Why is it so confusing to know whether I should return to my first or second husband?
Question:
Hello,
I am in my thirties and a mother with children. I am in my second marriage for several years.
Long story short, the father of my kids and I met when I was a teenager. We started dating and I several children by the time I was in my twenties. When I was still pregnant with my youngest we got married because I didn't want to bring any more children into the world out of wedlock, but the day she was born, as he held her, a feeling of regret came over me -- a regret of marrying him. I started feeling like it was pointless to have married him when he was going to give her his name anyway. I now realize that was selfish thinking on my part. Two years later I separated from my husband, and a year later filed for divorce which was finalized.
About a year later I received, claimed, and acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord over my life. Around this same time, I met my second husband. The following year we were engaged. I asked my former pastor if it was okay for me to be married since I was already married, and divorced with children, and she said "God didn't honor my first marriage because I wasn't a follower of Christ, at that time but now that I am He will honor it." So we were married.
Fast forward two more years, we have separated and we still are. This is where my problem comes in. Before I married my second husband I vowed that divorce wasn't an option because God hates it. Within a few months after marrying my husband, I gained the understanding that by me re-marrying I was committing the sin of adultery and that my husband was now an adulterer. I told him if I had known the truth, I wouldn't have ever married him. However, I believe God will forgive us for what we didn't know and that we should both fast and repent which we did.
However, I feel so conflicted and confused. I know God isn't the author of confusion, but there are days where I believe so strongly that the Lord wants me to fight for my marriage that I am in currently, then there are days where I think maybe I am supposed to reconcile with my children's father and let my current husband go. But the father of my kids isn't Christian. He drinks, smokes, and doesn't provide for our daughters. On top of that, I don't have the kind of love for him that a wife should have for her husband. To be honest I don't think I was ever in love with him. I think having the kids made me think I was. Nor am I attracted to him in any way. Plus he is in another relationship.
But with my second marriage, I am in love with him. He is my best friend as well as my husband. I constantly pray for our reconciliation, that I learn to fully submit to him as fitting to the Lord, but I am not sure if I am sinning against the Lord, though I have repented.
Am I suppose to let my current husband go and remain single? Do I keep praying for this marriage and holdfast faith that God has wiped the sin of adultery out of the book when I repented? If I am to give up on my second husband and he remarried, wouldn't he forever be an adulterer because of me? Am I being selfish by praying for the reconciliation of my second marriage?
I want so much to honor God, but, as I stated earlier, some days more than most I strongly believe and feel that the Lord is leading me to keep standing, to fight for my husband and believe he will come home, other times I feel let him go, give up, you shouldn't have married him anyway, and I find myself again crying to God for forgiveness. I just don't know what to do, or what to believe anymore and it's so confusing and complicated, even as I write this I believe I should stand and fight for my husband of now, but I don't want to follow my feelings because it's leading me wrong I want to obey the Word of God.
Answer:
If you want to follow the Word of God, then you would have to start living God's way. You are correct that "God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints" (I Corinthians 14:33). The confusion you are experiencing is not of God's doing. It comes from you not following God.
You decided to divorce your first husband. No one forced you. You wanted him enough to have several children with him, but once you married you claimed to regret it. It isn't sensible because you knew exactly who you were marrying. Jesus said, "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery" (Matthew 19:9). You did not have the right to a second marriage. The woman who told you otherwise was dishonest. God's laws apply to everyone. If they did not, then all non-Christians would not be sinners since sin is the breaking of law (I John 3:4). Nor does God say that only Christians can get married. Therefore, your second marriage was adulterous because you are still bound by the covenant you made with your first husband.
God forgives sinners when they repent of their sins. " "Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways," says the Lord GOD. "Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies," says the Lord GOD. "Therefore turn and live!" " (Ezekiel 18:30-32). But you did not cast away your sin. You remained in your adultery. "For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man" (Romans 7:2-3). God does not forgive sinners who refuse to give up their sins.
If this second marriage ends, your current husband would no longer be an adulterer. He would be free to marry someone else because this marriage should never have taken place.
The mess is not created by God, but by you not following God's instructions. You don't wish to return to your first husband, so your only option is to remain single and focus on raising your children. "Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife" (I Corinthians 7:10-11).
