The Spirit of Divorce

The spirit of divorce begins when a couple turns critical toward his or her spouse. That is right. It starts as a seed. Divorce doesn’t happen overnight but grows by tolerating a willingness to be critical rather than supportive of one’s mate. This blends in quite easily with today’s ‘victim’ mentality that encourages us to blame the other.

Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil,
prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).

Jesus and others warned us to be cautious of the evil one. We need to be. The devil prowls about like a roaring lion. He is seeking to destroy both your lives and ours. Last week an experience occurred that we would like to share with you. We want you also to be on the alert on how the devil attacks marriages.

The Experience

My wife had this feeling and numerous antagonistic thoughts toward me over a few days. She was critical and very displeased with me her husband. She tried to sort out the truth asking, “Is Paul really like that? Why am I thinking this?” We prayed together about it several times. Throughout this time she was unusually cold and negative of me. But she wasn’t wholly giving into the negative feelings. Something was wrong though, and it was hard to figure it out.

One morning she came downstairs and saw me praying. I asked if I could pray for her. I did and the whole negative feeling went away in a flash. She returned back to normal.

The Interpretation

So how do you interpret this?

1)     Recognize that this was a demonic attack and not just a hormone imbalance. Prayer dismissed the evil spirit in a flash.

2)     Somehow this evil spirit was able to sneak through our defenses even though we both had been praying and meeting God.  We need to be on the watch. The devil is clever and deliberately purposed to harm us.

3)     The spirit of divorce (I call it) devised a negative spirit in my wife that would plant antagonistic thoughts within her. She tried to act rightly but with these thoughts reoccurring in her mind, she kept wondering whether I really was as bad as those thoughts were saying to her.

4)     As her husband I always need to be loving and patient. The evil spirit was trying to use my wife to antagonize me and cause me to speak harshly against my wife. If I sharply reprimanded her or impatiently rebuked her for her coldness, perhaps the evil spirit would latch on to that and then intensify his attack by pointing out my unloving words (which would be true if I did such things). Then he wouldn’t need to keep whispering.

5)     In the end there was no such unloving acts so she could at times see there was no support for her critical thoughts. She persisted in asking whether her thoughts were true. To some degree she must have at times accepted them as true. When she did, she would then respond in light of those lies about me. If one spouse is acting atypically, let the other spouse be perfectly patient so that the one spouse can see how irrational his or her actions and attitudes are.

6)     We have noted over the years that an evil spirit often comes to antagonize my wife before a prayer meeting or sermon that he will be preaching. We are familiar how he tries to cause trouble at key times.

7)     If there is any wrong done or bad attitudes expressed during this time, then the offending spouse should apologize.

Summary

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23).

We should see then that the evil spirit seeks to cause division even when there is no division. A husband and wife should always be one-hearted, not two-hearted. If the two spouses seem like they are on opposite sides, then you know some biblical principle has been violated and that you need to quickly resolve it.

In this case there was no cause for a negative spirit. The evil one sponsored those feelings through certain evil and untrue thoughts by whispering them in her mind. The feelings were all imaginary because the facts were all an illusion. They were outright lies. If she accepted them as her own, then she would start fighting a battle for no real cause. This of course would tempt myself to react to her unfair words.

Instead through prayer and fasting under the cross, we could run the evil one out of our marriage and again enjoy the oneness of our God-given relationship.

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Biblical Foundations for Freedom ( BFF )

Rev. Paul J. Bucknell

info@foundationsforfreedom.net

Scriptures quoted from the New American Standard Bible unless noted
(C) Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1988