A story in a long post:
Once upon a time, a young man prayed sincerely to God to bring him a wife. A few years past and while in high school this young man met a Christian girl. She was pretty, but not the prettiest, she was well liked, but not popular, but she was sweet, she loved God, and she liked him. The young man took an interest in this girl and they became a young couple. For 3 years they went out together, went to church together, and prayed for each other.
Then one fall day, the young man asked the girl to be his bride. She immediately said yes. Their families were overjoyed. Everyone knew they were a happy couple, and that God had been blessing them. They had not set a date for the wedding yet as he was still in college, and they did not want to rush into things.
Another year past and they set the date for another year away. They wanted the wedding to be near Christmas. They both loved Christmas for its meaning. They wanted to celebrate their love in marriage at the time of year that the gift of Christ came to earth. They and all who knew them knew that God was with them and blessed them.
In all, they had dated for over 5 years with a 2 year engagement by the time they were married. And though life was hard at times, they persevered through it. They went to church, they worked, they had a family. All seemed right and good. There were times when they cried together, laughed together, and even argued with each other. But still, a husband and wife work through things.
The years passed and it seemed that something was wrong. Surely God did not intend that they would have grown apart. Yet that was happening. They both tried for a while to improve things. They tried together, then separately, then one of them quit trying.
Both the man and the woman were Christians their entire marriage. Yet after 18 years married, the woman left the man. She quit trying and caring. She said she had been praying for years for an answer to her question: should I stay or should I go? She said God answered her prayer and her question with "go".
The man tried to fix things. He prayed fervently every day. But with her "answer" to prayer, the woman refused to change her mind. So she divorced her husband after 18 years of marriage, and over 23 years being a continuous couple.
The man remained faithful to the marriage until the final day the official decree was signed and sealed by the courts. He did this even though his wife had already left and had already had a boyfriend to some extent. He didn't want to do that. But he had been praying for months for God to help him make sense of all this. But this was what God told the now much older man to do: remain faithful to your covenant until you are released from it.
The man prayed many times daily for months for an answer to his question: why? His answer came after the divorce was final. The man knew the answer from God was this: "Do these things because it is what I require of you. You need discipline, you need correction. I do this because I love you."
There was evidence in both of their lives that they loved God and tried to serve Him as best they could. Both produced much fruit. Both were without question firm believers in Christ.
So now some questions .
Was this union the will of God to begin with?
Did God allow the dissolution of the marriage?
Did God make a mistake?
Did the man and woman mistakenly marry?
Was the dissolution of the marriage the result of not having been chosen by God or by the hard heart on the part of the one or the other?
Reconcile all these things with the fact that we all serve a sovereign God. There is nothing that can happen outside of God's will.
I have my own answers to these questions and this reconciling. I do not ask you these things to assist me in discovering God's purpose in these things. I am the man. I have spent the last several years in prayer for my marriage. I have spent nearly a year with no wife and being in counsel with my pastor and elders. I have my answers.
The reason I post this is because it is very easy to say something is this way or that when you are only speaking hypothetically. It gets a lot more complicated to explain when its real. Yet even in this complexity I have the straightforward answer from God: I am that I am, I am your God and My will reigns supreme.
The marriage and the divorce were the will of God, but for reasons more difficult to understand than to grasp the infinite universe. God did not make a mistake, all things were planned by God and all things happened according to the will of our unchanging Lord. The marriage was not a mistake. And the divorce was the result of the hardened heart of the woman, though I know that I gave cause for much grievance in the marriage.
Even before the wedding, the marriage was prayed many times for. It was not decided in haste. There was much discussion between the two of us before marriage about how to handle hard things. The decision to marry and the timing was rationally thought out and was definitely of the brain and heart, not merely emotion.
Just my experience and something I think you need to consider in your thought process.
Edited to add: As I read this story well over a year later, I can still say that it fits. Everything that took place, the good, the bad, and the ugly, were all part of God's will to accomplish His purpose. And the result has been that I am a better man, a better husband, and a better father than I was before. God brought to me a woman who is now my wife. She also had similar circumstances in a previous marriage. She also underwent the discipline process of God. And though discipline is not normally joyful at the time, looking back now, it was all worth it. Thank you God.
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