Originally posted by wizofoz:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Since my experience with you has proven that you try to ensare one with the accusation of being unforgiving, let me answer your question with a comparative question:
If you cut your right arm off and throw it away before you got saved, are you still missing your right arm? Wouldn't it have been better to have your right arm sown back on, and then get saved? It certainly would have been best to have gotten saved before you cut your arm off, right?
Since you seem to be afraid to answer a simple yes or no, I will assume your answer is yes.
I hardly see the comparison between cutting off your arm and being divorced, but I'll humor you.
Ok, I'm divorced and remarried, so I am an adulterer. It has been indicated by other posters that I can be accepted as a member in their church.
Since I am considered an adulterer, and I shall continue in this "sin" as long as I am remarried, then I am willfully sinning, and should be chastised by the church. Since I will continue in my sin, I should be eventually turned out of the church, since I have no intention to stop "sinning" by continuing to be an adulterer.
Can you say "Catch-22"? </font>[/QUOTE]Just as I stated in my previous reply.
Just because you've run into that crowd that will rake you over the coals, or as you indicate they have by your replies, for being divorced, doesn't mean I am.
I gave you the analogy and you turn it around into a snare. All I've said is that a divorce has an effect on a person's life. Many will tell you that it's just like some one had cut off their arm.
I haven't said by your re-marriage that you are continuing in sin, if you haven't seen the need to ask forgiveness, then you are continuing in sin and need to repent.
Throwing away the second vow of marriage to try and re-instate the first is worse, because then you would have broken two sets of vows, live with breaking the first, get forgiveness for it, and go on with life!
You try to deny that a divorce has any effect on a person. You seem to look at it in this light: if you pollute the stream by dumping your washing machine water into it, there's nothing wrong with the water as long as you don't have to drink it. But what about the people downstream? They have no other source of water but the stream. So are you saying they must drink your dirty water just to survive?
You put your septic tank in your yard, and the leech field water pollutes your neighbor's well. Now who's at fault? Your neighbor for having a well? or maybe you, who put the septic tank in against the health code?
You say that YOU have to be accepted, but I say you have to accept the facts. If you dirty the water, then you should also drink of that water, else take preventative measures to avoid pollution.
I am reminded of my past often, if the devil isn't doing it, the Lord is. The devil does it to try and destroy me, the Lord does it to remind me where He brought me from. So when the devil reminds me of the "chicken scratch" he's sifted out of my life and throw's it back at me, I remind him that the Lord is using that to rebuke him, because that's not what I am, but what I used to be!
Divorce has it's OBVIOUS downside: BITTERNESS! So why does anyone try to justify bitter water? Should they not place the Cross into that bitter water and allow the Lord to make it sweet?
Wiz, you seem to feel I am condemning you, I'm not! I am condemning divorce though, because the Lord does! Divorce IS unforgiveness, unforgiveness is SIN! That is why re-marriage is adultry, it's trashing the marriage vows and trying to demand justification by man's laws. The Law NEVER justified anybody, but we are justified by the blood of the Lamb!
I've answered your question by allowing you the chance to reason it out for yourself. That would go on to say, you need to answer the question yourself, truthfully.
You say you are being condemned for being divorced and re-married, then you condemn others by calling them judgemental and unforgiving, I forgive you, but can you forgive your self?
Quit being the pot that calls the kettle black, ask forgiveness, put it all behind you, but don't forget to make every effort to clean up the water.
Some of my best friends are divorced and re-married, some several times over, it doesn't change our friendship, but it certainly is a life that has its' troubles.
You try being the child of a divorced parents, having to reprove your parents of the bitter comments they make about one another, if they only had Jesus as the center of their marriage! You know, that's the only reason people get divorced, Jesus is not the center of the marriage. So, yes, divorce is sin.
