Deborah agreed with the Breathe Fire viral post as MANY women did but disagreed with my response. She recently left her marriage because she felt she was being emotionally abused. Should this be a reason to divorce one’s husband? TheJoyFilledWife responded to Deborah.
I can relate to having experienced emotional abuse in my own marriage at one time and I know that sometimes we feel like we fall short of being able to express exactly what it feels like to face that. I was at that place for a couple of years and although I know that the road is not an easy or pain-free one, God will bless us when we choose His ways and trust that He will be true to the promises of His Word.
I want to address a couple of concerns and ideas you bring up here with as much sensitivity as I can; knowing what it feels like in some ways to be in both your's and Anna's shoes. Coming out the other side, I can tell you that my husband would probably have fallen deeper into the pit if his wife and only confidant were to have "breathed fire" and attempted to make him cower, instead of won him without a word by my behavior and the undeserved mercy I showed him. Women have plenty of natural "power" and the greatest of all is the one they yield in their marriage. The trouble is that most wives are not content to use their God-given abilities in the way that God intended; which is to serve their husband, to make a godly appeal, to raise godly children, to win their husband through their behavior, or to fulfill him sexually by giving herself to him fully. Instead, they want to force their husbands to hand over the authority that God gave them as the leader so that she can be in control and have things her way.
There is absolutely a strong belief that women are spiritually superior to men. Read the comment section of any Christian female blog and you will see that clearly. The truth is, Deborah, that while they are plenty of abusive men out there, I have known far more emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and even physically abusive wives than husbands. I see it with my own eyes in the way they demeans him in front of others, withholds herself sexually, shouts, threatens, cuts him down when he discusses Scriptures, and rebels against his authority on almost every subject. We need look no further than the first book of the Bible to see that, from the beginning, women have been using their "powers" to usurp the authority God gave to man and challenge his headship. God created women to be a help meet to their husband's needs and take care of their part so their husbands are free to work toward the purpose God has for them unencumbered.
I want to lovingly warn you, dear sister, that you are allowing yourself to fall right into the enemy's trap if you have convinced yourself that to "breath fire" means to simply have confidence. The author {who the enemy has quite effectively used in this article} made it very clear that she believes a wife should be able to make her husband "cower". That's just downright wrong. I'll be honest with you, Deborah, I know thousands of truly confident people who command, not DEMAND, authority and they have the respect of all those who know them. People who walk around making people cower are not confident people; they are insecure people who put on a show to hide the pain and inferiority they feel inside. Satan is a prime example of this. Satan was discontent with the role he was given and when he was kicked out of heaven, he found that the only way to hide the fact that he is a defeated foe is to walk around "breathing fire" and trying to convince everyone that he has ultimate power. I don't know about you, but I would much rather raise daughters to walk around "breathing life", rather than death and destruction.
If a woman is in an abuse situation, she absolutely must seek help, just as I did. If she's in danger, she should remove herself from the home. As far as divorce is concerned, though, I see no Biblical allowance for divorce in such a case. We must seek necessary protection, yes, but a wife who divorces her husband has zero chance of winning him without a word. I am a firm believer that Christ's ways prioritize repentance over rights and mercy over condemnation. Truly, we need look no further than the cross to see where God's priorities lie.
I call
heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that
both thou and thy seed may live.
Deuteronomy
30:19
Logging you in...
Rob · 498 weeks ago
So is it emotional abuse when a husbands embarks on the authority given to him by God. Have you ever yelled at your kids, disrespected your husbands authority by arguing or manipulating to attempt to usurp his authority? Non of us have it all figured out but deciding to follow scriptures commandments takes courage and strength at times when things are not well, but don't we find that strength and courage in the bible????
So for Deborah she felt she was being emotionally abused so she decided to ABANDON her marriage. 2 wrongs don't make a right. In my circle of life with the people i know and even people from church, most of them have marriages lead by the woman or at least thats the perception they give off!!
Real men don't abuse their authority bestowed upon them by God, but are to we to say that everytime we sin against each other we are commuting emotional abuse?
The more husband would live their wives as
Christ loves the church and wives become sincere help meets to their husbands than this nonsense of abandonment in marriage would hopefully decrease dramatically.
I hope i have not offended anyone with my comments i just am speaking truth from my heart as i see it.
being a sincere help meet your husband doesn't make you less a person, a door mat or anything like that. Husbands and wives both have tremendous biblical responsibilities in marriage so lets stop the abandonment and divorce
The more we follow our biblical commandments in marriage both husband and wife the less struggles we may have and less real abuse of any kind may happen.
Don't scream abuse everytime you don't get your own way!!!!
FREEINDEED! · 498 weeks ago
JFW- You know I love you, sister. Once again, your wisdom ( your explanation of His wisdom) is like a beacon in this dark, confused world. I commend you for your stance on this. We are imperfect beings. We make awful decisions that hurt each other emotionally and otherwise all the time. To say we don't is denying our need for our Savior! That doesn't mean we can deny our commitments under Him and our responsibility to honor those commitments for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.
It's a sick world we live in and the sickness is contagious! We need to keep reminding one another to turn back to the One who can heal us of all of our pain and suffering and justify us when we all fall short in our own power. Praise Him that He is strong when we are weak!! We are Overcomers when we stand with him and we CAN overcome that which seems impossible to get through/ endure otherwise. We miss this beautiful truth when we choose to give up and walk away from one another.
I praise Him for you today and your beautiful ability to state His truths so eloquently time after time. AMEN!
thejoyfilledwife · 498 weeks ago
You know, following in the footsteps of Christ is always the road less traveled and the hardest road to walk down, by far. When even Bible-believing Christians are encouraging other believers to forsake and betray their marriage vows (for better or for worse), you know the church is in a very bad place. When my husband's former addiction was first confirmed to me, it would have been easy for me to have "confided" in a few close relationships and I would have easily had their support (some of them would have probably told me to leave him), but would this have achieved the objective of helping a man come to reconciliation? If you look at the nature of man, you will see that shame and a disgraced reputation (deserved or not) doesn't often bring about repentance; it merely builds walls (which is why the Word of God tells a wife to "win him without a word by her respectful behavior"). My husband would have been devastated if I had told other people about his addiction. He was already living with self-condemnation and the enemy whispering lies to him that he will never be delivered from this, so he might as well give up trying. You see, broken marriages will never heal if we don't come to the realization that the enemy is not our spouse, it's the evil one. If we're going to fight, we should fight against him with the power of prayer. After all, he is the one holding the bait at the end of a spouse's anger, addiction, infidelity, insensitivity, and abuse. If you remove the bait, you can break the addiction and reconciliation can begin. If a woman if married to a man who falls into sin, the only way he will come out of it is if the bait is removed and he comes to set his sights and affections on the truth. A wife should do all she can to be more attractive to her husband than the bait in which he's pining for. How does she do this? 1 Peter 3:1-6.
Whenever I face trials, I think of the Cross and how small the injustices in my life are compared to what He faced. Christ set his personal comfort and even "rights" aside in hopes of reaching the souls of others. If we are to be Christ-like, we have to be willing to stand up for what's right, instead of "our rights". It breaks my heart to hear so many divorced Christian women I know who tell me that they wish they had known during their first marriages what they know now: that Christ could have used them in their troubled marriages if they had been willing to take their eyes off the offenses committed against them and been willing to be used by God as a vessel to bring about change in their spouse's hearts.
It's always dumbfounded me that a culture in which very few want to take responsibility for their actions is the same culture that cries "justice!" when mercy and reconciliation can be had. Is God a God of justice? You bet. There are penalties for our sins, even when we've been forgiven, but the purpose of Christ was to reconcile those who would turn away from their sin and follow Truth. If justice was God's main objective, He would have destroyed Saul, instead of called him to turn from his life of sin and bring the Truth to others. He also would have struck Peter dead when he denied Jesus three times, instead of calling him to be a pillar of the faith. In the same way, He would have let the Pharisees stone the prostitute to death, instead of exposing their own hypocrisy and telling her to turn away from her life of sin (which she did). God IS a God of justice, but He always gives the option of mercy, for those who are willing to take it and turn away from their life of sin. Because of this example, we can see that although there will still be penalties for the sins we or our spouse may commit, Christ's goal is always repentance and reconciliation, first and foremost. If our spouse is unwilling to accept God's mercy (sometimes shown to them through us) and turn away from their sin, God will not withhold His swift hand of justice. Once we realize that we can let God do the battling in our marriages, we are free to be used as an instrument of peace.
FREEINDEED! · 498 weeks ago
"Once we realize that we can let Him do the battling, we are free to be used as an instrument of peace". This is SO VITAL in all of our relationships!
Excellent!!
2happy4 66p · 498 weeks ago
So while out of control emotionally abusive people must be addressed, I think it behooves women to consider that the emotionally abusive person might be them as well.
thejoyfilledwife · 498 weeks ago
Diana · 498 weeks ago
thejoyfilledwife · 498 weeks ago
Valeria · 498 weeks ago
thejoyfilledwife · 498 weeks ago
Abuse is anything misused for the purpose of deceiving and/or causing harm.
Emotional abuse is kind of an overarching phrase, but is meant to represent verbal abuse for the purposes of this particular post. Verbal abuse is when someone insults, maligns, speaks harshly to, or uses coarsely insulting language for the purposes of causing emotional harm on another person. Belittling, screaming at, calling names, condemning, manipulating and such are considered verbal abuse. Hope that helps!
In my situation, my counselor helped me to see that the verbal abuse I was receiving was not because I was guilty or deserving of anything being said, but it was, in most cases, what he felt about himself and what he was repeating from the lies whispered to him. Most of it didn't even make sense because it was obviously not even true about me. When I opened my eyes and began to recognize what the words were really stemming from (his own guilt and shame), I was able to depersonalize it and really pray for him, instead of dwelling on my hurt and driving a wedge between us. The enemy wanted me to either fight back or be so dejected that I was useless for the cause of helping to reconcile. I was so thankful my eyes were opened to the truth and that my counselor had the guts to tell me that, if I wanted to help my husband overcome this, I had to be willing to set aside my "rights" for the purpose of Christ.
Anon M · 498 weeks ago
Mrs. G. · 498 weeks ago
God intended that we marry for better or for worse. Our goal on this earth is to seek holiness, NOT happiness. When divorce occurs, God doesn't have that opportunity to make something beautiful and holy out of the devil's mess.
One of our dearest friends called me the other day in desperate need of marital advice. He said he sought me out because he knows that I don't believe in divorce, and that I would steer him in the right direction. I felt very honored to be regarded in that way! We need to bring society back to a place of honoring the marriage vows!
Mrs. Gryce · 498 weeks ago
Nonya · 498 weeks ago
I don't see any reason that Anna cannot express righteous anger to Josh and tell him that he needs to get it together for the sake of his soul and his family. She should try not to lose her temper and sin herself, but sin should make Christians angry. Is he an unbeliever who may be won without a word, or a Christian? If he says that he is a Christian then I don't see why his wife should be silent about the fact that he is in serious sin.
Emotional abuse is a vague term. Without knowing exactly what is happening you can't know what the person should do.
thejoyfilledwife · 498 weeks ago
You're right about the last line. Emotional abuse is actually not the best term to use in this instance because emotional abuse can stem from both verbal or physical means. All abuse is emotional abuse because it impacts our being in one way or another. Verbal abuse is what I am specifically referring to in this post.
Yes, Anna can express righteous anger to Josh, as well as others who are working with him or close to him. Perhaps she already has? We don't know for sure. Either way, I can promise you that Josh is not being withheld from confrontation by the fellow Believers around him. Even if he were, which I absolutely don't believe is the case, we can be sure that he will receive the penalty of his decisions. He has already started to, as his reputation has been ruined in the eyes of all who know him or know who he is.
Anon N · 498 weeks ago
I have gone through the same I lop courses as the Duggars. And they teach that all anger is sinful. That only Christ can be angry and not sin. So if Anna verbalized any anger at Josh, it would be deemed sinful by the Duggars.
thejoyfilledwife · 498 weeks ago
I have not gone through the courses you are speaking of, but I have taken enough courses to know that I've never gone through one that I 100% agreed with, even if I would recommend it to others or largely teach my own children from it.
We know that "the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God", but we also know that the Holy Spirit can speak through us in ways that are inhuman, thus accomplishing God's purposes. I've had many days when I haven't felt like ministering to someone clearly in need of it because I was ill or tired, but I asked to the Lord to speak through me and every word out of my mouth was clearly His alone.
If Christ can turn over the tables in righteous anger and we are to be followers of Christ in all His examples (besides physically dying on the cross for our sins), then I don't believe that Christians can never have righteous anger, I just think that the majority of the anger we express in life is not of this variety. That doesn't mean God cannot speak through us in this way to reach a lost soul who will receive the message best this way. Are we not to have righteous anger when there are millions upon millions of unborn babies murdered who are precious in God's sight? Are we not to have righteous anger when we see a young life following the ways of the world, whom we know God wants to use for greater purposes? Unrighteous anger is rooted in selfishness and, in most cases, because we have been personally offended. Righteous anger is typically brought about because of blaspheming and going against the cause of Christ.
Mbb · 498 weeks ago
thejoyfilledwife · 498 weeks ago
Mbb · 498 weeks ago
Felicia · 498 weeks ago
thejoyfilledwife 62p · 498 weeks ago