Marriage and Divorce

February 20, 2019

Thank you, Lord, that Your mercies are new every morning. Heal the wounds in our hearts from foolish decisions and marrying outside Your will. Oh, please protect us from our flesh and lying spirits! God, keep us pure until You present the one meant to be our spouse. And it truly is a marriage God made. Amen.

Well, my precious ones, I've had it on my mind to share this little story with you. It's an important message for those of you who walk around feeling guilty because you are remarried, or because you had to leave your abusive spouse while you were still alive.

Just recently, my first husband of 35 years ago--the one I had my four children with--came to visit our children in Taos. He was, at that time, looking for work, and I needed help with correspondence. So, I asked him if he wanted to join us. He was very happy and immediately started to work here.

He is a good man, good at communicating and correspondence. He has years of experience at call centers. He is very polite and very much of a gentleman.

So, he began answering correspondence for us. I was happy with his work and treated him as a good friend. My husband, Ezekiel, also liked him and we worked together well. For the first time he got to spend substantial time with his son who is here in Taos.

Everything seemed to be going well, until one day, I mentioned... "Guys, if you work here, you have to be prepared to understand that we get spiritual attacks against our equipment. Sometimes with sickness, sometimes with issues that spring out of Hell from nowhere. But we do get attacked, regularly."

Well, as it turns out, my wording was provocative for him, and I didn't realize that. I was just stating what all our kids know: we get attacks. And that day we had had serious ones against our Internet. I didn't mean anything by it. I wasn't trying to force the issue--I was just warning everyone in the room.

Well, that set him off. And a day or two later he told me, "I quit." The reason, he said, was that "No one tells me what to believe." And I tried to say at that point, "Well, I wasn't telling you what to believe, necessarily--that you HAD to believe it. But that this is what happens here! At least, it's something to talk about."

Well, at that time I had made an issue about masses of people assembling in Central America to migrate to the U.S. My very reliable source, who is an active consultant in military intelligence, had told me there were 50,000 Red Chinese soldiers amassing in Honduras, heading for our border. Well, it turns out that President Trump, the day after that came out against China, announced the class of Ohio submarines that had 12 tubes that could shoot 20 nuclear-armed weapons, deploying rapidly enough to destroy all of China within a few minutes.

After that, I didn't hear anything more about the Chinese in Honduras--only that another group of refugees were assembling at our border. And it wasn't 50,000. It was more like, I believe, 5,000. My source came back and said that the new intel was that the group assembling was mostly refugees, and of course terrorists. And that however many Chinese were headed to Honduras or were in Honduras had withdrawn.

And I found it very interesting, because I looked it up. There are Red Chinese communities in Honduras. Some people migrate there for retirement.

Well, my first husband and father of my children confronted me, saying, "There are no Chinese amassing in Honduras." (And a few other contradictory statements about what I had heard.) And that people like my source were all over the streets of Phoenix with crazy stories like that. Further, the wife he had just left was really into all of this, too, and it was all fake news, rumor mongering and had no substance.

"And I quit, 'cause no one tells me what to believe."

Well, I don't blame him. You should never tell someone what to believe. You should just offer it to them, and if they want to, fine. And if they don't, fine.

But I was trying to give him a head's up on things that go on here, that we just take for granted. So, I sat there rather stunned and said, "Nothing has changed from when you first left us. You still don't believe! Nothing is any different. So, go ahead and go."

And that was how I felt. It was like, these were the same issues that separated us from the beginning. And I'm not saying that my discernment was perfect. You know? There's a reason why the Lord waited 50 years to get me into ministry. I had problems with discernment. I made mistakes. I made some big mistakes!

But you don't give up on discernment because you were foolish and made mistakes. You just go deeper. And allow God to perfect you, which is also very humbling. And you can't be hurt by being made more humble. That's for sure!

So, you know, I'm looking back on this. And here, Ezekiel and I have been married almost 30 years now. And I'm saying, 'Wow! You know, I could STILL be stuck in this marriage if he hadn't left me.' And I wouldn't have been able to do anything for the Lord. I'd be living in a very hostile environment.

You see, I made a huge mistake when I married him. I had a warning that it was wrong, but I ignored it, because it was embarrassing. And I was 32 years old and wondering if I'd ever be asked to get married, 'cause I hadn't yet. And I didn't know what else to do, because I had already had my first child with him. I didn't trust in my intuition. I wasn't a Christian yet, and I really messed up. In the past, we have both acknowledged that we made a big mistake.

Dear ones, if I had stuck it out in that marriage, I would not be serving the Lord today. There was an undercurrent of hostility, although he said he loved the Lord. Something about me--maybe my arrogance, pride, or belief in things you cannot see--really made him furious. And I felt it. I felt the same thing the day he confronted me. In fact, I'd been feeling it for a few days beforehand, that there was a severe irritation there. And it was a very, very same situation and reason why he left in the beginning.

So, I am sharing this with you, because many of you are yoked to the wrong spouse. God did not put you together. Your flesh, your fears, your poverty, your desperation put you together... But NOT God.

"Let no man separate what God has joined." That's what Scripture says. So, if God brought you together with your spouse, like Ezekiel and I, you should not divorce. Ezekiel and I had a test of that in our 8th year of our marriage and almost separated for good. But God healed both of us, and our problems and we reunited without problems. I could not imagine being without him, I love him so much. We are so united as one. But at the time, the friction between us on the mountain at that time was horrendous, and we almost lost each other.

So, I am telling you all this, because I want you to examine your conscience and apply some rules to your marriage. Were there lies or misinformation involved? Were you forced to marry by an outside source? Did you marry out of necessity, out of fear? Or because you became pregnant? Out of poverty? Out of fear that no one would ever ask you to marry them?

The bottom line is... the only reason you marry is because both of you know for sure it is God's perfect will for you, and He has brought you together to raise holy children and serve Him.

That is an equal yoke; that is a marriage God has joined.

Because we had children that were a mix of like mindedness and opposite mindedness, we had contradiction in the family. Some of the children are Christians - and some aren't. A Christian marriage would not have produced that much contradiction, because it was made by God, and your children would be more prone to being holy. Because both parents were leaning towards holiness.

Lord, did You have something You wanted to add to this?

Jesus began, "I know the torment some of you are enduring over this issue. Although I hate divorce, I also hate a carnal marriage which can bring forth nothing but corruption. I have spoken to you many times that you are in an illicit marriage, but out of fear of repercussions, you stay married and the situation only gets worse.

"My mercies are new every morning. I know you made a mistake, and My heart is to help you correct it. But as long as you stay yoked to your flesh, I can do nothing.

"On the other hand, if you have a good marriage--even though it is not the one I had for you--I will bring good out of it. But I never intended for you to live in repression and torment because you were young and foolish. The choice is yours to make, dear ones. Did I bring you together? Or did your flesh bring you together?

"I am for you, not against you. And understand, that if your flesh brought you together, your partner will never be fulfilled in this marriage, either.

"So, go deep, My people. Go very, very deep and examine your motives at marriage. If it was not My doing, the marriage is illicit and should be dissolved--unless you are both happy and willing to stick it out.

"That is your choice. Choose wisely. Remember. My mercies are new every morning. And when you do the right thing, I will be with you. I will not leave you without comfort."

And here's a very interesting and well-researched Grounds for Marriage and Annulment in the Catholic church.

And I find it to be very Scriptural and very complete in its scope, as far as grounds for marriage and Annulment go. And there's some really, really well-defined things that show that the marriage was not in God's will. It was not the Lord's choice.

#1 is: If you or your spouse did not know what was happening during the marriage ceremony because of insanity, mental illness, or a lack of consciousness.

Okay - so these are grounds for the dissolution of a marriage. The spiritual dissolution.

2 - Grave lack of discretionary judgment concerning essential matrimonial rights and duties. You or your spouse was affected by some serious circumstances or factors that made you unable to judge or evaluate either the decision to marry or the ability to create a true marital relationship.

3 - Psychic-natured incapacity to assume marital obligations. You or your spouse, at the time of consent, was unable to fulfill the obligations of marriage because of a serious psychological disorder or other condition.

4 - Ignorance about the nature of marriage. You or your spouse did not know that marriage is a permanent relationship between a man and a woman ordered toward the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.

5 - You or your spouse intended to marry a specific individual who was not the individual with whom marriage was celebrated.

And they give an example of mail order brides. Or...Rachel and Leah in the Bible. That would be a grounds for divorce, or annulment. Because the father slipped Leah into the bed instead of Rachel. So, he didn't know.

6 - The error about a quality of a person. You or your spouse intended to marry someone who either possessed or did not possess a certain quality, e.g., social status, marital status, education, religious conviction, freedom from disease, or arrest record. That quality must have been directly and principally intended.

So, in other words, marrying someone that has a long record, and you knew nothing about it. These things were kept from you. Or someone with a serious disease.

Okay.

7 - You or your spouse was intentionally deceived about the presence or absence of a quality in the other. The reason for this deception was to obtain consent to marriage.

Okay, so. You were intentionally deceived.

8 - You or your spouse did not intend to contract marriage as the law of the Catholic Church understands marriage. Rather, the ceremony was observed solely as a means of obtaining something other than marriage itself, e.g., legal status in the country or to legitimize a child.

9 - You or your spouse married intending, either explicitly or implicitly, to deny the other's right to sexual acts open to procreation.

10 - You or your spouse married intending, either explicitly or implicitly, not to remain faithful.

11 - You or your spouse married intending, either explicitly or implicitly, not to create a permanent relationship, retaining an option to divorce.

12 - You or your spouse attached a future condition to your decision to marry, e.g., you will complete your education, your income will be at a certain level, you will remain in this area.

So, you or your spouse said that that had to be fulfilled in order to stay married. Wow, that's a rough one!

13 - You or your spouse attached a past condition so your decision to marry and that condition did not exist; e.g., I will marry you provided that you have never been married before, I will marry you provided that you have graduated from college.

Oh, my gosh...

14 - You or your spouse attached a present condition to your decision to marry and that condition did not exist, e.g., I will marry you provided you don't have any debt.

lol...oh boy. Can you imagine this??

15 - You or your spouse married because of an external physical or moral force that you could not resist.

hmmm.

16 - You or your spouse chose to marry because of fear that was grave and inescapable and was caused by an outside source.

17 - You or your spouse married believing that marriage was not necessarily an exclusive relationship.

18 - You or your spouse married believing that civil law had the power to dissolve marriage and that remarriage was acceptable after civil divorce.

19 - You and your spouse married believing that marriage is not a religious or sacred relationship but merely a civil contract or arrangement.

20 - After your civil marriage, you and your spouse participated in a Catholic ceremony and you or your spouse believed that (1) you were already married, (2) the Catholic ceremony was merely a blessing, and (3) the consent given during the Catholic ceremony had no real effect.

Okay... Well, they're pretty serious about this.

And I just wanted to add at the end of this. If you're young and you're not married yet, wow. BE CAREFUL. You don't know what your spouse is going to be like in 10 years. But GOD knows. You might be happy now, thinking that this is really a good thing. But then things change in a relationship. And the devil is very clever about bringing people together out of necessity - and hiding that from them.

So, be very, very careful, dear ones. Because the children you have, if it's a divided marriage and it's not a marriage from the Lord. Your children will not be holy. And there'll be contradiction in your family. It is SO important for both spouses to love the Lord and bring forth good, holy children. He's only looking to your happiness.

And as an aside, I didn't meet my husband until I was 45 - and that was Ezekiel. So, you don't have to be desperate if you're in your thirties. There's still time.

God bless you, dear ones.

And I want to take a special moment to thank those of you who've been contributing to us. We really needed donations. You really got us out of a difficult place, 'cause we've had a lot of people coming to us that are so poor, they couldn't buy firewood. They can't buy food. They don't have money for medicine... There are so many different needs.

But mostly, we haven't been able to give to the trafficked children causes. And recently, someone donated enough so we could spread it around a little more. So, please remember us every month. When it gets to be that time. Because we are supporting missionaries around the world.

And you can go to our Outreach page on Heartdwellers.org and it'll show you the different groups that we do support.

And I wanted to add. We have a new music channel. Part of it's on Vimeo, actually, there's a lot of music on Vimeo. But the best one is on Soundcloud. It's Clare & Ezekiel du Bois on Soundcloud. And we have a LOT of playlists. And the music is all categorized into playlists and albums. So, it's there. It's free. And a lot of it is very contemplative to prepare your heart's to be with the Lord.

If anyone wants a copy of our new book on Healing, please drop me a line and I'll send it to you.

The Lord bless you, dear ones.