Welcome to the fifth episode in our series, Key Lessons on the Road to Freedom. In this episode, we are going to look at yet another vital aspect of learning to walk in freedom from sexual sin - keeping a godly atmosphere in your home. It's a lesson we all have to learn. If we want to live godly lives, we have to keep a careful guard over our homes.

Resources

The Role of Consecration in Overcoming Sin (Article) By Steve Gallagher

Before Dustin Renz came through the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program, he was living a double life. On the outside, he was a good Christian husband in full time ministry. But in secret, he was addicted to pornography and drugs. In this interview, he and his wife, Brittney, discuss how this duplicitous life prevented him from gaining freedom over his sin. They also share about the many problems it created in their marriage. (from Podcast Episode #462 - Husbands, It's Time to Be Honest)

Patrick: Dustin and Brittany, thank you for joining us today. Dustin, I wanted to speak with you today about what was important for you when you were rebuilding your marriage. And as we were preparing for this interview, what stood out to me about your story was how important honesty and transparency are in a marriage. So that’s what we want to talk about today. Before we get in to that, could you talk about your life before you came to the Pure Life Residential Program? Specifically, could you highlight the deception in your marriage?

Dustin: Sure. Brittany and I met in Bible school right after I graduated from Teen Challenge. I actually stayed and worked for a couple of months at Teen Challenge after I graduated the program. I had been free for 11 months or so from pornography and drugs, but I ended up working in an office with computer access and I started viewing pornography again. When I first met Brittany, I wasn't looking for a wife, but we fell in love and I knew it was the Lord. I felt like we were brought together by Him, so I told her everything. I told her my whole history and everything that I had done sexually. I just laid it all out there because she had grown up in a Christian home and had lived a completely different life than me, so I wanted her to know that this is kind of what the package of my life was. So initially I really wanted to be real and honest.
I knew I needed help with the pornography use, so I went to see a counselor at our school and started meeting with him regularly. I would meet with him and share with him my struggles and try to get help. But I kept working at Teen Challenge on the weekends and still had that access to pornography. So I would be looking at porn on the weekends and then I would go back to school and share all the things that were going on again.
          I don't know what the time frame was, but eventually I started to realize that I was going to lose my relationship with Brittany if I didn’t get this thing right. But I wasn’t getting free and I didn't know when I was going to. So I decided to just deal with it between me and God and just tell Brittany and the counselor that I was doing okay. That was the worst decision I ever made, but it felt like it was all I knew to do. So basically, I lied to her and we got engaged and then we got married, and throughout all of that she had no idea about it. In the first few years of our marriage, I was expecting the marriage to fix the problem and that didn't happen.
So then, I was still dabbling with pornography and in my eyes it was like, well, things are okay other than this little area of my life that I'm dealing with. But I didn't see that I had two different lives developing. Looking back, I see it that way, but at the time I saw it as me having this struggle from my past. I thought I would break free from it eventually. Instead, it ended up being nearly 6 or 7 years where my double life became more and more evident to me. But in my delusion I didn't think I was hiding a secret life. I felt like I was being transparent to a degree with her and that I was just keeping this little secret to myself. Of course it wasn't a little one, but I saw it that way in my deceived terms.

Patrick: Did that change your perspective on Brittany or your interactions with her? Did you see that as you started to lie and hide more and more that the lack of transparency caused things to change over time?

Dustin: Yeah. Anytime you lie and manipulate, you start covering up one lie and that leads to another lie. Eventually I had so many things going on that it wasn't just the pornography. It became the drugs, the alcohol and spending money on those things. It ended up becoming out of hand to where I would allow her in to my world to a certain degree, because she knew I was struggling with some things. She kind of knew that I was having emotional issues, but I would always mask them as if I was dealing with the effects of something other than my sin. So, it's kind of like I let her into a place of seeing a little bit of my struggles, but she could never get past that place to see what was really going on.

Patrick: So, Brittany, I'm happy that you were able to join us today for this interview because I think that your perspective on some of what Dustin is saying is going to help some of the men who are listening see how exactly lying and manipulating impacts others, not just themselves. So, what was your perspective on that time period that Dustin was talking about?

Brittany: So that's a little bit complicated because when somebody is lying and manipulating, they get really good at it. So, it was hard to know anything at that time, because I would get a little hint of something and then I’d talk to him about it and he would give really good answers and downplay things. When you love someone, you automatically want to trust them. So, I kind of had that in the back of my mind. I thought he must be trustworthy, especially because his answers were pretty much panning out. So, I really didn't know much and that's why when it all came out, I was so devastated because I didn't know anything, and I didn't have any hints of things. But when I look back, I could remember the hints here that I dismissed.

Patrick: Before Dustin’s sin was exposed, did you feel like you had what you had always imagined would be a good Christian marriage?

Brittany: Yes, I definitely thought at the time that we had a good Christian marriage. He was in the ministry, we did ministry at our church and we were involved in so many different aspects of Christianity. We were involved in things that outside looking in would seem like a really on-track Christian couple. Really, the only thing at that time I noticed were his bouts of depression. I would talk to him about them and try to find out what was going on and it would always just be some evasive answer that I didn't quite understand. But I kind of just accepted it because what else would I have known? I didn't know any other sins that he was hiding, but I guess that played out as depression and that was what he was willing to share with me.

Patrick: That's interesting to me, because Dustin, one of the things I asked you to help prepare for this interview was to give us one lie you used to believe that you now see is not true about how to be a good husband. What you said was that you felt like you needed to lie and hide your sin in order to protect Brittany. In some ways it sounds like that's what was happening. By hiding your sin, you kept her from being hurt. But, I'd like you to talk about how even though it seemed like you were protecting her, that wasn't really true.

Dustin: Sure. I think that was really the whole problem all along. When I decided to start lying early in the marriage and started pretending everything was okay, I created this other persona that nobody knew about except for me and the Lord. Interestingly, I remember early on in our marriage we were doing youth ministry and we were on our way out to a youth group and we were talking about somebody that we knew who had fallen into drugs. I don't remember the exact scenario, but I remember at that time Brittany saying to me, if you ever were like that again, I could never stay married to you. That was a flippant comment and she wasn't meaning for it to be anything. But all these years later, I can still remember that comment because that was the thing that made me think, “If I ever tell her, she's going to leave me.” And that was an overwhelming fear of mine.

Brittany: And at the time, I wouldn't have thought that he was doing any of that stuff. So that comment wouldn't have been even a threat. It was just an offhanded thought. I really believed that couldn’t be him and that he wouldn’t do that type of thing.

Dustin: I think the devil really used that as ammunition, because I remained with this fear that if I ever came clean, Brittany would leave me. So, I thought in a way that I was protecting her in the sense of protecting her from having to walk through all the pain.
         Also, the deeper we got into ministry I knew that it was going to affect my credentials. I knew that if I confessed I would get pulled off the mission field. She felt called to missions as a child so I felt like I was the hero and was keeping her from losing everything. I felt like this was just my cross to bear. I held onto that for years and the big lie that I believed is that I couldn’t tell her now because the stakes are too high and that it would destroy our relationship.
        During all that I had this fantasy that I would get free between me and the Lord. I pictured me and Brittany in our seventies or eighties sitting on rocking chairs in our house and I would say, “Hey honey, you know, back when I was in my twenties I had this issue I didn't tell you about and I just want to confess to you and let you know. But it's so far back that it's no big deal anymore.” And I kind of felt like I’d have this long track record of doing well so then she would be like, “Oh, it's no big deal. I'm glad you told me, but that was when we were young.” So that was this weird thing that was always in the back of my mind. Of course, that was a lie that allowed me to keep pursuing sin.

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Patrick: It's interesting because you said that you were afraid that you would lose the relationship. You even spun that in terms of telling yourself you were protecting her, and you talked about protecting her dreams and her image. But you were afraid that you would lose your own credentials. So, in a way it sounds like there was actually a lot of selfishness that you were trying to play off as selflessness.

Dustin: I think that's really the heart of it. It was really all about me. But in my mind, to justify and rationalize what I was doing, I had to feel like my hiding was actually benefiting her in some way. Looking back, that way of thinking was total deception. But at the time it seemed to make logical sense.

Patrick: So, what was that like when it finally came out? What was the process that led up to the confession and how did that affect both of you?

Dustin: We were on the mission field and we had been there about 16 months. Initially I didn't know the language or the culture, so I wasn't able to get access to things to feed my sin. But as time went on, I learned the language and I started to figure out how to get drugs. I had actually been able to get cocaine for the first time over there and within a couple of days of using again I was up doing drugs one night while Brittany was in bed. That night I had such a conviction of needing to confess to my wife.
For years I struggled with the point that if I could just tell somebody what is going on in my life, I can find freedom. That was the internal battle that I fought, but then I would always convince myself not to do it. And that night I remember making a tangible decision in my heart to keep living this lie. I couldn't tell her. But the next morning Brittney woke up and we were in bed, and she just looked at me and asked me, “What's going on with you?”

Brittany: I asked because I could tell that something was wrong. He was just very depressed and something looked really wrong. And like many times before I asked him, “What's going on? What's wrong?” And this time he shared everything. Whereas before maybe he just gave me a real quick answer and downplayed it, this time he shared everything that he had been doing for the past several years and I was totally devastated.
           I was totally blindsided because I hadn't known any of these things. When he shared, I was so upset that I almost didn't register what he was saying. But then, as I started to realize what he was really telling me and the reality of it, I was almost frightened by who he was. I was thinking, “I've been married to this man for 5 or 6 years and have no idea who he is.” Because he wasn't who I thought he was and I didn't know how things would look after this. What was going to happen now? What was going to happen with our baby because of all of this stuff that he had just spilled out?

Dustin: And for me it was like a chain reaction went off. For years I thought if I could just get this out, it'll fix it. I sort of had this expectation that it's the secret that needs to be let out and if I can just do that then maybe this will all be over. Instead, it kind of began the nightmare in some ways, because we immediately called our leaders and they came over. I showed them everything I had and three days later, we were flown back to the US and asked to resign. We ended up moving in with her parents. On top of all that, we had a baby to raise.
           My expectation of this fixing the problem actually in some ways opened up the chaos. It was the first step in getting somewhere, but I was hoping that I would just feel the weight lift off my chest. Instead, bringing it out caused her to begin the process of dealing with it all and it caused a chain reaction of negative consequences that eventually led me to the Residential Program at Pure Life Ministries. But initially for about eight months we had to walk through some pretty painful consequences.

Brittany: And even though the consequences took a long time to walk through, in the long run it was better that he confessed things when he did and didn't wait even more years and pile more consequences and more effects from his sin.

Having been saved during a powerful revival in the 1970’s, Steve Gallagher has personally watched a church on fire for God begin to atrophy spiritually. This has left today’s church filled with many who don’t care much at all about the things of God. So, in this episode of our series, “Babylon: The Seat of Satan’s Power,” Nate Danser sits down with Pastor Steve to discuss how the spirit of Babylon has contributed to this spiritual decline and what we must do as individuals to cultivate a personal fervor and devotion for God.

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.

Many of us have heard of reality-TV shows such as America’s Got Talent or The Apprentice. Prestigious award ceremonies, such as The GRAMMYs and The Oscars, decorate the abilities of the highest echelon of musical and acting talent worldwide. Humanity tunes into these shows and roots for their favorite entertainers because it is easy to get swept away by those who can rouse our emotions and give us goose bumps.

And this same type of attitude has quietly slithered its way into an apathetic and worldly-minded church. In our American church culture, many talented and ambitious Christians have made very big names for themselves and have a wide impact on the hearts and minds of many people. Unfortunately, through this, a door has been opened for a subtle deception to creep into the church.

As Steve Gallagher warns us in this episode, when we allow talented and gifted men who can stir up our emotions to be given positions of prominence and influence in our lives and in the church rather than men who are of godly character who call people to live a life of self-sacrifice and to live like Christ, we cannot have the spiritual discernment needed to detect the falsehoods that will come to deceive many in these last days.

The world tells us that hope comes from an expectation that something good is going to happen. But if that’s true, how can a wife have hope when her marriage is failing? You see, we need a hope that anchors itself in something beyond this world of suffering. We need a living hope flowing to us despite the difficult circumstances of this life. In this Purity for Life replay, Kathy Gallagher joins us to talk about the true hope of all believers, and she helps us see how to anchor ourselves in it.

Men in sexual sin who are married commonly blame their wives for their sinful choices. But this kind of thinking is never right and is only another form of minimizing the seriousness of sin. Join us for part two of our interview with biblical counselors Ken and Trey as they discuss this common counseling issue, and the way out of such a destructive mindset. (from Podcast Episode #478 - But, My Sin Isn't That Bad!)

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Nate: So, Ken and Trey, as we continue our conversation about minimizing sin. One of the next points that I want to talk about is a man who's blaming his wife for his pornography use. If you've got a guy who is constantly fantasizing, those fantasies are coming from his own desires. So, he's got situations, characteristics, body types and actions that he loves that are coming from his own heart and are becoming really entrenched in him. When he gets married, he will come to realize that his wife isn't a porn star. She won’t want to do some of the things that he has fantasized about or she may not look like his fantasy women. These unmet expectations will make it really easy for him to be totally dissatisfied, and to start blaming his wife for his that. This mindset could then easily lead him to justify meeting his needs through pornography or adultery. What are some of the things you as counselors see going on in the life of a man like this?

Ken: Lust is demanding. If someone has given themselves over to a lustful mindset, then that lust is never going to be satisfied. Not only is it sinful, but you're putting your wife in a position where she can never live up to your fantasies. There is a saying that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and in the garden the first sin Adam committed was that he shifted the blame towards his wife. These men are saying it's my wife's fault that I'm doing these things. But even if your wife is sinning against you, it's never right for you to sin against her in response. ‍

‍A married man in selfishness and sin may ask, “What can I get out of this relationship?” But in Paul’s description of marriage in Ephesians, he talks about how Jesus is the example of how a husband is supposed to behave in a marriage relationship. In the same way that Christ laid His life down for us, we as men are supposed to lay down our lives for our wives, not sin against them. It's supposed to be sacrificial love. I would say in a true Christian marriage where they both know the Lord, if the husband is really modeling Jesus to his wife, that woman is going to respond and he's going to be fulfilled and satisfied the way God intended through that marriage.

Trey: Yeah, and I think for someone listening, they might hear you describing a man who is in sin and they think, wow, that's kind of a harsh description of his life, but it's truth. When I am trying to see if I am in lust or not, the phrase I say to myself is, “I want, ____.” That's what lust is. I'm wanting. In marriage, those who are in lust have the mindset of wanting more than their wife could possibly give them. The solution is to see the blessings that the Lord has given you, which is why gratitude is so important for a Christian or a man who's wanting to come out of sexual sin. The phrase I use for gratitude is, “I have _____.” When I do that, in essence, I am acknowledging, this is what I have and even more than that, this is what the Lord is giving me. In one sense, lust is an arrow that is going in the direction of wanting while gratitude is an arrow going in the direction of what I have and what the Lord is giving me. The two are polar opposites. When you're in that place of gratitude and you're thankful for what the Lord has given you, you're satisfied, and you can have less than what your flesh wants but be satisfied because your eyes are on what you are grateful for and that's where your heart is.

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Nate: Yeah, I do think sometimes we need kind of like a shock to our system to see the reality of what's happening inside of us. But the thing I'm grateful for is that when we acknowledge the truth of our condition, I've always found that it's like the tone of the Lord really changes. Once a man acknowledges that he has been treating his wife horribly, God doesn't just keep beating up on him. It seems to me that God would be like, “Alright, let me teach you how to love her. Let me teach you how not to blame shift. I love you. I want to see you to come into a much better frame of mind and spiritual condition.” So those hard words sometimes are really just intended to bring us to repentance and then the grace of the Lord just overflows to us. That's what's amazing to me about His grace.

Ken: Yeah, absolutely. The truth is what sets us free, and telling a man how evil this mindset is and telling a man how selfish he is being is not going to be a very palatable message because we don't want to hear negative characteristics about ourselves. I was also thinking about flipping the script on this. You're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself and esteem others better than yourself. His wife is his closest neighbor and if he’s not willing to meet that command in that relationship, then he’s probably selfish in all of his other relationships. And what would he think if his wife was in sexual sin? Would he justify that? Would he think, “I treated her bad, so I guess it's okay if she gets her needs met somewhere else.” How would he respond if things were on the opposite foot?

Nate: It's amazing to me how often a guy could be sleeping around with prostitutes and viewing pornography, but then his wife threatens to divorce him and he loses it. It's like the worst thing possible has happened. He’s thinking, “How could she do this?” It just shows the blindness of sin. You've treated her like trash for decades and now she’s done with it and you can't fathom how she could do this to you.

Ken: It is amazing. He's already broken the covenant and now she wants to break it and he's upset.

Trey: Yeah, it gives testimony to Hebrews 13 about the deceitfulness of sin. Sin really is deceitful. The longer you are in sin the less clear the lines are, so crossing them becomes easier and easier. What was black and white is now gray and that's what makes it so hard for guys coming out of sexual sin – they're blinded to what is really truth. And what is that truth? It's God’s Word and getting into His Word creates the standard. And that truth really does have a way of setting people free.

As you continue on the road to real freedom over sexual sin, there's one key lesson that can take quite awhile to learn. And while learning it can be pretty painful, it's absolutely essential. Simply put, you have to learn to control yourself. But what makes it hard is that many of us have come to the painful realization that more self-effort in not the way to develop greater self-control. So join us as we look at how living a self-controlled life can only come by learning to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Resources

• "The Spirit is Willing, But the Flesh is Weak" (Article) By Steve Gallagher

In previous episodes, we’ve looked at how the enemy has slipped his way of thinking into the hearts of so many people. But we must remember that the enemy’s tactics do not just involve the unbelieving world. One of his greatest tools for tearing down the Kingdom of God is the American church. Much of what we see in modern evangelicalism consists of apathy and passivity for the things of God. Believers in America are often consumed with thoughts of comfort and temporal pleasures. Many have been drawn away from a true passion for God.

Satan has built a kingdom in this world that fosters mankind’s inclination towards pride. So, the more we live in step with this world system, the more we risk being polluted by its toxic influence. So for those who choose to enter the Kingdom of God, there must be a new way of life that takes over their inside world. That means that the old prideful nature must be torn down.

What’s it look like for God to dismantle our pride and teach us to be humble like He is? That’s the subject of this discussion. As you listen to Nate, Gabe and Ken’s personal testimonies, you’ll learn that it is a difficult process, but that it is not one you have to go through alone.

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. You have peace in your conscience. There's nothing hidden in your relationships. You’re tasting the joys of fellowship with God. But then something devastating happens. You fail. Now what? What happens next? In this episode, we tackle the incredibly important topic of how to handle failure. 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

In today’s culture, words such as “pride” and “self” represent positive qualities. Pride in our accomplishments, heritage or abilities are celebrated. Self-esteem, self-help and self-effort are seen as solutions for many of our problems. But as innocent as these terms may sound, they subtly promote a sinister philosophy aimed at drawing us away from God. And so the Lord works diligently to rescue us from this world system and bring us into His kingdom of humility and mercy.

Join us for episode 9 of “Babylon: The Seat of Satan’s Power” to learn about the process God works in our hearts to save us from the great tyrants of self and pride!

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.

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Freedom from sexual sin is absolutely possible. But it's a journey, and knowing how to stay on the path towards that freedom is crucial. There are obstacles that we will face along the way that can totally derail us, unless we learn how to deal with them well. One is how we navigate around our feelings. The second is how we choose to walk through the consequences of our own sin. That’s our subject today in episode two of our series, Key Lessons on the Road to Freedom.

Resources

20 Truths: Truth #19 - Faith is the Victory Over Sexual Sin (Short Video) by Steve Gallagher

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