• Referenced scripture:
  • Psalm 103:8-12
  • 2 Corinthians 10:3-6
  • Philippians 4:4:8
  • Romans 3:24
  • Ephesians 1:6-7
  • Titus 2:11

• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: Every once in a while we get questions. Actually, pretty often we get questions. And I think every once in a while we are able to actually address those questions. So often folks that write in, as much as we want to just… The questions that we get are heart-wrenching. A lot of them are very heart-wrenching.

And we want so badly to be able to look those couples in the eyes and say to them what we could find in Scripture to encourage them with the words of Christ, to exhort them in the things of God. But we don’t have that option through this medium. And so we spend our time teaching and preparing for broader contexts.

However, this question that came in has to do with infidelity, has to do with forgiveness over a long span of time, and namely what had happened. I guess we can just share them the other side. But our hope is by answering this gentleman’s question, it will encourage him but will also encourage you. And if you know someone in your immediate sphere that could use these words of encouragement, you could also take what you learn here and go encourage them. So thank you for joining us. We’ll see you on the other side.

[00:01:09]

Ryan: Welcome back. My name is Ryan. This is my lovely wife Selena. We are the faces, voices, founders of Fierce Marriage and Fierce Parenting. If you haven’t checked out the Fierce Parenting podcast, check that out. We have some fun conversations over there.

Selena: We do.

Ryan: That’s much more of a let’s walk alongside you in real-time, because we are still actively in the early stages of parenting. In fact, we are in the very early stages of new parenting.

Selena: Oh, you wanna share?

Ryan: Check Selena out. Look it out. Look at that. [laughs]

Selena: We got a little picture this morning.

Ryan: We were at the doctor’s this morning… If you’re listening to this, Selena is having another baby. We are having another baby.

Selena: We are having another baby. So final four are here. We’ll have four total. And God is good and I am good. [both laughs]

Ryan: Maybe we should do a podcast episode on when do you know you’ve had enough kids because we were wrestling on that.

Selena: Yeah, because we kind of differ on that. [chuckles]

Ryan: We do.

Selena: But it’s okay.

Ryan: Which is why we have another one on the way. [both chuckles] So we are thankful. We’re happy to celebrate that with you. But on the Fierce Parenting side, we talk through the journey that is parenting in real time. And you know what? Parenting is one of those things that there’s as many methods as there are kids [Selena chuckles] when it comes to parenting. So we just try to point parents to Christ.

Anyway, that’s who we are. This is what we do. Thank you for joining us. Let’s dive right into this.

Selena: I want to prepare, I think, the listener too. I think this is a… it’s a little unique in what’s happened. But what is transpiring is are things that need to always be addressed in marriage: rebuilding trust if trust has been broken, forgiveness, repenting of bitterness, being honest with each other, loving one another, and what does that mean when you are facing a battle, you’re facing some really difficult and dark times?

So I think this will benefit anybody who listens. But yes, especially if you have dealt with infidelity or you know someone who has, we just pray that this will be an encouragement for you specifically.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for that. We’re just gonna read it. It’s actually quite a long note, but we want to do it justice. So this comes from a gentleman. His name is Mike. We’re gonna read the whole body of what he wrote because I want to do it justice because I think it’ll benefit us as we do the answers. Okay?

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: So it says, “Hello, and thank you for this podcast. It has really helped me become a better husband to my wife. We are high school sweethearts…” Heyoo! High five for that. “We’re high school sweethearts and got married very young, 22 and 23.

Right before our wedding, we were going through a dark time. I was struggling with addiction and actually had to check into rehab. Around this time, my fiancée at the time, started having a relationship with somebody from work, which was uncovered about three weeks before a wedding when I had a relapse. At the time she told me they never had sex, but kissed and that I was still the only man she had been with.

I always felt there was more that went on than what she told me but never wanted to ask because I feared the answer would hurt too much. I gave her an ultimatum to quit her job and end it or I was going to move on.” Because remember the affair was happening with somebody at her job.

“She quit her job and we got married. We got involved in church and have had a good godly marriage for 11 years, rarely mentioning that dark period of time. I’ve always harbored a certain resentment toward my wife for what I feared she did right before our wedding.

And in an effort to forgive and move on, I finally decided to ask her more about this relationship and it was indeed more serious than she led on and she did have sex with this person. Though I believed this the whole time, this new reality has been very painful to handle.

I love my wife and we’ve had an amazing life together but the reality of what took place is very hard to deal with and I find myself thinking about the details of what took place throughout the day. I’ve been very loving [00:05:00] toward her and let her know that I forgive her because I do and I was no saint at the time either. But it’s hard for me to separate the last person she was at the time from the godly person she is now. Will this get better with time? I need help.”

So you can hear the desire for this husband to move on past this, but he’s finding that he’s struggling. He can’t seem to get through it. I think maybe at the outset, the first thing I want to do is just acknowledge that, yeah, this is a very difficult thing.

Selena: Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: I mean, let’s try to put ourselves in Mike’s shoes here. You know, we’ve been married going on 19 years.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: And before we got married, I said to you there was this thing, you know, I was with another woman.

Selena: I think that would overshadow, first of all, the wedding day, right? That would be a hard thing to kind of deal with. And they’re not the first couple that we’ve heard something like this has happened. But also, I think I want to kind of pinpoint the struggle too is they’ve grown into a godly couple.

Ryan: Right.

Selena: And so there’s been a lot of growth and healing that has taken place. But now, I’m wondering if the struggle is how do we live? Like he doesn’t want to ignore it, but how do you move forward with it, like with that knowledge, and not just trying to ignore what happened and move on with life? But I applaud them for dealing with it and hitting it straight on because there are a lot of couples that are still kind of floundering in these things.

Ryan: You’re hitting it straight on. You’re not going around it. You’re not avoiding it. You’re not just kind of hiding it away because you’re afraid to look at it. But you said you’re walking in the light. And that’s what the encouragement for you first off is that, yeah, it’s very difficult, but you’re asking the right questions. It sounds like you guys are going through this in a healthy way. You’re just struggling along the way. And so-

Selena: Which is okay.

Ryan: Praise God for that, that you’re actually going through it. He’s gonna bring you closer through that, which we have some encouragement to that effect later. But I just want to highlight that you’re asking the right questions, is you want to forgive, and if you say you have forgiven, but you’re still trying to… you want to know how does that actually work in your own heart-

Selena: …when you’re still thinking about it and you’re feeling the hurt, and you’re still having these triggering moments or whatever.

Ryan: And by the way, this applies to whatever forgiveness scenario you may be in. You know, sometimes forgiveness is a decision we make before it’s an emotion that we feel.

Selena: Right. Right.

Ryan: And maybe that’s something you’re dealing with. You also are asking questions, like Selena mentioned, how to move past this. And it’s not how do we avoid it, how do we get around it, but how do we move past it and leave it behind us in a healthy way?

And then the final question that just was heart-wrenching to me is, “Will this get better with time?” That to me just feels… I can feel you? I can feel-

Selena: You can see them.

Ryan: I can see you.

Selena: Yeah, yeah.

Ryan: Because I know that when endurance is hardest, especially when you feel like you’ve already been running a marathon and someone’s asking you to get up and run another one immediately.

Selena: Right. And it sounds like it’s pretty raw. And I think the goodness of God is that in the midst of the darkness and in the midst of the struggle is where He shines the brightest, where His love and His goodness is the richest and the fullest and the most experiential, and I think surreal during those times.

Ryan: Amen. So to answer the question, I think we just go through a few of the lines that you used in the question and just encourage you, and then maybe ask some challenging questions of you as well.

So the first thing I want to highlight is he said this. He said, “I love my wife.” And here’s the encouragement for you is your love for your wife doesn’t have to change because of this. And you probably know that in your head. We’re just here to remind you and maybe here-

Selena: Well, I think, I don’t know about change. I think there’s an opportunity for it to deepen to be honest. I mean, we’ve talked to many couples that have dealt with infidelity and they have said that their marriage feels more strong. More stronger? [chuckles] More strong. It feels more solid, more trustworthy. Not that you need to walk through something like that to get to those levels. But the Lord has used it, I think, to unify them in a deeper way. So I think to maybe emphasize that your love doesn’t have to change, but have hope that it will deepen.

Ryan: You’ve heard us say this a thousand times but we are called in marriage to love one another as Christ has loved us. Well, that begs the question: how exactly does Christ love us? He died on the cross.

Selena: While we were still sinners.

Ryan: He gave us forgiveness. He brought us into the family of God. But there’s a few doctrinal ideas that I think are really helpful here. I want to talk about the doctrine of the union with Christ and communion with God.

So when we are in Christ, the Bible says you are a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come. Right? You were born again. That’s an awesome thing. That reality is done. That salvation has been instantiated in the person and work of Christ. He brought you there and it’s done. That’s the union we have with Christ and that will never be broken. Right? [00:10:00] Nothing can snatch you out of God’s hand once He has His grip on you.

However, that sometimes is confused with communion with God. So the idea of communion with God is you have this relationship with God that is, in many ways, alive, right? You’re learning to hear His voice, you’re learning to obey Him, you’re learning to walk in step with the Spirit, and yet we still fail at times. And I think any believer will say this: that it affects the relationship you have with God.

Has God left you? Has He said, “All right, well, that forgiveness I gave you, I’m going to take that back. Sorry, you’re on your own now.” No, He-

Selena: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”

Ryan: Right. But we do feel a very real sense of, yes, our relationship is not what it should be, our communion has been damaged. And does God’s love change for us in those moments? No. Christ loves us despite our sin, in that when He forgave us He had every one of our sins in view. And it’s just as we go about the life of living as Christ loves us and loving him back, we have to fight our flesh to be in communion with Him.

So there’s an analogy there for love between husband and wife. That “my wife, I will always love you.” And maybe the funny way to say this is I always love you, but I don’t always like you. [laughs] Actually I do always like you. It’s just varying degrees. [Selena laughs] But sometimes we need to work through a hard thing. And our love is unchanging because we’ve made that commitment to love one another.

Selena: We’re living in the covenant but we’re still having to work through some of that hard thing. So our communion, how we interact may be affected a little bit more during that time.

Ryan: So that’s the encouragement is your love can be deepened, as Selena was saying, and that you’re feeling that communion is damaged. And so now the process is getting back to that place of reconciliation and communion with one another.

And I want to take a step back and just recognize that your wife has been honest with you. How easy would it have been—Now, I’m not saying that her heart wouldn’t have been wrenched in this—but how easy would it have been for her to say, “No, and nothing happened? But I told you it was true.”

Selena: I guess I struggle a little bit because it sounds like he asked her again. She didn’t volunteer the information. However-

Ryan: And that’s not okay.

Selena: Yeah. And that’s, I think, where the pain point would be is that “I asked you the first time and you didn’t tell me the truth. And I’m asking you again and now you’re telling me something…” That’s gonna affect the communion, that’s gonna affect your relationship. And that’s okay and that’s natural. You can’t slough that off.

Ryan: It’s natural for it to affect your communion.

Selena: Yeah. Just face it and know that you are still a child of God. God has not left you. He has not forsaken you. You guys are both still made new in Christ. And with that comes the ability to work through hard things to have that ability to forgive one another and to rebuild trust. You’re not just going to be at that same level of trust again. Again, that’s okay. That’s just the natural progression of when trust is broken.

Ryan: The first step of healing any wound is you have to get the foreign object out of there, right?

Selena: Right.

Ryan: And this was dislodging that foreign object from your marriage. And now you can actually finally begin to heal. To echo what Selena says, this revelation, it will only increase your love for your wife over time. With this caveat, we must see love the way God sees love. We’ll talk about that a little bit further on. But hopefully that helps.

The next thing I want to draw up from what Mike said was he said this: “We’ve had an amazing life together.” And so encouragement is here. You may need to hear this. This new knowledge does not invalidate your life up to this point.

Selena: That’s good. And while yes, there might be a tinge of all this whole time you’ve had this secret, and we’ve been intimate however many times and we’ve gone on vacations together, and we’ve built a life together… And I don’t know if you have kids or not, but if you’ve had kids together, like it’s all tainted by this cloud of you’ve been lying the entire time.

Don’t let that invalidate the life that you’ve built together. Because I think that’s a trap. I think it will only lead you to darkness, it will only lead you to bitterness, and it will only lead you to distrusting your wife, where you’ve said yourself that you love her and you’ve built this life together. And not only that, you have a covenantal marriage that… Frankly, there’s nowhere to go. And so to buy that lie, I think, is to undercut the healing process.

So the encouragement there is just you will get through this and you will have more amazing life together. Of course, God willing. I just don’t want that amazing life to be like something of the past or maybe it was a lie that I bought into no longer.

Selena: Right. It’s good.

Ryan: The next statement. You said this is very hard to deal with. It’s true. I just want to acknowledge that.

Selena: I feel like that’s an understatement. [00:15:00] That’s very true and it’s very hard. Like we said, you don’t have to be okay right now. You said taking out a foreign object. I think, after that there’s this cleansing that happens, right? And it can’t feel good to have, you know, alcohol or iodine poured on an open wound, but it’s necessary, right? There’s got to be that cleaning out.

And then there’s the healing process of, you know, the ultimate surgeon coming in and not just like fixing it to make it okay, but like renewing it. So I think you have that hope that, yes, this is very hard. And some days maybe it feels like it’s just going to break you both. But remember who you can depend on. You don’t have to depend on your own strength and your own ability. You can always depend on the Lord. And He is so faithful to show up, I think, in our weakest moments. And scripture is always the place you can go for encouragement.

Ryan: And we’re gonna have a lot of that just in a few moments. But to kind of bring that analogy too close is like the deeper the wound… Some of you know our story. I had have heart surgery. Before our second anniversary I was under the knife, so to speak. And that’s a pretty deep wound when they get in there and cut your heart open. [laughs]

Selena: Sounds like a tragic love song. [chuckles] Sorry.

Ryan: This is probably how you feel, like you’ve had your heart split open and-

Selena: Well, it takes time to recover.

Ryan: Well, that’s the thing is the deeper the wound, the longer the recovery and the greater the intensity of care needed. I remember I couldn’t even go up two stairs, two or three. Not two flights of stairs, like two stairs because my heart would just feel like it was about to explode. But over time, and lots of time, lots of healing, lots of care, lots of grace, lots of patience, my sweet bride was very patient with me—I was very angry at the Lord at that time in my life—we made it through. And you can make it through this too. But just know that there’s a direct correlation between the depth of the wound and the length of the healing needed.

All right, the last statement I want to draw out is “I find myself thinking about the details of what took place.” And as a husband, I would 100% echo that this would be the hardest thing. Because I’m trying to picture-

Selena: As a wife, I would imagine that would be a hard thing if I was in the husband’s shoes.

Ryan: And I’d be thinking like, “Where was I three weeks before we got married? I was here. It have been this day and this must have been this time and they were with… and I know what this person looks like. And I know…” That would be immensely hard, and it’s understandable, but it cannot lead to a good place.

Selena: Right. It won’t lead to a good place.

Ryan: It will not lead to a good place.

Selena: You need to stop that replay. You need to exercise the self-control. Because I think it’s just a tactic of the enemy to just replay, replay, replay, get that bitterness deep, let’s stir up those emotions and get you out of control when fruit of spirit is self-control. I read this somewhere saying to our emotions, “Submit to the cross. You have no place here.” When we’re instructed in the Bible to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

I think battles like that are very difficult, but it’s okay to engage in them. And I think that we need to engage in them as if they are with sword and spear or whatever type of weapon. Like you need to take them actively captive.

Ryan: That’s good. I want to read this passage from Psalm 103. It was very encouraging to me as I read it. Psalm 103 starting in verse 8 says, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. That tells us about the nature of God’s forgiveness. His forgiveness is forever but His anger is-

Selena: Is temporary.

Ryan: …time-bound. And it says, “nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.” Get this. “…as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.” For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”

I love that last part because it’s like God remembers that… He could just obliterate us, annihilate us, but He remembers our frame, He remembers that we are dust. And as this passage would show us, He’s moved to compassion. And so as far ease is from the west, did God mull over the details of our sin against Him? Does God do that?

Selena: No. And does He know the depths of it more than we do?

Ryan: So yes, we’re going to get to the taking captive the thoughts but first let’s look at how God thinks about us [00:20:00] in terms of our sin. He does not mull over the details of our sin. As far as the east is from the west. How far is the east from the west? It’s an infinite distance.

Selena: And he doesn’t deal with us according to our sins. I mean, look at the Old Testament and the laws that were in place for sins. I mean, God is… his grace is so abounding, his mercy.

Ryan: Yeah, amen. Let that be our calibrating spot. And then let’s get into how God forgives us in this way. And we should too. That’s the passage that you were talking about is 2 Corinthians 10. Why don’t you read that. Starting in verse 3, though, because it’s just so profound.

Selena: “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.”

Ryan: And then verse 7 says, “Look at what is before your eyes. If anyone is confident that he is Christ’s, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ’s, so also are we.” The headline here is “Paul Defending His Ministry” So this is not a passage about, “Hey, if your spouse has cheated on you in the distant past, here’s how to get over it.” But it gives us some principles for how to deal with arguments that would position themselves against what we know to be true.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: And in this case, we know to be true that God has forgiven us, that we are called to forgive one another. And that dwelling on these things is not going to bear good fruit in our lives. For that, let’s look to Philippians 4 starting in verse 4.

So Philippians 4:4 says this: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

So there’s another passage in there. Oh, there it is. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Notice how he says, “Guard your hearts and your minds. Do not be anxious and everything instead, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God.” And focus on these things—the excellent things.

Now, I’ll be honest, sometimes this passage rubs me the wrong way because it seems to me like you’re just faking it till you make it, right?

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Like, don’t deal with the hard thing.

Selena: Yeah, I know.

Ryan: I know but sometimes I want to read that way. I know that’s not what Paul’s saying.

Selena: I think you can replace and reorder some of those thoughts, right? Instead of swirling around in what you think happened, you know, you can replace those thoughts, “Okay, well, how can I guard my mind and my heart in Christ Jesus?” Well, Christ said that I’m forgiven. Okay.

But if I’m forgiven, I’m also called as a believer to extend that forgiveness? And how can I extend that forgiveness? By the power of Christ that lives in us the same power, the Bible says that raised Christ from the dead. And that is power. That is power. Power to forgive.

And then we are then marked as believers by how we love one another. Forgiving someone of infidelity, huge mark of love in my book, right? Forgiveness and working that out is a huge sign to an outsider. Someone who maybe is not a believer, saying, “How could you forgive? How could you work through that?” Truly, it’s by the grace and glory of God and His mercy.

Ryan: That’s a great time to share this quote. Thomas Watson said this. We need not climb up into heaven to see whether our sins are forgiven: let us look into our hearts, and see if we can forgive others. If we can, we need not doubt but God as forgiven us.

Thomas Watson is not saying that in order to be forgiven by God, you need forgive others. What he’s saying is that if you forgive others, that is such a profound act when it’s rooted in the gospel, that it is very clear evidence that God has already captured your heart.

Selena: Right. That you understand the depths of what the Lord has done in your own life and in your own heart.

Ryan: Right, because we can’t forgive if we’ve never experienced it. I was looking at passages on grace and forgiveness because-

Selena: That was a long list.

Ryan: Extremely long. I compiled a few here, but I just want to read a few. This is Romans 3:24. “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.”

Ephesians 1:6-7, “To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which he made us accepted in the Beloved.” Like to be accepted by the Holy God of the universe is through his glory, to the praise of the glory.

Selena: Dust.

Ryan: Yes. Right. [00:25:00] Titus 2:11, “For the grace of God has been revealed bringing salvation to all people.” Again, by grace. And this list goes on and on. I mean, I don’t want to gloss over this, but-

Selena: You skipped the one that I thought was really good. I think maybe you want to read it. It’s Titus 3:7. “Because of his grace, He made us right in his saying, give us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.” Amen.

Ryan: Right. He made us right and then he gave us confidence in this. And so maybe in this moment, it’s recognizing, “Okay, I have been made right, and now I have confidence in Christ.” And the only way we can see that rightly is by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Like He has to work in our hearts through His word, through seeing our sin for what it is, and then seeing God’s holiness for what it is, seeing this massive gap between the two and then seeing Christ fill the gap. Yeah, that’s grace and that’s a revelation of a holy… My holy God, you have saved me.

And so that revelation that will turn us into forgivers, to be serial forgivers, to look at our spouse and say, “God has not held my sin against me, how can I possibly hold your sin against you?” Mike, I feel like you’ve done that. But you’re still working through what that looks like. Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean that automatically you trust them.

Selena: Right? You’re not just right back where you were before this, right?

Ryan: Mm-hmm. Because you still do have to deal with the fact that there were years where you were… there was a lie of omission happening. And so pragmatically speaking, you have a few options. I think I know which one you’re going to take.

But the first option is to continue to harbor unforgiveness, though you’ve said you’ve forgiven her. Just to continue to kind of not actually walk out that forgiveness. And that will only crush you, it will embittered you, and it will poison your marriage. And not only that, it will crush your wife. And I can’t imagine Christ wanting to crushed His bride. He instead will build up his bride.

That’s the first option: continue down the path of… Not continue. But I’m saying take the path of bitterness. I don’t think you’re on that path, Mike, by the way. And the second path is this. You have forgiven her but you just need time to heal. You need time to be reconciled. You need time to rebuild your trust.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: And that’s the best path forward. But the caveat is don’t expect it to be fast. Don’t expect it to be simple. In other words, you can just kind of identify exactly what has to happen. The third thing is don’t expect it to be easy.

Selena: And I think that it’s important to recognize, like, obviously don’t do this alone. Get some community, Christian community around you, Bible-believing counselors, pastors, to help you both walk through and get to the other side of this healing and whole and unified.

I think stepping onto that path of healing it’s one of those things that you just kind of look down and you ask the Lord what the next step is, and you continue and you continue and continue. And over time, you can take that look back and say, “Wow, look where the Lord has brought us.” But you can’t just take a small step and then look behind and like, “We haven’t gotten that far.”

It’s just one of those things that you just got to kind of methodically go one foot in front of the other and just trust that you’re going where the Lord is leading, you are extending the grace and forgiveness that you should be extending, not by your own ability but remember because you’ve been forgiven. It’s coming from a place of already been forgiven and being loved and being secure. And so that matters. Motivation matters.

Ryan: Cling to Christ, fix your eyes on Him, and keep walking toward Him together. And don’t do that alone—just you and her. Get some people around you to pray with you, to be known by them so that you can walk more steadfastly.

So if you’re watching this, you made it to the end. You’re awesome. And if you made it to the end, and you are wondering, this forgiveness sounds otherworldly. And I’m here to tell you that it is. That it is not from this world. It is from the God of the universe, who has become flesh. He lived among us, dwelt among us, died for us, was risen again to defeat sin, to defeat death, and now reigns. He ascended into heaven and reigns at the right hand of the Father. And that you are being called into relationship with Him, to be forgiven by him so that you can experience the forgiveness we’re talking about. But then get this. Live it out in your own life.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: I can say that without Christ we would be divorced 10 times over because I would be a degenerate, worthless man. [chuckles] Christ has brought me out of the mire, plucked me out of the fray of eternity, and said, “That one is mine,” and He said that with my wife, and our marriage is vastly different because of it.

So we have a website set up for you. Thenewsisgood.com. Check that out. It shows you what it looks like to become a Christian and give you some steps forward in that regard. Let’s pray.

Father, I thank you for your forgiveness, your matchless grace in our lives. I thank you for the ability that you’ve given us in the call you’ve given us and the challenge you’ve given us to forgive one another. Lord I pray that you would empower Mike to forgive in profound ways. Maybe that he hasn’t realized yet. [00:30:00] I pray to help them walk out reconciliation and rebuilding that trust wisely.

I pray for any couple watching this or listening to this that has dealt with infidelity or maybe is currently dealing with it or maybe there’s a hidden sin of infidelity in their marriage that they know in their guts it needs to be brought to light so that they can heal, so they can move forward.

I pray, Holy Spirit, you would direct their steps, convict them lovingly. Draw them out of the darkness into the light so that they can walk and fellowship with you, fellowship with one another, being cleansed from all unrighteousness. In your precious name, Lord. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: All right, thank you so much for watching the Fierce Marriage Podcast or listening, [Selena chuckles] if you’re listening. If you made it this far again, you’re awesome. But also, you may want to partner with us. This ministry is only possible because of the bedrock of our patrons.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: So if you want to be a part of that small tight-knit community, go to this website. Go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. You’ll see some details there. As an added bonus, you’ll get some access to courses, you’ll get access to books, depends on the tear. You might even get some of these fancy wedding rings.

Selena: Oh, yeah.

Ryan: We have silicone wedding rings of our own design, of our own making. I don’t want to get into those but I think that the best silicone wedding rings on the market.

Selena: They really are.

Ryan: Anyway, go to fiercemarriage.com/partner, we would love to meet you in there. But I guess that’s it for now. So this episode of Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: We’ll see you again in seven days. Till next time—

Selena: Stay fierce.