I am going to propose a question to you with some scripture for you to consider and study so that you can come to your own conclusion.

We know our spouses have hard hearts when they decide to separate and divorce.

4 And they said, “Moses permitted to write a roll of divorce, and to send her away.”5 But Jesus said to them, “He wrote this commandment for you because of your hardness of heart; Mark 10

We know this came about the moment they chose to follow after their own flesh/selfish desires and ambitions.

We see that some of them are sorry and want to come back. But they can’t. Why? Is it because the hard heart, which they chose to allow to come over them, prevents them from having a choice on HOW to be free? It would be like walking into a prison cell of your own free will, but when the door closes and locks, you are in disbelief that you don’t have the key to get out.

King Solomon, who loved and sought wisdom to gain understanding and explanations, understood the snare that people stupidly fell into, AND he understood HOW to be free.

25 I directed my mind to understand, to explore, to search out wisdom and explanations, and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the folly of madness. 26 And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a net, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is ensnared. Ecclesiastes 7 BSB

My spouse was not the only one that was in awe that he could not get out of this snare; I didn’t understand it either. It made no sense to me as I talked to him, and he showed an apparent desire to end his affairs and was sorry that he was hurting me. But every plan he had attempted to free himself failed.

 No amount of WANTING and PLANNING – to fix our marriage, stop sinning, and stop falling into temptation with the other women – was working. He kept falling into the snares. He kept falling into these patterns of anger at me, life, and God and was in disbelief at why he could not just choose to set things right and back to normal. 

I was also in disbelief that he found it that difficult to get himself out of what he got himself into. We talked for hours, and I was convinced he was sincere in his desire to be free from the snare, so why couldn’t it be that easy?  I was actually tormented and sometimes fell for the lie, that if he truly wanted out, truly wanted to be free from her, he could easily do it. It made no logical sense to me why he was unable to set himself free from what he got himself into. I lived in this torment until God showed me the truth and kept insisting on this truth.

 

Why Could He Not Unharden His Heart?

Our hearts want our spouses to choose us. We want our spouses to break up with the other person (if there is one) and stop listening to anyone that is influencing them to leave our marriage because they deserve to ‘be happy.’ We are overjoyed when our spouse starts to want that too. So it can become bewildering when they want it but can’t seem to obtain it.

While it is not wrong to desire this, it’s a priority that needs to be exposed and put into its proper place. God created us to be married, but he did not create marriage, our spouse to replace Him and be our most important relationship. Nothing should ever be more important than Him.

 This is evident because the FIRST commandment is to love God FIRST with ALL your heart/soul/mind. It doesn’t say your spouse. MANY Standers start out wanting their spouse to want them first and to turn their hearts back to them, above all else. God wants BOTH of you to turn to Him first, just as He commanded. Why? Because loving God does something to us that would stop us from going down that wrong path and STAYING there. 

Loving God doesn’t stop us from making mistakes – look at King David and Bathsheba. Loving God did not stop King David from making huge mistakes, but it did cause David to sincerely regret his actions and WANT to repent because he understood his actions because of the close relationship he had with God.

To Repent is to change your inner self—your old way of thinking, regret past sins, live your life in a way that proves repentance, seek God’s purpose for your life. We know that our spouse’s hearts are hard.

We know that this appears to be a cookie-cutter-type situation as hard-hearted spouses think, feel, believe, and operate almost the same exact way. We know that our efforts to change that are futile and fall on deaf ears that are closed off and impenetrable.

 We know that we (at first) are working on our agenda to restore our marriage, while God is working with a different agenda to restore HIS RELATIONSHIP with our spouse and us FIRST and THEN our marriage……

So, is this hard heart from God?

I have talked to many spouses who shared that when they made the decision to follow the lusts of the flesh; they never dreamed it would lead to wanting to separate, even divorce their spouse and create a whole new life. Some of them did want out, but they never expected the level of ‘hatred’, coldness, anger, and resentment to well up out of nowhere. ALL of them expressed a level of fear, shame, and double-mindedness, that followed them into restoration, that was and still is, a battle they are trying to overcome. 

The lost spouses shared that they never dreamed they would become such a prisoner in their sins, until they turned aro