flyer miles for all those guilt trips. I would agree with all those statements. Divorce is bad. Divorce is sinful. God is against it. But last time I checked God is also against lying. God is against the sin of not praying enough. God is against the sin of gossip. All those people who whispered behind your back that you were getting a divorce, share equally in their sin that crucified Christ on the cross. What I am trying to say is that all have sinned. I may not have got a divorce, but I am riding in the same boat with divorced people, because I too am a sinner. Just in different areas. We are all in life boats, as the ship of a sinful life sinks behind us. We are saved from ALL sin and put in that eternal life boat by Jesus dying and resurrecting into heaven.

So the first thing for you to receive in your heart is that after divorce, you now belong to the “ I have sinned club”. Welcome. Every human is in it. Aren’t you glad that God is merciful. Loving. Full of grace. Longsuffering. He is the God of a second chance.

You cannot go back and start a brand new life. But you can start now to make a brand new ending! Jesus is like that. You need to 1) look at your past 2)learn from your past

3)leave your past and 4) grow on! You are not going through divorce. You are growing through it. You will let this divorce label you and cripple you from serving God to the fullest, or you will grow on through it and let God get glory from your trials. You should ask, “ God what do you want me to learn through this, and how can you get glory?” Your painful past can always be used as a platform for your ministry of today. Minister to other hurting people. Don’t wear a label – “divorced”. Put on Jesus Christ is what scripture tells us.

Don’t let people label you or keep you down where you used to be. It doesn’t matter as much to what you were, as much as it matters who you become. You are not divorced, depressed, stupid, ugly etc… Scripture tells us that those of us in Christ Jesus, are loved, accepted, forgiven, pleasing, worthy and crowned with glory and honor. We are wonderfully made. We have a plan for our life that is good and not evil. We have all the riches of heaven coming to us, all our needs met, our prayers answered, a high tower to run to when we are hurt and an ever present help in times of trouble. That is what you are. Let the Word define you and not the world. Through your weakness, His strength is perfected.

Stop relationships. Learn from your past before you ever get involved again. If you don’t learn, you are destined to repeat them. You need to grow spiritually and emotionally. You need to learn how to communicate better and control your anger. Don’t think of entering another relationship for at least two years post divorce. Get yourself holy and healthy so that you will attract other healthy, holy people into your life. The last thing you need is another sick relationship. But that is all you will get if you stay dysfunctional.

Move on. Some of you hold out that maybe your spouse will return to you. God can always restore your spouse to sanity. But if you are divorced, don’t waste another day on this fantasy you have. It may come true. It may not. Reality is that you are divorced. This is not the life you wanted, but it is the one you got. Deal with it. If God brings your spouse back, then you will be there. If not, you will be moving ahead. Life is too short to waste any amount of time on an idea you hope may come true. Build your new life on serving others. It will help you get over your problems. It will also help you fulfill your role as a Christian. Galatians 6:2 tells us to bear other people’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. Serving others will help you grow through this better than anything. Get yourself a personal ministry.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you it states in James 4. Focus on growing closer to Him. He will restore your soul. He will bind up your broken heart. He will heal you and set you on a divine plan of victory. Quit looking down and look up. And never, never, never give up. God is for you. Married, divorced, single or widowed, nothing can separate you from the love of God to those in Christ Jesus.

Every marriage retreat weekend that I do, there a handful of couples who come to it claiming they are getting a divorce. They state that this is their last effort to try and hold the marriage together. I am thankful to God that He gives me an opportunity to minister to these couples. With information from the Bible, these couples always leave the retreat with a renewed strength and a steadfast resolution to hold the marriage together.

Praise God!

This is not a reflection on my marriage retreats, but rather a reflection upon the power of Christ and the counsel of the Word of God to restore and reconcile human relationships.

( Just as a side-note, the next marriage retreat will be held at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas on October 19-20^th. Phone 501-679-2872 ). Here are some things couples need to implement before they get a divorce. You need to fight for your marriage. Don’t find grounds for divorce. Find grounds to stay married. God is for marriage. Please, do everything within your power to stay married.

1) Stop talking to friends and family. Many couples headed for marital break-up seek a lot of outside help. That is normal because you are at the end of your rope and don’t know what to do. However, I would limit asking my family what to do. Families are too close to the situation. Families have history, emotions and love involved. They can never offer objective help. They will offer most of the time, what is going to spare their own family member the least amount of trouble. In a major decision, seek objective help from someone not so tied into the situation. Don’t ask any friend for advice unless you know that friend is well-grounded in scripture and is touched by the hand of God on a daily basis. Galatians 6:1. They must be spiritually mature. Otherwise, the advice you get may not be from the Bible. Everyone has an opinion. Most people have close family members who have been divorced. They will all have types of stories to tell you. You don’t need stories. You need hope, help and restoration of your marriage. Only a person who spends time before the throne in an active prayer life, and who is an ardent student of God’s Word, would be a person that I would ask about something as major as the continuance of my family. Seek a pastor or a biblical counselor. Don’t’ be so prideful that you say you don’t need a counselor. That pride is a large contributing factor to the mess you are in today. Be humble. Seek help. God gives grace unto the humble but he resist the proud. James 4:6.

2) God is big and can do anything He wants. Luke 1:37 “ For with God, nothing shall be impossible.” You have wrong thinking. You think that it is over. There is no way to save this marriage. You are wrong. There is no problem in a human marriage that God cannot solve. Do you think he is sitting up there in heaven on his eternal throne throwing his hands up and saying, “ Gee I don’t know what for y’all to do. Guess you better get a divorce because I am stumped on this one.” God alone is wise. He has all the answers. It is God’s will for you to stay married. God is for marriage. God can change the heart of both of you. However, God can choose to not bring forth an answer when your heart is resistive, proud or doesn’t want any help. As long as a couple will BOTH tell me that they will do whatever it takes to save their marriage, then God can do it. If they will both say I want to sacrifice myself for the cause of my marriage, God will do it. But if either, or both, get this attitude that it is over, then God himself will allow the outcome of this type of closed off heart and this out-of-control pride. If you will just humbly cry out to God for help, he will show you great things He can do that you don’t even know about.

Jeremiah 33:3 “ Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”

3) Get away for a day. You both are so enmeshed in this thing, that you can’t think clearly. I would advise you two to take a day off and cool down. During this day, I want you to think about what it was that attracted you two together in the first place. Instead of listing all the problems you now see; find at least a few things that this spouse is doing okay with. If you can’t, ask God to show you. No one is 100% wrong all the time. Look at your spouse through the eyes of faith and believe God can change anyone. Know that for your marriage to work, you have to change yourself. It isn’t all your spouse’s fault. You share in the break down of this relationship. Humble yourself. Spend the day in prayer and reflection on these thoughts. You may have to spend the day praying and fasting. Don’t be around other people either. You can’t do this while playing video games with your friends, or shopping in the mall. Go to the park. If you live in Arkansas, go sit on a mountain top or on the banks of one of our beautiful rivers. Think. Believe. Pray. Fast. Pour all of your energy, emotions and mental drive into pondering how to save this marriage. Ask the Lord to lead you beside still waters and green pastures. Ask him to restore your soul and your marriage. Have faith. James 4:10 “ Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.” He promises to lift you up. Do you need a lift? Humble yourself and God keeps his promises. Read James 4: 6-10.

If you are already divorced, then don’t read this article. It will just bring you down. Your article, entitled “ After Divorce” is coming next. This article is the second article on why you should fight to stay married. In article one I wrote about how you can go about to keep the marriage together and restore the relationship. In this article, I will address the negatives of divorce. These are reasons why you need to do all you can to stay married and find grounds for marriage, rather than grounds for divorce.

Getting divorced rarely solves the problems of the people involved. You think that life will completely change and all will be well. However, the character and relational problems that the couple has before divorce, will still exist after divorce. The pride, anger, selfishness, depression, inability to make commitment, love of money, and all the other sinful traits, are not solved by getting a divorce. You will still have to work on them with God leading you to victory. All of these problems can be addressed while still staying married. You have painted a mental picture that your spouse is the sole source of all your problems. You think that by getting a divorce, then you will have all these problems vanish. Actually, divorce just gives you a whole set of new problems to deal with, and you still have all of your own personal issues to contend with. Your low self-esteem will still be evident and you will still live out your life, from a basis of low self-worth or shame. You may say, “ but at least I won’t have someone to remind me of how worthless I am every day.” That is true. But after divorce you still have your low self-esteem. Could you not learn to set some boundaries now with your partner, and both of you work on your issues together to stay married?

Divorce is a financial disaster. If you are a single mom, it will be extremely difficult to make it, even with child support. If you are a guy, you are going to be paying for this divorce for decades financially. It is not fiscally prudent to ever get a divorce.

Divorce will block your personal growth and ministry. You will be overwhelmed with raw emotions, and this will cause you to shut down and withdraw emotionally. It is quite possible you will be so hurt, that you will stop your personal devotion time. It is also hard to serve others when you are in this state because you tend to be self-absorbed. This limits your ministry of serving others.

Divorce sets you up for repeated failures with someone else. If you didn’t learn and grow through your mistakes and sin, what makes you think it will somehow magically be different after divorce. Divorce will harden your heart. Divorce causes you to put walls up around your heart. You don’t want to hurt like this again. You don’t want to be taken advantage of again. You don’t want to be the victim of betrayal again. Up comes the walls. As a result, you wall out love. You become mistrusting of others. You become distant and have a hard time being intimate with others. ( I am speaking emotionally here). If you put a wall up around your heart, it may keep a lot of the hurt out, but it also walls out the love. If you become vulnerable again, will you be hurt again? Yes, because we live in a broken world. But to leave the wall up, keeps the love out. And scripture tells us that a life without love is nothing.

Divorce weakness your faith. You have faith in God and marriage and His laws. After divorce you are left with doubt and questions. Instead of faithful obedience, you begin to choose what ways in God’s bible are right for you. There can be a crack in the truth which can lead to a bursting dam of doubt. Now the enemy can start on you. Satan loves to visit damaged emotions.

Divorce increases your loneliness. You will pull away from some people. Some people will pull away from you. The end result is loneliness and it hurts. Divorce always marks your children’s hearts no matter how old they are. Even adult children are hurt when parents divorce. You and your spouse may think things are now better, but you can’t erase the marks on the kids hearts. You can’t buy away the marks on their heart. You want a painless, no consequence result of your divorce, and that is not possible. Your kids can get over it. They can go on to be great Christians. They can love both of you. But there will always be a mark on their heart the rest of their life from your divorce.

You also will hurt your friends and relatives with your divorce. There is a rippling effect of pain caused to your entire circle of influence because of divorce. It impacts your legacy that you leave. Please let God restore your marriage. Put down your pride and selfishness. Put on the whole armor of God. Let him restore you. Divorce is not the answer. Jesus is. Heaven is pulling for you. Do whatever you both can to stay together.