The One Sin the Church Won't Forgive

is understand you are not alone.

It is an epidemic, especially in Christian circles.

I'm telling you what, I run into men particularly all over the place who are in the same situation I was in.

It's like the same story over and over and over again.

It's really interesting.

You know, in the church, there's one sin that everybody calls forgivable, but then treats it like it isn't, and that's divorce.

And my guest believed that for years.

And today he's going to tell you why he was wrong and what that belief costs a person long after the marriage is over.

So welcome to The Real Jason Duncan Podcast.

I am your host, Jason Duncan, and every guest on this show is here for one reason.

They used to believe something that turned out to be wrong.

And some figured it out on their own.

Some had to get knocked flat first.

But either way, by the time they sit in this chair, they know the difference between what's real and what isn't.

And what I've learned is that the lies that do the most damage are the ones that look like wisdom, the ones that everybody repeats, the ones that you're so sure about, you never even think to question them.

And a lie like that builds a cage around you.

And here's why you stay in that cage, because the cage looks like gold.

It looks like the smart play.

It looks like the good life.

It looks like the strong marriage.

It looks like the right way to do things.

And in today's instance, it looks like the biblical way to handle it.

And nobody walks away from something that looks like treasure, that looks like the right thing.

And that's what this show is about.

The gold is the lie.

And every conversation here is about finding the cage.

It's about seeing that the gold was never really real and walking out of that cage.

So here's why that particular belief holds so well, that divorce is the unforgivable.

Well, it is forgivable, but we treat it like it's unforgivable because it doesn't feel like judgment when you're inside that lie.

It feels like conviction.

taking marriage seriously, honoring a covenant, being the man who doesn't quit when things get hard.

And that's the gold on the lie that we're exposing today.

Now, think about what that belief does to the person holding it when their marriage is actually dying.

You can't call anybody.

You can't ask for help because asking is the first step towards the door that he's been told there's nothing behind.

So he stays quiet and he waits and he calls it faithfulness.

Well, my guest today believed that.

And then he ended up on the other side of the line that he spent his whole life telling himself never to cross.

And what he found over there wasn't what he had been promised his entire adult life.

And that's where we're going today.

So buckle up.

This is going to ruffle a few feathers, especially for those of you that follow me and know that I had a viral clip about Don't Say Divorce.

I had a TED talk called Don't Say Divorce.

So stick with me.

This is going to be an interesting one.

My guest today

is Jim Lang.

He's a coach, he's a speaker, and he's the number one bestselling author of a book called The Happy Wife, Happy Life Deception.

And he spends his weeks with two groups of people, Christian business and ministry leaders in his kingdom factor roundtables, and also men who are privately stuck in marriages that are tearing them apart.

And he was on this show back at episode 377, so not too long ago.

This is episode 391.

And in that episode, he was talking about the lie that

a man's job is to keep peace at any cost.

The happy wife, happy life lie.

That's what the title of the show is.

Now he's back today with another lie sitting underneath that happy wife, happy life lie.

And this is what we're going to be digging into today.

So Jim, welcome back to the show.

Thank you, Jason.

I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and I'm excited about our time together.

Well, you know, we talked

I really enjoyed the last conversation because that is a big lie, the happy wife, happy life lie.

And I think we did a good job of exposing that.

And so far it's been received well.

People are commenting and watching it.

But as we talked a little bit more about you after the show, I thought, wait a minute, there's more here to this that we could probably dig into.

So before we get rolling, as you just heard me tell everybody listening,

You came on here to talk about this lie that you used to believe.

The lie is that divorce is the unforgivable sin.

You're not bringing that to us from the cheap seats.

You actually believed it, you built your life around it, and then you went through a divorce yourself.

We talked a little bit about that on the show, but that wasn't the point of the show last time.

Now it is the point of the show.

Now you know both sides of that line personally.

I want you to say it in your own words as we get started.

where did that belief come from for you and how deep did it go before we expose what happened like where did the belief for you come about this lie that divorce is the unforgivable sin?

Well I didn't become a follower of Jesus until 1999 and so I was probably 15 years into my marriage at the time and thought I had a great marriage and um it was really interesting because I just

kind of thought that's the way I was supposed to lead is just let her do what she wanted to do and not cross any boundaries, don't cross the yellow tape, right?

the crime scene tape and you're going to be fine.

And so that's the way that I treated it.

And then once I became a believer.

things started to deteriorate pretty rapidly.

I really started to hear from my men's group because I started sharing stuff with my men's group and they're like, Dude, you just got to love her more.

You just got to do it.

You got to hang in there.

You can't divorce.

Then I would hear that from my pastor and hear that from other pastors and I'd be in other churches.

It was just like this lie that just got propagated and probably was much bigger in my head because

I didn't want to, as I mentioned on the happy wife, happy life deception, I was really this people pleaser who wanted everyone to love me and everyone to be happy with me and all that sort of stuff.

And so the same way, especially in the church, I wanted everyone to love me and think I'm doing the right thing and I'm this good, solid Christ follower.

And that kept me stuck in a place where I really felt like

you know, taking a stand was sinful and creating boundaries was unloving and taking care of myself was selfish, right?

And it just didn't fit in my Christian ease, in my Christian understanding at the time.

But the thing that it really did is it not only

created this fear of divorce, but it really truly deep down in me, it created this fear of becoming who God was calling me to become.

So, well, let me interject here because I want to point this out because I think this is important.

a lot of lies that come from the church, and we're not here to blow the church up.

We're only talking about this one thing, because I'm a follower of Christ just like you are, and we honor the church.

And this show is generally not about church and spiritual things, but this just happens to be a subject that we can cloak around that.

But a lot of the lies that we hear or that we believe that are propagated by the church

And the church is certainly not innocent from teaching a lot of lies.

But here's the weird thing is they don't say it out loud.

They don't actually say it.

Nobody said from the pulpit or from a Sunday school class.

you know, divorce is unforgivable.

Nobody says that.

That's been my experience.

Nobody says that, but that is certainly what we are led to believe.

Is that what happened for you?

Like nobody said it, but that was what was impressed upon you.

Is that right?

Well, I mean, it was kind of sad and it was cloaked around, you know, the words of Jesus and the fact that in Malachi 2, it says, God hates divorce.

And so if God hates something, you certainly don't wanna be the guy doing it, right?

And so it was just this crazy thing that happened to me.

And that's really what drove me to write The Happy Wife, Happy Life, Deception: How to Stop Walking on the Nightshells and Be the Man You Were Created to Be was because of both of these lives that I had.

And I see so many who are stuck in them.

Well, let me ask you then this before, about the years before you actually divorced, because you believed divorce was the one thing God wouldn't forgive, whether they explicitly said it or not.

It was the one thing you believe that God wouldn't forgive and your marriage is failing anyway.

You had to be, I would imagine you had to be living with something specific in your head, not a vague fear, but an actual picture of what you thought was coming for you if you followed through with this divorce.

So what did you think was gonna happen?

Walk me through what you believed that you were about to lose.

Well, I felt that

It was much deeper than I didn't feel that divorce was an option.

And like your I loved your TED talk.

I loved your clip.

I love all of that.

And I was a firm believer in that.

And I still am a firm believer in that because no one gets married with the idea that divorce is a possible.

Hopefully, you know, divorce is a possibility.

More people than you think do.

Well, I think that's probably true.

But I think most people

I would hope you don't get married with that as a possibility.

And so I get the context of what you were saying and I agree with it.

But I actually felt that I would have eternal judgment from God.

I don't necessarily mean hell, but I did not wanna displease him.

And it was such a thing.

It wasn't an option for me.

So I just thought this was my lot in life and I'm just gonna have to suck that up and be the best husband I can be, which created this passivity and timidity, which we touched on in the last episode.

because I wanted to keep this false peace because that would make it less painful for me.

I thought it was me being Joe Husband and doing a great job, but it was really selfishly driven because I wanted to avoid pain.

And what I later realized, and I think I mentioned this when we talked last too, but Jesus says, Blessed are the peacemakers, not the peacekeepers.

I was a peacekeeper, keeping a false peace rather than doing what was necessary to create a lasting peace.

That's an interesting turn of the phrase, isn't it?

Peacemaker versus peacekeeper.

I'd never had anybody say that before, but that's I like it.

I can.

It reminds me of another one that's often misquoted.

You know, don't cause your brother to stumble.

And really what a lot of people confuse that with is causing them to grumble.

Because a lot of people are just they're just they just grumble about stuff.

They're not stumbling like, get over it, man.

Well, so you spent you now spent years telling men

to stop walking on eggshells and start telling the truth about where they actually are.

But a man can't be honest about his marriage if he believes honesty walks him towards the one thing that God won't forgive.

And those two things can't be both true.

So somewhere along the line, that belief had to stop holding for you.

So take me to that moment where you and

you know, where you stopped believing that divorce was unforgivable and you like, where were you?

Who was right in front of you?

Like when you broke and said, I can't believe this anymore.

What happened?

It was really interesting.

I've got chills right now.

Just you asking that question.

I have chills because I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was sitting on our screened in porch in the backyard and I was actually studying the Bible about business stuff.

And I was working on some content for the things that I do about firing people the way the Lord would want you to do it.

And how do we do that as a Christian business owner?

And I came across this first, Titus 3:10, which says, Warn a divisive person once, warn them twice after that, have nothing to do with them.

And I was like, oh, that's perfect.

I mean, if you have a divisive person in your business, obviously you want to...

you know, probably get rid of them, warn them once, warn them twice after that, have nothing to do with them, and probably you wanna, you know, let them go to their next opportunity.

And, but then I started thinking, well, wait a minute, this isn't just for employees.

This isn't, it doesn't say to whom it's for.

So I had the question hit me in that moment on my porch, what happens if the divisive person is your spouse?

And I was like, huh.

And I said, well, there's other scriptures that talk about

don't have anything to do with these sort of people.

And so I just poured through, I took three hours, which then led to months and months and months of study about this.

And I have found it's somewhere between 20 and 25 types of people were to have nothing to do with according to scripture, like commands have nothing to do with.

And it went on and there's like 37 verses that make up those 25 people, right?

Some have overlap.

And so then I started to say, Okay, God hates divorce.

God hates us, what weighs more?

How does this fit into this?

And that's when I really started going down this path of looking at scripture.

And then that led to me next, Jesus obviously upholds the sacredness of marriage, and I do too.

I'm a marriage fan.

I think marriage is awesome and it's a gift from God.

And then you have this Malachi 2 verse that says, God hates divorce.

Well, do you know what else?

There's scripture after scripture after scripture of the things that God hates.

And let me just share one of them here.

16-19.

It says, There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

Okay.

So in most of these things he hates, I'll have to do with, you know, violence, abuse and oppression, etc.

So again, which does he hate more?

And, you know, in the thing that I'm really this whole conversation here that I that I really began questioning is why have we made it virtually impossible to divorce under just about any circumstance when

We can forgive.

I mean, look at the probably the four pillars in scripture or four of the pillars in scripture.

So let's look at King David.

King David was a man after God's own heart, only man in scripture.

Well, he was an adulterer.

He was a murderer.

He actually kind of divorced his wife, Michael.

I mean, all of these things, but he's the only man in scripture named a man after God's own heart.

And then let's look at Moses.

He was a murderer, and he's actually the one that God called to lead the Israelites into the promised land.

And then let's look at, let's see, the apostle Paul.

The apostle Paul was a murderer.

He murdered Christians.

And then God said, I'm gonna choose him to write the majority of the New Testament.

And then last one is Peter.

You know, the last words Jesus heard.

But where the last thing that Jesus saw of Peter before he died on the cross was him denying him the third time and hearing the rooster crow just as he had prophesied.

Yet he's the man that Jesus said, I will build the church on you, Peter.

So like God is full of this grace and mercy.

So in all those instances, but it seems like in the church that that doesn't apply to those who've gone through divorce.

Well, wouldn't it have been just easier to murder your wife?

I mean, of course, I'm joking, but that's something that I've always pitched back at this divorce conversation.

It's like, okay, well, if I can't divorce her, I'm going to kill her and I'll figure out how to get away with it.

But God will have to forgive me for that.

But if I divorce her, I'm out.

I'm done.

Society will like me.

will accept me, but God won't.

If I murder, society won't accept me, but God will.

That is so flipped on its end.

Now, here's the thing, and I'm going to take a little bit of my...

I used to be a pastor, so I'm going to take just a minute to say something because I think this is important.

Jim, I probably know enough about you that you'll probably agree with this, but feel free to disagree.

That's the whole point of the show.

But here's the thing, murder is forgivable.

But that doesn't mean we go and look for it.

We don't try to do it.

We should abstain from that at all costs.

There's no point at which taking another life is an easy thing to do or a good decision to make.

But are there situations where I would be willing to do that to protect somebody or something?

For sure.

But it's a last resort.

It's not something I try to look for.

Well, I've got the license to go murder if I need to because God will forgive me.

I think that's the same attitude I feel like you're coming at divorce with.

I think that I would come at it with as well.

It's like, I'm going to avoid it at all costs.

I'm not going to attempt to do it.

I don't even mention it.

In my relationship with my wife, we don't even mention it.

But in the event that something weird happened and it was necessary,

As painful as it would be, would we be willing to do it?

Yeah, I think so.

And you're standing there as an example of someone who did it.

How long were you married?

How many years?

It was dozens of years, right?

Almost 31 years.

Yeah, so 31 years.

My wife and I have celebrated 31 years this year of marriage.

I can't imagine anybody looking at you and saying, well, you're just a quitter.

Like you just tried to divorce because you couldn't.

You just wanted something different.

You didn't like her banana pudding.

So you wanted somebody made banana pudding better.

Like that's insane.

You you push through and you reach this point where you realize there is no way past this.

She's not going to she's not going to acquiesce.

She's not going to change.

That's the decision you made.

Now, am I right about that?

What do you think about what I just said?

I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly.

We just for those listening,

I mean, we went through over a dozen years of counseling with four different counselors, and then the process I went through was very deliberate.

I felt like it was given to me directly from the Lord, and it's what I write about in The Happy Wife, Happy Life Deception.

And it's a process that was extremely built around reconciliation.

And so, yeah, 100% agree with what you're saying.

Well, I want to get into a little bit more of this in just a minute.

I want to ask you a question about, you know, how do we counsel other men in this situation in light of what you experience?

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Now, back to the show.

So Jim, I want to sit on the cost of this for a minute.

the cost of the lie.

Because a man in that situation doesn't just lose a marriage, he loses a seat at the table.

He stops leading the group at church.

He stops volunteering.

He quits anything with his name on it.

And he ends up serving, in most cases, a life sentence for the one thing that everybody else in the room got grace for.

And there's no path back because the first step would be saying the words out loud and that's not what you're allowed to do.

So what do you know now about this that you wish somebody told you 20 years ago and why do you think nobody told you?

Well, one, I agree very much with that.

I mean, it's kind of like those of us who are divorced, at least I have felt, I'm starting to feel less like that now, but have felt like I have this permanent spiritual asterisk that says that I failed God and that sort of thing.

And you're right, I'm not invited to speak at churches.

I wasn't invited for a long time until about seven years after my divorce.

And so that is real.

But the thing that I wish that I would have known is that, you know, and this is actually another lie that I believe because of the teachings, every teaching I've ever heard about the word covenant meant that covenant isn't the same as a contract and marriage is a covenant.

And so a covenant means you're committing, you're covenanting that you are going to behave a certain way, even if the other does not.

And in fact, in covenant and scripture, when they would strike covenant, they'd cut an animal in half and put them on both sides and they'd walk through together to cut covenant.

And that literally meant that if I don't fulfill my end, may it be to me like it was to this calf.

And that's why in churches, they have the groom side and the bride side.

And it's kind of like that's kind of symbolic of that, right?

And so I thought I couldn't do anything, even though I felt like I was in a destructive relationship.

And by the way, there's a big difference between a difficult relationship and a destructive one.

And so that kept me stuck.

And so, but here's what I, in studying further,

I realize there's two different types of covenants in scripture.

There's an unconditional covenant and a conditional covenant.

An unconditional covenant was God's promise to never flood the earth again.

And he said that my sign of that's gonna be a rainbow in the sky.

Every time you see that, you can remember I'm never gonna flood the earth again.

And it doesn't matter, he doesn't put any condition on it.

So no matter what, God will never flood the earth again.

But then you've got the covenant of marriage, he struck covenant with Israel to make her his bride.

And because she distanced herself from him and neglected him and rejected him, he actually issued a certificate of divorce to his bride in Deuteronomy 3.

Check it out.

And even in Isaiah 50, verse 1, he also divorces Israel, but this one was like a short-term divorce.

And each time, by the way, and then in Hosea,

He does as well.

The whole book of Hosea, I thought it was about Hosea and Gomer, but that's just the first chapter and a half, but the rest is all about God and Israel.

And it's a picture of the way that God is, and he separated from Hosea.

He doesn't use the word divorce there, but it was all for restorative purposes.

But he did that.

So that made me realize that that is a conditional covenant because God said, Hey, you violated yourself.

I'm done until you straighten up.

And that was a game changer for me.

And, you know, and I'd like to propose one other thing that I wish I knew is that I'd like to propose that divorce cannot be a sin.

And here's why I say that.

By the way, can sin lead to divorce?

100%.

Can it be sin to divorce when, you know, like you said, she burnt the banana pudding, you know, whatever.

Yes, I think that is a sin.

And because you're not holding up the sanctity of marriage.

However, if you look at Ezra nine and ten, God commanded that the priests divorce their foreign wives who were leading them astray.

He commanded it.

He commanded that they divorce their wives.

And so if he commanded divorce and if he did, he divorced in my eyes that it's impossible for it to be a sin because he cannot sin.

Now, does he want divorce?

Absolutely not.

But you know, like that Malachi 2 verse that says he hates divorce.

If you read the verses before and after, what he's talking about is the type of divorce that is going on there.

And in fact, that word literally doesn't mean divorce.

It means putting someone away without a divorce certificate if you really look at it.

But we don't need to go into those weeds, but all around it, it is about an unfaithful spouse who's treating the other ones like dirt.

And and he's upset with that person and says, I hate what's going on here.

If you really read the context of it, that, you know, that's kind of what was going on there.

And I wish I knew all of that.

Why do you think nobody's telling us this?

You know, I was going to ask you that same question because I have some ideas about it.

But so I think

I think family, and I'm going to step on some toes here big time.

Is that okay?

Yeah.

So I think, you know, we've got a ministry that's done amazing things that everyone knows about around the world.

And however, I believe some of the language, even the name of it, can lead us to believe that family is an idol of some sort.

That this is like,

the this is the pillar of Christianity.

And by the way, it is a model of, you know, marriage, I believe, is a model of our relationship with Jesus.

But but that can lead us astray in this whole thing.

And so I think we've got to be really careful about that stuff.

And and I and I believe the other thing is, is I think it's a whole lot easier to see

divorce is kind of an outward thing where people see, however, they can't see the pride in me.

They can't see the envy in me.

They can't see, you know, any of the things like that that are also, that are sin, but they're not seeable.

They're visible to people.

And so marriage is, and it's, and I believe that, you know, it's almost like this thing that we, I believe the church

maybe inadvertently wants to do everything they can to preserve appearances rather than to actually, you know, become a place, you know, that actually is almost like a condition of belonging, so to speak.

It's kind of an unspoken thing, but that's kind of a thing.

And it's really no different to me than what was going on in the days of Jesus.

I mean, the people that he was most upset with

and took the biggest issue with were the religious leaders.

And, you know, he called them hypocrites, and they made people jump through these hoops that were ridiculous, and yet they wouldn't do it themselves.

And so, but that's kind of my feeling.

And then there's those verses we hang onto without really looking at the context of them and looking at the whole body of scripture.

And, you know, and like, what's God's heart in this?

Well, I think you hit it, Jim.

It's the keeping up of appearances.

And again, it's hard to talk about this without at least accusing the church a little bit of some wrongdoing here.

But I mean, if we're being honest,

The church unfortunately has been, the Western institutionalized version of the church, let's be clear, has been a lot of times more interested in what things look like than what they actually are.

And I'll give you an example of this.

A man who believes divorce is the one thing that God won't forgive, so he stays.

He stays in the marriage, but he vanishes inside his own house for 20 years.

And nobody in his church calls that a sin.

He keeps his seat the whole time.

And, but he's not honoring his wife.

He's not honoring that relationship.

He's just maintaining an appearance.

Now, so if you put two men in front of me, right, and same church, same age, same resume, identical on paper, one of them stayed in a marriage that was destructive and disappeared, wasn't doing the right thing and honoring his marriage, but he didn't get divorced.

The other man ended it, got divorced.

and he got treated like he failed.

So which of those two men is actually further from God?

And what's the truth that we should be saying is that, look, divorce is something God does hate, but it's not this anathema and scarlet letter that you should be tagged with forever if in fact that is an outcome that nobody wanted.

Just because it's an outcome nobody wanted doesn't mean it can't be redeemed.

Yeah.

So I think, I think you're, you know, why nobody's saying this is that I think it's about appearances and we have to be honest about that.

But the danger here, and I think you would admit this, the danger in this is that if they hear two people like you and me talking about this, they think that we're permitting it, that we're maybe even encouraging it.

Like, hey, if you don't like your wife's banana pudding, get divorced.

Well, that's not what we're saying.

For goodness sake, you spent 31 years, most of which sounds to me like wasn't very happy, trying to avoid the thing you didn't want and then ultimately decided this is the best thing for me and for her is to move on and we'll let God do the redeeming part.

It's not my job to figure out how to fix that.

I agree entirely with you.

And by the way, I had a hard time even telling people that I was thinking about divorce.

Like my groups, I lead these groups of business and ministry leaders, got 70 plus leaders in these groups, and I have a board for that.

And they told me, if you don't tell them, you're violating the principle of the group of being authentic.

But I didn't want to lead anyone astray.

So I'm entirely with you.

And by the way, the whole thing about, you know, God does hate divorce.

Is it possible he hates divorce because he understands firsthand the destruction it causes around?

Because it is a destructive thing.

It's awful.

It's the most awful thing I've ever been through in my life.

And there are still ramifications for that today, even though I've been divorced for 10 years.

But it is something that produced freedom for me.

And quite frankly, it took

mentors of mine around me.

I had this amazing life team around me of like 11 people and three of them were pastors from around the country.

And several of them at the same time were telling me, I don't think you can be obedient to God and stay in this marriage.

And that was so contrary to my thinking.

I mean, and so it took, in God's goodness, he had enough people in my life saying this at the same time where I started to say, huh, maybe this is true.

But it was a very, very difficult process.

And you're right.

I do have great trepidation about talking about this.

Well, and you talked in the last episode, which I don't want to rehash because people can go back and list 377 to hear it.

But I remember you talking about in the maybe month or even years afterwards, you had this adrenaline issue where your body couldn't process it because you had gone through such undercurrent drama or trauma of that relationship that when you finally were out of it,

It took a long time for your body to get back to homeostasis where it was operating the correct way.

So that leads me to this question.

What do you believe is the cost of staying inside that lie for, say, another five years?

And what's waiting on the other side for someone who decides to walk out?

Well, I think there's cost on both sides.

And there's a great cost in divorcing.

I mean, I'm just telling you, there's a financial cost, it's an emotional cost, it's an identity issue.

I mean, there's all sorts of things at stake in that.

And so there really is a cost in it.

And however, there's a cost in staying.

What I tell coaching clients often is that, you know, if they're predisposed to stay in this awful thing because of fear of whatever the fear may be, I say, you know, I hate to break this news to you, but you're going to have pain either way.

It's either you choose to get, you know, to die by a million paper cuts or you choose to die by a bullet, you know, or whatever.

And I think that's really what we're talking about here.

And so it is very painful either way, but remaining

I actually got to the place and I was desperately trying to avoid it up until the last couple of weeks.

I mean, I had this, like I said, this entire process and and I'm so grateful I went through that because I can look back with no regrets now.

But but but the cost was I really felt like I lost my soul for so long.

And and and that is still being rebuilt today.

I hear in you a sense of remorse and regret, but not in the sense that you made a bad decision.

It's just that you wished it didn't have to happen.

Am I reading that right?

Yes and no.

I was trying everything to stay on that side of divorce and not go through with divorce.

I was trying everything I could.

However, I believe in God's sovereignty that was necessary for me because you know what happened after I got divorced?

I realized how much judgment I had for others who'd been divorced.

Isn't that weird?

I mean, it just hit me and it saddened me so greatly that I was crushed.

I was like, oh, Jim, what in the world?

But that's the truth.

And I had to go through that.

And God has, I believe, anointed me to help particularly men in this, but also couples.

in this.

And it's amazing the stuff that happens in like these coaching sessions.

And the only way that can happen is because I've been through it.

I can talk from experience.

There's a scripture, it's in 1 or 2 Corinthians that we're to offer comfort, the same comfort that we received by the things we went through to others who are going through those same things.

And I believe there's like an anointing that happens there where God actually says, I'm gonna use this for great good for you.

And I believe wholeheartedly

And I wouldn't trade it for anything now, now that I'm on this side of it, because so much good has happened inside of me.

I've become, through the process, more of who God made me to be.

And I'm extremely grateful for it all, even though there's still some pain, you know, in this with some relationships around me.

But yeah, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Well, before we close, I want to give you one minute, and I'm not going to interrupt you.

I want you to tell the world as directly and passionately as you can what the lie is, why they've been believing it, and what the truth actually is.

So go.

So the lie that I believed and you may be believing is that that divorce is an unforgivable sin in the church.

And I'm here to tell you through scripture and I could I could do another three episodes and talk about more and more scripture in here, including Jesus's meaning when he said divorce can only happen in case of adultery, which is

That's not actually what he said if you look at the original language, but there's a lot more to that.

And specifically about what was going on culturally around them with the two rabbis and what they were teaching and what he was actually clearing up.

And they were testing him, scripture says.

And that gets blown out of proportion in my estimation.

And I'm just here to tell you that

If you've been divorced or you're considering divorce and you're in a destructive marriage, that this is not beyond God's purview.

This is not beyond God's grace.

And guess what?

I've come to the conclusion that you can't be a follower of Jesus and have everybody like you.

I used to think that I could be better than Jesus and not have any enemies, but Jesus got nailed to a cross for goodness sakes, and he never sinned.

He never did anything like that.

And so my invitation for you today, no matter who you are,

is not to agree with me, but to open up your Bible and not just look, look at the scriptures that we all know, but ask the hard questions and look at the overall body of what scripture says in God's heart in matters.

Because if we're believing one truth and we're putting it over a whole bunch of others, we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to others whom we are speaking with and in community with.

to know the truth.

So I encourage you to seek out the truth with everything.

And by the way, everything that I've shared here, scripture says we're to test everything.

I encourage you to test it.

Go look this stuff up.

Don't take my word for it.

Don't take Jason's word for it.

Look it up.

Find out the truth for yourself.

And that will help set you free.

Thank you, Jim.

Thanks for being on the show again.

Tell people how to find you.

Well, they can find me.

And actually, if you'd like to, I've made a special offer for the listeners of this show to get my book for a penny plus shipping, The Happy Wife, Happy Life Deception, How to Stop Walking on Eggshells and Be the Man You Were Made to Be.

And you can get that for a penny by going to jimlangebook.com.

That's J-I-M-L-A-N-G-E.book.com.

And so you can do that there.

And my e-mail address will be in the show notes also, at least it was last time.

And so you can reach out to me if you'd like to there as well.

And I'd love to have a conversation with you, especially about these two topics, because I'm very passionate about it.

All right.

It's Jim Lang Book.

That's J I M L A N G E B O K dot com.

You can get the book for a penny plus ship and Jim.

Thank you for being vulnerable and transparent and sharing your story here.

You know, final question.

If someone listening right now is still inside that lie and they're still believing it, what's the one thing you want them to hear before this episode ends?

I want them to surround themselves with a community of people further along than them who is not stuck in the religiousness of the Christian church, who is really a student of scripture and is willing to ask the hard questions and are truth tellers.

And that would be one of the greatest things they could do and for themselves to really seek out

scriptures, like we mentioned here, and I've got a whole bunch of others, and if someone wants to contact me, I can give them more.

But that's what I would do, is just seek out the truth.

And the other thing is, is understand you are not alone.

It is an epidemic, especially in Christian circles.

I'm telling you what, I run into men particularly all over the place who are in the same situation I was in.

It's like the same story over and over and over again.

It's really interesting.

Thank you, Jim.

I appreciate you.

Jason, I appreciate you too.

Really appreciate our time together here.

Well, that's a wrap on today's episode.

If you saw a bar on your cage that you had noticed before, I want you to send this episode to someone who needs to see theirs.

The gold is the lie.

As always, I'm your host, the real Jason Duncan, and Jesus is King.

We'll see you next time.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode.

Remember.

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