IDNTIMWYTIM Part 2

One of my support staff has decided she is leaving her husband. We have divorced individuals on our staff, so I don't have a problem with people having suffered a divorce in their past. If her husband had abused her physically or if he had had an affair, I wouldn't have been on the horns of the dilemma I mentioned yesterday. If he was filing on her, we would support her completely. But her leaving him; her filing on him. That's tough.

My wife and I care deeply for this woman. She's been a member of our church for almost 15 years--almost as long as we have been. She has been on our staff for almost 5 years. If I terminate her, she has no job and no income. I've been waiting a couple of months to see if she was going to allow God to get back into the middle of the marriage. But no. So I called her in, asked her point blank, "Are you planning on divorcing him?" She said, "Yes." I said, "I want you to go to counseling, the both of you." She said essentially, "Won't do any good." I said, "Well, this leaves me in quite a predicament." Eventually, I arrived at this plan: I gave her a week off (paid) to search for a job. Then I'll have to terminate her. However, if at the end of the week she has no job, I'll keep her on for a period if she'll go to counseling with her husband. My hope and prayer would be that after the reality of not having a job hits her, she'll be more open to going to counseling--and maybe, just maybe, God will do a miracle for them.

I'm sick and tired of people who call themselves 'Christ-followers' making decisions that Jesus would never make or lead them to make. There's a breakdown here. For so many, when they say they are Christ-followers: "I do not think it means what you think it does!"