MAX ON LIFE

111. I've fallen in love with a divorced man who has two children. I've never been married, so I wonder whether God looks with any disfavor on marriages to divorced people. Can you help me with these concerns?

Jesus was asked about divorce and remarriage.

"The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?' And He answered and said to them, 'Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female', and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?' So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate.'

They said to Him, 'Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?'

He said to them, 'Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery'." (Matt 19:3-9)

Our society plays musical chairs with marriages, exchanging lovers like partners at a square dance. God says stay put and stay faithful.

The home is sacred and should be guarded like a fortress. Only one thing, in Jesus' eyes, warrants divorce - an ongoing choice by one partner to be sexually active with a person outside the marriage.

Divorce should never be taken lightly. If reconciliation is absolutely you'll-be-talking-to-my-lawyers impossible, then what else can you do? If every means or repairing the relationship has been tried, tested, and tossed out, what's Plan B?

So does God forgive those who get divorced? How about an adulterer? Can the unfaithful ever again have a happy marriage?

God forgave King David. For David, adultery became a lifestyle, with all those wives and concubine girlfriends. He satisfied his own desires yet broke God's desire for marriage. David even committed murder to get Bathsheba. So does God forgive murderers and adulterers? Thieves on a cross? Persecutors on the road to Damascus? All the time.

God forgives, but he prefers to prevent. Forgiven people can move on with their lives, but they must deal with the consequences of their choice and all the hurt that accompanies it.

Since divorce is inevitable in this world, God can certainly bless two forgiving and forgiven hearts who desire to start over and make it right the second time.

By: Max Lucado