divorce Archives - Kuyperian Commentary

On September 25, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

What Does Repentance Look Like for the Unfaithful Husband?

Guest Post by Alan Stout

Here is the scenario: You have cheated on your wife. You have been unfaithful and she has asked that you leave the home. Your desire is to repair the relationship, reconcile with your wife, and get back to leading your family in righteousness. What does repentance look like?

1. This is my sin. I have sinned against God and my wife and the consequences of my sin are a broken family, including my headship. I am NOT currently the head of my home, because I broke the covenant vows that I made. As a result…

2. I am not going to plan or lead my wife in sanctification. It will not be my place to lead her in accepting me back into her life. I have, through my own sin, abdicated that role for a time. I have hope though for I know that…

3. The Holy Spirit does not leave my wife without a covering nor has He left her without counselors. I need to trust God and the men that He has placed in our lives to do what I failed to do. So that…

4. I might, in this wilderness of my own making, learn humility, love, and sacrifice for my wife. To that end…

5. I am committed to resting under the hand of a holy God. I will submit myself, my wife and my children to the care of the Church, believing that this will work to the glory of God and benefit of my soul, my life, my family and as a testimony to the truth of the Gospel. All the while…

6. Knowing that this is going to take a long time I will commit myself to prayer and patience, believing that God will give me the strength to bear this weight. Even if my family is never restored I will trust God through it all.** Finally,

7. As God works in me to see and to do His good pleasure I will be made more like Him and I will be the husband I have been called and always wanted to be. Even though I will have difficulty seeing God because of my sin, I know that He still sees me and will not abandon me. Hear the word of God from Job 23:8-10:

8 “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,

and backward, but I do not perceive him;

9 on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;

he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.

10 But he knows the way that I take;

when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.

** Part of this confession of sin is realizing that it may be too late to repair what has been broken. Your sin may have gone on too long, the testimony of an unfaithful man has far reaching effects and while your wife should forgive you she does not HAVE to take you back simply because you have seen the error of your ways and repented. This is not your wife’s fault… Trust God to turn even this situation toward your good.

Pastor Stout blogs at http://importantparentingtips.wordpress.com<>mobi game аудит а пример

On May 14, 2014 By Kuyperian In Family and Children Like

“The Good News About Marriage”

Guest Post by Ben Rossell

“Half of our marriages end in divorce.” No, they do not! The real numbers are in and it seems that little more than half of half end in divorce.

As a homeschool dad, I often refer to the “smell test” when reviewing math assignments with my sons. ‘Okay, if you multiply a big number by another big number, the answer is not going to be a small number, right?’

Well, perhaps we can do the same here. How many married people do you know? Okay, now how many divorced? This is a difficult thing to get our minds around, but try. Think about the sheer staggering number of married adults you know. It is far easier to list the unmarried adults than the married. Now think about the divorces. Do they even begin to approach half?

Jeff and Shaunti Feldhahn are Christian marriage counselors, popular conference speakers, and family enrichment authors. This Month Shaunti released The Good News About Marriage reporting the findings of an 8-year research project reviewing the statistical data on marriage and divorce in America. Her conclusions are shattering many of our most common conjugal clichés.

Among her more noteworthy findings were:

– The divorce rate in America has never even been close to half. While the actual divorce rate is impossible to establish, [the Census Bureau stopped trying in 1996] realistic estimates put the societal divorce rate as low as 27% with almost every source reporting a decline in divorces for the last 30 years!

– College-educated couples, married after their mid 20s, who stay together for their first 5 years have a general divorce rate of only 5-10%.

– Almost 80% of married couples describe themselves as “happily married”.

– A statistical majority of those who respond that they are “unhappy” or “miserable” in their marriages, when willing to hang in there, rate their marriages as “happy” when surveyed 5 years later.

– Only around 33% of remarriages end in divorce, rather than the often quoted 60-75% figure.

– The vast majority of marital problems stem from accumulated minor offenses. Small, simple changes produce significant and lasting improvements for the majority of married couples in counseling.

– Christian couples who attend church weekly have a divorce rate 25-50% lower than the average.

After hearing these results, one reviewer commented, “Wow! You’re like the Snopes of marriage!”

Well, besides being interesting, does any of this matter?

The Feldhahns insist that these things matter a great deal and that falsely inflated divorce statistics have been deeply detrimental to our national morality. If young people take for granted that they have a coin-toss-chance of succeeding in marriage, they will be much more prone to accept divorce as an inevitable outcome. They will be more tempted to cohabitate rather than marry. And they will be discouraged from persevering and fighting for their marriages. Statistics of defeat rob us of hope. And as any counselor can tell you, hope is the single most important factor in making a marriage work.

Ben Rossell is the Senior Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Valparaiso, Fl.<>