I only have a few minutes here before I must run, but just wanted to respond to let you know that I did read your response very carefully.

A few brief responses:

1. When someone shows up out of the blue on a post that is over a month old with a comment such as yours then, yes, I’m very curious to find out how they got to my site. I checked the stats and found out.

2. Despite your claims to the contrary, you are judging Amy Grant (since you admitted you don’t know the facts — I don’t, either, which is why I’ve abstained from making strong statements either way about her). But you also called for her “fans” to “REPENT”. All this, and yet you claim to have nothing to do with Amy and have more interest in thinking about the love of God and feel like you already spent more time than intended replying here. My question is, why did you comment in the first place, then?

3. I was not attempting to “obfuscate” or put up “smoke screens”. My point was simply that you said “divorce is sin” without any qualification. Yes, I know the Malachi passage. And yes, I know the Matthew passage. Which is why I said that I know where you’re coming from. But rather than “obfuscate”, I wanted to demonstrate that a high view of Scripture is willing to look at all of Scripture and see that God not only has allowed divorce in certain situations, but that He Himself “issued a divorce”. Who is to say that Amy’s divorce didn’t fall into the same category?? I don’t know, so I can’t say. But it appears you don’t know, either.

4. You have every right as a Christian to do what you want (or not do, as the case may be) with regard to Amy’s music. Don’t misunderstand what anyone has said here as saying you must like her music, support it, etc. etc. etc. But for those of us who believe it might be better to withhold judgment and trust that the people who are spiritually involved with Amy are holding her accountable, it would be generous for you to give us the same respect.

Listen, I don’t usually get this firm with any commenter, because that’s not the way I like this blog to be. But you have definitely pushed some buttons with the manner in which you just popped in and made your statements.

If you have better things to do, then by all means, do them. If you don’t have anything to do with Amy, then don’t make comments such as the one you did. And for the sake of Christ and His body, if you don’t have the facts, then reserve judgment. Don’t pass judgment and then say you aren’t judging.

Psalm 32:2 Blessed is the man
whose sin the LORD does not count against him

But as the 1 John passage I cited teaches, repentance & confession must preceed forgiveness (as in verse 5 of Ps. 32):

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD “—and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
Selah

Psalm 51 (King David’s public confession): 17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Secondly, you said “it is really sad to see that you found this blog post by Googling “Amy Grant repent divorce”. It appears to me like you might be on a crusade against Amy Grant on this very topic.”
Hmmmm…interesting. Do you do backtracking on all your posters to see where they have been before your site? Your use of the word “crusade is certainly emotionally loaded. Apart from avoiding her records and occasionally praying for her, I have had nothing to do w/ Amy Grant since she left her husband. I have better things to occupy my mind with such as the love and goodness of God. I have no interest in judging anyone as Christ promised to use the same size judgement scoop that I pick out for others.
Since you asked, however, the reason I Googled those words was that I wanted to know the facts. I recently was given a spoken message/song compilation CD called “The Invitation” put out by Rick Warren. The song, “Innocence Lost” is the lead song. There is much of regret in the song but I have not heard of any SPECIFIC repentance on her part for choosing to divorce her husband. I believe that God holds leaders to a higher standard. None of us are sinless but we are called to be blameless, especially those who lead God’s people. Moses was prevented from entering the promised land because of ONE act that mis-represented God. As I stated, divorce is a mis-representation of Christ’s promise to NEVER leave the Church.
Since we are on the subject of Christ, in Mt. 19 our Lord taught on the subject of divorce:
“Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The Jeremiah passage that you quote makes it clear that Israel was guilty of spiritual adultery and thus they invalidated the marriage by their own actions. But even in connection with Israel (before Christ raised the bar, so to speak in the NT) please read the book of Hosea and meditate on God’s post-divorce restoration of His harlotrous people to Himself.
The Ezra passage is clearly an attempt at obfuscation on your part as the Israelites were clearly given instructions to NOT marry pagan wives as they would inevitably turn their hearts from their primary calling to love God. Their marriages were never recognized as such by God in the first place as they were acts of disobedience.
Neither of these smoke screens addresses the passage in Malachi where God says He HATES divorce. What does that mean to you?
Regarding your somewhat sarcastic remarks about contacting other blogs about your CDs: Not to be disrespectful, but I had never heard of you before following the Google search engine to your website. I have already invested more time than intended in replying to your comments. You are reasonably safe that I will not take you up on your offer.
As for your parting shot- No, I do not know from what sins Amy has or has not repented of. That’s why I did the websearch. All of the time you and I have both spent on this has not shed any light on the subject either. So I do not have a clear conscience about passing the Rick Warren CD on to another person. Contrary to what Amy Grant’s actions appear to indicate, I do feel a personal responsibility for any influence I have in other people’s lives. I hope I have conveyed a high respect for the word of God in this post. In contrast one of the earlier posters said something about not knowing how God was leading Amy. You can be certain of this – God will not lead His people in a way in direct violation of the clear teaching of Holy Scripture.
I pray that God will enable you to be counted among those who “tremble at His word” rather than those who twist it to accomplish their own agenda. I pray that you would rejoice over the things that God rejoices over, weep over the things that grieve Him, and speak out about the things that anger Him.
Please pray the same for me,
Don Blosser, a fellow sinner
San leandro, CA

The reality is, unless you are a personal friend of Amy Grant’s, and know all the details of just what went on, you don’t know what sins have or have not been committed, nor do you know from what sins Amy has or has not repented.

Do you?

First of all, I have not seen anyone in this thread saying that divorce is not a problem, or even that it’s not a sin. If I’m wrong about that, please show me the relevant quotes.

Secondly, I have to say it is really sad to see that you found this blog post by Googling “Amy Grant repent divorce”. It appears to me like you might be on a crusade against Amy Grant on this very topic. Why is that? Again, I’m not justifying anything in her that would be sin, but searching for that phrase and then posting the comment you made somehow just seems rather… ummm …interesting to me.

Finally, while it is possible to make a case against divorce from certain Scriptures, there are some Scriptures that are ignored that, at best, show that it’s not necessarily such a cut-and-dried issue in God’s eyes.

For example, what is your take on the following passages:

Jeremiah 3 – we see this in verse 8: “[F]or all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce….” That’s God speaking, by the way.

Ezra 9-10 – here we see that as part of the nation’s repentance for their sins, they made a covenant with God to put away the wives they had married in violation of God’s orders. It doesn’t appear that God had anything against this. And as for your comment about God hating divorce for “what it does to the kids”, notice that they not only sent the wives away, but also the children!

I would be very interested to know how you explain those two passages.

I John 1:5-10 “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.”

2 Chronicles 7:14 “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

(The above is based on my observation that Amy Grant has never publically apologized to the Church for her unfaithfulness to her husband and to her Lord).

As the church, I believe that we do need to repent for marketing spiritual gifts. And exploiting spiritual gifts for profit. I don’t blame artists as much as I see it as a systematic problem in the institutional church in America in general. We’ve married ourselves to a worldly concept of success and materialism that I think God is beginning to deal with. I think that this is part of the heart behind The Call – it’s a call to repentence, and turning away from the corruption and remarrying ourselves wholely to the Lord – with a commitment to unadulterated purity. And I pray that we will see a purer stream of worship (for worships’ sake, rather than a form of marketable entertainment).

I’d also like to comment on Josiah’s question (although addressed to Steve). So I’m not trying to answer it – just want to engage this part of the conversation: “Is there room for leaders without it being an idol in God’s way?” I think yes. I think that God raises people up and puts them in a visible position for a particular purpose. But, I also think that we can make leaders into idols (even if those leaders have pure hearts, and don’t want to be seen – only want to point to Jesus). So I think it largely depends on how we respond to visible leaders. We can let God use them to be models for us, pointing us to Jesus. Or, we can stumble into following them as celebrity personalities, instead of letting them point us to Jesus. Keith Green is great example – people responded to him in both ways. There will always be visible leaders (God did this in both the old and new covenants in scripture), but it’s important for us to never look to man. (As Steve pointed out). Instead, we look to the Holy Spirit within people. We let the Holy Spirit use them to draw us closer to Jesus. That’s my two cents… for whatever it’s worth. Great discussion here!