Category: Uncategorized

One of the verses I hear quoted most often is, “God hates divorce.” And He does. But I think we’ve misunderstood what God was saying. Somewhere along the way, we’ve become so focused on the divorce itself that we’ve overlooked the very behaviour that destroyed the marriage in the first place. We quote one sentence while ignoring the surrounding verses that reveal God’s heart.

When you read the entire passage in Malachi 2, you discover that God isn’t simply talking about divorce. He’s rebuking those who “deal treacherously” with the wife of their youth. Some translations use the words faithless or betray. Treachery is the deliberate betrayal of someone’s trust. It’s deception, faithlessness, or choosing your own desires over the covenant you made before God. It’s knowingly violating the promises you made to love, honour, cherish, and protect your spouse. That is what God condemns.

Marriage is far more than standing before God and exchanging vows. It’s choosing every day to live those vows. It’s choosing truth over deception, faithfulness over betrayal, humility over pride, sacrificial love over selfish ambition, and repentance when you’ve caused harm. A marriage covenant isn’t held together by a marriage certificate. It’s held together by two people who are committed to honouring the covenant they made before God.

When a husband or wife chooses abuse, deception, betrayal, manipulation, abandonment, or adultery, they are dealing treacherously with their spouse. They are violating the covenant they promised to uphold. Abuse is one of the clearest forms of treachery because it betrays the very relationship that was meant to provide love, safety, trust, and protection.

Filing the paperwork isn’t what breaks covenant. The covenant has often already been violated through destructive behaviour and, ultimately, a refusal to repent. When there is an opportunity to acknowledge the harm that has been done, take responsibility, and do the difficult work of rebuilding what has been broken, often that opportunity is rejected. For the unrepentant, filing for divorce becomes the easier path than pursuing repentance and restoration.

That’s why I believe we’ve been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “Who filed for divorce?” maybe we should be asking, “Who broke the covenant?” Those are not always the same person, though sometimes they are.

One of the saddest things I’ve witnessed is watching people celebrate or affirm someone who has broken covenant and instead of repenting (not apologizing, but turning away from their destructive behaviour) moved on to a new relationship. There is nothing biblical about applauding someone who abandons the covenant they made before God, refuses to repent for the behaviour that destroyed it, and pursues someone else as though the past no longer matters. As brothers and sisters in Christ, our calling isn’t to celebrate appearances or affirm unrepentant sin. Our calling is to lovingly encourage truth, repentance, accountability, and restoration whenever possible.

Calling yourself a Christian doesn’t automatically make you Christlike. Jesus said we would recognize people by their fruit, not by their words. A profession of faith means very little if a person’s life consistently contradicts the teachings of Christ. Our actions reveal what we truly believe.

Yes, God hates divorce because He loves marriage. But He also condemns treachery. He condemns deception. He condemns betrayal. He condemns abuse. He condemns abandonment. He condemns hard-heartedness. He condemns the refusal to repent. In other words, He condemns the very behaviours that destroy a marriage long before a divorce decree is ever signed.

Maybe it’s time we stopped using the phrase “God hates divorce” to shame people whose marriages have already been devastated by covenant-breaking behaviour and started paying equal attention to what God says about those who deal treacherously with their spouses.

The divorce decree isn’t what breaks the covenant.

Treachery does.

One of the greatest ironies of human nature is how passionately we cry out for justice when we are the ones who have been wronged—yet how quickly we become silent when someone else suffers at the hands of a person we know, admire, or respect.

Justice is easy to champion when we’re the victim.

It’s much harder when the accused is our friend, our pastor, our family member, our colleague, or someone whose public image we’ve come to admire.

Suddenly, the standards change.

Instead of asking, “What happened?” We say, “There’s no way they would do that.”

Instead of seeking truth, we defend reputations.

Instead of comforting the wounded, we protect the comfortable.

It’s an uncomfortable reality, but our commitment to justice is truly tested when it costs us something—when believing the possibility of wrongdoing means confronting someone we never imagined could be responsible.

Character is revealed by consistency.

If we believe people deserve to be heard when we’ve been harmed, then we must extend that same willingness to others. If we expect compassion, fairness, and due process when we’re the ones suffering, we should offer those same principles to those whose stories make us uncomfortable.

Justice isn’t justice if it only applies when it’s convenient.

Throughout history, many wrongs continued because bystanders chose loyalty over truth. Not everyone who remains silent does so out of malice. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it’s denial. Sometimes it’s the painful realization that accepting the truth means rethinking everything they believed about someone they trusted.

But truth doesn’t become false because it challenges our assumptions.

Likewise, someone’s good deeds in one area of life do not automatically erase the possibility that they caused harm in another. Human beings are complex. A person can be generous to one individual and deeply hurtful to another. A positive personal experience with someone does not invalidate another person’s negative experience.

Justice requires humility.

It requires us to acknowledge that we don’t know everything. It requires us to listen before we judge, to examine facts before we defend, and to care more about truth than appearances.

As Christians, this matters even more. Scripture repeatedly reminds us that God is impartial. He does not show favoritism, and He calls His people to “seek justice, correct oppression” (Isaiah 1:17). We cannot claim to love justice while selectively applying it based on who is involved.

If we only seek justice when we are the injured party, we don’t love justice—we love self-preservation.

Real justice is impartial.

It asks difficult questions.

It refuses to excuse wrongdoing because the person is well-liked.

It refuses to dismiss someone simply because their story is uncomfortable.

May we become people who pursue truth with humility, extend compassion to those who are hurting, and seek justice consistently—not only when it benefits us, but whenever it is needed.

There are some lessons that no amount of wisdom, good parenting, books, sermons, or advice can truly teach us. Some things can only be understood once we have lived them. When I was growing up, I believed wholeheartedly in the phrase “it takes two to tango,” and honestly, it made perfect sense to me. I believed conflict was always shared responsibility. I believed if someone stayed calm enough, loving enough, patient enough, and kind enough, then peace could always be maintained. I carried that belief into adulthood, and I taught my children the same thing.

But life has a way of humbling us through experience.

Over time, I began to realize that not every conflict is mutual. Not every disagreement involves two equally willing participants. Sometimes there truly is an aggressor, and sometimes there is someone else desperately trying to keep the peace at all costs. Sometimes one person is trying to communicate while the other is trying to control. Sometimes one person wants a resolution while the other wants power. Sometimes one person raises their voice, manipulates, provokes, intimidates, twists words, or creates chaos, while the other walks on eggshells trying to prevent another explosion.

That realization changed the way I viewed human relationships forever. It also taught me something important about people who have never lived through certain experiences. We often speak in absolutes about situations we do not fully understand. We repeat phrases we were taught because they sound wise, fair, or balanced. But experience has a way of exposing the gaps in our understanding.

It took my personal lived experience to realize that there is a difference between healthy conflict and abuse. Healthy conflict involves two people who may disagree but still respect one another’s humanity. Abuse is entirely different. Abuse is about dominance, fear, control, manipulation, and power imbalance. One person may spend years trying harder, staying quieter, forgiving more, accommodating more, and sacrificing more, only to realize the problem was never mutual to begin with.

That can be a painful truth to confront, especially for people who pride themselves on accountability and self-reflection. When you are compassionate, empathetic, and peace-loving, your first instinct is often to look inward. You ask yourself what you could have done differently. You assume that if there is conflict, you must somehow share equal responsibility. But experience teaches discernment, that peace cannot exist when one person is committed to creating chaos, that some people do not want resolution because conflict benefits them. Experience teaches that not everyone argues fairly, loves sincerely, or fights clean.

And perhaps most importantly, experience teaches us to stop placing impossible burdens on people who are already carrying too much. I think many of us unknowingly shame victims by clinging to oversimplified sayings that fail to account for the complexity of human behaviour. We say things like “it takes two to tango,” not realizing that one person may be trying desperately not to dance at all. One person may be shutting down, staying silent, apologizing excessively, or sacrificing their own needs to survive emotionally.

Life experience has softened some of my previous black-and-white thinking. It has made me slower to judge and quicker to listen. It has reminded me that wisdom is not simply repeating familiar phrases. True wisdom requires discernment, compassion, and humility. Sometimes the hardest lessons are the ones we once felt most certain about. But there is growth in allowing experience to refine us rather than harden us. There is maturity in admitting, “I understand this differently now.” And there is grace in recognizing that many people are carrying battles we once could not comprehend until life brought us face-to-face with them ourselves.

There’s a kind of confusion that only comes from being hurt by someone who says they love you. It’s not the obvious kind of pain—the kind that comes with clear betrayal or open hostility. That, in some ways, is easier to process. What’s far more disorienting is when the harm is wrapped in kind words, soft tones, and familiar phrases like “I care about you,” or “I would never hurt you,” and yet they do. This is where so many people get stuck—not because they’re naive or weak, but because they’re trying to reconcile two things that don’t match: someone’s words and someone’s actions. We want to believe the words. We hope the words are true. We cling to the version of the person they present in their best moments. But your body keeps score. Your peace is disrupted. Your spirit feels unsettled. And deep down, there’s a quiet knowing that something isn’t right, because love does not consistently harm.

One of the hardest truths to accept is that someone can say they love you and still treat you in ways that are not loving. When that happens, you have to make a decision—not based on what they say, but based on what they do. Words are easy, and are often used as a covering, a way to smooth things over without true accountability or change. But actions require alignment. They reveal intention. They show consistency, or the lack of it. A person who truly cares about you will demonstrate it, not just declare it. They will take responsibility when they’ve hurt you, make an effort to change harmful behaviours, and consider how their actions impact you, not just how they can maintain access to you. Because love is not just something we say—it’s something we live.

It’s important to understand that inconsistency is not love. Cycles of hurt followed by apologies, promises, or temporary change are not love. That’s confusion and emotional instability. Over time, it erodes your sense of safety and trust—not just in others, but in yourself. Many people stay in these dynamics far longer than they should, not because they don’t see the harm, but because they’ve been conditioned to give the benefit of the doubt, to extend grace without boundaries, or to believe that enduring pain is somehow virtuous. But love does not require you to tolerate ongoing harm. There’s a difference between extending grace and ignoring patterns, and between someone who says they love you and someone who actually shows up in a way that reflects it.

If someone’s words and actions don’t align, trust the actions—not the potential, not the promises, and not the apologies that aren’t followed by change. The actions. Because patterns don’t lie. This doesn’t mean people never make mistakes—we all do—but there is a clear difference between someone who takes ownership, seeks to grow, and demonstrates change over time, and someone who repeats the same behaviours while using words to keep you attached. Discernment is not judgment; it’s wisdom. Learning to trust what you see—not just what you hear—is one of the most important parts of protecting your peace.

You are not asking for too much by expecting consistency. You are not wrong for wanting to feel safe, respected, and valued. And you are not obligated to stay in a situation where someone’s actions continually contradict their words. At some point, we have to stop listening to what people say and start believing what they show us. Because love—real, healthy, God-honouring love—is not confusing. It is honest, safe, steady, and it does not leave you questioning whether you are truly cared for. So if you find yourself in a place where someone’s words sound right, but their actions feel wrong, pay attention to that. That tension you feel is not something to ignore—it’s something to listen to. Because in the end, the truth of how someone feels about you will never be found in what they say; it will always be revealed in what they do.

When people hear the word “abuse,” they often picture counselling sessions, therapy rooms, and treatment plans. And while therapy is a vital part of healing for survivors, it’s essential to make one truth very clear: abuse itself is not a therapy issue. Abuse is not caused by unresolved trauma, mental illness, or emotional wounds that need treatment. Abuse is a deliberate choice rooted in the desire for power and control.

Abuse doesn’t happen because someone missed out on therapy or because they had a difficult past. Many people live with trauma, depression, anxiety, or painful childhoods and never choose to abuse others. Trauma may explain a person’s pain, but it does not excuse violent or controlling behaviour. When we frame abuse as a therapy problem, we unintentionally send the message that the abuser needs help and that with the proper counselling, their harmful behaviour will go away. The truth is, therapy might give an abuser new tools, but unless they choose to repent of their need to dominate and manipulate, those tools can make them more skilled at covering up what they are doing.

At its core, abuse is about one person exerting power and control over another—whether that control is physical, emotional, financial, sexual, or even spiritual. Therapy is designed to address wounds, but abuse requires accountability. To say abuse is a therapy issue is like telling the victim of a robbery that the thief just needed counselling. That minimizes the crime and shifts responsibility away from the person who chose to harm. In the same way, excusing abuse as a therapy problem takes the focus off the abuser’s actions and places it on circumstances, when in reality it is a moral decision.

This way of thinking also hurts victims. Survivors are often told to be patient while their abuser “works on themselves” or goes to counselling. This keeps them trapped in dangerous situations, hoping that therapy will change someone who has no intention of changing. It places pressure on them to wait it out and to keep being “understanding,” when what they really need is safety, validation, and a clear message that they are not responsible for another person’s choice to abuse them.

The proper role of therapy belongs to the survivor. After enduring abuse, many carry deep wounds, confusion, and trauma that require professional care and support. Therapy can help survivors rebuild trust, reclaim their voice, and find a path toward healing and freedom. But to suggest that the abuse itself is a therapy issue blurs the lines and reinforces harmful expectations. Survivors do not need to wait for their abuser to “get better.” They must begin their restoration journey apart from the person who harmed them.

What abuse requires is not excuses but accountability. Real change in an abuser only comes when they recognize their sin, repent of it, submit to accountability, and give up their need for control. That is not something therapy alone can create—it requires a complete moral and often spiritual transformation. Until then, boundaries, safety measures, and legal consequences are necessary in many cases. Abuse has never been a matter of poor communication, lack of coping skills, or untreated trauma. It is always a willful decision to harm.

Abuse is not a therapy issue—it is an accountability issue. Therapy can heal wounds, but cannot cure a heart that refuses to take responsibility for its actions. As a society, in our communities, and in our churches, we need to stop excusing abuse under the cover of therapy and start demanding accountability, while at the same time offering healing and hope to those who have suffered. Victims deserve protection, not more patience.

After walking through the heartbreak of abuse, it’s natural to long for something good, loving, and safe. When you’ve endured betrayal, deception, or loneliness, the desire for connection can feel overwhelming. You want to believe that the next relationship will make the pain fade, that love will somehow fix what was broken. The ache for companionship can be so intense that it feels like the only way forward. But here’s the truth: a new relationship is not a shortcut to healing.

When we’ve been deeply wounded, it’s easy to mistake loneliness for readiness. The silence of an empty room can feel unbearable, and the thought of having someone beside us again seems like it would cure the ache. We convince ourselves that if we can find the right person, this pain will finally disappear. Yet entering a relationship to avoid facing our pain only buries the wound deeper. It does not erase it. Instead of healing, the hurt lingers beneath the surface, and in time it resurfaces in unhealthy ways. Abuse leaves scars that cannot be covered by affection, attention, or romance. Healing requires time, intentional work, and the grace of God. Skipping that process doesn’t protect you; it only postpones it.

Taking the time to heal first matters more than many of us realize. Without it, we risk repeating the same patterns with a different face, cycling through relationships that leave us broken in familiar ways. Healing allows us to stop and reflect on what happened, see what we once could not, and learn how to build something different going forward. It also protects our hearts. A healed heart doesn’t demand someone else to complete it. Instead, it invites someone to complement what is already whole.

It’s tempting to see a new relationship as a way to distract from the pain, but distraction is not the same as restoration. Healing is not about avoidance—it’s about transformation. As difficult as it is, leaning into the discomfort allows us to discover who we are apart from abuse, apart from someone else’s control, and apart from the lies we once believed about ourselves. This is where the real work is done. Sitting with the grief, wrestling with the “what ifs,” and allowing God to meet us in those raw places—it all shapes us into people who are stronger, wiser, and more deeply anchored in truth. Facing those wounds directly is painful, but it is also where strength is forged and wisdom is gained.

The Bible reminds us that wholeness doesn’t come from another person but from God. Colossians 2:10 says, “You are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.” When we seek healing in Him first, we release the impossible expectation for another human being to fill the spaces only God can fill. That shift allows any future relationship to be built on truth and freedom, not desperation or fear. Instead of clinging to someone else to prove we are lovable, we see that we already are. Instead of hoping someone else will mend what was broken, we discover that God is the healer of our hearts.

So if you find yourself tempted to step into something new too quickly, pause and ask: Am I running toward someone, or am I running away from my pain? Choosing to heal first is not wasted time—it is sacred time. It is the season where God restores what was broken, rewrites your identity in His truth, and prepares you for the love and life He has ahead. The waiting is not a punishment; it is protection. It is the careful work of the Father shaping you, strengthening you, and teaching you to stand firmly on His love alone.

You don’t need a new relationship to prove you are lovable—you are already loved. You don’t need someone else to complete you—you are already whole in Christ. And when the time is right, love will not be a bandage for your wounds. It will be a blessing added to your healing.