Challenges, Podcast

Shame and Regret After an Affair

Shame, regret, pain, guilt. All of which are felt in the wake of an affair. But is there hope for healing and getting past the shame? Thankfully, there is!

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Scripture, Show Notes, and Resources Mentioned

  • Referenced scripture:
    • Romans 1
    • John 8:44
    • 1 John 5
    • 1 john 9-12
    • Romans 6:20-23

Full Episode Transcript

Ryan: We received this question from one of our awesome listeners and viewers. Thank you so much in advance for submitting that question to us. Here it is.

“My husband had an affair about two and a half years ago. I have forgiven him and both of us have made much needed changes. Our marriage is a lot better now but my husband’s guilt and shame is driving him away from the church. He feels great guilt and regret when attending. I don’t think he believes God will forgive him. I need a Christ centered marriage. I’ve been praying, but how can I help my husband further?”

So yeah, that’s a deep complicated question. We just actually last week, the previous marriage episode on the channel, in the previous episode in the Fierce Marriage Podcast, we talked about the anatomy of an affair. So this question just came in. I think it’s quite providential to start talking through.

Okay, say, you’ve been a part of an affair, whether it’s physical or emotional, there’s probably gonna be a lot of shame around it on both sides of the equation. So today we’re going to address this idea of shame and regret and guilt, particularly around marriage and infidelity. So we’ll see you on the other side.

[00:01:06]

Ryan: Hello and welcome back. My name is Ryan. This is my lovely wife, Selena. We are the founders, faces, voices behind all things Fierce Marriage, Fierce Parenting, Fierce Families. Thank you for joining us.

The whole reason we do these videos, the reason we do these podcast episodes is to just bless the body of Christ. We are wanting to point you to Christ. And so we thank you for spending some time with us, giving us your ears, your eyes, your attention. We hope that it’s fruitful. We trust that it will be. And let’s just dive right into this, okay?

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: We’re answering this question that I read before we did the intro. And just to be honest, it’s a little risky I think to take on a question of this magnitude. I think it’s really hard, it’s difficult to serve this couple well because we’re not walking alongside you.

Whoever you are, you ask this question anonymously, we want to honor that, but we don’t know your situation. We don’t even know frankly what you mean by the various words that you’re using because we don’t have the exact context. So that’s the big caveat here. But our hope is that by addressing it kind of directly but generally, that we can provide some hope.

Selena: And I think the most important thing that you can do if you find yourself in this position is to get people who are in your world, get a pastor, get a person in your Christian community to come alongside you and your spouse and help you walk through this face to face. This is not something that you’re going to get help entirely on YouTube channel or podcast episode.

We’re here to encourage. We’re here to kind of maybe slice through some stuff and define a few things biblically. But we really would point you to your local pastor, to your shepherd.

Ryan: So with that said, the theme, the overall core of this question, I guess to restate it, is her husband had an affair two and a half years ago. So there’s been some time. She has forgiven him and they’ve made steps forward. Now that’s an amazing thing to be able to say first of all-

Selena: First of all, yeah

Ryan: …is that obvious he’s come to you. You forgiving him implies that he’s asked for forgiveness.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Maybe not. I mean, it could be that he hasn’t quite directly asked for it. We don’t know. But you’ve forgiven him and you’re making much-needed changes. But at the core of this, it says that he’s feeling guilt and shame and a great regret that’s keeping him from joining the church or going to church or being participating in the life of the church.

So let’s just talk about that. I think that’s enough to chew on for one episode is, what is this idea of shame? And what place, if any… Maybe you just answer this off the cuff, Selena. I want to hear your [Selena chuckles] knee-jerk reaction. What place (if any) does shame or guilt or regret have in the life of a believer?

Selena: I think that it holds the place of shoving us back to our Savior. That’s probably the only place that it should have. Because in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve fell, what was the first thing that they felt? They felt shame. They felt this nakedness and they felt something… They hid from God’s presence.

All of a sudden, this God who they were familiar with, who they communed with, who they loved and had engaged with, was all of a sudden someone they didn’t want to be around. Why? Because they felt shame.

So to me, shame just shows how great and sovereign and good our God is because He can even take things like shame to bring us back to who He is, bring us back to the cross, bring us back to the good news of the gospel in His grace.

Ryan: That’s so good. Now we live in a time when we have the advantage I think we take it for granted. We have the advantage of living on this side of the resurrection. Adam and Eve didn’t even have the law.

Selena: Mm-mm.

Ryan: They had the law of God written on their hearts. And they did have the law where God said, [00:05:00] “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” That was the law to them. So shame I think had a lot more of a role to play back in those days.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: And in a sense, it was an indictment on ourselves. And there’s this natural law that Adam and Eve saw they had transgressed because they had disobeyed the Lord. In the same way, we still transgress the law, we disobey the law. But we’re on this side of it where we don’t actually have to have shame.

Now does that mean that we can commit sin brazenly? Not at all. Paul talks directly against that. I think it’s in Romans 7 or 8 or 6. [chuckles] One of those in there. [Selena chuckles] And not that we don’t sin all the more because of the grace. No. The grace of God compels us to love Him well through that.

Here’s a dictionary definition of shame. Not the Bible’s but just dictionary definition of shame. Here it goes. “A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.” Have you ever felt shame?

Selena: Oh, yes. [chuckles] I think we’ve all felt it.

Ryan: When?

Selena: When I do think bad things [both laughs] or when I sin. When I do things that are wrong I feel ashamed. If I say things that are hurtful or I act in a way that is not glorifying to God.

Ryan: I think I probably felt the most shame in high school… or actually it was in college. Or no, it wasn’t in college. I gotta go backwards. It was in junior high. I mean, somebody’s got into one of their dad’s beer stash.

Selena: Oh, my. [Ryan laughs].

Ryan: We were underage.

Selena: Very underage in junior high.

Ryan: I think it gets limited by the statute of limitations at this point. [both chuckles]

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: But yeah, we went out and we snuck down the driveway. We had like all the things we wanted to do wrong. Like we had chewing tobacco. We had the cigarettes. We had-

Selena: Straight out of… What’s that movie? [chuckles] Like old movies that they-

Ryan: Oh, we were… Same lot? [both laughs] Anyway, I felt so much shame the next morning that I just had to tell my mom. I felt this deep humiliation and distress caused by me being conscious of this wrong behavior. And that’s the dictionary definition.

But biblically speaking, what is shame? All right.

Selena: Well, and shaming versus conviction, right?

Ryan: I didn’t get into that as I was preparing. But yeah, I feel like the difference between shame and conviction is one will lead to repentance and another will lead to hiding.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Right?

Selena: Good job. I knew you had it in yah. [chuckles]

Ryan: Okay, good. And we’ll talk about that here. So biblically speaking, what is shame? It’s a direct result of sin. Selena mentioned Adam and Eve, they ran and hid as soon as they had sinned. They could feel the weight of it. They could feel the full weight of it.

And that’s the reminder of what you said how it kind of pushes us back to our need for a Savior. I wrote this: the weight of our sin should crush us. If it doesn’t crush us, we either don’t see it or we don’t see the Holy God who forbids it.

And what that does, that weight of it… And we’re gonna get to the hope. So don’t check out quite yet. That weight of our sin should bear… it squeezes out of us something. It’ll squeeze out of us a self-righteousness that says, “I need to somehow make up for this sin. I need to…” What’s the word I’m trying to think of? I need to atone for it.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Right. There’s all the, you know, Catholic kind of early theologies around that. I won’t get into it. Or it can crush out of me and squeeze out of me a groaning for help. And that’s the part that makes much of our need for a Savior, and then create our need for the Savior, the creator, the Savior Himself. So it’s a direct result of our sin.

And frankly, to this couple who has written this, and if you’re in a similar situation, I’d be more worried if you didn’t feel.

Selena: Absolutely. I mean, if we aren’t feeling any shame or any weight from our sin, then where are we grounded? What are we grounded in? Where’s our anchor? I mean, do we even have a moral anchor at that point?

When we’re in sin sometimes it’s hard to see up from down, right from wrong, because we’re just negotiating everything. But again, the shame aspect of sin should bring us back to our Savior, should make us run to our Father and remembering who our Father is.

Ryan: Well, that’s what happens whenever God would kind of leave people to their own, they would almost always be turned over to sin in a way that their consciences were seared. We see that in Romans 1. That they were suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, that it was their unrighteousness they were given over to.

Selena: To the darkness.

Ryan: They were handed over to the darkness. They got everything they ever wanted. They wanted to be [00:10:00] free of God. And there they were free of God, and it led to their tragic demise. So to feel the weight of it, I think there’s an encouragement there – to know that the father disciplines those He loves, that the holy spirit is alive and active in you, convicting you of that sin. That you’re not sinning freely as a beast would go around, just, you know, devouring whatever that beast would have an appetite for.

As somebody who’s convicted of their sin, that’s a reminder that you have a God who has written His law on your heart, and He is drawing you back, pulling you back to Him, making that sin unpalatable to you. So there’s an encouragement aspect there.

But if we sit in it for too long, that script begins to flip and it begins to turn us into Gollum a little bit. We start to hold on to whatever it is, this need for us to feel justified in our own merit in that sin, it will turn us into the monsters that only shame can turn us into.

And so let’s go down this line. I have a whole list of things of biblically speaking what is shame.

The next one is it’s a lie from the enemy. This is such a trick of the enemy to get you to sin and then to rub your nose in it and rub your face in it. It says if the enemy can’t get you to fail from sin again, he’ll shame you for when you did.

Selena: To fall to sin.

Ryan: Excuse me. If he can’t get you to fall to sin again, there it is, he’ll shame you for when you did.

Selena: It’s so true. It’s so true. Which is why when in Romans 12 Paul talks about the renewing of our mind. Because if we’re constantly replaying this scenario in our head of when we sinned and how it hurt our spouse and how frustrated they were, and how could they ever trust me again, or how could I ever trust them again, and all of that type of, you know, vocabulary just continues and continues, what is it perpetuating? It’s just perpetuating sin and brokenness.

But Paul is saying, like, even in Galatians, what is it? Think about things that are pure, that are true, that are good, that are worthy. Right? What are those things? And by starting out, thinking about them, I think that begins to empower us to actually act on them as well. But we have to first replace those lies with the truth.

Ryan: I think that was Philippians by the way.

Selena: Philippians.

Ryan: It’s close enough.

Selena: I like all those “ians.”

Ryan: Galatians, Ephesians. Two books away. You’re good. [Selena chuckles] So yeah, it’s a lie from the enemy. Shame is a lie from the enemy. This is Jesus talking about the devil, the enemy. He says, He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. We often gloss over that. There’s no truth in him.

Selena: Crazy.

Ryan: No truth.

Selena: No truth.

Ryan: When he lies, he speaks his native tongue or his native language, for he is a liar and he is the father of lies.

Selena: John 8:44.

Ryan: That’s John 8:44. That’s Jesus talking about the enemy. On Got Questions—you know we love that site—they have this quote. I want to read it verbatim because it’s so good, as again talking about the nature of the enemy, Satan being a liar.

The author of that article said this: “The apostle Paul tells us that Satan ‘masquerades as an angel of light.’” Masquerades. Have you ever been to a masquerade? I’ve never been to one.

Selena: No.

Ryan: I know the song.

Selena: Not in the vision that I would think a masquerade should be to some level.

Ryan: But they wear a mask. They wear a mask. And I think there’s an insidious nature to wearing the masks because I think they are able to do things [Selena laughs] that they wouldn’t do without the mask on. But anyway, that’s a different-

Selena: Oh, how interesting.

Ryan: So here’s the quote again. “The Apostle Paul tells us that Satan ‘masquerades as an angel of light,’ that’s 2 Corinthians 11. So that what he says and does sounds good and it seems reasonable to us, but it is nothing more than a false appearance.”

Selena: So good.

Ryan: So it sounds good to us.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: It seems reasonable that I should feel shame. It sounds good that I feel shame because it almost makes me feel a little bit better about the shame because I’m holding on to, I am not letting myself heal. I keep picking up the scab when God has said, “I’m gonna heal that.” But you keep picking it, you keep opening it up.

So let’s go on to this next piece. What is shame biblically speaking? It’s a direct result of sin. Got that. It’s a lie from the enemy only if we are in Christ. It’s not a lie from enemy if you’re outside of Christ. Like you need to turn from your sin.

But in Christ, it’s a lie from the enemy because the enemy is a liar. And I think our shame… Now, hear me out. I’m gonna use some strong words. Our shame is when we are in Christ and we refuse to acknowledge the forgiveness for the fullness that it is, we are calling God a liar.

It is as if to say, “Jesus, I know you said you died from my sin, but this one is outside your ability to forgive.” Meaning, you’re God but not quite. Not quite. You save all but not me. Why? Because I’m outside your scope. Right?

I read the verse I think it’s Psalm 1:12 around there. As far as the east is from the west, so he has removed my transgression from you. He removes our transgressions from us, [00:15:00] but not this one. You’re a liar, God. I put it in those terms because that’s what we’re actually saying. We just would never say it in those terms.

So once you read this passage, this is from 1 John 5, and this is in contrast to… If you remember, we talk about 1 John a lot because the transparency. In 1 John the first chapter, he says, “If you say you’re without sin you are a liar and truth is not in you.”

Now, here’s John again four chapters later talking about our propensity to lie and the different way that we lie. So why don’t you read this.

Selena: “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning His Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Ryan: Here’s what he’s doing there. He says, “Whoever believes in the Son of God has a testimony himself. Whoever does not believe has made God a liar, and has not believed that testimony that God is born concerning his son.” And then this is the gospel, he gives it to us. And the testimony is this: that God gave us eternal life and life is in Christ.

So if you say to God, “I can’t go and be among your people, I can’t go to church, I can’t…” Now, there’s a dynamic there. If the church is not a healthy church, they might be-

Selena: They don’t know how to… yeah.

Ryan: … a church that is legalistic and makes you feel like a pariah because you once sinned, even though they are all in the exact same boat as you, sinners, who need grace.

Selena: There’s a lot to be said, I think, for how a church handles sin.

Ryan: So on this side of sin, feeling that shame, we refuse to believe that testimony that salvation is in Christ, then we are effectively calling God a liar. And this is our encouragement to you to not do that. [chuckles] To take Him at His word and let God be God and just sit and bask in the grace that He’s given you. And we’ll talk about that more in just a second.

The next thing that biblically speaking shame is is it’s… This plays into the calling God a liar piece, but it’s making more of myself than I make of God.

Selena: Right. Could it be deemed a bit of navel-gazing depending on how long…? And I don’t want to minimize people’s shame, right? You don’t want to minimize the hurt and the pain. But we also want to question, you know, how long do we sit in this? How long do we allow it to keep us from…? I mean, what is the verse? Is it in Mark? Like do not forsake the gathering.

Ryan: It’s in Hebrews. [both chuckles]

Selena: It’s in the Bible. But it says, “Do not forsake the gathering?” Are there any caveats to not forsaking the gathering? No. It’s like we have to be gathering as the people of God. And I’m speaking to this particular submission, where they’re saying he’s not going to church and it’s hard for him to go to church because he feels a lot of shame and regret and guilt.

But again, we are called to not forsake the gathering. So what does that mean? Even when I’m in sin, the gathering should be one of the places, the primary places that I do go and find gospel perspective, grace, help, and love from other believers. Not say, “It’s okay,” but saying, “God is still at work. God is with you. God has forgiven you just like God has forgiven me.” Right?

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. So there’s something at play there that says, I believe the word of God enough to say that this is a bad thing that I’ve done. But do you believe it enough to actually step out what it means to be saved? Walk out, I should say, what it means to be saved. Or is it a truncated gospel? And that’s what it sounds like.

So it’s kind of this making more of myself than I make of God. In other words, you’re saying I get to say to God what He’s forgiven and what He hasn’t. And that’s just foolishness, friend.

Selena: Well, it’s an authority, order-

Ryan: So on the church note, we’re assuming a complete genuineness to this husband’s… what he’s saying. You know, it could be, and I’m not saying that this is their case, but it could be that it’s a convenient excuse to not engage in the life of a church. It could be. Because who are you to say how I feel at this moment?

Selena: And it also could be an unhealthy church that doesn’t deal with sin in a healthy way.

Ryan: It could be that too.

Selena: And by healthy we mean biblical. Like how do they deal with sin from a biblical-

Ryan: You don’t excuse the sin and you address it head on and then you encourage, well, growth from it, right?

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: Sanctification. That’s part of the Christian life. Not to be saved but as a result of being saved. Okay, we’ve got two more of these.

Another reason of biblically speaking, shame could the result of being ignorant of what God said about sin, grace, and shame. Maybe this is all news to you. Maybe you don’t know we have a forgiving God. Maybe you just think that the Bible ended at Exodus 20 with the ten commandments [both chuckles] and that’s it.

Selena: Right. Do we understand the weight of sin [00:20:00] and the beauty and depth and goodness of grace in the midst of our shame? Right?

Ryan: Yeah. It could be that he just doesn’t have a full understanding of what grace is, and he’s been raised to be a moralist and not a Christian.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: So we’re not called to be a moralist. There are morals involved with being a Christian, but we are not saved or rescued through our morals, but through Christ.

Selena: What a beautiful opportunity to experience God’s grace! It’s only God who can take the brokenness of a situation, of an affair and infidelity, and bring it back around to healing, to His grace, to His goodness, to a marriage that is united once again and getting better.

Of course, the enemy is going to want to pick it that. Of course, there’s going to be a target there. But what a beautiful opportunity to encounter God’s grace in a new way!

Ryan: I love it. Finally, biblically speaking shame is tragically ironic. And here’s what I mean by that. At its core, shame because of a sin you’ve repented of, is in itself a sin in need of repentance. In other words, if you look Christ in the face, and he says to you, “I have forgiven all your sins,” and you look Him back in the face, and you say, “No, you haven’t,” you need to repent of that.

That’s where we can echo, you know, the father who had a son who was possessed by an unclean spirit. And he says, “I believe. Help me in my unbelief.” Right?

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: So we can look Christ in the face and say, “Okay, help me.”

Selena: “Help me. Yes, help me walk out this new reality after my sin, dealing with the shame and the guilt. Once again, Lord, I lay it at your feet. Once again…” I mean, I feel like that should be the prayer of every believer every day of “God, I’ve sinned again. I lay it at your feet. Thank you that you’re my loving Father and I can come to you in this and I give these things to you. And you’ve already forgiven me and you’ve already given me ways to live out of the glory that you’ve bestowed on us through Christ. Like we’re just so unworthy and covered.”

Ryan: I’m gonna say it’s tragically ironic to be ashamed is that it’s doubt clothed as piety. Because I have to stew in this more to be validated in it. So we’re gonna wrap it up here.

So where do you go from here? If you feel shame and you’re wondering, “Okay, I hear what you’re saying, but I still feel it,” here’s our encouragement to you where to go. It’s gonna sound funny. Hide. Run and hide. And here’s what I mean by that. It’s not the way Adam and Eve hid. Everyone who sins hides. That’s a given. That’s in Scripture. We’ve experienced that in our own lives.

The question is, where are you going to hide? In the garden, Adam and Eve hid in the trees in their shame. But you and I, friend, Selena, listener, viewer, when we feel ashamed, when we sin, we run and hide as well, but we hide behind another tree. We hide behind the tree of the cross of Christ.

On Sinai, in order to survive the glory of God, Moses hid in the cleft of the rock as the presence of God passed next to him. Us, we must hide in the Rock of Ages who was cleft for us, who was cracked, who was broken so that we might too be shielded from the holy presence of our perfect eternal God.

So it’s not a question of where to hide. It’s certainly not a question of if to hide. It’s yes, hide. Just don’t try to hide somewhere dumb. [laughs]

Selena: Well, don’t hide in the darkness of your own sin and your own shame, but hide in Christ.

Ryan: Hide in Christ.

Selena: Be hidden in Christ.

Ryan: Be found in Christ.

Selena: Be found in Christ.

Ryan: I just can’t resist… I have to share this. There’s a fellow seminary and her name is Joy Wu. She wrote this article. It this: “In Exodus 33, God said to Moses, ‘You cannot see my face for Man shall not see me and live.’” This is, again, when he’s on Sinai and the presence of God is passing.

He says, “Behold, there’s a place by me where you shall stand on the rock. And while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” Again. God talking to Moses, saying, “I will cover you with my hand. And then when I pass-

Selena: The face of God in heaven, like-

Ryan: One day.

Selena: …goodness.

Ryan: One day. So this is the article continuing. This is Joy writing. “The Lord makes provision for Moses to protect him from the death that comes from beholding his glory as one who is not worthy.” That’s what shamed us. Shame shows us that we’re not worthy.

Selena: It reminds us that we’re not worthy.

Ryan: And she goes on. “The Lord, not Moses, makes this provision. He promises that He will hide Moses in the cleft of the rock when He passes by. This language echoes back to the Passover when the people were covered by the lambs blood. Well, those uncovered were subject to the judgment.”

And she writes this: “I know that the Passover symbolism gestured toward Jesus, but do I recognize Christ when I see Him in Exodus 33 as well?” The answer here is, yes, we should see that. She continues on. “And this is just how it will be on the final day. I have believed in Jesus…” So this is to you. Husband, wife, [00:25:00] the couple who wrote in with this question, this is for you. Hear these words.

“This is how it will be on that final day. I have believed in Jesus and I am in Him. All of those metaphors throughout the Bible about Christ as a rock and a cornerstone are not just literary devices. They are gestures toward moments like this when Moses was hidden in the rock, when the Israelites thirst was quenched by the rock that got streams of water. We see later the New Testament that the Rock had been Christ all along.”

I want to read this last part real quick. “Moses was hidden behind an inferior rock on the earth in Exodus 33, but we will be hidden in Christ Himself, because God’s face was turned away from Jesus on the cross. It will be turned in love toward me on that day, in spite of the greatness of my sin.” Do you hear that? In spite of the greatness of my sin.

“No, my eyes will never comprehend the fullness of glory in His face even then, but I shall be hold it and live because I’ll be in the cleft and the rock will be Christ.”

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: So shame is not your lot, friend.

Selena: Mm-mm.

Ryan: Shame is not your lot. Turn from it, repent of it. Ironically, repent of it and turn to Christ and just sit in His grace and enjoy it and let it wash over you. We can remember Paul’s words here. We’ll end with this.

“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.” I mean, you didn’t have to do good things because you were a slave to sin. “But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So you can walk with your head held high, not because of what you’ve done, clearly, but because of what Christ has done. You can walk through the doors of that church, not because of how they accept you, or because you’ve got certain a certain level of piety and moralism that you’ve achieved. No. You can walk through the doors of that church because God invited you there and He wants you there. And that’s where you belong, friend.

So hopefully, that’s encouraging to you. If you have somebody in your life that you’ve experienced shame with or that they have shame and they’re trying to walk through that, please point them to this episode… point them to this truth, excuse me.

And you can also point them to this website: thenewsisgood.com. It outlines the entire Gospel and gives you some tangible paths forward from there.

So with that said, Selena, do you want to pray for us?

Selena: Sure. God, thank you so much that You are our King, You are our redemptive Savior. Thank you for your word that brings us back to You. Thank you for the shame that we can experience only again to be brought back to You. God, may we not hold on to it. May we, again, come back to you and lay all the lies and all the guilt and all the shame at the foot of the cross.

Lord, may we run into Your arms when we feel insecure or lacking. May we just live in Your presence, knowing who we are because of You and who we are in You. May the thoughts and words of others not affect us in a way that they shouldn’t. May we just continue to stand firm and to hold firm to Your word and to our identity in You, God.

Thank you for this couple that wrote in and that shared and that was transparent. I pray that many of the couples would be encouraged in this episode. In Your name, Amen.

Ryan: All right. As a reminder, if you haven’t yet subscribed to the Fierce Marriage Podcast on iTunes or whatever, please do that. If you’re watching this, please do hit that subscribe button as well. Leave a comment, leave a rating, leave a review, whatever you can do. All that stuff helps to make sure that this content gets out to as many people as possible.

Finally, if you want to support this ministry—we rely on our awesome patrons—you can do that by going to fiercemarriage.com/partner. There are some goodies there, freebies, books, rings, more stuff coming in the future in fact. [Selena chuckles] But don’t do it for that, do because God is leading you there. We would love to have you in there.

So anyway, that said, this episode of a Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: We’ll see you again in seven days. Until next time-

Selena: Stay fierce.

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