Day: October 1, 2011

Pat Robertson Forgets: Marriage Is About Sacrifice

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The Berean Call 90x115by The Berean Call

Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told his viewers that it is okay for a man to divorce his wife if she has Alzheimer’s disease….Yet with his latest offense, Robertson may have given evangelicals and Americans reason to hope that our belief in marriage’s permanence and sacredness is not dead yet. 

As is by now well known, Robertson suggested on his show that a husband could divorce his wife and "start all over again" if she had Alzheimer’s. Robertson, in fairness, walked back an inch from his remarks, suggesting that they needed to get a professional ethicist to answer the question while underscoring his empathy for persons in that situation and wrestling with the difficulty of the problem. 

The Assigning of The Call

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Oswald Chambers 90x115by Oswald Chambers

I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church . . . —Colossians 1:24

We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, “If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!” But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed—you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.