Surviving an Unwanted Divorce : Lysa TerKeurst & Joel Muddamalle

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage Backstage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we tackle a topic all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you truly thrive in both life and leadership. If you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up. Take a moment to drop your name and the name of your ministry in the comments below. We’ll be praying for you. And whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. I’m really excited today because I’m welcoming back two guests who’ve been on the show before, Lysa TerKeurst and Joel Muddamalle. Lysa, many of you know her as a New York Times best-selling author. She is the President and the Chief Visionary Officer of Proverbs 31 Ministries. Joel is the Director of Theology and Research for Proverbs 31. Together, they’re the co-hosts of the Therapy and Theology podcast. Their most recent book, that they co-authored along with Dr. Jim Cress, is entitled Surviving an Unwanted Divorce. So Lysa and Joel, welcome to the show.

Lisa TerKeurst
Hello. Thank you so much for having us.

Jason Daye
Yeah, good to have you guys with us. Really looking forward to this conversation. As I mentioned, your newest book that you guys have been working on, that’s releasing right now, is Surviving an Unwanted Divorce. This is a topic, obviously, that is a challenging topic for most pastors and ministry leaders, whether it’s something they’re experiencing themselves, or they’re journeying with others through an unwanted divorce, and that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk from both of those perspectives. And I think I want to begin, if I can, Lysa, with the initial perspective of a ministry leader, a pastor who’s experiencing an unwanted divorce. And Lysa, for those who may not know your story, I’d love for you to share a little bit of that and what prompted you, what led you, to join up with Joel and Jim, really put pen to paper, and create this resource Surviving an Unwanted Divorce?

Lisa TerKeurst
Absolutely. Well, this is definitely not a book that I ever wanted to write. I wish there was no need for this message at all, but when I went through the very unexpected death of my marriage, I was so very heartbroken and devastated, and I felt like there was very little hope for me to even stay in ministry. So, I think a lot of people, whether they’re in ministry or not in ministry, see the death of their marriage as the death of their future because it’s what they thought their future would look like, and the same with me. Marriage is such a big part of our well-being. Marriage is such a big part of what we think we can count on for the rest of our lives. So, when that happened, I had the great fortune of finding an incredible therapist, Jim Cress, as well as working with Dr. Joel Muddamalle in our work at Proverbs 31 Ministries. So, I had the privilege of getting answers that I needed in real time. But I recognize that not everybody has access to a theologian who can answer their questions about what the Bible actually does and does not say about divorce. And not everybody can find a great therapist who specializes in betrayal trauma, in sexual addiction, and all of those things that are often wrapped up in the breakup of a marriage. So, because I had the good fortune of getting connected with them, and they were such an important part of my healing journey, I just felt like I could not keep this information to myself. So the first step was obviously getting to a healed place for myself, and walking this journey beside them and with them, and they helped me so much. The second step was a podcast called Therapy and Theology that Jim, Joel, and I do together. That’s an absolutely free resource that people can access right away, wherever they can listen to podcasts. So that’s really important. But then, because of the unique ministry exposure that we have. We were getting so much, so many emails, so many direct messages about people wanting a resource that they could hold in their hands, that they could give to their friends, that would be an immediate help. And so a book seems like the next logical step. So, again, not a book I ever wanted to write. But how could I not help those people coming behind me? This is one of the most painful things someone will ever walk through in their life, and there’s so much confusion, there’s so much hurt, and so I just couldn’t not help them. I have to.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that, Lysa. I’d like to stay with you, Lysa, on this for a little bit, because you touched on this. But for pastors and ministry leaders, when you experience an unwanted divorce, it can almost hurt on a whole other level because of the pain that might be unintentionally inflicted by the church, by the ministry, by where you’re serving, or the questions around that. I’m curious, Lysa, how did that reality kind of impact you personally as you were navigating this divorce?

Lisa TerKeurst
Yeah, so it impacted me in several ways. Not a lot of people had the confidence to know how to find biblical answers, how to open up the Bible, and really help me discover what the Bible actually does and does not say about divorce. But most people do know Malachi 2:16, which most people quote as “God hates divorce”. So, what can happen, though, to somebody who didn’t want this divorce? I didn’t want the divorce. I didn’t pursue the divorce. I was being a faithful wife, fighting for my marriage. I was doing everything I possibly could. I had forgiven. I had given second chances, third chances, and fourth chances. I think there were a lot of very honorable reasons that I stayed so long and fought so hard for my marriage, but I also want to say that I think there were some unhealthy reasons as well. But regardless, I knew how hard I’d fought for my marriage, so to have someone find out that I was getting a divorce, and immediately, their response was, You know, God hates divorce. It made me feel like they were almost implying a couple of things. One, God hates the person getting a divorce. God hates me. God can never use me again. It’ll be this stain, even though it was not my integrity, not my character, not my choices, that got us to the place where we did, but it felt like something I was going to have to carry the consequences for the mistakes of another person. Now look, immediately, I can feel, you know, people going, well, there are always two people that contribute to marriage difficulties. And I say, You’re absolutely right. But my friend Leslie Burnick helped me understand there’s a big difference between a difficult marriage and a destructive marriage. In a difficult marriage, there are two people who humbly kneel before God, who are willing to go to therapy together, who stop whatever bad behavior is contributing to the dysfunction, who are willing to own their part of it, and both people want to come back together. That’s a marriage fight, for sure. But the purest definition of love, and I love this definition of love, is that each person should seek the other’s highest good inside of a marriage. So, when someone in the marriage is seeking the other person’s highest good, but the other person is participating in very destructive behaviors that not only dishonor their spouse, but dishonor God. And there’s a whole list of these. It’s not just sexual infidelity, although that is part of it. But when they refuse to stop their bad behavior, when they are very, very into covering up their secrets, using manipulative tactics like gaslighting and lying, and all of those things, then you no longer have just difficulties in marriage, you have a destructive marriage, and that has to be dealt with very, very differently. Now, obviously, one of the passages that I just mentioned, Malachi 2:16, deserves to be theologically unpacked a little bit more, because, as I said, that verse has been weaponized against people, and I think that we need to do a better job at understanding the cultural context of that verse and the other verses in the Bible that mentioned divorce. But just to start out, I’m going to toss it over to Joel for sure, but Malachi 2:16 does say in some versions of the Bible, God hates divorce. But that really stems from the way that the King James Bible was interpreted. But King James was not the first Bible. In order to really understand, you have to go all the way back to the Septuagint, which is when the Hebrew context, the Hebrew text, was translated into Greek. And I think that’s a much purer version. And Joel, I’m going to let you take it from here, because now some translations of the Bible no longer say God hates divorce. So some Bibles like mine, in NIV, say, I think, a closer representation of what the text actually says. It says when a man hates and divorces his wife, he does violence against the one he should protect, thus says the Lord. The object of the hatred is really important. So, Joel, I’ll let you take it from here.

Joel Muddamalle
Yeah, that’s really good. I think, Jason, you guys might have heard that famous phrase, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a horrible phrase. Like, what? I think it should go, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words, they will always hurt me, you know? And so if Jim were here with us, one of the things that Jim would say is that our words frame our reality. There’s a poet who once said that the words we use build the worlds that we live in. And so, to start this conversation, I just think it’s really important that we recognize that there is a context behind why a phrase that is flat and simple, like God hates divorce, will be understood in devastating ways for a woman who has just done the very best that she absolutely can to honor the Lord in her marriage. And then, definitely, some men out there as well who have been the recipients of an unwanted divorce. They’ve done the very best that they can. And we need precision with our language. As Lysa mentioned, the original Bible, the Bible, in its original context, was not written in English. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek. In between those two things, there’s this thing that came about called the Septuagint, which is when 72 rabbinic scholars were hired by one of Alexander the Great’s generals, one of the Ptolemies, and they were entrusted with a really important task: to take the Hebrew text and translate it into the Greek language. So in many ways, that Greek text ends up becoming almost like our first commentary on the Masoretic text, which is the Hebrew text. And so, if you took any Hebrew scholar today and you said, Hey, would you read Malachi 2:16 for me? And they look at the text, the first thing they’re going to be like is, Oh, hold up. I gotta do some work here. Because, arguably, the Hebrew text is one of the hardest to interpret into a different language from the original source text. So what biblical scholars will do is they’ll take a look at what the Septuagint says, how they handle the translation, the Latin Vulgate, and the Targums. There are these lists of ancient sources. And what’s fascinating is that those ancient sources do something very specific when it comes to the Hebrew word Shana, or hatred. They associate the subject of that verb not with God, but with the man, the one who is unfaithful in the covenant. So, I’ll read from the CSV translation, Malachi 2:16 says, if he, and that he is the husband or the covenant breaker, if he hates and divorces his wife, says the Lord God of Israel. He, once again, referring to the man, covers his garments with injustice, says the Lord of Armies, therefore, watch yourselves carefully and do not act treacherously. And some would say, Joel, this is a difference without a distinction. And to that, I would respond, no, this is a difference with a really big distinction, because what it identifies is that the Lord’s grief, his anger, and his frustration are not aimed unilaterally at both individuals. It is aimed specifically at the one who does injustice. The one who broke covenant. And it’s important that we read this verse in the context of the entirety of Scripture, which is, there’s hope for repentance, there’s hope for redemption. The Lord wants the individual to be convicted and to return to the Lord. And so that’s the goal of this. And the Lord is a righteous judge, and he will hold those who are breaking covenant accountable, and he will uphold the rights and the integrity of the victims who are facing this and doing so in a way that they’re processing something they never even asked for. And so that’s one of those verses, I think, that can easily be flattened to just say, Well, God hates divorce. You’ve got no other options. But a passage like Deuteronomy 24 lets us know there’s this thing in the ancient world called the divorce certificate. And the whole purpose of the divorce certificate was the upholding of the rights and the integrity of the woman who was caught in a horrific situation that she never asked for.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s really helpful. I’d like to spend a little more time on this and just kind of this idea of, how do we then ensure that we lean into and, Joel, you mentioned this just a moment ago, lean into this idea that God is a God who restores. God is a God who reconciles. God is a God who redeems. My favorite things about God, right? We all love that about God. How do we make sure that we don’t distance ourselves from the beauty of that to such a degree, but at the same time, we don’t allow ourselves to get so hard-hearted that we’re actually hurting people whose God’s heart is breaking for, if that makes sense?

Joel Muddamalle
Yeah, the hard-hearted part is actually very important because that’s actually some of the context of who the Lord hates. It’s the person who hardens their own heart. So I’ll go first, then I’d love for Lysa to kind of unpack this. But I do think this is why assessing the individual’s inclination towards humility is so important. That when you have a person who’s aware of the gravity of their sin, they understand the righteousness of God, and they desire to make right the thing that has been wrong, what you’ll notice is a couple of things. One is a contrite spirit, a contrite heart. That edge of arrogance and stubbornness kind of falters, because you just recognize the devastation that’s taken place. And there’s a difference from just like an emotive response from a heart that understands the gravity of this. Once again, I’m tapping into my inner Jim. But it takes time, plus believable behavior, and sometimes you just have an immediate like, oh, momentary, but there’s no longevity to it. The second thing is a willingness to submit to discipleship, to say, Hey, I’m willing to walk the long road of restoration, the long road of rebuilding trust, and I think that those things are vitally, vitally important. When you find an individual who’s just trying to kind of cover the bases just to get back to whatever it is that they want really fast, I think you find an indication of a heart that might still be compromised, and you want to be really careful in that process. So you’re really trying to assess the fruit of the individual over a period of time, so that you can assess and evaluate the possibility of what type of restoration there might be. And even if restoration is not possible with that individual, as I said, the restoration with the Lord is always possible.

Lisa TerKeurst
Yeah, and I’ll add something that I think is really important, too, and that is the posture of the one who caused the fracture in marriage. Now, we understand that sometimes it’s the statement it takes two to tango. There are always two sides to every story. When I hear that, there are always two sides to every story, I think, Why are we talking about sides? This isn’t a spectator sport. This is a marriage. A family that’s getting decimated on the field. So, can we please come together and help the hurting individuals? But, I do want to say that the posture of the one who has done some action that fractured the marriage, their posture has to be humility. And it’s going to take humility for a long time. And I think one of the ways that you know that someone’s heart is really in restoring the marriage is the one who was deeply hurt. So in my case, that was me. If my then-husband came to me and said, Hey, I want to restore the marriage, if the posture of his heart was humility, then when I got triggered in pain, which will absolutely happen when you’ve been deeply hurt, betrayed by someone else. If he were to say, You know, that makes a lot of sense. Of course, you are triggered in this pain. What do you need for me? Do you need me to come close to you? Do you need me to give you some space? Do you need me to show you my phone? Do you need to see my computer? If that’s the posture, like, I have nothing to hide and my sole focus is to help you get through this trigger, that posture of humility points in the direction that there’s a really good chance that that relationship can be restored. And I think it’s really important that Joel and I both state that that is absolutely what I was pursuing with my relationship with my ex-husband, because we think marriage is a beautiful creation of God. The institution of marriage is sacred, and it is holy, and so we never, ever want to encourage someone to give up too quickly. If that kind of posture of humility is there and both people are willing and able to work on the marriage, then that is a beautiful thing. That can be a beautiful, beautiful reconciliation, and that can be a beautiful redemption story. If, however, the one who caused the fracture does not have a humble posture, and the one who was hurt gets triggered in their pain, and all they hear is, Seriously, you’re not over this yet? This happened a month ago, and you’re still talking about it. This happened five years ago, and you’re still bringing it up. I mean, haven’t you forgiven me? Don’t you know, forgive and forget? If that’s the kind of posture that’s there, then that shows me that one, there is not the proper level of concern or tenderness for the hurting one’s heart. And two, that lack of humility shows me that they are not operating like David cried out. Create in me a new heart, God. That doesn’t just mean renovate my old heart. That means take out this cold, hard heart that I had, and make a new heart, your heart, God, and put your heart in me. And so I think that’s a really important, practical, everyday distinction, to know where somebody’s heart is. And like Joel said, the fruit of the Spirit also makes it really evident. And I do think reconciliation is possible. I also think sometimes the end of the story is a rescue. But even if your story is a rescue and you don’t have reconciliation with another person, you can absolutely always live a redemption story with God.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find this for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation as well as reflection questions so that you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network.

Jason Daye
I love that. That’s so helpful. And, Lysa and Joel, for both of you, what are some of the challenges that the church can create? We talked a little bit about how we might use scripture, but what are some of the other challenges that ministry, the ministry world, or the church world can create for those who are experiencing an unwanted divorce that maybe we should be paying better attention to as pastors and ministry leaders to help those who are facing these kinds of challenges?

Joel Muddamalle
I’ve got a pretty personal kind of, like, first one, and Lysa has got a lot of experience on this. But this kind of comes from my area of study and expertise in terms of, like, a biblical theology guy. You know, Jason, I spent a lot of time in study and in school. Undergraduate degree, degree in psychology, seminary, PhD, and one of the things, the further you get along the way, is you learn really quickly where your skill set is, where your expertise is, and maybe more importantly, where it’s not. And so, if you’re like, Hey, Joel, can we talk Ephesians 2:18-22? We can talk for five years, six years. I did my dissertation on that, you know? You go, Hey, can we talk about Paul’s letters? Absolutely. I’m Pauline guy. I did a PhD on Paul. You start saying, Can we talk New Testament? Yeah, we can have a real, educated conversation on the New Testament. Can we talk about the Old Testament, minor prophets? Yeah, I’ve got a general understanding. Hey, can we talk about Daniel 9:22? I’m probably going to tap out. The Aramaic. The Hebrew. There are people who have spent their entire lives just focused on not just the book of Daniel, but that specific chapter. And so there’s this benefit in formal academic training that you get, where you get to learn where your skill set is and where your limits are. And I think with ministry, particularly, it can become very easy to have a Superman complex, like a hero complex, where you have some very, very complicated scenarios that come through the front door, and you feel this tension of like, I’ve got to be the one who’s going to be able to pastorally counsel these folks through it. And it’s like, we’ve got to understand our limits. We need to know what is garden-variety sin, what are some things that we can walk alongside in terms of spiritual disciplines, and help in terms of general biblical counseling. But there might come a time when we go, I’m in the deep end, and I need to bring in a specialist. It’s not saying I’m tapping out, but I’m going to be committed to things that I can be committed to, but I need to bring in some help, because God has graced other people in different ways in order to help with addiction specialty, or trauma betrayal. I know Lysa’s going to talk a lot about this. So I think one of the things that we’ve got to get better at saying is, Gosh, I need help. Y’all need help, I need help, and so let’s pursue that help together so that we’re not in the deep end trying to survive. And honestly, that just creates a lot more pain than it does do harm.

Lisa TerKeurst
Yeah, and I just want to say that I have a lot of compassion for ministry leaders who have the heart to help. But, if you don’t understand the complexities of things that, as Joel just mentioned, like if you don’t understand the complexities of personality disorders, they can play such a huge role. If you don’t understand the complexities of abuse, if you don’t understand the complexities of addiction, and you know what, as a ministry leader, you’re not supposed to be an expert in all of those. So, I think, as Joel was saying, it’s really, really important to know when to get the professionals involved. But a great bridge between those two, I think, my hope is this book that we’ve written, Surviving an Unwanted Divorce, because it’s not just for the person who is in the pain of the death of their marriage, it’s also for people walking beside that person. And so I hope this is a resource that pastors will pick up and let it give them some deeper insight into what the Bible actually does and does not say around the subject matter of divorce, especially some of the harder divorce passages that can make a ministry leader or pastor kind of shy away and just kind of have the mindset. The safest mindset is, divorce is bad. We need to do everything we can to save the marriage. And I understand that, because I want to do everything we can to save marriages, too. But I also know that there are some dynamics where we elevate sometimes the institution of marriage above the image bearers of Christ. And I think we need to be really careful, because that does not honor God. It does not honor God to send a woman back into a relationship. And look, I understand this can go both ways. Sometimes it’s the woman causing the destruction, but for the sake of me being a woman, I’ll just say a woman. It’s not wise to too quickly send a woman back into a dynamic and say things to her like, Just don’t instigate him. If you wouldn’t instigate him, then he wouldn’t be so harsh. He wouldn’t abuse you. And do you see what that does? It puts all the ownership of the dynamics on the one who is hurting. And look, no woman wants to be abused. It’s about whether she is instigating it. It really needs to be the one who’s causing the fractures, the hurt, and the abuse. That’s the person who needs to be addressed. So, I hope our book is a real bridge to start healthier conversations around biblical truth, but also therapeutic wisdom and insights, so that we’re not inadvertently giving people advice that, in the end, could hurt more than it helps.

Joel Muddamalle
Yeah, there are some moments in the book that I’m really proud of, which are just the footnotes. Obviously, I would say that because I’m a theology guy, I’m an academic, but for my pastor friends and ministry leaders that I recognize, gosh, you have so much that’s going on on a day-to-day basis. There’s just the immediacy of ministry. You’ve got funerals, weddings, and crises all over the place. One of my goals, our heart as a team, was to provide almost that guide of saying, Hey, here’s some difficult passages. Malachi 2:16. Here are some concepts of marriage. Here’s the Eastern world, the culture, and the context that it would take a lot of time, probably, to jump into that. And so I just took it on myself to say, Let me try to grab some of the best scholarship in this area. I’m not going to necessarily tell you exactly what to think. But as Lysa and Jim often say, we want to give you a lot to think about so that you can make the very best informed decision for your ministry context, and as you’re being led by the Holy Spirit. So I would just really encourage people to check out the appendices in the back, where we get more technical in the conversation, if that is something that will help you, and follow the footnote, so you can see where the conversation is going, because this is a starting spot. And I anticipate that you’ll want to dig in a little bit deeper and have an ongoing conversation with literature and with the theology behind it.

Lisa TerKeurst
And I also want to be a voice for the many, many 1000s upon 1000s, upon 1000s of women who feel like they used to know their place at church. When they were married and they had kids, they had someone to go to church with, and it was just like they were doing the deal. You know what I’m saying? But then a lot of women who walk through a divorce feel lost now when they step into the doors of a church. The pastor, understandably so, isn’t talking about the very real dynamics of her life right now. Very rarely will a pastor even address divorce from stage. And I say, understandably so. But we’ve got to give women something because one of the number one groups of people leaving the church today, it’s women my age, and a lot of those women have just been completely disillusioned because somebody has said something that made them feel like the church is no longer a safe place for me. I don’t have a place here. People don’t know what to do with me. So I think it’s really, really important to have something that we can give that hurting person, and I pray that our book becomes that something, so you don’t have to be an expert on all the nuances and complications. But don’t leave her out, because also, that same hurting woman who needs your help today, if she’s properly cared for, and she starts living a redemption story with God, there is no more powerful person who will want to serve, help, and love people at your church than that woman. I’m more passionate about ministry now than I ever have been, because I have tasted the sweetest redemption, even when my life imploded, and now I’m so eager that I cannot wait to get to church. I’m going to be the first one raising my hands and praising God. I’m going to be the first one to stand up and help this single mom over here or that hurting family over here. If you want really powerful women at your church, find women who are living a redemption story. Help them get there, and they will be powerful and effective prayer warriors, ministry leaders. Those are the women that you want to come alongside and help. So don’t abandon them now. Walk with them. And I pray that our book, Surviving an Unwanted Divorce, is going to be a real help, a real tool for that.

Jason Daye
At PastorServe, we love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you want to learn more about how you can qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. That’s PastorServe.org/freesession.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. And as you’re talking, Lysa, I was thinking, I can’t help but think of Christ when we read the stories of Christ throughout the gospel, his tender-heartedness, his love for women, specifically, who are caught in heart-wrenching situations. That’s who we’re called to be as the church. And if we can lean into that tenderness and seek that tenderness, I think that does so much to honor God, right? I mean, that’s what he’s called us to do. I love that Surviving an Unwanted Divorce, the book that you guys have put together, as well as Theology and Therapy, your podcast, are such great resources, kind of as we’re talking about this idea of not being an expert, right? And, oftentimes, in ministry, I remember, in seminary, one of my dear professors said, Jason, probably one of the best phrases you’ll ever use in ministry is, I don’t know, I’m really not sure, but let’s try to figure it out. Right? The idea of, okay, you don’t have to be Superman, you don’t have to have it all figured out. It’s okay to be in ministry and say you’re not sure. But let’s see if we can find some resources. Let’s see if we can find some people who are experts in this. I think that is so important in the work that you guys are doing. Lysa, Joel and, of course, Jim, through the podcast and through this book, are providing some real tools that we can use in our local churches and our local ministries to really engage and point people to Jesus, and as you said, Lysa, I love the way you said it, a bridge to something that’s going to provide something that makes it feel like we don’t have to come up with a quick answer, right? Or one of those platitudes that, unfortunately, Christians can often be famous for. But those platitudes often create more harm. As we’re kind of processing through this and talking about these tools for the local church. What are some hopes that you might have, Lysa or Joel, around how to best encourage the local church, pastor, or ministry leader who’s watching or listening? What encouragement would you have for them?

Lisa TerKeurst
Yeah, I’ll go first, Joel, and then I’ll let you hop right in. I would say, when someone is in a tender place, they need to hear from a tender voice. And just remember that when a woman, especially when she has been deeply hurt by a man, it’s very, very comforting to have a leader in her life speak truth over her and to commit to praying for her, and to be a male voice that reminds her that she still has a place at the church. That’s a really powerful thing. And I think the other thing that I would say is, when you get that initial phone call, like you’re a ministry leader, and you get that initial phone call from a woman or from a man, whoever’s being devastated in the marriage, and they tell you what’s going on, please believe them. Because chances are, the vast majority of the time, it took a lot of courage for them to call you. And if they say there are things going on with my spouse that are deeply hurting me, the first response should be, I believe you. Now, let’s unpack it more. And if that person is lying, which very rarely, in my case, have I seen that. If they are, then you can deal with that on the back end. But the high chances are that they are absolutely telling the truth. And to say something like, there are two sides to every story. That is devastating to a woman who it took every bit of courage she had to finally acknowledge what’s being done to her at home, and what’s really happening at home. But it’s really powerful when someone says, I believe you. That helps that person take a deep breath. Immediately, it brings safety into the conversation. And for them to say, Hey, I may not have all the answers right now, but I’m going to give you this resource, and I know that it will help. And it’s written by Dr. Joel Muddamalle, who has great theological understanding. It’s written by a therapist who is not only a trained therapist, but Jim also has a seminary degree, so he’s trained also in theology. And it’s written by a woman who’s been through something very similar to what you’re walking through, and I know she’s going to provide some experiential wisdom from her healing journey that will help you get on the right path for yours.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good.

Joel Muddamalle
So good. I would just say that I think where we start our anthropology really matters. And so anthropology is the study of humanity. And, often, we start that conversation with Genesis 3, with the fall. I really think it should start in Genesis 1 and 2, with the ideal of humanity. And so for pastors and ministry leaders, it’s like, I understand it. I feel this desire to uphold the beauty of marriage. And, as Lysa said, we are marriage people. We love marriage. We believe in it. We also believe that it should be understood within its appropriate context, the way that God intended for it to be understood. And these are two image bearers that come together and bond together. This is actually new, Lysa. I haven’t even told you this. I’ve been studying this topic a lot recently, and that word for bond is the Hebrew word dabaq. And it has in mind the exact same word that’s used of the scales of a crocodile that come together, and the breastplate, like metallurgy, when the breastplate is formed, and the scales kind of come together. And the whole idea is that it’s protective in nature. There’s a vulnerability to it. So it’s like you bond together to be mutual protection for each other. And then to recognize that marriage is supposed to point us to the self-sacrificial love of Jesus and the Church, and we ought to respect and dignify those two image bearers who make up that institution, and do our very best to actually uphold the beauty of that institution by not compromising on the integrity of the image bearers who are participating in that marriage. And so that would be my heart and my hope for this, and the theology that you will get throughout the book from Lysa, Jim, and I is going to hopefully just continually reinforce that. That we are for marriage, that we are for God’s ideal for it, and we’re also for upholding the image of God amongst these two image bearers. And we have to deal with that tension appropriately.

Jason Daye
That’s so good. Lysa and Joel, it’s always a pleasure to hang out with you guys. Thank you for making time to be with us. For those of you watching or listening along, every week, we have a toolkit that we designed that complements the conversation. And you can find that at PastorServe.org/network. There you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, which pulls insights out of the conversation that Lysa, Joel, and I just had. And also has questions for you to process through with the ministry team at your local church, and a ton of other resources, including links to Surviving an Unwanted Divorce and Theology and Therapy, the podcast that Lysa, Joel, and Jim have together. All those resources will be available, so please check that out. Brother, sister, thank you again for making time so good to have you with us. God bless you.

Jason Daye
Here at PastorServe, we hope you are truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage BackStage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend, and don’t forget our free Toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.