Bitter Breakups and Divine Closure: Our Pain and His Providence

I remember my first failed relationship. I was in junior high and enamored with a girl one year my senior. One day I mustered up the courage to approach her and asked if she would be my girlfriend. Though we hardly knew each other, she said yes.

No one should be surprised that the relationship ended shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, my depraved 14-year-old mind and heart thought that I was in love, and when we broke up, it hurt.

I cringe at the memories of singing love songs (think Usher in 2001) while sobbing in my room, wondering why it had to end.

Frankly, it was pathetic.

Good, Bad, and Bitter Breakups

 

Shake your head if you must, but many of us have endured similar experiences in our adult years. Accruing countless breakups before marriage has become the norm.   Continue at  Phillip Holmes

When Two So-Called “Married” Women (or Men) Repent

One of the sweet advantages of insisting that there is no such thing as same-sex “marriage” is that there is therefore also no such thing as same-sex “divorce.” In the days ahead, this will be very good news for many who repent.

In the years to come, God will be merciful on thousands of those who have been damaged by the present moral madness of our culture. He will exalt Christ in the conversion of many who have lived in same-sex relationships. More complexities than we can imagine will be presented to us in the church.

One of the more difficult scenarios will be what the church should do when, say, two women, who have lived in a so-called married state for some years, are converted to Christ, repent of their sin, and want to join the church. And what if they have children?

In this uncharted territory, here is a map with some of the biblical guideposts I foresee. It is not exhaustive. I invite every pastor to pray that God would grant him the great privilege of leading new believers through this process.

1. Rejoice. We should join all heaven in the joy that our Father and the angels feel over this repentance.

“There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Luke 15:7)

2. Pray. This is going to be complex and difficult. We need humble wisdom beyond the merely human.

The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3:17)    Continue at John Piper

10 Ways that Satan Loves to Watch Marriages Fall Apart

According the Bible, Satan prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8), but many times, he probably doesn’t have to do that much. I wonder if sometimes Satan sits back and laughs at us.

Marriage can be extremely messy. As sinners we can do dumb things in marriage—we hurt one another; we make false assumptions and then miscommunicate; we manipulate or say mean things to our spouse; we think less about serving and more about being served. We don’t always follow God’s Word or advice from godly leaders. We put our hopes in the world or each other more than we put hope in God.

We don’t need Satan to ruin our marriage. We do plenty of unhelpful things on our own to ruin our marriages. I’m sure Satan enjoys having a front row seat, watching our folly and foolishness.

What does he see?   Continue at BCC

Family Matters (John MacArthur)

For the last several years, we’ve had a front-row seat to a vicious, violent attack on one of the Lord’s most precious institutions. And make no mistake about it—the family, as established by the Lord, is under attack.

The assault is waged on many fronts—homosexual marriage, pervasive immorality, rampant divorce, and even the widespread acceptance of unwed couples and children born outside of marriage. They all chip away at God’s design for the family. The Lord created marriage as an image of His love and care for His people—our sinful society has turned it into a canvas for wickedness and perversion.

When he was recently in studio, we asked John MacArthur what’s most important about God’s design for the family, and what dangers face a society that rejects it. Here’s what he said:

Not long ago, we featured a blog series about the importance of biblical marriage and God’s design for the family. You can find all those posts collected on our series page.

And you can find further teaching on the subject in John MacArthur’s landmark series, The Fulfilled Family.

GTY Staff

Pastors: That Divorce Rate Stat You Quoted Was Probably Wrong

Since I have written quite extensively about the abuse of stats by evangelicals and the media in the past, it was refreshing to see a recent article at the Gospel Coalition show some new data that corrects some erroneous divorce rate statistics which seem to get thrown around the Internet, in the media, and, unfortunately, in the pulpit. The stat in question was that Christians divorce at roughly the same rate as the world. 

But what did the actual research show?

People who seriously practice a traditional religious faith---whether Christian or other---have a divorce rate markedly lower than the general population.
The factor making the most difference is religious commitment and practice.

What appears intuitive is true. Couples who regularly practice any combination of serious religious behaviors and attitudes---attend church nearly every week, read their bibles and spiritual materials regularly; pray privately and together; generally take their faith seriously, living not as perfect disciples, but serious disciples---enjoy significantly lower divorce rates than mere church members, the general public, and unbelievers.

The article draws from research found in Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites... and Other Lies You've Been Told, the 2010 book by Bradley Wright (and for which I wrote the foreword), as well as an article by W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Williamson in American Religions and the Family.

Specifically, the research shows that couples who are active in their faith are much less likely to divorce. Catholic couples were 31% less likely to divorce; Protestants couples 35% less likely; and Jewish couples 97% less likely, which in itself is quite impressive, I must say.   Continue at Jonathan Howe

Pornopoly

By the time the couple made it to my office, their marriage was already chaos. She had cheated on him, he had cheated on her, and neither seemed remorseful. The problem, as they saw it, was that the other was not satisfying them. The problem, as I saw it, was that they had each spent years consuming pornography. Frequently subjecting their minds to perverse pictures had created a pattern of thinking and of arousal. And my counselees are hardly the only ones in this predicament.

The sexual climate of our culture is dominated by the pornographic. The way most people think about sexual expression is tainted by lubricity. True sexual morality is seen as inane and archaic. Sex and sexuality are governed by the immoral, and the pornographic mindset has cornered the market on all sex. In short: we live in a Pornopoly.

This monopoly has affected everything from sex education in schools, to clothing styles for pre-teens, to the expectations of married men and women in their bedrooms. The porn problem is not contained to adolescent boys and their computers in mom and dad's basement. It has spread, like a rapacious plague, across our culture and even into the church. Porn controls much sexual expression and sexual discussion in our culture.

For example: porn has deeply affected the way men relate to women. The average single man watches porn for 40 minutes, three times a week. That's two hours a week, and 104 hours per year. The average male views porn for the first time at age 11, which means by the time he is 30 he will have watched almost 2,000 hours of pornography. For the average man in a relationship it is only slightly different. A married man, or man in a steady dating relationship, will watch porn 1.7 days a week for 20 minutes. Perhaps more alarming, 90 percent of men watch pornography. William Struthers talks about how this prolonged exposure to porn affects relationships. In his book Wired for Intimacy, he writes:   Continue at Dave Dunham

The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage, Part Two

The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage, Part One

 

The Christian worldview must direct all consideration of sexuality to the institution of marriage. Marriage is not merely the arena for sexual activity, it is presented in Scripture as the divinely-designed arena for the display of God’s glory on earth as a man and a wife come together in a one-flesh relationship within the marriage covenant. Rightly understood and rightly ordered, marriage is a picture of God’s own covenantal faithfulness. Marriage is to display God’s glory, reveal God’s good gifts to His creatures, and protect human beings from the inevitable disaster that follows when sexual passions are divorced from their rightful place.

The marginalization of marriage, and the open antipathy with which many in the culture elite approach the question of marriage, produces a context in which Christians committed to a marriage ethic appear hopelessly out of step with the larger culture. Whereas marriage is seen as a privatized contract to be made and unmade at will in the larger society, Christians must see marriage as an inviolable covenant made before God and man, that establishes both temporal and eternal realities.

Christians have no right to be embarrassed when it comes to talking about sex and sexuality. An unhealthy reticence or embarrassment in dealing with these issues is a form of disrespect to God’s creation. Whatever God made is good, and every good thing God made has an intended purpose that ultimately reveals His own glory. When conservative Christians respond to sex with ambivalence or embarrassment, we slander the goodness of God and hide God’s glory which is intended to be revealed in the right use of creation’s gifts.   Continue at Al Mohler

Does Facebook Wreck Marriages?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his status to “married” Saturday and received over one million “likes” from his followers. But the site he founded isn’t always so marriage-friendly.  In fact, lawyers say the social network contributes to an increasing number of marriage breakups.

More than a third of divorce filings last year contained the word Facebook, according to a U.K. survey by Divorce Online, a  legal services firm. And over 80% of U.S. divorce attorneys say they’ve seen a rise in the number of cases using social networking, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “I see Facebook issues breaking up marriages all the time,” says Gary Traystman, a divorce attorney in New London, Conn. Of the 15 cases he handles per year where computer history, texts and emails are admitted as evidence, 60% exclusively involve Facebook.

“Affairs happen with a lightning speed on Facebook,” says K. Jason Krafsky, who authored the book “Facebook and Your Marriage” with his wife Kelli. In the real world, he says, office romances and out-of-town trysts can take months or even years to develop. “On Facebook,” he says, “they happen in just a few clicks.” The social network is different from most social networks or dating sites in that it both re-connects old flames and allows people to “friend” someone they may only met once in passing. “It puts temptation in the path of people who would never in a million years risk having an affair,” he says. Facebook declined to comment.   Continue at  Quentin Fottrell

The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage

AT 32, one of my clients (I’ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple’s friends, families and two dogs.

When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. “I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,” she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she’d tried to do everything right. “My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen?” 

Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis. 

In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.” 

About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.  Continue at NYTimes

Columns from Tabletalk Magazine, December 2011

The December edition of Tabletalk is out. This month’s issue examines the brokenness afflicting all households and seeks to offer hope amid the turmoil through the gospel of Jesus Christ. It aims to provide wise biblical direction for all readers as we seek to live out the gospel in caring daily for our own families and other families around us. Contributors include R.C. Sproul, John Piper, Scott Anderson, John Starke, Anthony Carter, Burk Parsons, and R.C. Sproul Jr.

We do not post all of the feature articles or the daily devotionals from the issue, so you’ll have to subscribe to get those. But for now, here are links to a few select columns and articles from this month:

• “Hope for the Broken” by Burk Parsons
• “Divorce” by R.C. Sproul
• “Holy People Are Happy People” by John Starke

Read it all HERE

David a Model of Restoration?

Does David’s life teach us that God can restore an adulterer to ministry? After all, David was a murderer and an adulterer, as well as a liar and poor father. 

Polygamy aside, his family life was a catastrophic train crash matched only by the debacle in 2 Samuel 11. 

Yet God did not remove him from the throne, and allowed his reign to directly last 40 years, and indirectly forever. Why? What is the lesson there?

The wrong lesson is this: God does not take sin seriously. I have heard people who commit immorality point at David and say, “See! God let him be king, so he can return me to ministry despite my unbiblical divorce and/or adultery.”

Let me be clear about two things. First, God does use sinners (those are the only kind of people there are!). At the same time, there are some sins that in the church disqualify someone from being an elder or church leader. Second, it is possible for people who have committed certain disqualifying sins to eventually be restored to pastoral ministry after an extended time away. An excellent book on that topic is The Stain that Stays, as it provides principles to apply in  those situations. This post does not want to go down the road of looking at those principles.

But I have heard Christian leaders who have committed disqualifying sexual sins point to David as justification for their refusal to take time away from ministry. The goal of this post is to explain why David’s life does not function as an example of God blessing the ministry of a disqualified leader.   Keep Reading >>>

Christ, the Church, and Pat Robertson

This week on his television show Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said a man would be morally justified to divorce his wife with Alzheimer’s disease in order to marry another woman. The dementia-riddled wife is, Robertson said, “not there” anymore. This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore. Most roll their eyes, and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment (for instance, defending China’s brutal one-child abortion policy to identifying God’s judgment on specific actions in the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake). This is serious, though, because it points to an issue that is much bigger than Robertson.    Keep Reading...

Art, Nakedness, and Redemption

Where God displays His redemptive activity in contexts of extra-marital nakedness He clothes His people. Ezekiel 16 exemplifies this pattern in Scripture: God graciously redeems and clothes His bride, covering her nakedness and making her beautiful.  Her God-given covering is not a denial of beauty, but rather a redemptive rescue and restoration to appropriate, glorious, public beauty, after she had been an object of abandoned, uncovered shame. The bride, however, turns to play the whore, prostituting herself, taking off her beautiful clothes, giving her naked beauty, now rebel, distorted and cheap, to any passer-by. Her disrobing outside of marriage is an outward expression of her inner rejection of God's redemption. She calls men to join her in violating God's perfect law. 

The disrobing, redemption-rejecting woman of Ezekiel stands in stark contrast to the bride of the Song of Solomon, whose nakedness is truly beautiful. It is reserved for her husband, given to him alone--a "step that does not establish deep intimacy, but one which presupposes it." [3]  Even in the literary description of the marital sweetness and joy of the inspired Song a poetic modesty remains. [4]  There is also a glorious foreshadowing here of the relationship of Christ and His Bride, the church, who is clothed as well--by His redemption. Read the whole article HERE

Divorce — The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience

When the Christian right was organized in the 1970s and galvanized in the 1980s, the issues of abortion and homosexuality were front and center. Where was divorce? Smith documents the fact that groups such as the “pro-traditional family” Moral Majority led by the late Jerry Falwell generally failed even to mention divorce in their publications or platforms.
“During the 10 years of its existence, Falwell’s organization mobilized and lobbied on many political issues, including abortion, pornography, gay rights, school prayer, the Equal Rights Amendment, and sex education in schools,” he recalls. Where is divorce — a tragedy that affects far more families than the more “hot button” issues? “Divorce failed to achieve that exalted status, ranking so low on the group’s agenda that books on the Moral Majority do not even give the issue a listing in the index.”
But the real scandal is far deeper than missing listings in an index. The real scandal is the fact that evangelical Protestants divorce at rates at least as high as the rest of the public. Needless to say, this creates a significant credibility crisis when evangelicals then rise to speak in defense of marriage. Read the rest HERE

Is “Ever After” Just Too Long? Marriage and Modernity

The breakup of the Gores caught attention at least in part because it came after four decades of marriage. This couple had endured the climactic highs and terrifying lows of political life. They had spent virtually their entire adult lives together. They had leaned on each other as they experienced the near death of their son, Albert Gore III, as a boy. They had been the stalwartly married couple standing alongside the humiliated Clintons. They had forged a new life after Al Gore’s loss in the 2000 presidential race. Al had gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and became the most visible celebrity face for the campaign against climate change.

But now, after spending forty years together, raising their family, and surviving political life at the heights, they announced that their lives had been moving apart and their mutual decision was to forge their futures apart from each other. Read the rest HERE

10 Points to Consider Before You Contemplate Divorce

Divorce and Remarriage: A Smokescreen and a Fire

The Divorce Divide — A National Embarrassment