Totally disagree with this:
That if the spouse has remarried, that person seeking restoration should remain in a state of singleness (no dating or looking for someone new). When the remarriage ends in divorce (current statistics say this will occur 83% of the time without the power of prayer), we will encourage that person at that time to pray and seek the Lord as to whether or not He would have that person work with Him to restore the marriage (Matt. 7:7 and 1Cor. 7:39.).

How long is life supposed to be put on hold while your ex figures out what he is doing. And I do not think that God wants you to remarry your first spouse after he has already remarried and divorced. That is ludicrous.

adgirl48, right now I have to believe that matt 5:31 which is Jesus talking if anyone is divorced and remarry they are committing adultry. from this I have to believe that any one you marry except for your 1st spouse you would be commiting adultry with. hence the verse that says to remain single. With that said you also have to question which only the walk away and God know: is the walkaway a believer or not which takes you to 1 corinth 7 which says if the unbeliever leaves the believer is not bound. everything goes back to is the walkaway a backsliden believer if so then any marriage except for thier 1st is nothing but an adultress relationship. Knowing what I believe the Bible is saying restoreministries has not contridicted what I have found in the Bible. But maybe God is showing you something different

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by SMIAJ:
<strong>adgirl48, right now I have to believe that matt 5:31 which is Jesus talking if anyone is divorced and remarry they are committing adultry. from this I have to believe that any one you marry except for your 1st spouse you would be commiting adultry with. hence the verse that says to remain single. With that said you also have to question which only the walk away and God know: is the walkaway a believer or not which takes you to 1 corinth 7 which says if the unbeliever leaves the believer is not bound. everything goes back to is the walkaway a backsliden believer if so then any marriage except for thier 1st is nothing but an adultress relationship. Knowing what I believe the Bible is saying restoreministries has not contridicted what I have found in the Bible. But maybe God is showing you something different</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Matthew 5:32 - But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Deuteronomy 24

Law of Divorce

1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some (1) indecency in her, and (2) he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house,
2 and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife,
3 and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife,
4 then her (3) former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.

My husband was unfaithful the whole relationship because of pornography use that I had no clue about, he had an affair and is having a child with the woman, I tried for 8 months to reconcile
and he refused, I prayed for him and waited for him, until God finally said LET GO. And I believe that God wants me to move on, and according to this verse, and Matthew 19:9, that I am allowed to remarry. Because it really isn't "remarriage"- It is marrying again. Remarriage would mean that I have a tie to my ex. He broke that covenant- with God and with me. And again, verses in Deuteronomy talk of how once your spouse has married someone else, you are not to go back to them. Restore Ministries, I believe, puts way too much on the betrayed spouse, in the way of making them think that they must put their lives on hold, be emotionally beaten down, all in the hopes that their wives/husbands will be saved. Sometimes a wife/husband has to lose everything, including their spouse, FOR GOOD, to wake up.
I believe God hates divorce, but also that HE knows that since we are human beings with free will, that it will happen. I believe HE was right there feeling my pain with me, and that He now wants me to be able to move on.

<small>[ July 04, 2003, 09:42 AM: Message edited by: adgirl48 ]</small>

adgirl, I don't understand the issue. Matthew 5:31 prohibits divorce except in the case of unchastity, which seems to apply to your case. You would be well within your rights to divorce him given the facts in your situation.

Melody,
You and I are on the same page. My discussion with smiaj is how I disagree completely with restore ministries.net, because they seem to go under the assumption that a BS should wait for their husband, even AFTER the husband remarries! And Smiaj also thinks any remarriage after divorce is adultery and that I (or anyone) should remain single unless the spouse was an unbeliever.

<small>[ July 04, 2003, 10:09 AM: Message edited by: adgirl48 ]</small>

Hi adgirl, I take the Bible very literial which means in Deuteronomy 24 it says that if a man divorces his wife and if she remarries another than she can't return to her 1st husband. it doesn't work the other way around. God holds the different sexes accountable in different ways. he does not always treat us equal, as shown in husbands love your wives. He never told the wives to love thier husbands. He also never told husbands to submit to thier wives. Restore ministries takes the Bible literial also. Because of this it does matter who divorced who. Knowing this I have not found where anything they recommend goes against the Bible. Thier major teaching is : don't worry about your spouse ( god will take care of them) worry about your relationship with God. If you draw closer to God and become the person that God wants you to be ; There is a strong possibility your spouse will come home. Smiaj

I respectfully, but completely disagree. It is absolutely insane to me to think that God wants me to sit around at age 26 and never find love with anyone because I am supposed to wait for my husband to stop cheating and using porn even though he directly tells me he does not want to be with me. He divorced me in his heart long before the papers were filed, and as much time as I have spent in prayer, and as many people as I have counseled with, and as many miracles as I have seen happen, there is NO way I believe that God thinks I should suffer anymore. I believe that He has said, well done my child, you did everything you could, now move on. I don't believe he wants me to be punished forever (I do not have the spiritual gift of celibacy- I need a partner) because of wrongdoings that my husband has created. IMHO, you are too focused on rules instead of relationship with Christ. Being a Christian means being FREE - not being miserable.

adgirl, I haven't known of a rule that was put in place yet that wasn't to show the love of the one that put it there. It's because of the rules in place that give you the freedom to do things. As a parent you tell your kids not to play in the road (they could be hit by a car) the parents didn't tell the kids that they couldn't play. they tell the kids to stay out of the woods out back due the poisonious snakes. They didn't tell the kids that they couldn't go out back! Parents give kids rules to let the kids have freedom because they know what the rules are. God does does the same to us. not to punish us but to give us freedom! Smiaj

adgirl, the old Testament law was never handed down to the Gentiles. While the Old Testament is perfectly relevent in many aspects, many laws were given to the Israelites in the beginning to help them survive. Jesus was the fulfillment of that law. Just stick to what Jesus said to the Gentiles in Matthew 5:31 and you will be fine. To believe otherwise is to believe that the Bible contradicts itself, which it doesn't.

Smiamj,
Yes, I totally agree with you about the rules giving you the freedom- BUT I totally disagree with how you interpret them. And I think you take a more legalist approach. IMHO of course.
Edited to say:
And I dont' think God's love /rules for me is that he wants me to be 26 and alone, because I married someone who would rather have porn and another woman than me...otherwise he would take away my desire for a partner.

Melody,
So what are your thoughts on the interpretation of Matthew 31-32, as far as remarriage goes? And do you believe it is a different interpretation, based on whether you are the husband or the wife?

<small>[ July 05, 2003, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: adgirl48 ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by adgirl48:
<strong>

Melody,
So what are your thoughts on the interpretation of Matthew 31-32, as far as remarriage goes? And do you believe it is a different interpretation, based on whether you are the husband or the wife?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">adgirl, they are intended to be the same except where specifically stated otherwise.

Melody,
Where is it specifically stated otherwise?

Here is an excellent article too.
http://www.theocentric.com/originalarticles/divremarry.html

adgirl, there are numerous passages where wives are specifically addressed and husbands are specifically addressed in relation to their sepcific roles. You can do a search on Bible Gateway: http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?language=english

Ok thanks. But you do not think that Matthew 5:32 is one of them? That for example, Ephesians is- roles husbands and wives are to take, but not Matthew 5:32? And how do you know?

No, I don't. When you look at the passages in Ephesians you can tell it is addressed to wives and then to husbands, can't you? The Matthew passage does not set out a specific address in the same way. Throughout the Bible, the term "man" is used universally, that doesn't mean he is NOT addressing women too. He doesn't say men AND women when he is addressing people, he says "men." [I guess the authors of the Bible never had diversity training <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> ] Whereas, in the Ephesians passages you can tell that he is specifically addressing women.

Melody,
I was just playing devil's advocate a little bit to see if we were still on the same page <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

We are. I believe exactly what you said- that man is used universally to represent both sexes.

adgirl--

I'm weighing in here because your interpretation of what God wants for you touched my heart as it reminds me so much of how I was thinking when I divorced my 1st H. I felt, thought, and said all the same things you have said in this thread. I felt like the D had already happened when my H put me away and took up with another woman and that me getting the legal D was just a formality acknowledging what had already taken place. I felt like I could not take the pain any longer and chose to go with my feelings instead of learning what God's will is by thoroughly studying His Word.

What I thought was pain of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 was in hindsight only a 5 compared to the 10 I've experienced in my 2nd M. I'm right back where I started and worse. My 1st H didn't truly know what he was doing to me because he had never been on the receiving end of adultery, but my 2nd H claimed his previous W had committed adultery that destroyed their M, so you can imagine how much more it hurts to have someone do that who KNOWS how it feels and does it anyway.

My children from my first M are permanently damaged from that D, and now I have another set of children from this M dependent on my decisions for their future. My 1st H is also married to another with children from that union as well. It is a gigantic mess and very illustrative of why we should do things God's way.

This may help in clarifying some of the passages referred to:

The terminology in Matthew 5:32 (known as the exception clause) is fornication. (This is what I used to justify my D from my 1st H.) But what this actually refers to is the Old Testament law that if a man discovered on the wedding night that his new bride was not a virgin, he could divorce her because of fornication, but this was only a one-time window of opportunity, so to speak, and it is gender specific. It is very clear in the law in the Old Testament that the penalty for adultery was death by stoning, and not divorce, so fornication and adultery were and are two distinct things.

Another way this is proven is to note the passages in which fornication and adultery are used as distinct separate descriptions and not interchangeable (see Romans 6:9 for example). Study of the Greek terms is very helpful in understanding the difference between these two terms.

It is important, also, to note that in Matthew 5 Jesus is making the same point over and over again--that the law was such-and-such, but now I am here and the law will no longer suffice because you are called to follow Me, which is a higher standard:

The law says do not kill, but I say anger puts you in danger of hellfire. (IOW, the law draws the line at killing, but He, the fulfillment of the law, draws the line at anger.)

The law says do not commit adultery, but I say lust is adultery.

The law says you can divorce your wife, but I say divorcing except for fornication (discovery of non-virgin bride) results in adultery.

The law says to make oaths, but I say do not swear at all, but let your yes be yes and your no, no.

The law says an eye for an eye, etc., but I say turn the other cheek, give up your coat and offer your cloak also, go the extra mile.

The law says love your neighbor, but I say love your enemies.

You'll notice that in all of the examples Jesus gives, He actually calls for more than the law called for, so it follows that just as with killing and other points of the law, he tightened up the standard regarding marriage and divorce. In the Old Testament, men (and only men could divorce, not women) could divorce their wives for any cause, but here in Matthew 5, he is tightening that to fornication only. He did not address adultery as a cause for divorce because adultery was a cause for stoning to death, not a cause for divorce.

He later demonstrates how adultery is now to be responded to--that it is now a cause for forgiveness--when he intervenes between the stoners and the woman caught in adultery.

In reading Matthew 5, the pattern is very clear, and what Jesus is emphasizing is that the law dealt with what we do, but now it is a matter of the heart--the heart is to be after His heart, and out of a heart like His will flow doing things the way He does them.

In that light, note that Jesus does not divorce us (He never forsakes us), but we are the ones who commit adultery against Him and/or divorce Him. This is the mystery spoken of in Ephesians 6:32--to put it simply, marriage represents our relationship to Christ. The purpose of marriage is to make us holy, and not necessarily happy.

This is what I learned: That it was MY adultery against my first love, Jesus Christ, that I needed to be focused on and not my H's adultery against me. As long as satan can keep us focused on our adulterous spouses, he has us right where he wants us.

I also learned that no matter how awful or difficult things are, if I try to do things my way instead of God's way, it can and will get a whole lot worse. God will allow us to suffer if that is what is necessary to bring us closer to Him and to make us more fit for His Kingdom. Read 1 Peter 2:13 to 3:18. Remember, He is transforming us into the image of His Son, and He will do that regardless of any discomfort it may cause us. He loves us too much to do otherwise.

Also, can't remember who said we weren't, but we ARE commanded to love our husbands in Titus 2:4. In any case, what Jesus commands in Matthew 5:44 should cover all.

Conqueror,
I appreciate your response but respectfully totally disagree with you. I am tired of the people on this board who seem to want others to be emotionally drained and miserable. I do not believe this is God's will. I did EVERYTHING possible to restore my marriage, including spending great amounts of time in prayer over it. My husband did not want to be married period. IT did not matter that I agreed to accept OC in our lives, or that I agreed to help him with his pornography addiction. He chose the path of adultery and addiction and lying and deception instead. I cannot make him come back, and Jesus tells us to flee from evil and from sexual immorality. Jesus DOES want you to live life to the fullest and does not want me to spend my life in an unhealthy relationship. I firmly believe that He is saying Adultery (Marital Unfaithfulness) is a reason for divorce- in fact, in Proverbs, it says that an adulteress leads down a pathway to death. In other words, my husband is spiritually dead because he has not repented of his sin and continues to live on that path. Mortarman had an excellent post on that on Jen Brown's thread I believe it was, about remarriage. God wants us to practice self-control. Some of that self control means not continuing in a damaging relationship. Why would Christ die on the cross for our sins,- so that we could live enabling it?!?! I am supposed to sit all my life, 26 years old, wasting away, while my ex-husband plays and may NEVER come around? Granted, with God all things are possible. But we still have free will. My ex will not come around just because I want him to or just because I pray for him to. Miracles occur daily, but he has to make the choice to follow Christ. In the meantime, I am living life by putting God first and making sure that the next person I meet is the opposite of my first husband. And that I have made changes necessary in me to ensure a healthy relationship. I am sorry if that is not agreed upon in certain legalistic approaches to Christianity, but I believe in relationship, not religion.

What I thought was pain of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 was in hindsight only a 5 compared to the 10 I've experienced in my 2nd M. I'm right back where I started and worse. My 1st H didn't truly know what he was doing to me because he had never been on the receiving end of adultery, but my 2nd H claimed his previous W had committed adultery that destroyed their M, so you can imagine how much more it hurts to have someone do that who KNOWS how it feels and does it anyway.

Oh but I am sorry about your 2nd husband cheating on you. That is horrible and I can't imagine the pain. You would think he would understand. And you are right, it shows what happens when we don't do it God's way- but those are decisions your husband (s) made.

Adgirl--

I'm not trying to get you to agree with me. My purpose in posting was to point to the Word of God and encourage you to humble yourself under His mighty hand and study for yourself what His Word actually says. I felt led to share my experience because I once stood at the crossroads where you are now standing, and my hope is that you will avoid my fate, which would avoid misery, not add to the misery you are already feeling. It's not so much what I did or didn't do as it was the condition of my heart. Examine your heart.

The trap that most of us get caught in is focusing on our spouse's mote and neglecting our own beams. God is very clear throughout His Word that there are no degrees of sins. God ALWAYS sees us in one of two ways, ALWAYS: Proud/humble, wise/foolish, light/darkness, slave to righteousness/slave to sin, obedient/rebellious. Our sins are no different in God's eyes than our spouses'.

When you read the New Testament, note Jesus' attitude toward humble sinners compared to his attitude toward the Pharisees. Jesus' harshest words were directed toward the sin of pride exhibited by the Pharisees. Those who touched Him the most were those whose hearts were filled with self-sacrificing love for Him. A very revealing lesson is studying the heart of Mary of Bethany (Luke 10, John 11 & 12). It was HER heart that not only moved Jesus to tears, but also moved Him to raise the dead.

It is our hearts that will be examined at the Judgment, not our spouses' activities. We will each stand alone, and no amount of finger-pointing will distract the Judge from what is in our hearts. I believe what God is looking for is the same love for His Son in our hearts that is in His. John 17:26. I encourage you to focus on that one needful thing.