I just wonder. Is he truly saved? Is he a prodigal? He has no remorse or sorrow for committing adultery(ies) dumping me after my mother died and leaving me with a big mess, a mortgage, etc.
I still battle with chronic illness and a visual disability so I don't drive.
He doesn't care that I have often had to walk home in the dark and exposed to danger.I know God is taking care of me.
If he is truly born again, how is it that he is not repenting/responding to the convicton of the Holy Spirit?
WAs my whole marriage a lie?
I discover that this man, who worshipped God with me, prayed with me, is now obsessed with Japan, and everything Japanese..even now (possibly) Buddhism. He doesn't care about his mother or his siblings much now and even lost contact with old friends.
First of all, I want to say how much your post grieved my heart. You have endured one of the most painful things in life: betrayal and rejection by a spouse. My heart goes out to you. I will be praying for you.
I don't mean to add insult to injury, but I doubt very much that your ex-husband was ever truly a born-again child of God. Certainly, nothing you have described of his conduct in the recent past suggests the Spirit of God dwells within him.
It is so easy to give intellectual assent to the truth of God, to the Gospel, and yet not really have embraced it at a heart level. My grandfather, a pastor for sixty years, preached a sermon he entitled "Missing Heaven by Eighteen Inches." This is roughly the distance between one's brain and one's heart. He did so because he believed, as I do, that the majority of people claiming to be Christian are no such thing. They are of the faith only nominally, maintaining merely an external allegiance to it. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, Jesus said of such people,
6 ...“Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:
‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.'
The Bible calls your husband "treacherous" (
Malachi 2:14-15). His forsaking of his marriage vows to you is something God absolutely hates. (
Malachi 2:16) His lack of remorse over his treachery seems to confirm the fact that He is not saved. God convicts (
John 16:8) and disciplines (
Hebrews 12:5-11) His wayward children. They feel His displeasure and suffer his chastisement. Is this the experience of your husband? It doesn't appear to be which is telling.
Our Heavenly Father is the "God of all comfort" (
2 Corinthians 1:3) I hope you have experienced Him in this way through the terrible troubles you've endured. He will never let you down. He will never leave you nor forsake you. (
Hebrews 13:5)
May I offer some advice? You ought not to continue to interact with your ex-husband. Our sin separates us from God; it halts our fellowship with Him. We remain always His children once we're adopted by Him, but our direct interaction with Him is severely curtailed when we sin. This loss of fellowship with God is an important way God communicates to us the wrongness of our actions and motivates us away from our sin and back to Himself. I think you ought to follow God's example and severely restrict your ex-husband's contact with you. He needs to know and be reminded as often as he thinks of you that what he has done in forsaking you was deeply evil and that there are - and will be - direct and serious consequences as a result, one of which is the loss of contact with you. Right now he is having his cake and eating it too - and by your assistance. He has left you to indulge incredibly in selfishness and sin and then he has the gall to contact you, not in repentance from, and confession of, his wickedness but to see how you're doing? God does not give us such liberty when we sin. He is not "big enough" to overlook our wickedness. The first casualty of our disobedience to God is always our fellowship with Him. We can no longer fully enjoy Him; we cannot be at peace with Him if we've sinned. Until we repent and confess our sin, God will not hear us. (
Isaiah 59:1-2) Why, then, have you been so accommodating of your former spouse's interactions with you? You don't follow God's example in doing so. Pray for him, yes. Love him, of course. But this does not necessitate maintaining contact with him.
Here's what God has to say to those who are spiritual adulterers, to those who have sworn allegiance to Him but have forsaken their commitment to Him for other things:
James 4:4
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Not a lot of accommodation of "adultery" here, is there? This is what holy love, godly love, looks like, however.
James 4:8-10
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.
When's the last time you said anything like this to your ex? This is God's only advice to those who have turned from Him to a life of sin. Have you taken this line with your ex? If you are to act in a godly way toward him, you ought to.
In any case, let me leave you with some words of comfort from your Heavenly Father:
Romans 8:31-39
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
33 Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
34 Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written:
“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
