How to Save a Broken Marriage

Matthew 19:8

He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

Divorce has never been God's option for a marriage. God's original intent was for a man and woman to be one flesh. God wanted man and woman to be so united that nothing would come between them. The Pharisees, in an attempt to catch Christ saying something wrong, brought up that Moses commanded to give a writing of divorcement and to put away an adulterous woman. However, Jesus' response to this statement was that the hardness of their hearts is why he gave this command. In other words, Jesus was teaching that if you remove the hardness of the heart, you can salvage the marriage.

The word hardness means to be inflexible. It means to be resistant, coldhearted, calloused, unkind, or a lack of feeling. The hardness was a result of something that happened in the past, something they were unwilling to change.

There is always hope for every marriage if we remove the hardness that is the cause of marriage problems. When I deal with people having marriage problems, the hardest thing I have to do is to get them to remove the hardness so we can bring the tenderness they once had back to their marriage. There are four areas of hardness we must remove if we are to salvage a broken marriage.

First, remove the hardness of the past. You will never salvage a marriage if you bring up past indiscretions. One of the hardest things to get a couple to do is to stop talking about what each did that was wrong in the past. You cannot salvage a marriage when you throw up the past, but you can salvage it if you look at what you can do in the future.

Second, remove the hardness of personal shortcomings. Just because your spouse has shortcomings does not mean that you don't have shortcomings yourself. As long as you point to their personal shortcomings, you will never see the person that you originally loved and married. Stop trying to change their shortcomings, and change the shortcomings that you can change which are yours.

Third, remove the hardness of comparisons. One mistake in many marriages is comparing our spouse to what we believe they should be. The Scripture warns that comparing ourselves among ourselves is not wise, and this includes your marriage. As long as you compare your spouse to another person, or to your parents or theirs, you will keep the hardness of the marriage that is causing your problems. Stop comparing your spouse to what you think they need to be, and accept them for who they are.

Fourth, remove the uncommon differences. I always try to bring people back to what they originally loved about their spouse. If I can get past the hardness of the heart to get them to see what they originally liked about that person, that thing that drew them to their spouse, then we can salvage their marriage. You once used to love that person, but hardness has covered that love. Remove the hardness, and you will find the love that you had for that person. Your original love is still there; the only reason you can't see it is because you have allowed hardness to cover it. Remove the hardness that is causing the problem in your marriage, and you will discover the love you have for your spouse.