Here's a paradox: If you want to enjoy tremendous freedom in Christ, then cultivate a disciplined lifestyle. In today’s episode, Steve Gallagher joins us to take a look at why discipline is part and parcel with growth as a Christian.

Before God flooded the earth, the Bible tells us that man’s heart was continually thinking of only evil. This horrific condition is the extreme end of the “Spiral of Degradation” outlined in Romans 1, which still threatens the hearts of man today. In this week’s discussion, three of our staff members break down each step of the spiral and discuss how it played out in their own lives before coming to Pure Life. Yet they also share the hope of how God was able to bring them back up and out of that spiral of sin and into His marvelous light!

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

Austin Kropf and Josh Bergstrom had both tried numerous things in an attempt to find freedom from sexual sin. But instead of getting better, they had only grown worse. So when they came to Pure Life Ministries, they were exhausted, despairing and desperate for change. And then something happened that changed everything. They fell in love with Jesus.

Resources

The Love of Christ Constrains Me (Article) By Guest Author

It’s hard to build trust in a marriage when a man has spent years or even decades lying to his wife about his secret sexual sin. But Jeff and Rose can testify to the Lord’s great power to restore a broken relationship. In this brief segment, they discuss some simple lessons they’ve learned on how to rebuild trust in a marriage.

Host: Jeff and Rose, as we focus on couples this week, we want to talk about what is admittedly a difficult issue for anyone. And that is the betrayal of trust. Jeff, how does a couple begin to deal with this issue?

Jeff: Well, first of all, the husband needs to understand the impact that has come from lying to his wife for a long time. He has hurt his wife very deeply by lying to the point that some wives actually are more upset at the lies he's told rather than the actual sin that was committed. And the husband has to understand that and realize that trust is not going to be something that's going to come automatic for his wife. He's going to have to be willing to be truthful and to handle things differently so that he can build that trust back into his marriage. And it might take quite some time to do that.

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Host: So, do you find that sometimes the husbands think, “Well, ok. I've gotten all this out in the open. I've acknowledged everything that I did, so everything should be ok now.”

Jeff: Absolutely. That's what we see a lot of the time where the husband expects his wife to immediately begin to trust him as soon as he makes some visible changes. And really, I question whether that guy has really been broken over his sin if he is not willing to bear his wife through the process of building trust back into the marriage.

Host: So, are there any particular steps that he can take? What are the things that he needs to begin to do?

Jeff: Well, the Bible is pretty clear. In Ephesians 4:25 it says, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” (Ephesians 4:25, ESV) And it pretty much comes down to learning how to speak the truth and being vulnerable. A lot of times a husband who is in sexual sin isn't honest about what is going on inside. So, the wife may sense that something's wrong, but he's lying and saying that everything's fine. But when a husband is honest, and he begins to speak truth from his heart and he's vulnerable to his wife then she can know that she can trust him. She can know that he is not putting a false front to her and that he is being honest about his struggles.

Host: Yea. And oftentimes, I would assume that a man is just looking at his own outward behavior, but God is wanting to do a deep inward work in his heart. And that's what the wife is looking for too. So, if a guy is just focusing on changing his behavior to make things right, he maybe won’t understand why his wife isn’t trusting him. What he'd be failing to understand is that she's looking to see if there's a heart change over a period of time.

Jeff: Absolutely. And sometimes the husband will fall into the trap of being lead to believe that she is just expecting perfectionism. So, in those cases the husband may fear that if he shares with his wife that he's struggling inside or that there's something not right inside then she's going to freak out. But really what he doesn't understand is it'll actually make her more secure if he is honest about his struggles. Our wives want to know what's going on inside of us and they're not looking for some spiritual superman. They're looking for a man that is honest and vulnerable and willing to open up his inside world with his wife.

Host: Rose, is there a different perspective that a wife in this situation has? How does a wife perceive this issue? Does she see it differently?

Rose: Usually the wife does not trust the husband at all. Even if he is someone who has gone through the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program and done all the right things, initially she still won’t trust him. And that's just where she's at in that point in time. Also, a wife will get frustrated a lot of times because the husband is in this mindset that he has proven himself to be trustworthy through the right things he has begun to do. But regardless of the outward acts, the husband still has a track record where he can't be trusted.
       So, I try to help the wife to see that her focus needs to be on the Lord. She needs to see that the Lord is the one that her husband is accountable to primarily and she needs to trust that God is able to deal with him. Overtime as she sees the Lord working in his life and dealing with his heart, then the wife starts seeing that trust can be built back into the marriage. It can come back, but it really depends on the husband and how vulnerable he's willing to be and how open and honest he is with his wife.                                                                                                                              

       That’s because you can trust someone that is honest and vulnerable. But someone that's been lying and deceiving – you can’t trust that person. And usually I'll ask the wife “When can you trust someone?” And the right answer is that you can trust someone when they're being honest with you. So, if they're not being honest, then they are hindering the Lord from working in the area of restoring trust in the marriage.

We wouldn’t think twice about trying to live without air, water, or food. So why do we think we can live spiritually without a daily intake of God’s word and a daily life of prayer? In this episode of Purity for Life, we’re going to talk about establishing and maintaining a devotional life—because, let’s face it, we will never stay on the road to freedom without keeping first things first.

Resources

• The Walk of Repentance (Bible Study) By Steve Gallagher

Although worldliness isn't only about what we watch and listen to, the kind of entertainment we engage with on a regular basis does have a very real impact on our spiritual life. In this discussion, three of our staff members talk about how their worldly lifestyles opened the door for sexual sin.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

Imagine that for the first time in your life, you're leaving all the miserable consequences of sexual sin behind you and walking forward in real freedom. But then something devastating happens. You fail. Now what? In this episode, Steve and Kathy Gallagher join us to talk about what to do, and what not to do, when you fail so that you don't get fatally sidetracked on the road to freedom.

Resources

• Truth #18 - Failure is Not Defeat in Your Battle with Sexual Sin (Short Video) by Steve Gallagher

True repentance is a gamechanger, and it sets a man on a path toward real freedom from sexual sin. But what should he do if he fails? And how should his wife respond to this? In Part 2 of a discussion with Steve & Kathy Gallagher, we show husbands and wives how to respond to failure in the right way so that they keep moving forward in their battle against sexual sin. (from Purity for Life Episode #511 - How to Handle Failure | Key Lessons on the Road to Freedom)

Nate: Now, Kathy, if a man who has repented of sexual sin is married, then likely he's married to a woman who has already been through a lot. This is not the first time she's had to face this, so if he happens to have another failure that can be really traumatic for her. All of the pain is freshly opened again. The wounds are open again. It brings back a lot of the memories that she hoped were completely behind her. Maybe she hasn't even really healed from a lot of these memories. What does she need to hear about these failures and how does she deal with them?

Kathy: If his repentance is genuine, a failure does not nullify that. It doesn't take you back to ground zero. I remember so well, the dichotomy of seeing Steve deeply repentant and then fall. It was very hard to understand because I knew what I had seen. I knew his repentance was real. I could not get away from the reality of what had happened to him spiritually. So, then I ask myself, “What is this failure then? What in the world are you doing here? You said a lot of things to me and you said a lot of things to the Lord. Things were changing, and now this.”

      All I want to say to women is that this is part of the process. I had to learn it. You have to learn it. It's not the end. It's not over. We're not going back to ground zero. Actually, the way I see it now, when Steve would fall into a form of sexual sin it was the lingering remnants of his old life still being purged from him. It wasn't truly failure, but it was like a finality to the whole awful thing. He had a few failures with pornography after he had his biggest moment of repentance, and it was pretty devastating because as a wife I went right back to square one in my mind.

    But what was happening in between the falls was that he was changing and I could see the change was real. And so, we’d go along for a few months and then boom, he would fall again. And in the female mind, we're back to ground zero. We have to start all over again. But he was still changing and the failures became less and less. There was more period of time in between each of those failures. So, he was changing and he was repenting. He was just having to battle his way out of things.

     In my mind, I was thinking he just wants his sin and that's why he keeps going back to it. That's what was in my heart sometimes, because that fear just takes over inside and you think that your husband is just messing with your head. But that's not what was happening and that's not what's happening in your situation most likely. Your husband is moving forward. It may not feel like he is to you, but he is. The thing that every woman should be looking for isn't necessarily the sin but the fruit of repentance. And for Steve, there was more fruit of repentance in the daily life than there was sinful behavior.

     What is happening in your husband spiritually? What does his life with God look like? That's the thing I have such a hard time trying to get through to women, because we take so personal what our husbands have done to us. We are always looking at how his sin is affecting us. And I don't mean to make it sound like that’s a horrible thing. It's just the reality of what we as wives are bent toward. But what you should be seeing is what is going on in his life with God, because that's the most important thing. Not the marriage.

      I hate to say it. I know that ruffles feathers, but the most important thing is his walk with God. If that is growing, your marriage will end up where it's supposed to end up. But if all he is focused on is you and your feelings then he is not going to grow spiritually. The thing that kept me hanging on with Steve was the repentance in him and the life that was developing in him spiritually. I saw something even in the midst of failures. I saw reality and I wasn't going to let go of that.

Nate: And that reality doesn't mean an absolutely transformed life overnight.

Kathy: No, it took years. And to be honest with you, walking through Steve issues with sexual sin in a certain way was the easy part. Yeah, he would have his lapses of sexual sin after he came into a life of victory, but there were deeply rooted attitudes and ways of thinking in Steve that God needed to deal with. And once the sexual sin got dealt with, I thought, “Oh, boy, a new husband, won't this be fun!” But then I was like, “Who is this guy?” The sexual sin was gone, but there was an angry, grumpy, disgruntled, complaining husband still there.

     Those were the things that the Lord was working out of him. So, I hate to say it, but women generally have a very fairy tale mentality about marriage. We think of it as if it is supposed to be utopia on earth and that is just not what it is. It’s two sinners coming together under the banner of Jehovah and allowing him to work into both of us His compassion and His mercy. His patience and His long suffering. All that He is we are supposed to be becoming. Not a happily married couple necessarily. That's not really the goal as I see it.

Nate: That's a lot to chew on. I'm glad you say that stuff and not me. One thing I have seen with quote unquote sexual addiction specialists is this idea that the failure should be thoroughly analyzed. Like, “Where was I?  What did I feel? What were my triggers?” And I think the idea is that if I can understand all the dynamics, then I can protect myself from those circumstances in the future and that will keep me from “relapsing”. Is there any value in this approach where you analyze the failure, or is that a lost cause?

Steve: Well, I can tell you this. I sure I am grateful I have the Lord and I am not dependent on my ability to analyze myself. I suppose there may be a little bit of value to doing that, but comparatively to putting your energy, time and effort into developing a life with God, it is a night and day difference. It's like three cents worth of help versus a million dollars worth of help.

     We are talking about the power of Almighty God working on your behalf inside of, transforming your life, changing your circumstances and carrying you through life. Compare that to analyzing yourself. Are you kidding me? But that's the difference between worldly wisdom and the wisdom that comes from God and from a life in God. All I can say is this is not a mental battle. This is a spiritual battle and it's not won through knowledge of ourselves. It's won through connection to God and it's that connection to God that gives us the victory.

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Kathy: This whole idea of analyzing self to me is just an extension of what people have already been doing, because sin is like a thesis on self. So, why do you need to look at yourself more?

Steve: All it will do is a get a person more wrapped up in themselves.

Kathy: Yes. It is totally taking you away from where you should be putting your head and your heart toward, which is the Lord. What Steve just said is absolutely true. Put your energy, put your effort and put your mind in the Word of God and spending time with Jesus, because that is where true change comes from. Not by looking at yourself. We already know we're a mess. We need help and it's not going to come from our self-estimation. Self-examination is such a worldly wisdom approach to me and it grieves me.

Steve: And now you know why there's no hope in this world, because the world has nothing to offer.

Nate: Yea. Well, one of the struggles that I had with this whole interview was that we're talking about in some ways the good that can come out of failure. And it's a touchy subject because you don't want to give people a sense that every single time I fall good is going to come out of it. That can really let people off the hook from reality, because sin has destructive consequences every single time. So, I know Pastor Steve, in your book at the At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry, when you talked about this you were very clear that this should never be an excuse to give into any kind of sin. Although, you did touch on the good that can come out of it. So, can you identify for us some of the specific kinds of good that can come out of a failure.

Steve: Ok. Well, first of all, let's set the proper stage here. We're talking about a man who is walking in victory but then has a failure. So, he's been mostly walking in victory over sexual sin for a matter of months or something like that. We're not talking about a guy who's still in the throes of sin. So, for a guy who things are going pretty well for and he has a failure, is there a silver lining to this cloud? Yes, I would say that there certainly could be the. The potential is certainly there. It'd be better not to fall into sin, because there are consequences. But it's not all black and it's not all negative.

     For instance, it's a humbling experience. There is an element of the man’s pride that's still there, especially when he starts doing well for a time. He may start feeling pretty self-confident and self-reliant, and sometimes we need to be taken down a peg or two. So, a failure can be a positive in that sense. Another thing is that it creates and deepens the hatred for sin, because there are consequences. And you get sick and tired of paying the price for that little bit of fun. So that reality goes deeper in you, which is a good thing also. Which that's the sort of thing that really can keep you from sin later when a temptation comes along.

     You start remembering, “Yeah, I know it could be really fantastic for a few minutes, but I remember the aftermath and it’s not worth it.” That kind of a thought can come to you. And the other thing we need to keep in mind is God's approach to our dilemma is holistic. He's not interested in just cleaning up this one little sin. We would be happy if that's all He would do. So much so that a man may have thoughts like, “Just leave me alone Lord. Let me live my worldly carnal selfish life. Just take this one sin out of my life because it's bothering me and it's making my wife really mad, so take it.” And praise God that He doesn't think like us.

  He's thinking about a complete change of character and a movement of our entire being headed towards Him and His Christ likeness. And that encompasses all the different elements of our nature. So, it's not just a matter of sexual sin. He's wanting change everywhere and in everything about us. So, we would be happy maybe to keep things as they are life other than this one sin that is ruining our lives, but God wants to move us into a life of true victory.

Nate: Yeah. And Kathy, for the wife, what good can come to her from her husband's failures?

Kathy: I have a short list. The first thing I would say is dependence on the Lord because we can very easily go through life without depending on Him when life is going well. So, I see the trials that have come through my husbands’ failures as a blessing, because they have caused me to really cry out to the Lord and put all my faith and hope in Him. I needed to be humbled greatly. When you're the wife and the “victim”, you can really get yourself in a mental quagmire and a spiritual quagmire of trouble from thinking that you're a victim and losing sight of the sovereignty of God. I have had to go through this struggle a million times in my life. Where I ask myself, “Where is God in all of this?” And the truth is that He is in every part of it.

      That's my answer to that question every time now after 43 years of marriage and looking back, He used it powerfully in my life. I needed to be humbled greatly even at the ripe age of 21 when all this hell broke loose on my life. But it also helped me to see the real battle that my husband was in. And it helped me to see how the Lord uses our struggles and sins to deal with us, to purge us and to conform us. My sight was raised up from not just my life in this world but to the bigger picture of what God is doing. It's so much more than what we can see. We're just so earthbound and it's natural to be that way, but the Lord is wanting to lift our vision to something more than just life on this earth.

    For decades we have been going through dealing with our own issues, but also dealing with so many other people. I have to ask myself, what is God doing with all of that? What is the point of all of that? That's kind of what we've been saying in different ways through this whole interview. We are being conformed to the image of Christ. We are not just putting off the old man, we are putting on Christ. That's the point. So, to lose our lives in this world and repent and turn away from our sin means that we're turning to Him and that we are taking on Christ likeness. And that to me is worth all the battle and all the struggle.

    Jesus is the prize. He is the goal. That is the end of the line right there. So, all the other stuff that confuses and muddles up the purpose for the struggle, I'm done with all that. I want Jesus and I don't care what it cost me. And that is where I have ended up after 43 years of marriage and seeing a lot of people go through struggles. But I understand God is still in everything. As painful as it is, He's there for us in every trial. You just have to apprehend Him and set Him as your course and as your prize in life.

If you and your spouse are walking down the path laid out by Jesus in the Beatitudes, something wonderful is on the horizon. From the ashes of sexual sin's destruction will rise something new and beautiful. Where sin once reigned with terrible fury, God will rule over your hearts and home with a powerful sense of peace. This is the final episode of our series, Ashes to Beauty. You don't want to miss it!

Resources

• From Ashes to Beauty (Book) By Jeff Colón

The world is set in a system which is totally opposed to God and His ways. So how does a person who claims to follow Christ end up being a part of the world system? Three of our staff members come together to discuss this in the first of our roundtable discussions for our series, "Babylon: The Seat of Satan's Power".

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

When a husband repents, both he and his wife are hoping that he will never stumble again. So, what should he do if he does? And how should his wife respond to his failure? In Part 1 of a discussion with Steve & Kathy Gallagher, we show husbands and wives how to respond to failure in the right way so that they keep moving forward in their battle against sexual sin. (from Purity for Life Episode #511 - How to Handle Failure | Key Lessons on the Road to Freedom)

Nate: Pastor Steve and Kathy, this series is called Key Lessons on the Road to Freedom, and what we're really trying to do is give people who are in the early stages of repentance some real help for what they're going to face in the future, because it's just an uncertain time. It's a difficult process to go through and we don't want people to be discouraged. We want people to make the right choices at the right time. And so one thing that we've already talked about was the need to live by faith instead of feelings. We talked about the need to never quit and how we need to be in this for the long haul.
        What we want to talk about in this episode is learning to deal with failure. And so obviously, we've kind of given ourselves away even by having a title like this, but we’re just saying that even if someone has genuinely repented, it doesn't guarantee that they're going to be instantaneously delivered from all temptations and it doesn't mean that they'll never stumble or even fall. Could you give people a realistic sense of what their lives will look like if they've genuinely repented—in terms of victory over sexual sin?

Steve: That's a very good way to lead into that question. I'm glad you asked it like you did because their lives should look quite a bit different than before and I'm not just talking about in regard to sexual sin. I'm referring to the whole general flow of how they live their lives, because it's been my experience that 99% of the time, a person who is in bondage to sin has a home life that is usually not that great from the Lord's perspective. There's been a lot of compromise. Maybe in terms of worldliness and carnality. Or maybe in terms of selfishness and pride. Or maybe even on both sides of the aisle so to speak.

    So, what is needed is a whole new lifestyle that is pleasing to the Lord. Of course, this is especially true for the husband who has been in sin and really needs to change, but the wife as well is going to have areas in her life that she will need to change so that they can both be moving in a direction that is closer to what the Lord desires. As part of that, the man is going to be doing better and better in regard to sexual temptation. And if he's got a good devotional life established, he's going to find that those temptations just don't have the power they had.

Kathy: Yes. So, for a wife, it kind of is the same thing. Even if she hasn’t been in habitual sin, from my own experience, she has developed negative habits. There are things that get set in motion in a wife’s heart and life that God needs to deal with and she needs to cooperate with the Lord about dealing with those things. When I'm counseling a woman, one of the things I try to get her to do with her husband is pray. There's probably nothing more solid and stable that they can do together as a couple because you're being vulnerable and you're opening your heart up.

    Hopefully it won't turn into a big argument when you're praying, but that's a good starting place for a wife to get into the place of supporting him as he's journeying his way through this because you can't just stand outside of it and look in. You have to actually come into this trial with him and help him walk through this and get on his team. If there has been genuine repentance you will know it. You won't have to question, “Is he just pulling the wool over my eyes? Is he messing with my head?” Don't even go there. Just assume the best and get on his team and pray with him.

    But also, in your own life, as far as the lifestyle changes that have to take place, I'm just going to be pretty blunt here. If you've got carnality going on in your own life, you need to deal with it regardless of what your husband is doing. As a Christian, you need to deal with things in your own heart and life and you need to rid yourself of whatever worldly junk that's going on that is pulling you away from Jesus. Those things have to be dealt with, because you're not an island either and you have to come out of the world in certain ways as well to be in unity with your husband. This battle is both of yours. It's not just his.

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Nate: Yeah, I'm really grateful for how you guys handled that question, because it does broaden the vision—which we always need because we want to focus on the one thing. Let's just get this one area taken care of so that our lives can be better. The Lord is not thinking that way and we need to understand things from His perspective. My next question is, how hopeful should a person be about what their new life could look like? Should they hope and believe for a life where they are impervious to temptation and they will never fall again?

Steve: I think to say that they can be impervious to temptation would be an unrealistic and over the top expectation. We still live in a very fallen world and we have a fallen nature, and those two things are always looking to connect. So, I don't want to take it that far. What I would say is that it would be right, and the Lord would want and expect a man to be living a lifestyle where victory is the norm. Where winning those battles would take place on a regular basis. Maybe there would be an occasional fall or maybe not. A lot of guys when they make that turnaround, they go on and they just never really struggle again. I don't know exactly why some do and some don't, but that's the way it goes for a lot guys.

    All I would say though, is that the wonderful thing about the Lord is that it's not all resting on us. We have our side to it, but this is where grace kicks in. When a man is sincerely trying, the Lord is going to be sincerely working with him. And I can just tell you from my own experience over the past 37 years that the Lord has covered me many times, especially during the earlier years when I was still pretty raw and I had only recently come out of sexual sin. There were times that situations would arise and the Lord would arrange circumstances where it was easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing. And I knew it was the Lord and I went along with the Lord, and I didn't have a problem. So, I would say that we can count on His grace to be there to help us win those battles when we are sincerely trying.

Kathy: I want to just throw out kind of a different perspective on the question of people wanting to know, “Will I ever fall again? “Or “Is it all over, because I blew it again?” The point here is not human perfection. The goal is that we are continually becoming more Christlike. Of course, we all want to be done with sin. We don't want to keep falling and the Lord doesn't want us to either, but those failures, as hard as they can be, are part of the transformation process. We have to journey out of sin. The Lord is using the struggle and He's using the battle. And that is so much a part of the transformation process.

    I remember when Steve would fall and it felt like the bottom was dropping out, but actually what was happening was we were getting closer and closer to the end of the matter. We were coming out of the thing. It was like he was having to get freed of or purged from that old life. It was still clinging to him in some ways, but he was fighting and I was fighting. We weren't fighting each other, though, we were fighting together to get through this thing. So, we were throwing off all that weight and all the sins that were so easily entangling us because we were going in a direction. So, I wouldn't be overly discouraged when someone has failed. I'm not saying get excited about it either, but I'm just saying that it's not the end of the road just because someone blows it.

Nate: Yeah. And that's good because that's one of the things I did want to talk about was how to handle failure—because it is very hard. There's the discouragement and the overwhelming fear for the wife that nothing's changed and this is going to go on forever. She may think that she can never trust him again. Then there are also the feelings that can occur in the man. When he falls it can stir up all those old desires and it brings about a darkness and a feeling of being disconnected from the Lord. So, I'm sure that there's a wrong way to handle failure. I want to talk about the right way. What are some right ways to handle failure and how does a couple move forward during those times?

Steve: Well, the first thing I would say is, what kind of failure are we talking about?  Are we talking about a lapse into pornography or are we talking about hooking up with another person? Because those are two hugely different things. So, let's just say that it's a lapse into pornography. I tell guys all the time, if you have a fall, you pick yourself back up again, repent and get right back on track doing the things you've been doing. The important thing is to keep going forward and don't just stop and die on the spot. You have to keep doing the things that you've been doing because if are headed in the right direction that’s where you want to keep going. A failure is a setback, but what's the alternative? To stop? To not fight anymore? No. That's not an option.

    So, what I always say is that failure is not a fall, failure is quitting. And that is the one thing we do not want to do, cannot do, and must not do is quit. So, you pick yourself up again and you get going again. When you do that, the devil is going to try to take you in one of two extremes. The one would be what I just said, to quit. To just get so despondent and discouraged that you just give up inside. Telling yourself things like, “What's the use? I'm never going to change. I'm not changing. I still want this stuff like I always did.” Which if you've been going in the right direction, that is not true, but it feels that way at that moment.

    So that's one way the enemy can get someone. But there are certain types of personalities that can easily go into a Pollyanna delusional state where they're not really dealing with things. They're not really having a deep repentance over what they just did. They are just sloughing it off—too much so. They're sloughing it off like it didn't even phase them. And so, we don't want that either because that means there's nothing of any depth happening inside of them through this process. So, the right thing to do is to repent to the Lord. There should be some sincere grief about it. You should feel badly and repent to the Lord sincerely and genuinely. And then you just got to get back on track and keep going. You can't just drag baggage of previous sins behind you.

Ashes to Beauty Episode 7: When a husband truly repents of sexual sin, most couples are ready to put all of that behind them and to enjoy a new life. But they soon find that there are other huge areas of their marriage that still need God's powerful touch. In today’s show, we'll talk about two of the biggest: healthy communication and intimacy in the marriage bed.

Resources

• From Ashes to Beauty (Book) by Jeff Colón