How To Keep God Central In Marriage After Disclosure | Pure Desire Ministries

Know that God is really the one in charge of redemption. And so when it comes to this kind of recovery, I think there can be maybe a temptation of we just need to use relationship tools. We need to have healthy boundaries. We need to understand the brain. And we can almost disengage a little bit from our faith. How do we keep God central in this process of restoration?

Well, for us, the reason that we had Bob leave that in treatment program was because you do need clinical care. I have people all the time telling you I'm just not convinced that a Christian who's struggling with pornography needs clinical care. But what we know about the brain and what we know about how addictive and damaging pornography is, not just to the husband or wife who's using pornography, but to the partner who's experiencing symptoms of betrayal, trauma and brain fog, muscle fatigue, all those kinds of things. You need somebody that really understands the clinical aspects of this. The free counselor at church who's great at helping you figure out how to stop fighting about who's taking out the trash or why your husband leaves his socks in the middle of the living room floor. I don't know, is that a little sensitive? Because I don't know if you guys do that, but is that a guy thing? All guys leave their living room?

I'm glad to say that's not a rhythm I'm currently in.

So, nope, that's not what you would need help with. All right, that's just us. But you need that clinical understanding. But as I said before, when I wrote the book, I tried to find really great credible data on the recovery rate of some of these secular programs. And the few that I did find numbers for were single digits. And my publisher ultimately decided you don't have enough data. And I said that's because they don't have enough data. Yeah, yeah, right. And I even interviewed and asked some of these models, like, what is the recovery rate? They're like, it's pretty pathetic. It's pretty pathetic. But when you integrate the power of the Holy Spirit and you integrate scriptural truth into all those things, because all those things you just mentioned a moment ago matter. The disclosure matters. The. What else did you mention? You mentioned a bunch of things. Recovery groups, accountability, all those things matter. But they fall short when you haven't. Like, let's start with this shame. How do you overcome shame outside of the amazing grace of Jesus Christ and the words you find in scripture that eliminate and erase it? It's a man made effort. Unless you have Jesus in the driver's seat of it. So, so all that to say that programs like Pure Desire put Jesus in the driver's side. In the driver's seat with all that clinical understanding.

Yeah.

And I think you can't divorce the two. I think they have to be done in tandem when it comes to the issue of pornography.

Yeah, I think, I mean, because we're on board with that. And I think another aspect of it too is, we already talked about it is staying in community, you at scripture, like there's a lot of one anothers that we're called to and that's only done in relationship. That's where forgiveness actually takes place. That's where you learn to serve other people. That's where you learn humility, you know, you learn how to repent. And so I think that the only thing I would add is just that we also, yes, Jesus is absolutely in the driver's seat and we use clinical tools to help understand our brokenness. And then we also, to your point earlier, heal in relationship because that's where. And it's language we've used here. And I still don't know who to credit it. So sorry if it's you, Nick, and I'm not giving you the credit, but that God's vertical love is experienced on a horizontal plane with relationships with other people. And so it's that idea that as we're being like Christ because he's central in our life to other people, that's where they're experiencing him as well. And so I think that relationships absolutely have to be a part of it. And that's how God distributes that healing.

So good.

I think you're right that not every program will incorporate that. And so I think for Christ followers it is important to use, you know, some of the tools that Pure Desire has advocated for of like understanding God's promises to us and seeing experientially in our life. Where have I felt or experienced God's love, His affirmation of me in a way that as I'm learning about trauma or pain or connecting the dots to my painful childhood experiences that have created core lies in my belief system that then it's really the key of how am I replacing those with experiences of God's grace and love and truth and calling to mind experiences not just words or Bible verses, but experiences that say no, this is the truth of how God feels about me and incorporating that into our thought process over time. And you could be going to a secular counselor that's helping you unpack your family of origin, trauma and then as a Christ follower, you could be taking that next step into okay, and then where was God at? What is he saying to me? And thankfully, at Pure Desire and other places like us, we make that just part of the workbook. We make it part of the program itself. But I think it's kind of the other half of restoration. We can use all the tools to understand our trauma and our pain and the lies we believe, but if we have nothing else to replace it with, I think there is a danger we will just go into self help. Or as I've seen some people do, like, they get really healthy and exercise a lot and eat a lot because they don't really know what else to do for health other than work on their bodies. But health is really being reconnected to who we truly are in Christ. And then with others going deeper in that journey.