Today’s passage is Mark 10:1-12. Jesus goes to Judea and teaches the crowds. Some Pharisees ask him if divorce is lawful. He says Moses allowed it because of their hard hearts, but God never intended it, saying that God created us male and female and that when husband and wife are joined they become one flesh, joined by God and no one should separate them. Divorce and remarriage is adultery.
Have you ever wanted to divorce your spouse?
Have you committed adultery?
My heart is hard with selfishness.
When I met my first wife she was married to another man. I committed adultery with her. She divorced her first husband and married me.
According to today’s passage, her marriage to me was adultery against her first husband.
I committed this adultery and encouraged my wife in adultery because I wanted to be happy.
I justified my actions by rationalizing that she was unhappy in her first marriage and that marriage to me would make her happy.
My own desire was my motivation, not obedience to God’s law.
I was lucky I didn’t go to jail because just a few years earlier Canada had changed its law. Originally, adultery was a criminal offense.
During my first marriage there were many times I thought about divorce because married life was very hard and it made me unhappy.
My own selfish sense of pleasure and well-being has always been something that I have had to fight because it always leads to trouble for myself and others.
In my heart, I divorced my first wife many times.
When my wife was dying of alcoholism, I actually did commit adultery by having an affair with another woman.
Why? Because I felt miserable, I wanted comfort, I wanted to be happy and have good sex.
I put my desires above God’s intention for all of humanity and above his law.
I am 100% sinner, but God loves me.
Jesus paid the price of my sin.
Even though I am completely undeserving of God’s love and regard, he has blessed me with a Christian wife and a Christian community that helps me stay focused on the Lord so that I can see myself more objectively, share my sins and hardships and walk a better path than before.
I love my wife. It is not a pure love because it is colored by my hard heart and selfishness.
I want to love her better than I do, but I can only do that if the Lord continues to change me and soften my heart.
I am hopeless to do it myself. I depend on God alone to do that because I see more and more clearly who I am and how sinful I am.
I have never thought of divorce from my wife because God is writing his laws on my heart, just as he promised.
Application: Share my QT with my wife and give thanks to God for our life together.
Lord, continue to show me who I am and fill me with gratitude for the marriage you have given me.
