Most of the time it is assumed that the biggest regret I have in our marriage is my choice to have an affair. The hurt was visible. The devastation was widespread. It must be my biggest regret. There is no doubt that I regret that choice every single day.

But the single worst mistake that I’ve made in our marriage is refusing to go to counseling. It is my biggest regret.

Years before the affair, Trisha asked me to go to counseling. She could tell that we were well beyond our experience and well beyond our ability to fix us. She asked, and I refused. I came up with every excuse there is: we don’t have time; we will get through it; I can make the changes I need to make; I’m a pastor, I don’t go to counseling, I give counsel. 

My biggest excuse: We can’t afford counseling. 

Every poor choice; every single mistake; every hidden sin-including the affair, was a consequence of my refusal to go to counseling. Would counseling have magically fixed our marriage? No. But my pride prevented our marriage from the healing that was possible.

Not going to counseling was like dying of cancer simply because I refused to go to the doctor.

RefineUs is a place where everyone can come as they are. This is a place where we acknowledge that everyone is broken and everyone needs healing. This is a place of grace and second chances. This is also a place where we speak the truth in love, knowing that it is only Truth that has the power to transform our hearts. I feel compeled to speak truth in love today.

I think every married couple should consider counseling. It is so helpful. But if your marriage is in trouble or you are contemplating divorce or separation, you can’t afford not to go to counseling.

The average divorce in the United States costs $15,000. Fifteen thousand. You could spend one hour a week in counseling for the next 3 years before you amassed that total. If you have kids, you can’t calculate the cost to them. Divorce, in every way, is much more expensive than counseling.

Should all marriages stay together? No. Can all marriages stay together? No. I know there are many marriages that end even though one spouse deeply desires to make it work.

But so many marriages end way too early and way too easily.

Your marriage is the most important human relationship you have. All other relationships flow out of the health or the dysfunction of your marriage. It is worth the fight!

When we don’t allow wisdom and truth into our life, we become a product of our own will and our own wisdom. For most of us, our own will and wisdom won’t bring about change. All of us need help.

My opinion on counseling: You can’t afford not to.

What is your opinion?

An honest answer
is like a kiss of friendship. Proverbs 24:26

For the first 32 years of my life, I struggled with honesty. I told the truth, but would exaggerate sometimes. It started with lies to my parents about who spilled milk on the floor in the kitchen, then where I was going on a Friday night. I would fudge the truth with friends on what colleges I was being recruited by to play basketball, I’d lie to professors when asked if I’d read the assignment they had given.

I graduated from college and went into ministry, but honest answers weren’t consistent. I’d lie about how many kids were at youth group. I’d lie to people I didn’t want to do dinner with and tell them I was busy. I’d tell people I didn’t get their message when I had listened to it and didn’t return their call.

My wife wasn’t spared from my stretching of the truth. I’d often tell her I’d be home at a certain time, and consistently show up late. I tell her we had the money to make a purchase when I knew if we spent the money it would have to be taken from another area. I’d over book our calendar and tell her I told her about a dinner we had to go to when I’d never had that conversation.

I rationalized my lies with “They aren’t really hurting anyone. No one will ever find out. They’re just exaggerations.” No one ever sets out to become a liar. No one ever sets out to not be trustworthy. No one ever dreams of having people question what they say because you have exaggerated so much.

I love how the Message translation puts this verse: “An honest answer is like a warm hug.”

Truth is inviting. Truth builds up. Truth is the foundation of relationship. My prayer is that God would allow me to be a person of truth. That when I speak people feel the warmth of truth. When I say something people receive it as though they are hearing it from a friend.

How are you at truth telling? Is there lack of warmth in some relationships because you are withholding truth or stretching the truth?

Who do you need to give a warm hug to this week by giving an honest answer?

Have you ever read a passage of Scripture that you have read 100 times before, but for some reason in that moment it hits you in a different way than it ever did before? That happened to me the other day.

Genesis 2:25 “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

There is a shame epidemic in Christianity today. So many people feel ashamed. Ashamed in their friendships. Ashamed in their marriages. Ashamed in their relationship with God. The problem with shame is that it puts a choke-hold on grace. Shame allows you to experience living with the knowledge you are free from the penalty of sin, but feeling as though you are not.

What jumps out to me about this passage is that there is a definite connection between nakedness and shame. Naked doesn’t just describe Adam and Eve’s physical appearance…it describes the condition of their heart. It illustrates their relationship with God.

Our willingness to live naked…to live exposed…to come out of hiding will determine the amount of shame with which we live. We can’t understand why we can’t grow in our intimacy with God. We can’t figure out why all of our friendships come to a standstill after the same exact amount of time. We convince ourselves that the pseudo-intimacy we experience in our marriage is as good as it can be. Shame diminishes our potential for intimacy in every aspect of our life.

God’s desire for us is:

• Bare
• Open
• Exposed
• Uncovered
• Honest
• Known

What we live in is:

• Hidden
• Disguised
• Secret
• Concealed
• Buried
• Unknown

Adam and Eve hid behind fig leaves and thought that God wouldn’t see them. How ridiculous is that? How could anyone ever think they could hide from God behind fig leaves? I would never do that.

Except: I hide behind my reputation; my income; my status; my talent; my career; my smile; my ability to fake you out. What this type of hiding leads to is shame…and shame is the enemy of the life God longs for us to have.

Maybe today, you are experiencing shame in your life; in your marriage; in your friendships; in your relationship with God because for some time you have been unwilling to be naked. You have counted the cost of baring your soul and exposing your heart to God or to another…and the cost seems to high.

It will cost you something. To live naked will cost you a lot. But what you will gain is being known and feeling no shame.

James 5:16: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other, so that you can be healed.”

We’re continuing this blog series today called Succeeding as a Pastor but Failing as a Parent. You can read the rest of the posts here:

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The goal for this series is to share with you some mistakes that I made in the first 10 years of being a parent and some things we’ve tried to change and do better as parents over the past 6 years. I’m still not perfect and I still make mistakes, but hopefully the mistakes outlined here will help each of us move closer to God and build our relationship with our kids.

4. I lied to my kids.

I didn’t set out to be a liar. Lying to my kids wasn’t something that I consciously thought to do. It just happened here and there. One of my kids would get in the car and be really excited. “Hey dad, do you think we could play football when we get home.” My response: “Absolutely.” We would get home and I would get distracted or start watching TV and we wouldn’t play football. “Dad, can we go to the mall tonight and look for some basketball shoes?” My response: “We can’t tonight but maybe later this week.” In my mind, I knew we wouldn’t be going to the mall, I was just trying to pacify him.

My dishonesty didn’t stop there…it spilled over into my teaching on Sunday morning. I would exaggerate stories and embellish here and there to make an illustration during a message on Sunday. We would get in the car and Trish or one of the boys would say, “You know that story didn’t play out like that.” or “Dad, I didn’t say it like the way you said it today.” It wasn’t an obvious lie, just a subtle shifting of the truth.

Through these distortions of the truth, I began to notice that my kids were questioning my word. When I said I would be home at 5, would I really be home at 5? When I said I would be at their game would I really be at their game? When I told a story from the stage, would they respect me for telling the story or inside would they be embarrassed for me as I stretched the truth of the story?

It may seem like a little thing, but respect is earned through integrity. Over the past six years, I have worked really hard to have my word count. When I say I’ll be home, I’m home. When I say something from the stage, I try to nail the details of the story as they actually happened. The worst thing that could happen is for others to think more of me than the people closest to me. That is me building my reputation while my character dies a slow death.

How are you at truth-telling with your kids? Do they think your word is trust-worthy? Maybe the single greatest thing you can do to improve your relationship with your kids is simply tell the truth. It has been a redeeming act in our family.

Just a few weeks before the affair began, I found myself with a way out. I had a chance to extinguish the forest fire before it ever started. This choice would have saved my marriage. This would have allowed me to continue being the pastor of our church. I could have saved so many relationships from hurt and destruction. I didn’t take the way out. I didn’t have the courage to confide in a good friend. I kept the temptation of the relationship to myself and the fire quickly consumed everything in its path.

What I have come to realize over the past few years is that my story isn’t just my story. It is all of our stories. There is a fundamental truth about sin in all of our lives and that truth is this: Sin is never slow, it is always in a hurry.

The pace of sin is why no one ever prays about charging up their credit card beyond their ability to pay. It’s why we don’t stop and pray about downloading porn or watching that movie. No one prays about losing their temper and going off on their kids. No one ever takes a day or two to pray about flirting with the guy at the gym. No one pauses at the bar and prays right before the one night stand. No one prays about lying to their spouse and takes a few days to calculate the damage that lying will do to their relationship. No one does a quiet time and talks to God about chatting with their old girlfriend on Facebook. We don’t pray about inappropriate text messages or our excessive gambling.

Why? Sin is always in a hurry. Sin is impulsive. Sin is manipulative. It is always trying to convince you that its consequences are small and its payoff is large. The truth is that it seeks to destroy you and those you love as quickly as possible.

Sin races against logic.

Sin races against conviction.

Sin races against consequences.

Sin races against your faith.

It is never slow, it is always in a hurry.

Sin tries to convince you as quickly as possible that there is only one choice; you deserve it; no one will ever find out; you’re not hurting anyone; you can get away with it; you have needs; it isn’t that big of a deal; she doesn’t love you anyway; it’s only text messages; you’ve gone too far to go back now.

Slow down today. Talk with God. Maybe for the first time in a long time look around. Is there a sin that you’ve allowed more space in your life than you thought?

It isn’t too late. With God, it is never too late.

One of the hopes we have as we share our story is that we would inspire others to tell the truth. The truth is hard to say.  Sometimes the truth is harder to hear. But truth sets the capacity every relationship has to experience intimacy. Our relationship with God; our friendships; our dating relationships; our marriages all are impacted by our willingness to be truth-tellers.

As we meet with people and as people email us a common phrase is said to us, “I am so ashamed to be sharing this with you.” These words kept me from sharing truth with others FOR YEARS. We have bought this lie that we should be ashamed to tell the truth. Jesus never says “The truth will make you ashamed.” He says, “The truth will set you free.”

I am not saying that we shouldn’t feel conviction. I am not saying we shouldn’t feel remorse. I am not saying we shouldn’t be repentant. But we should feel ashamed to withhold truth. We should feel ashamed to be fake. We should feel ashamed to settle for anything less than total honesty. We should feel free when we share truth.

I believe the words of Scripture that say, “There is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ.” Romans 10:11 says, “Anyone who believes in Him, will never be put to shame.”

You never have to feel ashamed to share truth here.

This is a place to give grace to truth-tellers because they are seeking freedom.

It is God who promises freedom as we tell the truth.

What are your thoughts on being ashamed of the truth?

Last night my phone received several text messages. Two friends were texting me about the same issue just different circumstances. The first, I have walked with for more than a year. He has shared with me parts of his heart that he hasn’t shared with anyone else, other than his wife. He desire is freedom. His heart longs for healing…from his past…from his sin…from his addiction. He has been honest, just not completely honest. Until last night.

The second friend was going to talk with a guy that just confessed to an affair. He texted me to ask for my prayers and to let me know that this person may be reaching out to me. His last text to me was “I’m not sure he is being completely honest.”

The thing about complete honesty is that no one can gauge it but the person that is sharing. You and I could meet every day for accountability and support, but if you leave out part of the truth, only you know that. Complete honesty is something only one person controls…and that person often times values safety over transparency. When we value safety over transparency, truth is almost always the sacrificial lamb.

As my friend texted me last night, he said, “I want you to know I’ve been honest. But I’ve only shared about 80% of the truth.” I text him back and said, “I don’t know a lot, but I know that you will never experience 100% healing by sharing 80% of the truth.”

Maybe today you realize that you have been skimming the top of honesty for a long time. You share only part of your heart; a fraction of the truth; some of the details. You expect God to heal you from addiction or show up for you in your marriage or provide you with freedom from your past. You want 100% of God, but only offer him 80% of you. You want 100% from your marriage but only offer 80% of you. You want 100% from your accountability partner, but only offer 80% of you.

So many people stay tied to the last 20% of their struggles because they only offer 80% of the truth. I don’t know a lot, but I know we can never experience 100% freedom; 100% healing; 100% of the life Jesus promises by offering 80% of the truth. 80% of truth will always leave us 20% short of true healing.

It takes courage. It takes risk. It provides 100% of what you are longing for.

I came to a crossroads almost six years ago that changed every aspect of my life and marriage. It was a decision to come out of hiding. The secret I had kept of my struggle with pornography had robbed me of so much in my life and marriage.

Over the past few weeks, I have met with and talked to several (more than 10) guys that have come to the same cross roads. They want something different in their relationship with God.  They want something different for themselves. They want something different in their marriage. They are tired of hiding.

Pornography doesn’t kill you all at once…it kills you a little at a time. It doesn’t suffocate your marriage all at once…it suffocates it a little at a time. Over time you begin to ask yourself questions like:

• Why are my wife and I so distant?
• Why are we not connecting?
• Why do we fight about so many little things?
• Why is our sex life not what either of us want or desire?
• Why are we always on each other’s nerves?
• Why do we not have a spiritual aspect to our marriage?

Pornography promises feelings of intimacy, then never delivers. Pornography causes you to give your mind and heart to something that God has designed for only your spouse to receive. Pornography is an intimacy assassin.

Based on my own journey and the journey of so many other people I’ve talked with, there are a few things you can do today to begin to find freedom from pornography:

1. Start Telling Yourself the Truth: If you struggle with porn, you have told yourself more than once, “I’m never doing that again.” “That was the last time I’m doing that.” When you tell yourself that you are going to quit and then you don’t, you have an addiction. Be honest with yourself. That is the first step to freedom.
2. Tell Someone Else: There is power in the bringing light into dark places. For most guys, and for myself, the power of shame and secrets had gripped my heart and I didn’t want anyone to know the truth about me. In fact, I had convinced myself that if anyone knew the truth about me, I would be judged and labeled for the rest of my life. In order to break the power this has on your heart, you have to tell someone.
3. Tell Your Spouse the Truth: At some point, there has to be a time when you tell your spouse the truth. This is so difficult, but essential. Intimacy in a marriage can only be as deep as the level of truth that is shared. Why a lot of marriages struggle in the area of intimacy is because of this struggle. It will be a very difficult conversation…but what you are keeping from your spouse is slowly causing your marriage to drift.
4. Find a counselor. If you are committed to telling yourself the truth, and telling your spouse the truth, you will need some help in walking in freedom. Counseling helped me find healing and wholeness for parts of my heart that I didn’t even know were broke. You and your spouse will need this.

I know not everyone reading this post today struggles with pornography. I also know that there are people reading this post that are hiding their struggle with pornography.

Freedom is possible.

I hope you choose it today.

Trisha and I had the opportunity to speak at Mountain Lake Church yesterday. The services were powerful and we were so honored to share our story.

After the first service we made our way to the lobby to greet people. A man made eye contact with me. His eyes were blood shot and his lip was quivering. He came up and put his mouth to my ear and he said, “Is it worth it?”

I said, “Is what worth it?”

“Is telling the truth worth it? I need to know, is it really worth it?”

I looked at him and I could see fear gripping his heart. I knew that look and I knew that feeling. I said, “It will cost you, but it is worth it.”

Those of us that hide do a cost analysis every day. We are trying to determine if the truth we hide, if the sin we conceal, if the addiction we deny is worth bringing into the light. Is it worth it? We tell ourselves that the pain would be too great. The damage would be to deep. The embarrassment would be too much. So every day that we delay being honest, we do so because we have calculated the risk in our mind, and to us, the cost is too great.

You know what I’ve learned…the hard way? The marriage I tried to save by hiding pornography was destroyed. The ministry I tried to save by withholding truth was lost. The relationships and the reputation I tried to build by pretending I was more put together than I really was evaporated. In an attempt to save everything by hiding, I lost it all.

There is no doubt that being vulnerable will cost you. There is no doubt that sharing truth has a price. There is no doubt that coming out of hiding will have consequences and cause damage. But the highest price comes in the slow death of your heart and your marriage and your relationships.

While we convince ourselves that we are saving those around us by not telling the truth, we are really just losing those things that mean the most to us so gradually that we don’t even notice until their gone.

The greatest of all paradoxes to me is in the fact that there is a huge price to pay in sharing truth. There is a cost to being honest. There is a price in transparency…but it is the truth, and the truth alone that will set you free.

Isn’t freedom what you long for?

It is worth it.

It will cost you, but it is worth it.

One of the predominant emotions that characterized our marriage before the affair was fear. Fear is something we usually equate with traumatic events or circumstances. But fear grips more of our heart than we are often willing to admit.  I lived most of my married life with a spirit of fear:

Fear of being found out

Fear of being rejected

Fear of being misunderstood

Fear of being proven wrong

Fear of being hurt

Fear of being let down

There is a reason that the Bible says, “There is no fear in love. For perfect love drives out fear.” Without allowing perfect love to drive out fear, we compromise intimacy in our marriage and relationships. Each of us have to decide if we are going to allow fear to set the limits of our marriage.

Here are two fears that prevent intimacy in marriage.

1. Most wives fear offering their husbands unconditional love.

If you offer your love without condition then what will defend you from hurt? If you offer all of your heart to your husband, without condition, then what if it isn’t reciprocated? If you offer unconditional love to your husband, then what move can you make to get revenge; to get your way; to be heard or valued?

Most wives offer their love, but it comes with conditions. Conditions give you leverage. Conditions give you power. Conditions give you rights. Conditions give you options.

2. Most husbands fear telling their wives the absolute truth.

If you share the truth with her, she’ll think less of you. If you admit your weakness then she’ll say she told you so. If you tell her about your porn addiction or your feelings for your co-worker, she may leave you. If you tell her that secret you’ve kept hidden for years, she may never trust you again.

Sharing part of the truth protects you. Sharing half of the truth maintains your image. Being partially honest gives you options.

For the past five years, I’ve come to a crossroads often: give into fear and withhold truth or overcome fear and be completely honest. Despite being fearful, I’ve shared brutal truth with Trisha. She knows the dark parts of me. She knows the weak parts of me. She sees the worst of me. I have been scared to do that at times. The cost of giving into fear was greater than the cost of being transparent.

Trisha has chosen to overcome fear as well. Unconditional love left her defenseless five years ago. Fear of history repeating itself has crossed her mind more than once. Despite her fears, she has chosen unconditional love.  She’s promised to love me no matter what. That love has driven out fear.

Our marriage isn’t limited by each of us withholding something from the other because of fear.

Fear tells you to protect yourself. Fear says withhold some of the truth, just in case. Fear says to love with conditions because you might get hurt. What if we admitted fear? What if we overcame fear?

Would we ever feel we had to withhold truth?

Would we ever feel we had to put conditions on love?

Do you agree that most marriages deal with these two fears?