Elisabeth Elliot: May I, in the name of Jesus, implore you if you are considering a divorce, get down on your knees, confess all your sin, your anger against this spouse, your disappointments, your disillusionments, all the rest of the things which seem to make it impossible to continue in this marriage?

Lisa Barry: And with that admonition from Elisabeth Elliot, I want to prepare you for today's Gateway To Joy program. Divorce may seem like a cure-all in our day and age, but it's a very serious thing in God's eyes. In just a minute, you'll see Elisabeth's response to a friend who divorced his wife. After that, the testimony of a woman who thought divorce was the only answer to her problems. If your marriage seems in shambles right now and you're feeling desperate, then I believe you've tuned into this program for a reason. Stay tuned to find out why next on Gateway To Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, talking again today about the sad tragic subject of divorce. It really is astonishing how letters about divorce seem to be increasing continually. I mean the letters that come to me via Gateway To Joy. I'm assuming that most of my readers are Christians, and so most of those who write me letters would call themselves Christians. Yet we know that God hates divorce.

When this happened to a young man that I loved and thought very highly of, I wrote him a letter. I'm going to read you some excerpts from that letter. "You are holding imaginary dialogs with those who condemn your action-people like me-proving that you had to do it. You couldn't take it any longer. 'It will turn out all right in the end. It will be much better for Sally and the boys.' I hope you are holding such dialogs, because it would show that you needed to justify your action. Action that is clearly right needs no justification.

I dare to hope, too, that in some predawn hour of sleeplessness in your solitary bed, you have admitted that you have not found the freedom you were looking for. You face, in saner moments, the sad truth. You have been irrevocably changed by quitting. If you are half the man we thought you were, you are hating yourself for what you have done. The arguments you have educed, 'You are being honest, you were living a lie while you were married, you finally got in touch with your real feelings and summoned the courage to defy convention and the expectations of all who love you,' those arguments are beginning to ring hollow, aren't they, in your quiet, solitary moments.

You know that the 'real feelings' of all of us, nearly all the time, are selfish. What we conveniently call convention might be (in this case, is) the clear command of God. What God has joined together, man must not separate.

I earnestly hope that you've not fallen so far as not to be ashamed of yourself. C. S. Lewis wrote, 'In trying to extirpate shame, we have broken down one of the ramparts of the human spirit, madly exulting in the work, as the Trojans exulted when they broke their walls and pulled the horse into Troy. I do not know that there is anything to be done, but to set about rebuilding as soon as we can. It is mad work to remove hypocrisy by removing the temptation to hypocrisy. The frankness of people sunk below shame is a very cheap frankness.'" That's the end of C. S. Lewis' quotation. It's from his book, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN.

Now I have a lovely simple testimony that I think is well worth reading to all of you. A lady named Cathy Brown writes, "This is the story of an ordinary person and an extraordinary God. Everyone has a story like this, for our lives are a plot woven together by God's love, His mercy, His patience and His forgiveness. My story begins when He conceived me before the foundation of the world. He knit me together in my mother's womb and I was born into a loving, upper middle-class family of five. I was the only girl, adored by my parents and affectionately taunted by my brothers. There was nothing unusual about my childhood. I got good grades, was popular, went to church, and that is I where I began to wonder.

I remember sitting in the pew at the Easter pageant. I heard that my sins had killed Jesus. I whispered to my mother, 'How could I have killed Jesus? I wasn't even there.' My mother didn't know, so I reassured myself that my sins hadn't killed Jesus. Somehow they had gotten that wrong.

In college I studied hard, listening in class to the professors droning on. Nothing ever connected. It seemed meaningless and I finally summed it all up in two words, 'So what?' But I continued on, joined a sorority, fell in love a few times, got a degree. The man I married was going to be the one and only one who could make me happy. Of course, he didn't.

Then we had two children. They were supposed to make me feel worthwhile and fulfilled. They couldn't. We were on our way up the professional ladder. We had a new house, a Porsche and a successful life. Sipping a glass of wine in an elegant restaurant overlooking San Francisco Bay, a dark cloud drifted across my mind. Trailing behind it was the question, 'Is this all there is?' As I became less satisfied on the inside, I searched for deeper answers.

I began to try to figure out the big picture. I reasoned that we were all parts of a whole, and when each individual died, a soul piece was either added to the giant puzzle or discarded. Because I had solved the mystery, I would not be cast out, but would be put neatly into the grand eternal scheme. This is the point at which an extraordinary God did what He ordinarily does. He intervened.

First, He isolated me. I moved across the country with the two children and awaited the arrival of their father at his new job. Then God got my attention. I spoke on the phone late one afternoon to my husband and I heard these shocking words, 'I want a divorce.' I lost all pretense of having it together. I felt alone and desperate. That's exactly how God wanted me-vulnerable.

Standing at a bus stop one day, I began to sob. When I turned around, a woman put her arm around me. She was a stranger. I had never seen her before. She was ordinary, like me. She didn't say anything. I blurted out, 'Have you ever had marriage problems?' That's how our friendship began. It grew in her kitchen over a Bible and prayer.

I relinquished to God my rights. I surrendered my husband to him. I began to see how my sins deserved death long ago. For 35 years, Jesus had not given me what I deserved. Instead, He offered me a new life in Him. Any discomfort or suffering that I would experience by being obedient to God seemed inconsequential.

One of the first Bible verses I remember reading was in Malachi. God hates divorce. That meant I had to stay married. The decision to follow God's way taught me difficult and priceless lessons. I had to practice unconditional love and forgiveness. I had to learn to surrender to my husband in ways that pleased him, not me. I needed to work on giving up the leadership role in our family, something I had actually done very well. My tongue had to be tamed.

All of this I could not do on my own, even with the best intentions. The Lord Jesus had to change my very nature. Miraculously, He did. He gave me an insatiable appetite for the Word of God. I recall putting a load of wash in the dryer in the morning and reading the Bible until the children got home. When anyone asked what I had done that day, I could honestly answer, 'The wash.' Jesus provided me with a small group of ordinary women who prayed with me. Each step toward my marriage renewal came from answered prayer.

When my husband was looking for an apartment to move into, we prayed he wouldn't find one. He never did. Not in the whole city of Seattle! The church I began attending had a pastor who loved my husband. Jesus knew He would use this man to bring my husband to myself.

This is the story of the beginning of real life for me. As I look back at these events, they seem highly unusual. At the time they happened, they seemed to fit into the normal ebb and flow of things. That's just how an extraordinary God does His work-entering into our ordinary days with ordinary people."

Now what was it that turned this woman around? First of all, ordinary people who prayed. And then what happened? Did God change her husband? No. God changed her. He changed her very nature, did what she could never have done on her own, even with the best intentions, she said. He gave her an insatiable appetite for the Word of God.

God knows how to transform your marriage, but God is going to work on you. Don't put the blame on the other person. May I, in the name of Jesus, implore you, if you are considering a divorce, to get down on your knees, confess all your sin, your anger against this spouse, your disappointments, your disillusionments, all the rest of the things which seem to make it impossible to continue in this marriage? Lay it out, all of it, just how you feel. Lay it out before the Lord and say, "Lord, here it is. You understand it all. Change my heart. Help me. Transform me." I believe that God can do that.

Lisa Barry: If you'd like to hear more of the response Elisabeth gave to that friend facing divorce, you can find it in a booklet called WHAT GOD HAS JOINED. You'll find the rest of it as thought-provoking as today's portion was.

For information on how you can purchase that or for information on how you can be involved in the support of this program, we'd be happy to help you with that. Here's our address: Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. If you've never visited our Web site, this would be a great time because we're featuring excerpts from Elisabeth's book, ALL THAT WAS EVER OURS. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow we'll learn why any marriage has the potential to fail because we married a sinner. Find out more next time on Gateway To Joy.