A friend of mine asked me the other day what I thought of this article, “You May Have Heard That The Divorce Rate In The Church Is 50%… Get Ready To Be Shocked”. I told him I would take a look at it and get back with him. As I began to read it, I thought of previous articles such as:“Church Divorce Rate Way Lower Than Anyone Thought“, that were written about Shaunti Feldhahn – The Good News About Marriage”. I thought to myself that maybe I should post this in a blog entry so that others could benefit from this information – and that is exactly what I did here.
Everyone has heard that the divorce rate is somewhere around 50% of all marriages, and usually after a statement like that is made they also lump in those “statistics” that the church also suffers from the same divorce rate. As you will read in the various articles not only is that inaccurate, but to claim Christian marriages that are assumed to honor God are just as doomed is nonsense. I must admit that I initially accepted this information on it’s face, but after researching this I just couldn’t reconcile that bible-believing, God-fearing Christians were also suffering the same fate as everyone else who weren’t honoring marriage. Now, don’t get me wrong by thinking that is some elitist statement that Christians are better than everyone else, because we are not. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (from Romans 3:23), but those who have repented and committed to changing their lives should expect to be living life more abundantly. We should also expect blessings when we honor God’s principles such as:
Hebrews 13:4 (NIV) “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure…”
I’m not going to spend much time reiterating here what others have already written. I’m not going to spend much time spouting off statistics to get lost in, you can read that information first hand for yourself. What I have done is provide you with some information and the links to find the facts so that you can research it for yourself. I will say this, after many years of successes and failures and seeing the many successes and failures in others’ lives, I am convinced that the principles of sowing and reaping are a definite fact of life. Incorporating the direction and principles that God has laid out in His Word – the bible, the instruction manual for life, is a sure-fire way to know what to expect in this world.
There is one example that I would like to highlight based on information I have gathered on the subject and here it is:
The August 2010 article, “The Couple that Prays Together’: Race, Ethnicity, Couples’ Religious Involvement, and Relationship Quality among Working-age Adults” in the “Journal of Marriage and Family” (Volume 72, Issue 4, Pages 963-975) concluded that couples praying together on a daily basis were less likely to get a divorce than those couples who were not praying on a daily basis. In fact, the divorce rate was 1 in 1156 (not even 1%) for those couples involved in church/ministry and couples that prayed together on a daily basis. Everyone is told that the typical divorce rate is much higher (somewhere between 30%-50%) so the statistics of a prayerful couple are very encouraging and quite amazing.
Spouting off statistics that the Christians are just as likely to end up in divorce as everyone else is like claiming that “real Christians” can willfully sin and ignore the direction and principles laid out in the bible and still have the blessing of God in their life. Any person can stand in the garage and call themselves a car but that doesn’t make it so. If you honor God with marriage, you will bring Him glory and He will bless you. When we use our marriage to serve one another and the purposes of God, we fulfill the destiny that God intended for us. That is why I think “real Christians”, not just those in name only, really do have a lower rate of divorce and see more success than other marriages who do not honor God.
Galatians 6:7 (NKJV) “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”