Thanks to all of you for your advice. To answer your question, I am seeking scriptural advice. My husband and I are in our 30’s. He is an ordained Minister who has a Masters in Divinity. 85% of his job in the church is spent on the business side (non-profit and business development) and the remaining 15% is divided between weddings, funerals, counseling and teaching for the Men’s ministry.(which helps to support men to be the fathers and husbands that God wants them to be) and he serves as a teacher for the Boy’s ministry (this group helps boys to transition from young boys to men through the building of character through spiritual discipline). Also, he is occasionally invited to preach at other churches.
We are of the Baptist denomination. We have the traditional Christian values. Our church believes in building strong families. The church believes that there are severe consequences for not being obedient to God. Our church believes that God requires total stewardship of our personal selves and it is our duty to walk the way God would want us to.
minwife – Thank you for this information, it is very helpful. Before I get into responding to you posts, let ask you something to think about. You stated that you have been married about 2 years and are both in your 30’s. How much do you know about your husband’s “past?” Do you know when he accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior? Were there any previous relationships for either of you that ended in divorce? If so, on what basis did a divorce happen, as there is only ONE valid reason to end a marriage between two believers?
Okay, let’s turn to “heart of the matter.”
Assuming all that you have said about the beliefs of you and your husband, and of the church you attend, your husband is in extremely dire circumstances. Obviously it can, and probably will, have a negative impact on his employment, but his danger goes far beyond that. He is a leader, an elder of the church, and is directly responsible to God for his actions in that role. He is willfully sinning directly against God first, you second, and the church and it’s people third.
The Scripture is quite clear about all of this, and if you need Scripture references I’ll be happy to provide them.
But let’s turn the “most operative” part of Scripture concerning your situation for the moment. You’ll find it in Matthew 18:15-20 and it pertains to discipline for a sinning brother or sister in Christ. The FIRST avenue of approach is “one on one,” where the sin is confronted in love by someone who is aware of it, in this case, for example, it could be you who is doing the intervention, based upon what the Scripture says, not on what you “feel.”
If that doesn’t work, then you involve one or two others who are trusted and firmly grounded in the Scripture, perhaps the senior pastor and/or elder. If their intervention continues to be met with resistance and a refusal to repent, the circle widens. The PURPOSE of this disciplinary intervention is NOT to punish the sinner, it is to hopefully gain repentance and full restoration into the body.
This situation is complicated by the fact that your husband IS already a minister and in a position of leadership. His statements to you and his actions of adultery make him unfit for such a position at this time and you may well have to face the fact that you cannot “look the other way” and allow him to continue in a ministerial and teaching position when his actions, and apparently his beliefs, are heretical to God’s revealed Word. This sort of “wolf” cannot be allowed to function within the body or others WILL wind up getting hurt, perhaps even damaging their own faith, especially so with the youth of the church.
So let’s get into some specifics for a minute or two.
My husband is a Minister and spends a lot of hours at the church. The long hours at work became an issue very early in our marriage. He would come home around 10:00pm every night.This is, unfortunately, a very common experience. In a “zeal” to be “working for the Lord,” they justify actions that cause problems with other commands of God and excuse it on the basis of “they are doing the Lord’s work.”
Here is the “proper” order of things for prioritizing one’s time.
God first
Spouse second
Children third
Extended family fourth
Fellow believers fifth
Employer sixth
Everyone else a distant seventh.
Now I don’t want to “argue” about personal preferences in the ordering, but without exception, the first two I listed are in that order always. One CANNOT be putting God first if one is disobeying God’s commands and attempting to justify that disobedience because they are “doing the Lord’s work.” An example, God has COMMANDED husbands to love their wives. If there is NOT love in a marriage it IS the fault of the husband. Remember that “love” is first an action verb. “Feelings” of “in love” come after “acts of love” that one chooses to do. That love may not be returned by the wife, but God does not command a wife to love her husband. God has other commands for the wife that are predicated on the husband being a “biblical husband” even if he is not himself a believer. For a Christian husband, the “threshold” of the wife’s responses to God’s commands to wives is predicated on the Christian husband fulfilling his role according to God’s commands to him.
So let’s get very specific. “Thou shalt NOT commit adultery.” Nothing ambiguous there. A person “suitable” for leadership in a church must either be single or the husband of but ONE wife. That is clear Scriptural teaching and NOT subject to interpretation or twisting to “accommodate” a desire to sin and certainly not subject to any “spiritual rut.”
But let’s get to the most serious issue, the Scripture is equally clear that unrepentant adulterers WILL NOT be in heaven. If they will not, then they NEVER were saved. Remember that even Jesus responded to many who claimed to be “Christians,” [color:"red"] “Away from me you evildoers, I NEVER knew you.” (emphasis added) [/color]
All of the other issues, as serious as they are, don’t hold a candle to the peril of his soul in eternal separation from God.
THAT is what must be addressed BEFORE anything else.
I don’t mean to hurt you with what I am about to say, but you need to “get your mind around this” in order for you to approach saving both your husband and your marriage. Your marriage is already over. It ended when he chose adultery. YOU can forgive him. YOU can choose to attempt to rebuild your marriage. But only if, and when, he repents and turns from sin back to God and to you.
This led to constant fighting and even longer hours away from home.This may have been partly your fault and may have lead to an “atmosphere” where he might be vulnerable to an affair, but it is no “excuse” for a choice to commit adultery.
I found out that on some nights when I thought he was working, he was actually spending time at the strip clubs. My concern is that he is a Minister and that is not setting a good example to the members in the church if they were to find out. He says that he does not care about his reputation and enjoys going to these clubs. They will find out, so let’s get that out now. The question I would have is whether or not he was going to the strip clubs alone, or did some other member(s) of the church also attend and may be enablers of his activities. His reputation may not be of concern to him (obviously) but it is, or should be, to the leadership and membership of the church.
I asked my husband if he thought that he was assuming the roles of the husband that are listed in the Bible. He said that he was probably not but did not feel any remorse for this.As a minister this answer is very revealing as to where his heart is. Such is the power of sin and is also indicative of the “hardness of his heart.”
He feels that he has made every effort and that a marriage should not require a whole lot of work. It should be a natural thing and we should intuitively know what the other person’s needs are. Fogbound justification. Again, as a minister, he should KNOW the fallacy of this since NONE of us a “mind-reader.” He is attempting to shift the blame for his choice to you and make you the “bad girl” in HIS choice to commit adultery. Marriage takes work, plain and simple. At the very least it takes communication of needs so that the other spouse can know what is “needed” or “important” to each spouse.
Let’s just cite one glaring fallacy in his statement; marriage is for LIFE, not for 2 years. Suffice it to say that he has NOT “made every effort,” if for no other reason that 2 years can’t hold “every effort.”
When we were dating, we always enjoyed each other’s company. We had such a strong connection in the beginning. Lately my husband has said that we are not right for each other. He thinks that he made a mistake when he married me. He told me that I was not nurturing the way that he needed me to be. He said that I should just know what he needs when he needs it.More justification and fog-speak. More attempt to shift blame to you.
Over the last year, he has formed an ally with a good friend of his. She was also having problems in her marriage and they started having lunch together twice a week. Then, they started exchanging suggestive text messages. He swears that nothing else happened. And if you believe nothing happened, given the other things you know did happen, then “swampland” turns into prime real estate with no need for improvement.
About 2 months ago, my husband told me that he wanted a 30 day separation and I agreed. During the separation, my husband had an affair which he denied at first.Separation is just a means many a WS uses to be able to “do whatever they want to do” (read: have an affair without someone constantly looking over their shoulder).
It has been 2 months since the separation and we are living under the same roof.So why did you let him move back in without repentance and without commitments?
We have been seeing a spiritual guidance counselor at our church who knows us also on a personal level. She has committed to help us restore our marriage. She feels that my husband is going through a spiritual rut. Forgive me for saying this, but I disagree with this counselor. Your husband is in no “spriritual rut,” whatever that might mean or how it might try to attempt to justify outright sin. Your husband is in direct disobedience of God and that’s a CHOICE, not a “rut.” This counselor is playing in the arena of “feelings,” and feelings are NO justification for willful sin, nor do “feelings” excuse or justify adultery. Either we stand on the Scripture as the revealed Word of God, or we don’t. I would personally question the competency of this counselor and would strongly recommend you seek out a counselor who is trained in Nouthetic Counseling. I can give you a link to the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors if you’d like it, and you can search the counselor database for counselors in or near your area.
The first week of our counseling, the counselor asked my husband if he was asking God to guide his path and his answer was “no”. He stated that he was not going to make a decision to stay in the marriage based on what the Bible states. He wants to make the decision based on what he wants. I am really concerned with his rebellious attitude towards God.You are right to be concerned about this. For a Christian, let alone a Minister, to say that he is NOT going to do what God says is not just “troubling,” it strongly indicates that the person was never truly “born again.”
At the suggestion of our counselor, we have started praying together every morning but there are days when my husband says he does not know what to pray for. In week 6 of our counseling sessions my husband told the counselor and his best friend that the last month of our relationship has been very good and even better than the beginning of our marriage. However, I noticed that during this last month, my husband has been emotionally unavailable so I asked him what was wrong. He stated that he has been pretending over the last month. He says that the relationship has been peaceful but the euphoria is gone. He really does not think he wants to be in the marriage anymore. The only reason that he agreed to try to work on the marriage is because he felt he should try to honor the marriage. I truly love my husband and don’t want the marriage to end but I am not sure what to do at this point. I feel that we have lost our rhythm. He is still in his affair. It’s probably just gone “underground” for now.
If you would like, I can email you a pamphlet that our MC gave us when we began counseling. It’s called “What Do You Do When Your Marriage Goes Sour.” If you want it, send me an email at
mbforeverhers@yahoo.com and I’ll email it to you. Just be sure to tell me who you are on this system so I’ll recognize you.
God bless.