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

What happens when a church culture loses a love for God Himself and replaces it with a focus on other things? Find out in this conversation between Nate Danser and Steve Gallagher. (from Purity for Life Episode #501 - Babylon: An Apathetic Church Culture)

Nate: Okay. So, Pastor Steve, you have said that a culture of apathy in the church creates an environment where the standard of Christian living becomes very different from what is laid out in Scripture. So, people feel like as long as they do some basic, outward good things, they are good to go. But I wanted to talk to you in this segment about what you experienced back in the 1970’s, because that was a time of revival when the church was very strong, healthy and passionate.
    You've mentioned at different times that the atmosphere in the church today is very different than it was then. I want to talk a little bit about some of the differences and how you've seen that affect people's lives. One of the things you've said is that people were very passionate about the things of God. What was it like to have a church culture where the general atmosphere was filled with a passion for God.

Steve: Well, I don't want to overstate it. The part of the church that I was involved in, which was the Pentecostal side of things, generally speaking, had a high level of passion. I don't know that it was true of the rest of the church because that's where my involvement was. And the Jesus movement came up out of Chuck Smith, David Wilkerson and Leonard Ravenhill. Those kinds of men are the ones the Lord used to really usher in the Jesus movement that I got saved into in 1970. So, there was such a difference in that movement as opposed to how things are now in the church.

 of course, a lot of it was that many of us were young and excited about the things of God. Especially those of us who were ex-drug addicts and came out of a lot of darkness. But I guess if I could just get it narrowed down to one thing that I can use as a comparison, back in those days I used to love Sunday night services because after the service was over, we would gather around the altar of the church and we would literally spend hours seeking the Lord. That was the norm. We would often have all night prayer times on Friday nights. We would pray for a couple hours and then go out witnessing to people. That was the kind of passion we had.

Fast forward all these years later and there's hardly any churches that even have Sunday night services. People are so uninterested. They are locked into things of the culture like television and the internet. They go to church on Sunday morning, but for the typical American Christian, there is not much passion for the things of God in their lives. There are people out there that still are really passionate for the Lord, but not at the level that there were in 1970.

Nate: Ok. So, you definitely have firsthand experience with the church then and the church now. And you have been watching decade after decade this passion declining. When you think about what contributed to that decline, are there things that really stand out to you as the big contributors?

Steve: What happened was when the Jesus movement swept through the church in the late sixties, early seventies, it brought a lot of youth who were excited about the things of God and that just created an overall enthusiasm. And out of that enthusiastic movement, Christianity became more popular in America. There was a real change. It went from being something that old people did to in the eighties when it became something that young people were involved in. So in the eighties, we saw a real change come over the evangelical movement. Mega churches started to proliferate across the country. Christian radio just really took off. There were shows that began then that are still going today and have held that level of success all these years.
    So, what happened was success came into the church and it really became the thing to look acceptable to the culture. So, the aspects of success, the size and the focus became shifted from godliness to talent. And as that change happened, there was a great diminishment in the passion, because over time the culture of the world began to mix in with the church. And it's really gone downhill since then. So, in my opinion, that is why that fire went out from the 1970’s.

Nate: Yeah. So, it's like the fire was there because people were pressing into God Himself. But then when the focus shifts to something else, you start kind of moving away and you just lose the passion.

Steve: Yeah, it's just success. I mean, that's what happened. The church became successful, and the culture started noticing the church. And it wasn't all negative attention like what it's mostly become now. Now there is vitriol aimed at the church. Back then it wasn't that way.

Nate: One of the things that you just touched on was that when you make something other than the pursuit of God the focus, then there is going to be some kind of negative consequence. There's going to be some kind of diminishment in your spiritual life. And one thing that Patrick and I were talking about in preparation for this interview is how easy it is to pursue a cause because there are so many good ones out there. Like abortion, or justice, or the need to have godly schooling and training for your kids. In a really wicked age, there are a lot of good causes to promote and to fight for. But then there's just the dangers that can come with it when you make that the thing that you're going to focus your whole life on. What do you see as being one of the main negative consequences of doing that?

Steve: Well, some of the causes you mentioned were not really going on in the eighties. The main causes back then with Christian activists were against abortion, against pornography and against the homosexual agenda. And because I was in the midst of starting a ministry to men in sexual sin, those issues became big for me as well. And it wasn't until later that I really could look back and see things in hindsight. You see, what was happening was there was a shift in church culture. In the seventies there was a lot of repentance going on. There were people really seeing their need to repent of their sins and to walk circumspectly with God. Meaning they were being very aware of their own tendencies to veer off or to get carnal or worldly.

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 By the time of the eighties, the shift that I could see happening was that Christian activists like Don Wildman and Jerry Falwell were creating a movement within the church, and it was taking the church with it. They were focused on these causes and basically what it amounted to was seeing the faults in the culture and focusing on the faults out there rather than people looking at their own hearts. I think that was one of the main reasons why the American church left its passion for God and was kind of displaced in part by those kind of things.

Nate: Ok, briefly, could you talk about what the connection is between why starting to always look outward reduces the passion for God?

Steve: Let me answer that question by referring to the Sermon on the Mount. How did Jesus open it?
    Blessed are the poor in spirit.
    Blessed are those who mourn.
    Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Those were the foundational pieces that should be in place as people come into the kingdom. But those same components are vital for someone to maintain their life in the kingdom. That requires you to have a tremendous awareness of your own need before God.
     That is what it means to walk in repentance. And that was at some level very real in the seventies and into the eighties. But it started to change. And part of that change came from people looking at outward issues instead of looking inwardly at their own hearts. And I don't mean there should be morbid introspection and a total fixation on what's wrong with oneself. There is a healthy balance between having our eyes on God and on being aware of our own lack and our own need.

Nate: Ok. I have a thought pertaining to what you were talking about. You were saying that sometimes God sees something different in our inner life as we're fighting for these causes. We may be looking out and seeing all the problems in the world around us and God might see something going on in our hearts. That's basically what Jesus’s message to the church in Ephesus was all about in the Book of Revelation, because he saw their works and He said there was a lot of good there.

  For instance, they were not bearing with those who are evil. They were exposing false apostles. They were patiently enduring. They were bearing up for the sake of His name and not growing weary. But he also said to them that they had abandoned the love that they had at first. He even went as far as to say, “If you don't go back to where you were, I'm going to take your lamp stand away.” Why is maintaining our first love so important to Jesus?

Steve: Well, the whole point of Christianity is to enter that relationship with God to where we love Him and have a love relationship with Him. Which is different from religion. The Christian religion says, “Okay. I have all these do’s and don'ts” or “I'm supposed to go to church. I'm supposed to not do these things or go to these places.” That's religion. But Christianity is a spiritual life.

  It isn't just going to church. It is my spirit interacting with God's Spirit, and the connection between that interaction is love. It's my love for God that makes me want to interact with Him and makes me want to worship Him. And it's His love for me that wants to care for me and watch over my life and so on. That interaction between God and us is what it is all about. I know, for me personally, I started off with a passion for God, but it diminished over time and then it came back. I think that is pretty typical for someone on the right trajectory. They start off in that first love and then over time it kind of dissipates. But then it starts building up into a mature love.

  And that's what I can say, 40 to 50 years later for myself is that my love for God is so much stronger than it was 20 to 30 years ago, even though I felt more passionate than I do today. But it has matured into something that's real and it controls how I think and act. My love for the Lord is why I don't allow myself to lust and do the things I used to do. I don't have to beat myself into not doing the wrong thing because I don't want to do something that displeases the Lord. There's just a change that has gone on inside me. I'm just using myself as an example, but that I think is part of what has been missing in the Church. A real sincere love for the Lord.

We know that a marriage cannot survive when selfishness dominates the couple’s hearts and their home. But do we really believe that the opposite is also true–that a marriage will overflow with blessing when each spouse is giving their lives away for others? In episode 6 of Ashes to Beauty, Scott and Erin Wilson talk about why living "the mercy life" radically changed their marriage and became one of their greatest goals.

Resources

• From Ashes to Beauty (Book) by Jeff Colón

Proverbs 28:26  in the NKJV says, "He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered." In this interview, Nate sits down with Ed Buch to unpack this verse and how applying it to our lives can save us from having to learn the hard way from our mistakes. (from Purity for Life Episode #498 - Babylon: An Empire Aimed at Conquest)

Nate: OK. So, Pastor Ed. This is the second segment in a show where we are looking at how the enemy has infiltrated this world and how he is working to create a global mindset where he is fully in control of people's hearts and minds. And the thing I wanted to key in on in this interview was part of how he does that. Pastor Steve has said that many people spend their whole lives pursuing what brings them the most pleasure, and that they think they are in full control of their lives. But they don’t realize that they are being led by the hand to their destruction by the spirit of Babylon. And the reason that I wanted to key in on that is because if there is anything that defines American culture, it is the pursuit of pleasure. And so, what Pastor Steve is saying is that we can think that we're in full control because we're pursuing what pleases us. But in reality, we are being controlled by the spirit of the world and we're being led to destruction. What I’d like you to do for us is give some Scriptural support for that idea?

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Ed: Unfortunately, Nate, I think most of us find out the truth of what Pastor Steve is saying the hard way. One of the things we always must keep in mind about lust is that it is never satisfied. All of us have something that we're allured by and attracted to in the pleasure realm that's different for each person. We all have our little individual preferences and tastes, but there's something that we're pulled toward and most of us eventually find a way to experience it. Those things are not all necessarily even sinful, but many of them can really delve into sin very quickly for us.

  But the thing is that over time, the pleasure we're getting out of that experience fades. What once brought us a real thrill of pleasure now leaves us dissatisfied and craving for more and at a place where we internally feel like we have a need for this thing. And sometimes at that point, we'll go after a more powerful version of the thing that we've been pursuing or we'll seek out another form of pleasure altogether that is more powerful to us. But regardless, we're following our desire for pleasure and that self-centered pursuit of pleasure is leading us down a path. In 1 John 5:19 it says that the whole world lies under the sway of the evil one. Or as the NIV puts it, under the control of the evil one. So, when we're naively pursuing that worldly pleasure, we're actually immersing ourselves in that domain where evil prevails and in that domain our control is nothing more than an illusion.

  This is exactly what Paul was talking about in Romans 6 where he says that we are slaves to the one we present ourselves to. Whether that's sin leading to death or obedience leading to righteousness. We're all enslaved. We have a choice to make, but we'll be a slave to one or the other. So, whether we realize it or not, our pursuit of pleasure is increasingly enslaving us to sin and handing control over to the evil one in our life. And many of us end up enslaved to various forms of pleasure, sexual pleasure of course being predominant in our culture and in our ministry here. But here's the sad part of this Nate, even after whatever we’re chasing no longer gives us the pleasure we are seeking from it, we will continue to be driven by a desire for it. That is the place of misery and destruction that the evil one had in mind from the beginning.

Nate: Yeah. The thing that you said, or inferred I think is that as humans we're really never in control. The only control we have is who to give control to. Do we give it to Satan, or do we give it to God? Do we give it to righteousness or do we give it to sin? And that's the only choice we have. We don't have the choice of remaining in control of our own destination. We don't have the option of remaining in control of how our lives will turn out. So, it's very clear to me where we can be very self-deceived. We may think that we can make a decision and control the outcome, but that's not an option.

Ed: Not really. Once you make the choice of which path you’re taking, then the destination is settled for you.

Nate: Yeah. And let's bring in a Scripture here. The first part of Proverbs 28:26 says, “Whoever trusts his own heart is a fool.” How do you see a Scripture like that playing into this conversation?

Ed: Well, from a Biblical perspective, the heart that it's talking about is the seat of our desires. And of course, I think most of us would understand that we're born with a sin nature, which means all of those innate desires have been corrupted in some measure. So, I find myself literally cringing when I hear people say things like, “just follow your heart.” That is literally the exact opposite of what the Proverb says. You have a lot of movies, even Christian movies, that seem to really push this notion of following our hearts. But when it comes to what the Scriptures have to say about the heart, it's a scary reality in a sense. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. If you really consider what it's saying, would you follow your heart? Would you willingly follow something that is deceitful above all things? Everything else is less deceitful than your own heart. Is that the path you are going to choose? And Jesus Himself said in Mark 7 that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride and foolishness.

  That whole list of stuff comes out of someone's heart. So, I think that it's very clear in Scripture that the heart is the seat of our corruption. It's full of corrupt desires and it's easily swayed by untrustworthy emotions as well. So, Scripture really has a dual thing that it teaches us against following our hearts. And I think you could even say that every sin a person ever commits started in their heart. So, if we follow our hearts, we're just literally playing right into Satan's hands. We're doing exactly what he wants us to do. And we're a fool like that Proverb said because we have been warned over and over in Scripture not to do that.

Nate: Yeah. And I think that if anybody would just take an honest look and survey their past, they will see that we all naturally trust our hearts. We don't have to be told to trust our hearts. We don't have to be encouraged to do it. We just do it.

Ed: We want to be deceived I think is part of what's going on there because we really just want what we want. Deceiving ourselves in order to go after what we want is something that us as fallen human beings are willing to do.

Nate: Yea. So, then the other half of Proverbs 28:26 says, “He who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” We obviously really need this because like you said, in so many situations in our lives the only thing that really seems to get through to us is the pain of our horrible decisions. Who really wants to spend the rest of their lives only learning from complete disaster and failure. So the solution to avoiding that is to grow in wisdom. What is wisdom?

Ed: Well, I saw you were going to ask me that question today, so I took the liberty of looking it up on the dictionary app on my phone. And one of the definitions that it gave me was “Scholarly knowledge or learning.” That's what we might call human wisdom and the Bible does use the word wisdom that way a couple of times. For example, in Acts 7:22 it says Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and deed. That kind of human wisdom is occasionally being referenced, but it's usually pretty clear by the context that it's not the same as godly wisdom. I think of it as wisdom with a small “w”. Now contrast that with the godly attribute of Wisdom that you might think of as Wisdom with a capital “W”.

  So, one of the other definitions really gets more at the godly attribute of Wisdom. It says that Wisdom is the knowledge of what is true or right coupled with the just judgment as to action. Now that's a mouthful. But in simple terms, it's knowing what's true and right, and then acting according to that. And I think that's a lot closer to what the Bible has in mind when it speaks of Wisdom. I'll throw another definition in here as well. Years ago, I ran across another definition of wisdom from a ministry website and I jotted it down. It said that Wisdom is seeing and responding to life's situations from God's frame of reference. I think that is a very practical and helpful definition of Wisdom.

Nate: Yeah, that is definitely what we need because like you said, Wisdom is the knowledge of what is right and true coupled with just judgment about the action. And sometimes we don't see the situation at all for what it really is. Sometimes we do see the situation for what it is, but we don't act in a way that is going to get us through. It's like the verse that says, “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” (Proverbs 22:3, ESV) We do that a lot. Our desires are really deceptive and they're really powerful. Another verse that I thought about that shows us our total need of the Lord even in this whole realm of learning to walk in Wisdom is that Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. Why is that?

Ed: Well, first of all, I think most Christians can probably quote that part of the verse by heart from Proverbs. But I find that most people don't have much of an understanding of what the fear of the Lord really is or even a sense of their true need for fearing the Lord. The way I see it, a healthy fear of the Lord is rooted in His role as judge. The Bible of course teaches us that everyone is going to be judged one day. It's right there in 2 Corinthians 5:10. It says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” (2 Cor 5:10, NKJV) We're all going to appear before that judgment seat and Jesus told us that we shouldn't fear those who can only kill the body but can't do anything to our soul. He says, “rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.” Of course, the latter is referring to God. We should fear the Lord.

  So, Wisdom is simply living in the reality that my eternity is much more important than my present. I'm going to be judged and there's going to be an eternity that follows that judgment that is either going to be very good or very bad for me. When I live with that kind of perspective ever in front of me, then I'm living by Wisdom. So, that includes denying myself worldly pleasures right now and taking every thought captive. That means storing up my treasure in heaven instead of on the earth and focusing on my spiritual growth. That means developing the mind of Christ and prioritizing my relationship with my Heavenly Father. Those are all the things that result when someone's living according to Wisdom in their life. And if I live today with the intent of being in the right place spiritually, when I get to that place of judgment before Christ then I've allowed my healthy fear of the Lord to steer me down the right path of Wisdom. I won't be living in sin with the fear of being punished, but rather I'll be living in obedience with the expectation of receiving the reward that comes for that.

If a couple who were in real trouble asked you what it would take to restore their lives and their marriage, what would you tell them? Would you tell them they both really need a desperate desire for righteousness? In episode five of our series Ashes to Beauty, Shawn and Susan Smith talk about why becoming hungry for righteousness made such a huge difference in their own lives and marriage.

Resources

• From Ashes to Beauty (Book) by Jeff Colón

Have you ever sought counsel for something and the person giving you counsel starts touching on something that you think is totally unrelated to your problem? For example, you want help with your addiction to sexual sin and they start talking to you about your relationship with God, your ingratitude, fear, worry, or even your perfectionism. In this episode we discuss some of the spiritual issues that a person must deal with if he or she is looking to find freedom from sexual sin.

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Want to learn how to overcome temptation? Then check out this episode. We'll look at James 1:12-15, where the apostle left us priceless wisdom on the nature of temptation, so that we can learn how to handle temptation in a way that brings life.

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In the fourth episode of Ashes to Beauty: Scott and Erin Wilson’s world blew apart in one day when Erin found texts from another woman on Scott's phone. For the next couple of years, they tried to fix their marriage--in their own way and their own strength. Eventually, they both came to the place where they were willing to do the will of God. That’s when their marriage began to be restored.

Resources

• From Ashes to Beauty (Book) by Jeff Colón