Dear sister, God does
NOT hate divorce; he hates the
TREACHERY that causes divorce. The Lord himself divorced Israel due to her treachery.
What the Lord hates in your situation is how your husband is treating his daughter. Would it please an earthly father to keep his daughter in bondage to a cruel abuser like your husband?
Matt 7:9Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
10Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
11If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
I was paralyzed in the same place you are for many years. Knowing that I needed to end my marriage but not daring to because of what I understood the pastors to be teaching. I didn't dare to read the actual words in the Bible without the sacrificial living filter I had...the idea that I was responsible to be a beautiful example of a Christian to win my abuser to Christ. So I would read over the obvious in the Bible without reading it; assuming "yeah, it doesn't really mean that".
One day when I was just desperate to have some solution for the situation I was praying and praying for the Lord to give me wisdom (just like I had 1,000's of times before) except this time I was more desperate and more demanding of the Lord's attention and help. I was at my end. The Lord gave me the 2nd half of Isaiah 28:
15 Because ye have said,
We have made a covenant with death,
and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:
16Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner
stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.
17Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.
18And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.
19From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only
to understand the report.
20For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.
21For the LORD shall rise up as
in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as
in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act.
22Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.
23Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.
24Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground?
25When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place?
26For his God doth instruct him to discretion,
and doth teach him.
27For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
28Bread
corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break
it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it
with his horsemen.
29This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.
Now some will say the verse doesn't really talk about marriage, but it talked DIRECTLY to my exact situation. When I read the words "you have made a covenant with death" I was struck to attention because there was NO better way to describe a marriage to an abuser. This passage allowed me to realize all this "marriage covenants cannot be broken" theology was nonsense. I felt the command of the Lord to take a stick (staff) and beat it out. To take proactive measures to end my suffering under abuse.
Now, in my background, separating without adultery or the unbeliever physically leaving would have not incurred the blessing of the church, and might even incur church discipline for doing so. Sister, I chose to fear man more than God and continue in this abusive situation because I was AFRAID of what some pastors say. After about a year of this my body suffered irreparable damage from the stress. I will never have my health back the way it was before. When I realized that not stepping up boldly to beat out this covenant of death me was costing my life, and that my kids were better off with a mom who has been disfellowshipped than a mom in a grave, I finally dared to fear God more than man and with ever so timidly started inching toward what I should have done boldly a LONG time ago.
I spent over a year afterwards studying Scriptures to understand how the Lord's direction to me (to beat out the covenant of death with a stick) jives with the rest of the Scriptures because it seemed initially not to. I won't go into all of the theology here, but I started allowing myself to read and believe what the words REALLY say, and that was quite an eye opener.
Sister, please fear God more than what some pastors say, before it is too late. Please!!!!