Seasons Of Divorce Volume 1: Seasons Of Loss And SorrowSample

You may now be understanding today’s verse in a new way, sadly enough. It is often read as if it says, “God hates divorced (or divorcing) people.” But it doesn’t. It says, “God hates divorce.” (In context, it refers to the divorces occurring then as men were divorcing their wives for younger women, abandoning the woman who has stood with them.) In the process of divorcing and the subsequent healing, you will have a deeper understanding of why God hates divorce. Before it was easy to glibly talk about broken families and how people should stay together. As you go through the processes ahead, you will never speak of this glibly again, but with sadness in your tone, a tear in your eye and an ache in your heart, remembering the impact on your life.

There are things you will feel that you will hate. You may think things you will hate to admit having thought. There are choices you will have to make in which you hate every option. You will hate having to go through some things, and hate more what your children go through. In the brokenness, loss, loneliness, fearfulness you will have a deeper understanding of, “God hates divorce.” He hates what you are experiencing. He hates the marring that has come into the world through the Fall, leaving the kind of world where divorce is, at best, an apparently necessary evil.

As Jesus wept over Jerusalem, so He weeps over your experiences. His heart breaks with you. His desire is to heal your brokenness and to be near you during this tough experience. Sure, His best choice would be for your marriage to be restored in such a way that each is a committed, humble partner, repenting of every wrong, and living with one another and with Him in holy marital bliss. But if that is not your situation, He will still walk with you through the days ahead.

He will speak if you listen and comfort if you draw near. He will give courage when your courage fails, and get you through the days ahead. He will bring you out in a way He can use to make you more than you are to prepare you for the ministry beyond these dark days. You have to trust Him, day by day, moment by moment, step by step, until you see the sun shine again.