We say this all the time, but when we started RefineUs almost two years ago, we had no idea what we were doing…we just knew we were called to do something. God had not only saved our marriage, he recreated it. We had to share. Over the course of the past two years, we have revisited our vision and refined our desire for this ministry.

Our vision is: To ignite a movement of marriage refinement and redemption in pastors and churches around the world.

To continue to pursue that vision, we have begun two very strategic partnerships that we are really excited about!

Last week, Trisha wrote for the Leading and Loving It Blog. Leading and Loving It is a ministry that connects, encourages and equips pastor’s wives and women in ministry. Trisha is a part of their Hurting Marriages Team, and will be a regular contributor on their blog.

Today marks our formal partnership with Lifeway and Lifeway Women. We will be doing several events with Lifeway over the next year, but today at 12:00 Central time, Trisha will be on a live Web Cast with Pam Case the Director of Lifeway Women, discussing the challenges of church planting and being a church planters wife.

There will be a live discussion and chat as a part of the 45 minute program. YOU CAN PARTICIPATE FREE by CLICKING HERE

As a part of the RefineUs community, we covet your prayers and thank you for your continued support and encouragement. We feel honored to partner with these great ministries to bring God’s vision of healthy marriage to even more people.

Last week was our kids’ Spring Break. We got a chance to go to Nashville, Tennessee and spend some time with two of our best friends Pete and Brandi Wilson. When Trisha and I were still separated in 2005, we spent fall break with Pete and Brandi. We showed up broken and battered and somewhat hopeless. God used them in so many ways to help in our healing and restoration. They are the type of friends that everyone knows they need, but are so difficult to find…they and their kids hold a special place in our heart. During our visit last week, we attended the church Pete and Brandi started, Crosspoint Church. Along with their regular service, we also attended the Kidstuff service where each week a virtue is given and explained, and last week’s virtue was HOPE: Believing something good can come out of something bad.

There are a number of things that Trisha and I could write about in our last post on the principles that restored our marriage, but this concept of hope is probably the most important. So we are going to each take a few minutes to talk about how Restoration principle #8 played out for each of us as God lead us through the restoring process.

Restoration Principle #8: Whom or what you put your hope in will determine the depth and health of your restoration.

Trisha and I were separated for two weeks before we started going to counseling together. About a month after we started counseling, our counselor advised us that we were approaching a critical point in our journey. Trust was beginning to be rebuilt. Intimacy was starting to return. There was a hope that each of us had for our marriage at this point. He told us that if there was anything left un-confessed, that I needed to come back the next day and confess it. So Trisha and I went to our separate homes, and the next day came back to the counselor and I confessed more details that I had omitted for the previous month. Trisha was devastated (as she should have been). She got up and left me at the counselor’s office. Later that night, I got a call from a lady in our church stating that Trisha was going to file for divorce on Monday…she was done.

Here is the truth…up until this point, the hope that I had in restoring my marriage and healing my relationship with Trisha was in MY ability to make things right. I was hopeful that we would be able to stay married if I went to counseling, if I was remorseful, if I did all the right things. The next day Trisha called me and told me that she didn’t want to be married to a liar and a person that withheld truth. I hit bottom. I was hopeless. I realized there was nothing I could do to convince her to stay married to me. It was at that moment that the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. He revealed to me that it was time to come clean…once and for all. The sexual abuse I had never talked about…the pornography I had denied struggling with…the lying and stretching of truth that had become a way of life…it was time to confess it all. So I went to a friend’s house that night and told him everything. I was pretty sure that my marriage was over, but for the first time in my life, I had a hope that I could be who God envisioned me to be through Christ. Not because I was good enough, not because I had it all together, not even because I could convince Trisha to take me back…simply because of His unfailing love.

Psalm 147:11 says this: “The Lord delights in those who fear Him, those who put their hope in His unfailing love.” That was the beginning of true restoration for me and for my marriage…realizing that the only hope I had was found in Jesus…and His unfailing love.

Trisha and I renewing our vows December 2005

In all honesty I (Trish) am grateful to be writing on a day where my hope meter is tipping towards low. Weird I know, but its times like today when life isn’t unfolding as quickly as I would like or on my time table that hope seems to drift from my heart. I tend to make decisions and fight emotions of hopelessness when life doesn’t always make sense. It is on days like today or weeks or sometimes even months, when my disposition is camped in this place of despair, that HOPE has the power to invade me and renew every part of me.

Hebrews 10:23 (NLT) “Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.”

Hebrews 13:5b (NLT) “I will never fail you. I will never forsake you.”

In our previous postings we have shared the journey of our marriage going from destruction to restoration. As Justin shared, there were many dark days we had to wade through in which the future of our marriage was uncertain. Through it all and even up to this very moment that I write I have to remember this about hope: you have to choose it! Look again at Hebrews 10:23… we can’t waver on holding tightly to hope. When you encounter tough times you will not drift towards feelings of hope. When your spouse comes home and tells you they are leaving you… your heart will not drift towards hope. You have to choose it and hold tightly to it!

I have come to learn that no matter what happens in life choosing hope is first an act of obedience. Whatever life circumstances have caused you to loose hope you have to first make the choice to be hopeful. Why? In doing so you are saying to your heavenly father “yes I will hold tightly to the hope I have in You and I trust You to keep Your promise. The promise that no matter what You will not fail me!” By first choosing hope even if you don’t “feel” it, I believe with all my heart that God eventually bridges the gap of your heart feeling despair to a confident place of hope.

Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT) “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

Micah and Elijah after the ceremony...realize that we are staying together.

It is in the waiting that it is so hard… will my marriage work? Will my children ever respect their father again? Will I be able to survive if he walks away? Those were my questions. What are your questions in the waiting? What life circumstance has a hold on you stealing your sense of hope? We have seen just this week alone stories of horrific acts of violence from people who have lost hope throughout our nation. This is why this principle of fighting for hope is so important. God doesn’t need you, but he desires you with all his heart enough to send his Son to die on the cross to bare your sins so that you may have a hope of eternity with Him. Yes life may suck here in waiting until he finally calls us home, but he promises to give us a sustaining hope in the waiting and that he will be with us always every step of the way.

As we close this post and our series on restoration…the truth remains. Your bank account can’t restore your marriage. Your career success can’t restore your marriage. Your clean house, your PTA office, your keen ability to hide your sin, your leadership ability, your outstanding ministry skill set, your capacity to pretend like everything is okay (even when it isn’t) will not have the power to restore you, or your marriage. What you are desperate for is what we found when we were in our most hopeless place…HOPE in the power of Jesus Christ. Our prayer is that you will find that HOPE in Him in this moment.

On Saturday, our son had a basketball tournament most of the day. Trisha was able to go to the first game of the day, but I couldn’t make it. I showed up for his afternoon game and it was tense from the very beginning. I’ve been banned from “offering suggestions” from the sidelines. Trish put the shut down on that years ago.

It wasn’t difficult for Micah to know how I felt about how he was playing. I didn’t have to say a word…my face said it all. After the game, I told myself that I wasn’t going to say anything. That commitment lasted about five minutes.

I launched into the speech I had been writing since the first half. I shared with him all the different ways that he could improve and all the things he could have done differently. My words cut to his heart. He shut down. We walked to the car. I continued with my pep talk. Finally, Micah looked up at me and said, “You know, it doesn’t matter how good I play, you are always critical.”

In that moment, I realized just how much I had hurt him. My heart began to sink. But in my mind, my pride defended my actions. I began to justify the words I had said and the advice I had offered. I was trying to make him a better player. I was destroying him as a person, but I was making him a better player.

He and Trisha left and went to a graduation party and I left and went home. As I drove home, the pain of my words rushed into my heart. I began to text him an apology…he wasn’t returning my texts…so I texted Trisha to convey how sorry I was.

When I got home, I read this verse, as I prepared to speak at church the next day:

Matthew 5:23-24: “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

What a hypocrite I am.

How many times have I tried to offer my worship to God, when I knew I had hurt someone? How many times have I offered God half-hearted worship because I haven’t owned the pain I’ve caused someone else?

I’m thankful Micah showed me grace and forgave me. I’m thankful God does as well.

Am I the only one that has trouble owning it?

I grew up in a home where the goal was to “keep the peace.” My parents often argued and as the oldest I would gather my brothers and sister and we would hide in the closet. As I grew up, I learned the ground rules for peacekeeping:

-Peacekeepers walk on eggshells to not upset anyone
-Peacekeepers don’t share how they really feel so they don’t start an argument
-Peacekeepers avoid conflict and apologize for things that they haven’t even done
-Peacekeepers always feel taken advantage of and find their identity in not making waves

The Bible says nothing about being a peacekeeper. Scripture calls us to be peacemakers.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:9- “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

We’ve confused peacemaking with peacekeeping. What we typically think is that peacemakers need to take one for the team. If we’ve been hurt then pursuing peace is keeping quiet or not speaking truth or only sharing part of the truth. We equate being passive with peacemaking. We withhold truth and we skirt the truth and we don’t speak how we are really feeling, thinking that we are doing what is best for the relationship.

The by-product of living like this is resentment and distance and passive-aggressiveness and hurt and surface level relationships. We have no peace. We think we are helping the relationship, but we are actually fracturing it even more.

Maybe you’ve been hurt; you’ve been let down; you’ve been disappointed…and you haven’t said anything in an effort to “Keep the peace”…but the truth is you don’t have peace at all.

Peacemakers are different. Maybe the key to peace for you is to stop keeping peace and start making peace.

- Peacemakers are ruthlessly committed to truth-telling.

Peacemakers speak the truth in love. When they are offended or hurt, they communicate their feelings honestly. When they have hurt others, they own their mistake and ask for forgiveness. They know that withholding truth will never lead to intimacy.

-Peacemakers are humble enough to pray for the person that hurt them.

An amazing thing happens when I pray for someone that has wounded me…God changes my heart. There are times that God changes them, but God always changes me when I humble myself to pray for that person. When I bow my knees and bring that relationship before God, I am saying to Him, “This person is more valuable to me than being right.” God shows up in a heart that is humble enough to elevate someone else above ourselves.

-Peacemakers pursue reconciliation at the risk of their own comfort.

Avoidance isn’t peacemaking. Avoiding conflict will never build intimacy. You will never grow closer to your sister by ignoring her. You will never reconcile with your dad by not going home for Christmas. You will never grow closer in your marriage by pretending there is no conflict. Sometimes the best way you can build peace is to embrace confrontation.

How about you today? Are you a peacekeeper or a peacemaker?

When Trisha and I were first separated in October of 2005, I was the first to start counseling. I went to counseling 4 days a week for two weeks before Trisha and I started going together. Attending counseling was something that I had never done. I recommended counseling to others. We had Christian counselors that went to our church. I had pastor friends that told me of their great experience in counseling. My pride and my fear kept me from counseling. I thought that I was too strong for counseling; I could handle my junk on my own. Weak people go to counseling. At the same time, I was scared that if I went, the counselor would see right through me and I would be found out as the shallow poser that I truly was. (I told you I was messed up!) I resisted Christian counseling like the plague…until I was desperate to save my marriage.

At the end of my first week of counseling, I told the counselor to be honest with me. I said something like “Now that you have an idea of just how messed up I am, how much I have jacked up my life and marriage, I need to know, are we going to make it? Can you fix me? Can you fix my marriage?” He simply said that he didn’t know. He had no idea if what I had destroyed could be restored…but he did have hope that I could be restored. So, I said to him, “I’ll do anything…just tell me what to do.” He said to me “If I can recommend one thing for you to find healing it would be for you to buy and read “The Power of a Praying Husband.”

Let me just say that this wasn’t the first time I had heard of this book. I can remember several people emailing me about this book. One word came to mind when I thought of this book “CHEESY”! I read a summary of the book at one point and I thought only weak and incompetent guys would read this book. Turns out, that is exactly what I was…weak in character and incompetent as a husband and father. So I bought this book.

As Trisha and I talk to couples, often we are asked by them for one tip, one suggestion, one thing that they can do that will have immediate results on their marriage. This is that one thing…read this book. This book reveals the truth of Restoration Principle #7:

Principle #7: Our willingness to pray for our spouse is instrumental in God recreating who He wants us to be as husbands and wives.

There are two major reasons that I resisted not only reading this book but praying for my wife.

-Pride: The same pride that kept me from seeking help from a Christian counselor kept me from praying for my wife and marriage. If I prayed for my marriage, if I prayed to be a better husband, then I was admitting that I didn’t have it all together. I wasn’t the model husband, I struggled to be who God called me to be, I couldn’t provide the leadership and direction that my wife and kids were relying on me to provide.

-Priorities: I knew in my heart that if I prayed for Trisha and if I consistently prayed for my marriage that God would bring things to my mind that I needed to deal with. He would allow me to see changes that needed to be made and work that needed to be done to have a healthy and growing marriage…and I had a church to build. I didn’t have time to be sidetracked by issues that if I could ignore, would go away for fix themselves.

I began to read this book and God began to do something that I never expected. He began to change me. He began to allow me to see needs in Trisha that I never saw before. He gave me a heart for her desires that I never had before. He gave me an understanding of her world that I never comprehended. Through the prayers that were in this book, God unlocked a supernatural power in our marriage to bring about the changes in us that we knew were necessary, but was powerless to make happen.

I bought this book 3 ½ years ago. I have read it about 25 times. I still read it and pray through at least every other week. It is a vital part of my relationship with God and my wife. It gave me words to pray when I didn’t know how. It gave me verses of Scripture to read that applied specifically to something Trisha and I were going through.

God is passionate about your marriage. God longs to see your marriage thrive…even more than you do. When we submit to praying for our spouse, we acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers and we need supernatural help in becoming all that God has called us to be. It is through that process that God does something in us that we could never do for ourselves. I have come to realize that I can’t change my wife. As much as I want to, often times, I can’t change me. But as I pray and humble myself before God and submit to His desires for my marriage, He changes my wife and me in more complete ways than we could have ever done.

Trisha purchased “The Power of a Praying Wife” and consistently reads the prayers in that book for me. It has transformed who she is as a wife. These books were the single greatest resource for us finding hope, restoration and change that allowed us to move from destruction to restoration. I know it could do the same for you.

Yesterday, we talked about a part of our heart that dies when we compare ourselves with others. We often don’t see ourselves how God sees us, we see ourselves in light of our weaknesses and others strengths.

I want to talk about a deeper part of our heart and mind that we probably don’t allow others to know about too often. This type of comparison is subtle and it is often illusive and justified. If the death of our heart begins as we compare ourselves to others, the death of our marriage begins when we compare our spouse with someone else.

This isn’t a conversation we have out loud all too often, but these thoughts can flood our heart and mind. The conversation goes something like this:

• I wish my husband was as romantic as her husband
• I wish my wife complimented me like she compliments her husband
• I wish my husband spent as much time with our kids as her husband does
• I wish my wife worked out and took care of herself like his wife does
• I wish my husband was as good of a listener as her husband
• I wish my wife could cook like she cooks
• I wish my husband was handy and could fix things like he can

This is the first stage of comparison. But if left alone and unidentified, these feelings can quickly move to the next stage.

• I wish my wife respected me like my secretary does
• I wish my husband complimented me like my co-worker does
• I wish my wife was as in shape as the lady in my spin class
• I wish my husband was as good of a listener as my boss

The moment we start comparing what our spouse isn’t to what someone else is, we open the door for disconnection and fractured intimacy. Even if our comparison isn’t followed by romantic feelings, there is an aspect of our heart that is withheld from our spouse.

The reality is when we wish our spouse was more like anyone other than Christ, we place an expectation on them to be something that they were never designed to be.

One of the practical things that Trish and I have done over the past five years is to tell each other what we love about the other. Rather than to compare what we aren’t we compliment what we are. It has drastically changed our relationship. Instead of resenting what we don’t bring to our relationship we celebrate all that we do bring to our relationship.

Maybe you find yourself in that place today.

If your wife could just be more like ____________________.

If your husband could just be more like ________________________.

Living in that thought will erode your marriage and allow resentment to rule your heart. Comparing will never bring life. You will live envious of someone else’s spouse and prideful of all that you are and all that your spouse isn’t.

Maybe the best thing you could do for your marriage today is to tell your spouse all that you love about them rather than all that disappoints you about them.

One of the things that was so frustrating to me in my walk with God until Trisha and I separated was the fact that I struggled with the same sins over and over and over. I made repeated promises to God that I wouldn’t commit a particular sin ever again. I asked for forgiveness and would do great for a while in not committing that sin…then even though I had the best intentions to move past that sin and find freedom…it seemed find me in my weakest moment. The question I continually asked myself was “How, after all these years,  can I struggle with the same thing? If I were a better Christian, I wouldn’t struggle with ________ anymore.”

The same pattern was true in our marriage. Maybe you can relate to this…Trisha and I didn’t argue about new issues. Our arguments were very uncreative…they were always about church, sex, or money…usually in that order. There were certain variations of these arguments, but when it came right down to it, we always argued about these things. The question that we asked ourselves as a married couple was “How can we, after all of these years, still argue and fight over the same things? If we had a stronger marriage, we wouldn’t argue about these things anymore.”

When we began to go to counseling, something in me changed. I no longer wanted to know “how” I could struggle with the same sins in my life, I wanted to know “why?” When you begin to ask the question “why” in your marriage, it unlocks this restoration principle we discovered that has helped us move from destruction to restoration:

Restoration Principle #6: Your willingness to deal with and understand the destruction of your past will determine the depth of restoration in your future.

This is how this played out in my life and how it completely transformed our marriage. It would have been easy for us to take a few months, go to counseling to deal with the breach of trust that the affair caused in our marriage. But so often we repeat sins and behavior patterns in our life and in our marriage because we fail to understand when the destruction began in our life. We spend so much time trying to pretend that we are not broken, not messed up and not hurting. We fail to grasp how our past decisions, our past sins and our past mistakes, if not understood, acknowledged, confessed and redeemed can affect every aspect of our life.

For me, this meant going way back in my life and identifying when sexuality was first broken. I was sexually abused as a child, when I was in first grade. I didn’t tell anyone about it because the person that did this told me that no one would believe me and I would get in trouble for lying if I told. Finally, when I was a freshmen in high school, the AIDS virus came on the scene and I became nervous that this encounter I had 8 years before would cause me to have AIDS…so I told someone. It wasn’t received with much seriousness and was dismissed. That was a defining moment for me. Yes, I had choices that I made from that point on…choices to have sex before I was married, choices to give into lustful thoughts, choices to indulge in pornography, and a choice to have an extramarital affair…but those choices were driven by a brokenness that I never identified and never dealt with or understood.

I have typed this and retyped this over and over trying to make sense-I hope I am making sense!!!

The truth is that both you and your spouse bring a past into your marriage. You bring sins and hurts and disappointments. Maybe you were raped in high school. Maybe you had a one night stand in college. Maybe you were physically or sexually abused as a kid. Maybe you started watching porno movies when you were in 8th grade. Maybe you cheated on a test when you were a freshmen. Maybe your dad left you when you were a kid. Maybe your mom never told you she loved you. What we have come to understand in our marriage is that the depth of restoration and intimacy we experience in our marriage today is in direct proportion to our willingness to understand our past and allow our past to be redeemed.

The truth about God is that he will never force Himself on any of us. If we are unwilling to bring part of our heart to Him, he will not redeem and heal that specific part of our heart. Somehow, we sentence ourselves to struggle with the same sin and the same temptations because we are not willing to go back to that dark place in our past and bring it into the light. We hope that by ignoring it or pretending that it didn’t happen that it will magically go away. The opposite is actually true. The longer we ignore hurts and brokenness from our past, the more it robs us of the person that God has created us to be.

This principle is painful…but it is powerful. I struggled with lying…so we went back and talked about when and why I first started lying. Trisha struggled with feeling validated and valued…so we talked about when she first felt devalued and taken advantage of.

Here is the cool part. When you get serious about this, you begin to identify the areas of your life that bring you the most pain and you deal with it…those pains, hurts and sins loosen their grip on your heart. When you are willing to go back to that dark place and figure out when you were first broken in that area, the stronghold that had in your life is crushed!

Life and marriage is “easier” if we don’t go this route. It will cost you something to choose this principle. But you begin to wake up to the person you always wanted to be and you begin to have the marriage that you always wanted to have. No longer do past hurts, mistakes and disappointments have a hold on your heart. If you want to take a giant step away from destruction and toward restoration, look back at your past. What areas of your past are still following you around today? What issues have you wished would just go away, but still creep back into your heart and soul? What arguments are you having today that you had five years ago? Ten years ago? Are you willing to go there and release the past from having control of your future?

This past weekend, Trisha and I had the honor of leading about 70 couples through our Refine Our Marriage seminar. It was an honor to share our journey and what God has taught us over the past six years. Looking back on the weekend, I really feel like God showed up in some incredible ways.

At the end of each of our seminars, we like to leave some time for Q&A. We hand out index cards before the last session and allow people to anonymously ask questions that they have about the content or about anything that they may be struggling with. There were about 30 questions that were asked…here are a few of them.

• How did you overcome your pornography addiction? What advice would you give to someone that struggles with pornography?
• If avoiding conflict is a part of your personality, is it possible to change who you are so you can handle conflict better?
• How do you change behavior patterns that you learned as a child so you don’t repeat those same destructive patterns with your own family?
• How do you handle the rejection you experience when you want to have sex, but your spouse doesn’t?
• What do you do when you have a higher sexual desire than your spouse does, and they seem disinterested and even offended that you desire sex?
• What do you do when sexual intimacy seems disgusting, unenjoyable and is the last thing you want to experience?
• How do you teach your kids about sexual temptation, lust, pornography and protect them from experiencing the same thing I experienced as a kid?
• My husband and I have been married 5 years and I want to start having children and he has no desire to have kids…what do we do?
• What do you do when the person you know you are supposed to forgive keeps hurting you over and over again?

I could go on and on with some very deep, heart-felt and heart-breaking questions. We did our best to answer these questions and point people to professional counselors that could more adequately unpack the root of the issues behind these questions.

All day yesterday this thought kept coming to my mind: Why don’t we have a place for people to ask these questions more often? What have we done in our culture and in our churches where men and women live alone with question after question and feel like they have no one they can feel safe enough to share their confusion or frustrations with?

It makes me sad that we don’t talk about these things in our homes; we don’t offer deep level conversations in our churches; we aren’t talking about these things with our friends. There is an absence of questions that continue to plague men and women that desire to have a great marriage, but don’t feel comfortable enough in any environment to be real and honest. It makes me sad. It make me mad. It confuses me.

It makes me realize that while the American church has done a great job in branding itself as a place of authenticity, we still have a long way to go in living authentically.

I’d love to hear from you today.

Do you think The Church has a role in helping people ask these difficult questions?

Some of the principles we have shared are a process to work through in your marriage. When we discovered this principle, however,  it was a like a light switch turned on in our marriage and it was instantly better. We have since tried to discover deeper ways to implement this principle.

Trisha and I moved to Noblesville, Indiana in 2002 to start a church. Our desire was to reach people who were far from God, and help them find their way back to Him.  We quickly learned through this experience that we LOVED helping people find their passion, and their giftedness. It was exciting to see someone discover how their passions and gifts could make an eternal difference in this world. We developed a process in our church that didn’t leave people on the sidelines, but equiped and unleashed them to contribute to God’s bigger vision for their life. This process was critical to the life, health and growth of our church. We never considered it could and should be applied in our marriage.

Restoration Principle #5- God has given you and your spouse passions, gifts and talents that if discovered and applied, in your marriage, will drastically increase your joy in your relationship.

Before Trisha and I were separated, one of the most consistent arguments we had centered around meals. Trisha was constantly stressed out about cooking. She wasn’t good at it, and she hated it. She would do her best to meal plan, grocery shop and prepare meals for our family. She would bust it all day taking care of our kids and prepare dinner for me by the time I got home. I would usually come home later than I promised and dinner would be cold. It would be Mexican or pasta or chicken or…..well that about sums it up…one of those 3 things. The truth is this was a serious area of tension and stress in our relationship. Trisha constantly felt unappreciated and defeated. I felt like it shouldn’t be that hard to plan, shop and prepare food for our family.

Everyday, we spent time identifying gifts and abilities that others had to serve the in the church. We wouldn’t ask a person who hated kids to serve in the nursery. We wouldn’t consider allowing someone who couldn’t sing to lead worship. We would never ask someone to teach unless they had the gift of teaching. But we functioned in our marriage with a totally opposite philosophy.

When we were separated and began dating again, we spent a lot of time talking about the things in our relationship that caused the other pain. This subject came up early in a conversation over dinner (at Red Lobster, not that Trisha cooked). We were talking about what gave us life and what drained life from us. She just began to pour out her heart and share with me how much this was life-sucking to her and how my response over the years had made her resentful and bitter and defeated. It was a huge wake up call for me. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal…but it was a huge deal for her. That night, I told her that after I moved home, I would assume all cooking responsibilities…she never had to worry about it again. A month later I was able to move home and begin to make good on that promise!

Here is what we discovered…I love cooking. I love learning how to make new things. I love getting up early on Saturday morning and making breakfast for our family. I love that my boys have seen their dad find a passion in serving and contributing in a way that builds up their mom! My boys now love cooking with me!  There was an exponential increase of joy in our home from this one discovery. But we didn’t stop there…one of the things that Trisha learned is that I really don’t enjoy mowing the yard…but she does. So I cook about 90% of our meals and she mows our yard about 90% of the time. As we have engaged in these activities, we are both doing something that we like doing, and taking something off of the plate of our spouse that they don’t like. It is a huge win for our family.

The truth is that 80% of our pre-separation roles are still the same. But, by talking about our gifts, passions and talents, and then reassigning 20% of our roles, it has made a HUGE difference in the quality of our marriage and family. This conversation should be had by every married couple alive. Because here is the cool part: Where it starts is in the daily tasks that each of us are responsible to accomplish to make our family function…but where it goes from there are bigger dreams, greater visions and larger passions that God has given us as couples to experience and accomplish together.

Trisha and I have been on a journey to reenter ministry for almost 2 years. We have had opportunities to consider a number of different roles, ministries and locations. What has guided our decision to pass on those opportunities and wait on God is that we know who God has called us to be as individuals and as a couple…and we will not settle for a ministry role that will not allow both of us to live out that calling…we have been there and we never want to do that again. This principle if applied starts with small things, but leads to life-guiding things.

Do you know what your spouse is passionate about? Have you ever asked the question to your spouse “Are there things in the daily life of our house that you do that give you life? Are there things that suck life out of you? Are there things that I could begin doing around our house that would free you up to be more of whom God has called you to be?” Obviously someone has to take out the trash, someone has to change the dirty diaper, someone has to do the dishes. But your marriage will be instantly improved if you can discover how you can orient your marriage relationship around the God-given gifts, passions and talents of one another.

I love how Romans 12:4-6 (Message) talks about this principle. He is talking about the Bride of Christ, the Church…but I think the same principle can be applied to the bride and the bride-groom in your marriage.

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

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.