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• Before You Say I Quit
• A Sermon
• By
• Bishop Jerry F. Hutchins

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How Does God Feel About Divorce?

• 16 For I hate divorce! says the Lord, the God
  of Israel. To divorce your wife is to overwhelm
  her with cruelty, says the Lord of Heavens
  Armies. So guard your heart do not be
  unfaithful to your wife.
• (Malachi 216) (NLT)

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• 16For the Lord, the God of Israel, says I hate
  divorce and marital separation and him who covers
  his garment his wife with violence. Therefore
  keep a watch upon your spirit that it may be
  controlled by My Spirit, that you deal not
  treacherously and faithlessly with your marriage
  mate. (Amplified)

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Why Does God Hate Divorce?

• God, not you, made marriage. His Spirit
  inhabits even the smallest details of marriage.
  And what does he want from marriage? Children of
  God, that's what. So guard the spirit of marriage
  within you. Don't cheat on your spouse. (Malachi
  215 NLT)

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The Impact On Children

• Among the millions of children who have seen
  their parents divorce, one of every 10 will also
  live through three or more parental marriage
  breakups. (The Abolition of Marriage, Gallagher)

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• Studies in the early 1980s showed that children
  in repeat divorces earned lower grades and their
  peers rated them as less pleasant to be around.
  (Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage
  Harvard University Press 1981)

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• Teenagers in single-parent families and in
  blended families are three times more likely to
  need psychological help within a given year.
  (Peter Hill Recent Advances in Selected Aspects
  of Adolescent Development Journal of Child
  Psychology and Psychiatry 1993)

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• Compared to children from homes disrupted by
  death, children from divorced homes have more
  psychological problems. (Robert E. Emery,
  Marriage, Divorce and Childrens Adjustment Sage
  Publications, 1988)

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• Following divorce, children are fifty percent
  more likely to develop health problems than two
  parent families. (Angel, Worobey, Single
  Motherhood and Childrens Health)

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• Most victims of child molestation come from
  single-parent households or are the children of
  drug ring members. (Los Angles Times 16 September
  1985 The Garbage Generation)

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• A Child in a female-headed home is 10 times more
  likely to be beaten or murdered. (The Legal
  Beagle, July 1984, from The Garbage Generation)

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• Seventy percent of long-term prison inmates grew
  up in broken homes. (Horn, Bush, Fathers,
  Marriage and Welfare Reform)

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• Children of divorce, particularly boys, tend to
  be more aggressive toward others than those
  children whose parents did not divorce. (Emery,
  Marriage, Divorce and Childrens Adjustment,
  1988)

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• Children of divorced parents are roughly two
  times more likely to drop out of high school than
  their peers who benefit from living with parents
  who did not divorce. (McLanahan, Sandefur,
  Growing Up With a Single Parent What Hurts,
  What Helps Harvard University Press 1994)

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Four Christian Views of Divorce

• No Divorce and No Remarriage
• Divorce, by no Remarriage
• Divorce and Remarriage for Adultery or Desertion
• Divorce and Remarriage for a variety of reasons

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Ephesians 525

• 25Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also
  loved the church, and gave himself for it

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Hebrews 135

•  5Let your conversation be without covetousness
  and be content with such things as ye have for
  he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor
  forsake thee.

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• 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
  shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
  or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
•  36As it is written, For thy sake we are killed
  all the day long we are accounted as sheep for
  the slaughter.
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• 37Nay, in all these things we are more than
  conquerors through him that loved us.
•  38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor
  life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
  nor things present, nor things to come,

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• 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
  shall be able to separate us from the love of
  God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans
  8 35-39 KJV)