Marriage Truth or Opinion

I hope that this article falls in the plates of every Christian that is hungry for the truth and knows that they are tired of opinions concerning marriage and divorce.
âFeed my Sheepâ Malachi 2:16 âFor the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away:
This scripture speaks Godâs heart concerning divorce and His command for spouses to forgive one another and reconcile their marriage. Please note that within chapter 2 of Malachi, you read about a husband that has been treacherously dealing with his wife and after hearing God rebuke him for this kind of treatment He states that He (God) hates divorce then He (God) tells the reader why in that same verse (Mal 2:16), He says, âfor one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hostsâ Here is where you find the wisdom of God unveiled, it is locked up in the two words:
Covereth: Hebrew word ataph â hideth: continuously hiding, denying, disregarding
Violence: Hebrew word Chamac - cruelty, wrong, false, cruelty, damage, injustice, oppressor and unrighteous
So with these words understood you can begin to get a better understanding that will lead you to read Mal 2:16 like this: I, the Lord, God of Israel, will always hate divorce because all you did or thinking of doing is to hide what you would not repent of, such as your wrong doings, cruelty unrighteous acts towards each other and you wish to deceive yourself into thinking that a divorce decree will be your garment to cover it all, only to have that garment removed in the next relationship and the new person runs into the once hidden wrong doings, cruelty, unrighteous acts that you performed or did not forgive from your last marriage. Then God says this to end Mal 2:16 âtherefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherouslyâ So here we realize that if we take heed to our spirit (our connection to Godly truth) and not our flesh (our connection to ungodly opinions) we will not deal treacherously with each other through violence or divorce.

Read the following and see if you understand Godâs heart or His emotional state:
Mal 2:13 -17 13 Another thing you do: You flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. 14 You ask, "Why?" It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. 15 Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. 16 "I hate divorce," says the Lord God of Israel, "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment," says the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith. 17 You have wearied the Lord with your words. "How have we wearied him?" you ask. By saying, "All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them" or "Where is the God of justice?"

God did not waste His breathe when He spoke His commands, His statues and judgments about marriage, but as we can see more and more Christians (followers of Christ) are covering their wrong doings with the garment of divorce and acting dumb-founded about the exact same problems re-occurring within their new relationships or marriages. Most Christians that read statements like this automatically pull the âWorst case scenarioâ card even though it was not their own case. You see, they will say, âWhat if I was being abused or he or she was cheating on me?â Which would be deemed grounds for divorce because the person has now cut another covenant by way of sex with someone other than their spouse, however God has restored marriages like this as well. But the problem with them saying this is that they are normally not the ones who have experienced anything like abuse and adultery they just know someone who has and think they have to protect themselves from the possibility of it happening to them. I have great compassion for those who are really in those situations, but I pray that the ones that are living in fear of that happening to them will grab hold to Godâs reasons for marriage covenant as well as His understanding of how it is suppose to work.
We can also read in Hosea 2:5-7
Hosea 2:5
Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.'
2:6
Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
2:7
She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.'

Please note that God is dealing with an adulteress wife that stubbornly sets out to have her way, God himself places detours and road blocks to keep her from fulfilling her selfish desires, but she continues to seek after her selfish ambitions, but as always it took the pain of the thornbushes to cause her to say privately to herself that she must humble herself and return to her husband. We can read all over the bible where God refers to the adulteress body of Christ being the bride that Jesus is coming back to show His ultimate celebration of His Love and I showed these to comparisons so that you can see that God still desired for that wife to return to her husband and God sent Jesus to show husbands how much they will have to be willing to sacrifice for their wives which proves how much he loves her as Christ loves the church and this statement kills that nonsense phrase, âBut Iâm not Jesusâ.

Since God said He never changes and that His word will not return unto Him void, God is the same way today as always, but what we are seeing is the divorce rate increasing and many believe that this increase is due to bad choices, incompatibility issues, past hurts, sex, money, power or marriage just does not work. Although all these issues are a reality, the problem lies deeper. The real issue is the love for God is being secretly taught against. God said if you love me you will obey my commands; divorce is the absolute example of people (one or both) disobeying Godâs word:
Divorce causes you to disobey commands about denying yourself (reason; because they do not want to risk losing their identity), Do not commit adultery (reason; my spouse was not their for me), Forgive your spouse or I will not forgive you (reason; you donât know how verbally and emotionally abusive he/she was), Care after the things to please your spouse (reason; they do not care to please me), Let no man put asunder/separate (reason; I just could not take it anymore and now I am happier and at peace).
These are real reason for disobeying Godâs word and if came through the desire to divorce, in the mind of these people some validated some exaggerated, but they are all apart of disobeying God.
Many people state the argument that if someone is abusing you, you are to leave and 85% of those people are acting out the very thing they say their spouse is doing to them (like mean words, thoughts of who they should have married, and defrauding sexually). As for the other 15%, of truly abused spouses (men and women), these people are actually more readily to forgive their spouse with hopes of change and they are called stupid and foolish. Please note that in no way does this mean that I condone real abuse in marriage. I am using the realities to expose the love loss towards God (disobedience) and making people know that God knows when they are exaggerating to live out their selfish goals and ambitions.

God placed divorce in the same category of a reprobate mind; the covenant breaker (Romans 1:28-32). He hates with the same intensity as the act of homosexuality and every other act mentioned in those verses. All leaders must keep in mind that marriage is the most honorable relationship that exists to God, it is the heart of God and it is truly the love act that caused Jesus to be sent. Hebrews 13:4 is thought to describe the separation of the marriage bed and the whoremorgers/adulterers bed but with Godâs insight you will see that it is separating Godâs sheep from the goats and seen in Matthew 25:31-46. Marriage is the stage for givers to please God (sheep) and this includes the ones that one day are to marry as well as the called ones to be married to God only. Now the goats are revealed through the taking actions of whoremongering and adulterers, taking (not giving) what does not belong to them. God increased my desire for saving marriages by allowing me to see how it was meant to save souls, because every sinful nature that will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven has some direct connection to whoremogering and adultery (sexually immorality). God hates divorce because it is against marriage and no matter how anyone tries to soften the blow, God has the final say on the chastisement that follows divorce and because of what I have experienced through my Life Coaching business via coaching others through, I will never again say what people deserve to or do not deserve to go through.

What we see in the world and church is the numbing teaching that divorce is alright, yet we have leaders praying for guidance on how to handle the disorder/dysfunctions of families. Think on that for a moment.
We have leaders that would rather give an opinion about divorce instead of the word of God and wonder why people havenât just stopped with breaking covenant with their spouse, but now they have moved on to breaking covenant with the church membership/partnership and for the same reason: âthe opinion that says, âyou have to do whatâs best for you!â. Paul gave an opinion about marriage, he said âI wish that all of you would be like me and not marryâ now where would that have left the body of Christ? I imagine a church full of fornicators and babies out of wed-lock, but Paul was wise enough to follow his opinion with the word of God (who he worshipped) and this why we know Godsâ way of thinking about marriage and divorce.
The worldâs numbing power comes indirectly through Hollywood marriages followed by quick divorces and ****/lesbian marriages. However, the churches are being numbed through leaders that say they have a heart for divorced people, made divorce a ministry, and teach everything about beginning again and very few topics on repenting of divorce, asking for forgiveness for divorce and dealing with what caused their love loss towards God and their spouse to get the divorce. I am truly aware of the people that will say, âmy spouse caused this divorce! I did nothingâ, but in Godâs eyes it takes two to make a marriage work or fail. Then the first thing God looks at is the hardened heart of each person. This heart is very cleaver to its self (but not to God). This type of heart only wants the outside people to see them trying to make things work and doing enough to get by in human eyes. Meanwhile they are totally hard towards their spouse in private with no regard to how their spouse sees them and they have a temporal seared conscience. To truly understand how this personâs heart works you must know that the majority of hard hearted people have a temperament weakness that causes them to suppress their true emotions in public, especially if they are in a leadership position. They view this temperament weakness as a strength all the way until it shows its destruction through health, mind and even their financial lows.
Church leaders must stop trying to find a way to satisfy people when it comes to marriage, divorce and singleness because we are living in a time that God is causing His people to hunger for truth of His word and we are here sitting in your pulpits, we know the difference between your opinion and the word of God. We know that Godsâ word corrects and your opinions causes people to be mislead, but what the leaders must realize is their opinions spoken to the church that is not followed by the âJust weightâ (Prov 11:1) of Godsâ word, will cause people within the congregation to talk to one another about it and unlike before when they use to believe they were talking about their leader. They now realize they were just flushing the opinion because of their hunger for truth. In this day in time this hunger for truth is real and it will cause correction to begin with opinions and misleading examples, what I have come to realize; when someone (leader or not) has no real experience within a serious matter such as divorce/drug addictions/etc. they tend to voice an opinion to keep from looking like they did not know what to say. Keep in mind that the blood is not removed from any leaders hand if he/she teaches part of what God says about any one of these topics or what they think God said (Ezek 3:18-21).
Jesus spoke about all three issues (marriage, divorce and singleness) in front of everyone and anyone that had an ear (Matthew 19:1-12). Unlike Jesus, leaders are afraid of offending divorced/separated people so some will not teach on staying together, repenting and reconciling and others will teach it openly to the church, but then teach whatâs more comfortable in private with each spouse separately; things that I call âCut and Dry opinionsâ like; âif someone says they do not love you then you will be alright by yourselfâ or âYou have to do whatâs best for youâ, whenever I hear this said I have always said, âIsnât following Godâs word, His will and His way the best for anyone?â The same type preferred teaching is being performed around singles as well. Who and what is the driving force behind teaching people to get out of marriage if its not for you, if you are not feeling it, if you canât handle it, if it is affecting your health, if they say they donât love you anymore and if you canât trust them, as if God agrees with this type of teaching. You see, God has never given any teaching that is that cut and dry, all of His teachings involve working through something, denying oneself and seeking to please God above all. This tainted teaching actually lines up with the following; in the last days men will become lovers of themselves; not loving God or His ways.
I remember when I was under this same demonic influence, but unaware. I advised a man to leave his wife because her actions were causing him misery and his health to deteriorate through stress. I took his side because I believed that no one should have to deal with whatever they thought was miserable and I stood on the word that Jesus came to give him life and life more abundantly. Secretly I felt that since she mistreated him she deserved not to be with him for a while or at all. I thought this way because I did not understand how people could believe that God would want them to stay in what I thought was a bad marriage and I had no real training in marriage counseling. He took my advice and separated from his wife and despite all her efforts to show him she was a changed woman he stayed away from her. Nine months had passed and he looked very healthy, like life was good for him, he told me that he was happier without his wife nagging him, talking about him, never being their for him, treating him like he was a servant within the house and the bed and he kept right on talking, but I started hearing God speak about his disobedience towards the marital laws then I gained a new understanding towards his health problems but I was too afraid to say anything to offend his new found happiness.

Later that year I was no longer afraid to tell him the truth and God showed me that he was not happy at all because God doesnât allow true happiness within disobedience. After studying all the scriptures on marriage and becoming certified in Biblical Counseling I repented of all my opinions that I gave to him. I then realized that all I was asked to do by God was to share His word with insight and that seed would remain in the responsible partyâs hand (God). Since they were already separated and no adultery or physical abuse had been committed God gave me insight that revealed that both of them loved God with all their heart but was struggling with the sacrifices that are required within the covenant of marriage. So God lead me to share His understanding of 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11 But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.

Within verse 10; God gave His statue that the couple is not to separate, but since He knew that disobedience is a real option for all of us due to emotions and circumstances. God had to give a command on how to handle this time away from each other, please try to see why God said handling time away from each other through realizing that the part of the command âbe reconciled to her husband and husband do not divorce your wife clearly proves that God had and has in mind how this separation is suppose to end as well as the fact that God sees the two as one, still in a covenant with Him and each other (still married).
So now lets see how God wanted the wife (which means still married to her husband) and the husband (which means still married to his wife) to remain during this time away from each other. He (God) told the head (husband) do not go and seek a divorce and He told the wife to remain unmarried. In order to understand unmarried we will have to read its requirements in 1Corinthians 7:34 â¦.. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: You see God is commanding the wife (still married to her husband) to be healed, matured and prepared once again to do what will please the Lord and during this time away from her husband she must stay pure within her spirit (get rid of bitterness, unforgiveness and the harden heart) and within her body (have sex with no one other than her husband) and this goes for the husband as well. This time away from each has no time limit on it because God is doing something the both of them and only He knows how long it will take. So do not let anyone rush this or end it in any other way than how God commanded it within 1 Corinthians 7:10-11. This couple was tested on every side, they were made to think that if they had been apart for more than a year it was time to move on, that they would only be going back to misery and hell if they didnât choose to divorce and that divorce was the only way to move forward. I told them that with God the only time He told anyone to move forward was when it was to destroy the plans of their enemy or the devil, just like what Moses experienced in Exodus 14: 13-17 13 And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. 14 The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. 15 And the LORD said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: 16 But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. 17 And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen.
Only an opinion can lead someone to believe that Godâs people are that naïve to believe otherwise. I have learned with great conviction that opinions will always have the same harvest, which is; people coming against them and the person that gave it thinking that it shouldnât be that way. However, Gods word will always have the same harvest as well, not returning unto Him void. This is why I am glad to say that that coupleâs marriage covenant has been restored and they really and truly followed what God intended them too within 1Corinthians 7:10-11 and I hope this article will help many to live to see Godâs word fulfilled and stop trying to live to see if an opinion can trump truth because it will take an eternity and where you may end up isnât worth it.

I am, E. Levon Holman, Certified Life Coach
www.hopechoices.com/rufreechallenge

If you are thinking about getting married letâs see if you are really You!
Order my book Freedom To Live Authentically!â
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There is One Thing that you can do better than anyone else! And That is being YOU!!!!

But copied living has kept people from being themselves and I challenge you and the world to research who's way of life you have been living!

Read an exert from the Book:
Lisa was in the kitchen preparing food for a family gathering. While cooking Lisa's kids came into the kitchen and immediately Lisa had an outer body experience, where she went back to her childhood. Lisa saw herself, at age 12, happy about the family gathering, excited and just feeling the love. Innocently Lisa placed her forearms in a crossed position, on the counter where the food was and leaned over the covered dishes saying, "whatcha cooking mom?" Lisa's mom angrily replied, "If you are not helping, learning or washing dishes then get out my kitchen and don't be leaning over my food!" Lisa remembers how confused she was about what made her mom so angry as well as how hurt her feelings was towards getting yelled at. Despite all that Lisa remembered she quickly came back to herself and angrily said, "If you are not helping, learning or washing dishes then get out my kitchen and don't be leaning over my food!" Lisa's husband heard her and said, "Honey they're alright."
Lisa later realized that she was acting out someone else's frustration or pet peeve and she saw the potential damage it could cause through this type of transfer. Lisa realized that making sure that the food was protected was not nearly as important as protecting her children's emotions and their family bond.

Read an exert from the Workbook:
Linda, age 22, grew up with a loving father and mother. Her parents never married and lived together all her life. Linda's parents would say from time to time, "Marriage is the only way you can get a divorce." Linda recently met the love of her life (Mike). Mike desires to marry her and Linda thinks that marriage is not that important. Mike digs into why she feels this way, Linda says, "Marriage is the only way you can get a divorce." Linda never said or let on that this thought about marriage originated with her parents. Mike was left wondering how does a 22 year old woman come up with a decision like this if she has never been married? Should I let her know that my mom and dad have been married for 54 years? Linda and Mike are at a cross road in their relationship but they are only there behind indirect diverted influence. Neither of Linda's parents told her that she should not get married. However, Linda was gently persuaded to think about marriage as they did. If you were honest with yourself, and did not feel as if you would be dishonoring your parent/s, can you find some beliefs that have been challenged at cross roads in your life (within relationships, careers, religion, goals, commitments and so on)? ______ If yes, write them down.

I am Levon Holman Certified Life Coach
asking you are you living a copied life and daring you to take
the "Freedom Challenge!"
www.hopechoices.com/rufreechallange