Divorce and Remarriage

arrived home one night to find my children perturbed and concerned.  They had not seen their mother since arriving home from school and noticed also that the dogs were missing.  The electricity bill had not been paid and the power had been cut off.  Since it was now getting dark and it was the middle of winter, there was an atmosphere of total gloom in the home.  A closer examination of our room showed that a suitcase had been packed and removed.  My greatest fears began to take on reality, but there was no sign of a note or any indication of where she had gone.  Calls to friends and relatives yielded no clues as to what had happened.

That night my three daughters and I slept together in the same bed, trying to keep warm and encourage each other.  In the middle of the night, by candle light, I discovered the note.  It was scribbled in pencil on a small piece of paper and revealed nothing except the fact that she felt she needed to get away alone and get her thoughts together.  Five days of confusion and pain followed before I finally found out what had happened, and by then it was too late.  Someone else had claimed my place in her heart and she no longer wanted to be with us.

Thus began the time of greatest grief I have ever experienced, leading to the most traumatic event in my life.  Divorce!  The 'D' Word.  The unthinkable in the life of a believer and a minister of the Gospel to boot.  I remembered how years back the kids would say to us, "Dad what would happen if you and Mom were divorced?"  My reply was quick and confident, "Don't even think about it.  It will never happen."

But it did.  And I found out that believers, even preachers, are not immune to the ravages of sin.  For the first time I fully understood what people went through when their marriages broke up.  I realized that divorcees needed to be viewed with compassion and not condemnation.  And I learned a few things about both marriage and divorce that I had never learned before, in spite of my extensive studies in the realm of counseling.

I am not going to go into the details of my story, since that is the past and it is gone, but I want to be able to help you work through some of the problems which are associated with divorce, so I am going to try to identify with you every now and then by sharing some of my experiences and what the Lord taught me through them.  Having come successfully through the trauma of divorce,  the Lord has often led me and the new wife He has given me to minister to others who have had to face it.

Although in the past it has commonly been the womenfolk who have faced this situation more than the men, there is an increasing incidence in today's society of men having to face the trauma of desertion and single parenthood.  Since this was my experience I will be writing from this perspective.  I know that this might not enable me to fully understand the predicament of a women who is divorced, but I will be covering principles that apply to both.  I have found that divorce leaves a similar mark on both sexes, and after the experience I could easily relate to both men and women who had experienced it.  The effects are the same.  So is the pain.

Although this will not be a very detailed discussion on the subject (we could write a whole book on it), I hope to cover all of the main aspects involved, and we will be looking at the subject under the following headings.
 

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Emotions of Divorce

In this section I am going to deal with the most difficult part of divorce - the feelings that are generated in a divorcee.  Feelings are always the most difficult things to deal with.  Even though you might be able to understand what has happened and try to explain it all, the feelings are still there.  And feelings are beyond the control of our wills.  So I am going to try to help you to deal with your feelings in this section.

The Grief of Divorce

Divorce is very similar to losing a person through death - only worse.  In death the person never returns, and time heals.  But with divorce the person remains and is continually there.  Instead of the pain healing with time, it can be like a festering sore that is stirred up every time you see or interact with the person.  But it does not need to continue.  This section will help you deal with the grief process that accompanies divorce.

You probably did not think that this could happen to you, especially if you are a committed Christian.  And certainly the chances are it took you by surprise.   You have suddenly lost someone who has been part of your life over a long period of time.  The effects are very similar to loss by death.  Your whole life is shaken up and could be coming apart at the seams.  You are confused, angry, disappointed, afraid and all churned up inside.  The divorce decree has made it final.  There is no going back now.  It is over, and it still seems like a bad dream that you wish would stop. 

You will go through various stages similar to bereavement, but the most difficult thing is going to be letting go.  You may find yourself reviewing times together, but the greatest pain is likely to come where your partner was unfaithful to you.  You keep thinking about him or her with someone else, and it tears you apart.

Dealing with these feelings of grief is something that you cannot handle alone.   You need the Holy Spirit to intervene in your life.  You need to Lord to give you a fresh vision for the future.  But the most important thing is that you must make a choice to put the past behind you.  There will be things that remind you of your ex and your past marriage and bring back the pain.  So you have to break all links with the past.  That means you have to get rid of everything that reminds you of the past.  This is a different to a person who is bereaved.  They want to retain the happy memories they had with the departed loved one.  But the divorcee cannot afford this luxury.  The past memories must be erased for the pain to stop.

Here is where wisdom is needed.  It is possible that the divorce may not be final, in that your ex has not remarried and could return to you.  There is a possibility that reconciliation may be accomplished.  It that be the case, then you have to change the image of your mind.  You must not grieve as though you have lost a loved one, but you must see the marriage restored.  It is important here to know God's purpose in the matter.  You need to know if God is telling you to believe for restoration  or not.

In my own experience the Lord indicated that my wife had become a withered branch and needed to be removed.  He promised that He would graft a new branch in its place that would be fruitful.  God is concerned about His Kingdom, and this carries greater priority than a faulty marriage relationship.  Where restoration of the relationship would stand in the way of God's purpose and calling in a person's life it cannot be God's purpose to restore.  Where one partner interferes with God's calling and refuses to be part of it, God will woo and do many things to bring that partner into order.  But where such a person rejects God's purpose to the point of breaking the marriage bond, it would be foolish to seek God for restoration on the relationship.

It is true that God can change such a person, and where this happens, a restoration can take place.  In my experience God had placed a joint call on both partners and one had refused to comply with that call.  So when my ex wife left, and refused to be reconciled, the Lord told me to let her go, and cut off the withered branch.  He promised that He would graft in a new branch that would bear fruit.  And this He did, supplying a wife that would fully accept and move into the joint call that He had placed.  

However I did not follow this procedure until I had made every possible effort to bring about reconciliation.  I followed every Scriptural principle to restore the marriage. Then I took a stand that I wanted a new wife, who would comply with the call of God.  I gave my ex wife the opportunity to become that new wife if she chose to.   Then when every effort had failed, and she refused to comply, I gave her the release that she desired.  She remarried a week after the divorce decree, leaving me free to look to the Lord for the wife He had promised me.  And within three months the Lord answered my prayer and faith.

If you find yourself now in the position of being divorced, you need to seek the Lord for His purpose in this matter and follow His will for your life.  If there is no possibility for reconciliation, then put your previous marriage behind you.  Get rid of every sentimental object that reminds you of your ex.  Get rid especially of any letters that were written by him or her.  These carry the spirit of the person you were married to and will continue to maintain a spiritual link with that person.  If you have children they might want pictures of your previous marriage and your ex spouse.   Otherwise get rid of them.  They are links with the past.

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The Bitterness of Divorce

No divorce can take place without some form of bitterness being generated.   Whether it be bitterness against the ex marriage partner, or against a third party that contributed to the breakdown on the marriage, it is always there.  I will show you here what the Scriptures teach concerning dealing with bitterness, and how this may be removed from your life.

One of the most difficult things to deal with in divorce is the unfaithfulness of your ex spouse.  The thought of him or her being with someone else can be almost unbearable.  You might find yourself wallowing and moping thinking about it.   This will continue until you have let go of the bitterness.  And the only way you can do this is to forgive both the ex spouse and the other person.  You might find it possible to forgive your ex, but forgiving the person who destroyed your marriage is going to be a little more difficult.  Notice I said difficult, not impossible.   Because with God all things are possible.

I want to give you a few guidelines here on forgiveness that are absolutely essential if you are going to break free of the bitterness and stop the pain.  I have a full study on forgiveness that will be available separately under the counseling section, but I just want to give you a few of the basic principles here.

I found that when I forgave my ex spouse and the person who it appeared had broken up our marriage, the pain stopped.  I was finally able to let go of what had happened, and they even became my friends instead of enemies.  So much so that later when I remarried, my new wife and ex wife got along together so well that they even ran a business together in partnership for a while.  God is able to do wonderful things when you are prepared to do things His way.  Jesus prayed on the cross for the very ones who were crucifying Him.  And by His grace we can do the same if we want to.   It is simply a matter of choice.

You have to make that choice.  And if you refuse to do it the pain will go on, and you will never be able to break free.  Neither will you be able to enter into a future marriage successfully.  I will speak more about this in the section on remarriage.

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The Loneliness of Divorce

We tend to take our marriage partner for granted until that person is no longer there.   Having someone with you is something you have been used to, even if the marriage was in trouble.  Now suddenly you are alone, and the loneliness can become overwhelming.  I want to look here at some ways of dealing with the loneliness.

When God made man, He made him a single unit originally - a complete person, having both masculine and feminine qualities.  Then later God put Adam to sleep and removed half of him and made it into the perfect partner.  He created two different people, one having mostly masculine qualities and one having mostly feminine qualities.   Now as the two came together as one, they pooled their resources and became a complete person.  This is the way the Lord has made us.  We are incomplete without a partner who compliments us in every way.  The strengths and weaknesses of each combine together to make a complete person.

Every married couple learns to flow together in way that each one's qualities offset the other person's.  You learn to use the strengths in your partner that make up for your weaknesses.  This is why it is usually opposite temperaments that attract.   This is a fascinating subject in itself, but I will leave that for another place. When you have lived with someone for a long period of time, you have learned to adapt to each other too pool your resources.  But when divorce occurs you are suddenly left with half of you missing.  The strengths that you relied on in the other person are no longer there.  Instead all you are left with are your own weaknesses in that area.

Perhaps your partner had a better capability with finances and managed the budget every month.  Now you have to learn to do it yourself.  This is especially difficult for a woman who had a husband who took care of most of the decision making and handling of problems.  Now she is left alone and has to do things she never did before.   Perhaps the husband has been left with the children and now he suddenly has to learn how to deal with children, whereas that was always the responsibility of the mother before.  I will speak more about this later in dealing with single parenting.

Before being alone over weekends was not a big deal.  Even if you were just watching TV, there was always someone there to keep you company in the background.   Now the house is deserted.  The bed space next to you is empty at night.   When you go to church you sit alone.  If you eat at a restaurant you feel awkward because you sit alone at a table.  And it seems that everywhere you go, there are couples holding hands and spending time together.  You are half a person, walking around in a daze and wondering what purpose your life has.

Then there are other stresses.  The marriage relationship brought release from the sexual tensions that everyone faces.  Now there is no partner to fulfill the physical needs.  There is no one to come home to at night.  There is no one at the breakfast table in the morning.  Suddenly all the little things that you took for granted before are taken away from you.  You float around aimlessly dreaming of what was and what could have been, and what might be in the future.  This is the greatest pain of divorce.

For the believer there is only One who can truly help you to cope with this.   Whether you are male or female, it is only the Lord who can in some way fill the aching gap that is in your heart.  Now is the time to get to know Him in a way you have never known Him before.  Now is the time to learn to hear His voice.  It might be the only voice of comfort that is available to you.  He will be able to give you strength to overcome your weaknesses.  He will give you wisdom when you do not know where to turn.

It could be that you learned to become too dependent on your spouse instead of the Lord.  You needed your partner too much, and that is why the loneliness is so severe.   That might even be part of the problem in your marriage.  Perhaps it was not truly a love relationship, but a need relationship.  Perhaps your need for your partner was greater than your love. Perhaps your ex was weary of catering to your needs all the time and found someone to cater to his or her needs.  These are things you need to take a long look at now that you are alone.  This is especially important before you think of entering into a new marriage.  You might find history repeating itself.

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The Guilt of Divorce

Perhaps you were a direct cause for the divorce, perhaps you were not.  Either way, there will always be a sense of "Perhaps there was something I should have done, or not done."  This guilt can eat away at you and lead to severe depression and discouragement.  I want to show you here how to deal with the accusation that comes from your own conscience and perhaps from others.

Along with the tendency for divorcees to be bitter comes the tendency to either carry a load of guilt or pass the guilt onto the ex spouse.  Often you swing from one end of the pendulum to the other.  You start out by feeling guilty for not saving your marriage, then you cover it up by passing all the blame to the other partner.  I am going to deal first with your own guilt.  And here I want to add more to what I said before about forgiveness.  I dealt earlier with learning to speak forgiveness to those who have hurt you.  But it is also necessary that you obtain forgiveness.

It is important that you go about this the right way before you can put everything to rest.  I want to firstly consider some of the ways you must not seek to obtain forgiveness.  These are strictly a no-no if you want to do it the Scriptural way.

All of the above methods of seeking forgiveness leave you in an unbalanced position.   It might resolve the conflict you have with the person, but it leaves you with a sense of guilt.  You might have confessed your failures to the Lord and you know that He has forgiven you, but you cannot forgive yourself for where you failed.  There is only one clear Scriptural way to obtain forgiveness, and that is to do what Jesus said.  

Matthew 7:3 And why do you look at the splinter that is in your brother's eye, but do not consider the beam that is in your own eye?

You have to look at your beam first.  So you approach it by identifying your failure.  Then when you approach the person to ask forgiveness, you do it like this.

I was wrong in  ...(say exactly what you did that was wrong).  Please would you forgive me?

This causes two things to fall into place. 

If you do it this way you can put to sleep the things that are bothering you and you can break free of the guilt of your failures that led to the divorce.  Of course if you had done some of this before the divorce took place, you might have been able to prevent the divorce from taking place.  But that is another matter altogether.   We will cover that under marital problems.

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Breaking Free

Severing the Bond

The marriage bond is more than what was created when you spoke your vows and were pronounced husband and wife by the marriage officer.  It is a spiritual thing.   And since the bond is spiritual, there is no divorce court or Judge that is able to break it.  A divorce decree does not break the bond that was created between you and your ex.  It has to be dealt with separately or you will never be free of the past and the pain will continue.

There is a Scripture that Jesus spoke that has been greatly misunderstood by many who refuse to acknowledge that divorce may take place between believers.

Matthew 19:5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they two shall be one flesh?
6 Therefore they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put apart.

What Jesus was actually saying here is that man cannot put apart what God has joined.   It is only God who can do that.  The question then is "Is it the marriage officer who puts the two together when he performs the ceremony?"  No, this was only a civil ceremony to abide by the laws of the country.  It is the unity of two people as one that takes place when they become one flesh that constitutes the marriage bond.  What happens is not just a physical act.  It is a communion of spirits that takes place.  A bond is created spiritually by the Spirit of God.  God joins the two together to make them no longer one person, but two.

Once this takes place, who has the right to cause a division of the marriage bond?   Is it the divorce court, or an ungodly judge that issues a decree of divorce?   Absolutely not.  Since it is God that created the spiritual bond that constitutes a true marriage, it is only God that can destroy that bond.  Why is it that people are quick to go to church to get married, but turn to the world to get divorced?

Let me tell what happened in my case.  Perhaps you might think this absurd and you might wonder if I am into heresy, but at the risk of being misunderstood I am going to share it with you.  Before I proceeded to grant my ex wife the liberty she desired, I did my best to bring about reconciliation.  The Lord had told me to cut off the withered branch and He would graft in a new one.  When I finally realized that she was not going to return but wanted to be released from the marriage, I came to a decision to break the marriage bond, in accordance with what the Lord had told me to do. 

I called my children together, and announced to them that I was going to proceed with a divorce.  Then we joined together in prayer and I gave my ex wife to the Lord.   I prayed and asked the Lord to remove her from me.  Up until then we were still so one in the spirit that I could often feel her conflicts and suffered with her.   I could not break free of the pain of having her with someone else.  There was still a bond in the spirit between us.  So I asked the Lord to cut the cord and break the bond.  My children were witnesses to my declaration before the Lord.  In the name of Jesus, I cut the cord that tied us together, and immediately I became aware in the Spirit of the branch dying and withering away.

Immediately I felt a release such as I had never had up until that time.  It was as though I could feel the branch withering away and dying.  The memories no longer hurt me.  I felt that I could release her in love to go to someone else.  It was at that point that my divorce occurred, even though it was only about six weeks later that a judge pronounced the decree that legally ended my marriage.  My wife was with me when the decree was issued.  It was not planned that way, but it seemed like the Lord arranged it that way, because she had to be present to countersign an alteration to our divorce agreement where the children were concerned.

After the official divorce I had my last opportunity to be alone with her and to clear up any remaining misunderstandings.  I took her to her new home, and together with her future husband and the children, we stood together and held hands as we committed ourselves to the Lord and placed our future in His hands.  A week later she was remarried and that signaled the final death knell to a sixteen year marriage.

Now I was free to look to the Lord for the new branch that He had promised me.   And He showed me the kind of wife He had for me.  I gave Him my desires and He promised me that He would give me not only my desires but far more.  He told me that as I was prepared to give up what I loved the most in life for the sake of His Kingdom, He would give me the best He had to offer.  The rest of the story is in our article Finding the Perfect Partner.  He truly honored His word and did exactly as He had promised.

Since that time I have learned that there are so many divorced Christians that have never been properly divorced.  They have been through the divorce courts, but have never severed the spiritual link with the their spouse.  You will see these people entering second, third and even more marriages, and they are unable to settle down into a successful marriage.  The main reason for this is that they are still bound to their first spouse.  God has not yet broken them apart in the Spirit.

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Building New Goals

Your life goals before included the person who is now your ex.  Now suddenly that person is removed from the picture you had built in your mind.  This leaves you confused and directionless.  It is necessary to build new goals before your life can get back on beam again.  If you do not set new goals you wander about aimlessly not knowing what to do with your life.  Men have been known to become homeless tramps when they have lost their wife.  They have nothing to strive for any more.  They have no more goals in life and try to escape into another world.

This is the same problem that a person faces when they lose someone in death.  It can lead to depression and no clear life goals.  You have had visions of growing old together with this person, and now they are no longer in the picture.  So you have to set new goals.  Your plans for the home, for the family, for your job, are all affected by this change.  So now you must sit down make new plans for the immediate future and for the long distant future.  Where do you see yourself in the next few months?  Where do you see yourself the next couple of years?  Some of these things are difficult to decide because you are not sure whether you will marry again.

So this should come first on your list of goals.  Many who suffer a divorce are too afraid to enter into another marriage in case it doesn't work out.  Often they end up only having a physical relationship with someone without the finality of marriage.   For the Christian this is totally unacceptable.  The fact that your previous marriage failed does not mean that you have to go through the same experience again.   If you put the Lord at the centre of your life, then you cannot even entertain that idea.  If God is first in your life and first in your new marriage, then there is no reason to fear.  You can enter into the new marriage without making the same mistakes as before.  That is going to be part of the goals you will set.

If you have custody of children from the divorce then you are going to also have to take them into account in your future goals.  A lot of things in your life are going to change.  You must set your goals to take all of these into account.  You need to examine all the areas that you failed in your last marriage.  You need to be honest with yourself and identify all the things in your life that need to be dealt with.   Then you need to submit your goals to the Lord for His approval.  And once you know that He approves, go all out to put them into action.

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Remarriage

Finding the Right Partner

You have not had to worry about finding a marriage partner for many years.  You did not anticipate this would ever be necessary again.  Now suddenly you are faced with the same kind of problems you faced as a young single person.  Only now you are older and the odds have narrowed down a bit.  Where do you find a new partner?   How do you go about it?  My wife has written an article on this very subject, in which we have also shared our own story of how the Lord brought us to together.   So I am not going to try and repeat what has been taught there.  I recommend you go and read the article entitled Finding the Perfect Partner.

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Templates and Triggers

I have dealt with the concept of Templates and Triggers in a chapter of my book The Way of Blessing.  I recommend you go and read up on it first before you read the rest of this section, so that you can understand more of what I am talking about.  This is a very important area that needs to be understood before you enter into a new marriage.   Second marriages face more pressures than first marriages.  You tend to not only take into the second marriage, the same failures you made in the first, but you also take into it some preconceived ideas that can destroy the new marriage before it even has a chance to start.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail here, but I just want to give you a few examples of the sort of things that can happen in your new marriage.  Firstly, you need to realize that you developed certain habits in your previous marriage.  There were things you expected of your spouse and ways that he or she responded to things that you said or did.  You learned over a period of time to read him or her life a book.   When he came home with flowers you knew for sure that something was up.  He had probably done something wrong and was softening you up for the crunch.  If she was quiet and withdrawn then you must have said something out of place somewhere.   I'm sure you could make your own list.

But now you are married to a different person.  This new spouse probably has different strengths and weaknesses and responds different to things than your previous spouse.  But because you have developed habits and assumptions from your previous marriage, you read the signs all wrong.  He bring home flowers to show that he was thinking of you and appreciates you.  Instead of appreciation he is get drilled down on what he has been doing.  She is worried about something and draws into herself, and you keep wondering why she is mad at you.  Instead of being there to encourage, you withdraw to avoid the inevitable confrontation.

Can you see how some of these seemingly innocent things can cause stresses on your new marriage that can tear it apart?  Often you are not even aware of the fact that you are triggering, or that a template from the past has been activated.  All you see is another marriage that is filled with problems and probably won't work out.  But to be forewarned is to be forearmed.  When conflict occurs you are able to stop and look at it objectively, and find out why you are reacting the way you do.  Then with open discussion and communication, you learn to change the templates and triggers of the past.

Eventually your new spouse has so taken the place of the old that you find yourself reminiscing about things you did together that you actually did with the previous spouse.   You have become so one that the past has become blurred.  The painful memories have become like a dream you had a long time ago.  And the good memories have become absorbed into the new relationship.  This is what the Lord wants for you, and it is possible.  I know, because I have experienced it.  Sure there will be times when you will fail gloriously, and every now and then something will take place that will trigger you to something you thought you had forgotten.  But then you quickly identify it and put it to rest.

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The Children

Inevitably divorce and remarriage are complicated by the existence of children in the family.  This adds new complications when remarriage takes place.  The children are often caught in the middle of parents that are divorced, and then when a new marriage partner enters, they are caught also between the natural parent and the step parent.   I deal here with many of the issues involved and we will look at some of the mistakes made by parents where children are concerned.  This is a very sensitive issue, and one that can cause destruction of a new marriage before it has a chance to begin.

I want to deal with this subject under the following headings.

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