By Denise Spooner
From Genesis to Revelation, God’s heart never changes and never compromises on the issue of marriage. He enters into the very foundation of marriage because it was His idea in the first place. Marriage between a man and a woman was selected as an example of the relationship between Jesus and the church, God’s own people, and Himself. Do we demonstrate this wonderful, sacred relationship to others?
In Mark 10, we see the importance of marriage to God when Jesus shares the heart of God on the issue of divorce. Verses 2 through 9, Jesus tells the Pharisees the reason Moses said it was acceptable for people to divorce. The reason was because of the hardness of the people’s hearts. Not because of sexual immorality, not because of abuse and certainly, not because spouses were just not getting along. Jesus said this was not God’s way for marriages. From the very beginning God made man and woman to be joined together permanently in marriage. A man was to leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife therefore becoming. God said, “Let no man separate what God has joined together.”
I wonder sometimes what part of that last command we don’t quite understand especially when a couple firmly says, ‘But what about this or that?’ I think God shares His heart on this issue quite clearly. Moses allowed the people to write a letter of divorce because of the hardness of their hearts, but God says it should never have been so. We must accept this truth. God hates divorce as spoken in Malachi 2:16, and for good reasons. This hardness of hearts flows down from our spouses to our children as well. It is not very often someone who is seeking divorce thinks of the devastation and pain it will cause their children.
Satan is not for marriages and he can care less about your covenant before God or your children’s best interests. He comes to tear down that which God wants to build. What matters most should be what God says on the matter of marriage and divorce. He sees it as a sacred covenant between us and God. Often we find the hardest thing to surrender is our own personal reasons for divorce. God knows what is best for families and divorce should never be an option if our relationships are right with God.
We have a tremendous responsibility to love one another even when it is a challenge to do so. During the first 10 years of my marriage to my present husband, selfishness, lust, physical and emotional abuse, adultery, pornography, and unfaithfulness encompassed our lives. Had it not been for God’s gracious power to heal, strengthen, forgive and restore us and our marriage we would be part of the 60% divorce statistic while planting seeds of divorce into our children’s and grandchildren’s lives and their future marriages. What kind of legacy would we have left them?
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Denise Spooner writes from Grants Pass, Oregon.