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Welcome to The Overflow—the bonus round of faith and real-life conversation with Brandon and Susan Thomas. Every week, they unpack the powerful insights, behind-the-scenes experiences, and personal reflections that didn’t quite fit into Sunday’s sermon.
This is where the conversation gets practical, honest, and a little bit unscripted. Whether it's an encouraging word, a deeper dive into Scripture, or a hilarious moment from their week, Brandon and Susan bring fresh perspective and spiritual fuel to keep you going.
It’s real talk, fresh takes, and full hearts.
These are the conversations too good to cut and too real to miss.
Today, we're talking about every marriage's greatest fear. We're talking about adultery and how to affair proof your marriage. Welcome to The Overflow, and we're talking about how to fair proof your marriage, and that adultery could be emotional adultery, it could be physical, sexual adultery, it comes in different forms. But recently we read that one in four marriages, that was hard to believe it was that high, but one in four marriages has some level of adultery. That's a heartbreaking stat.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's huge and it's heartbreaking. And this conversation, oh, it's it's not a one and done conversation. It's such a real and very devastating reality in many, many homes and many, many families. And just seeing the impact, even for me firsthand, having the privilege to walk with families and walk with precious, wonderful people that found themselves in a really broken, broken place, seeing firsthand the damage that can happen in a family. But, you know, not to bury the lead, but also the hope of Christ and amazing you know, we're gonna talk about it today, what God can do.
Speaker 2:Our biggest messes are a place where God's biggest miracles can show up. But it's a real fear. It's a real thing that many families and many people deal with, and it's a real thing we all need to be prepared and fight against.
Speaker 1:I've literally watched people going through affairs and walking through that, and as a church, we have the incredible privilege to walk through so many families at their worst moment, and to hopefully we get to build it on a solid foundation and build back up. But I see people, they shrivel up, they lose weight, they can't sleep. The physical toll, the toll on kids, the toll on the family, like you said, it is like a bomb has been detonated, the trust that's broken. When someone, their affections begin to drift over to someone else, just the identity issues that are circulating about that, this is a monster.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It is a monster. And, I mean, maybe let's talk for a second about why it hurts so bad. Why even the thought of it happening, or if you've experienced it actually happening, why does it hurt so bad?
Speaker 1:Well, that's a theological question, and there's a serious answer to that. And it's, first of all, sex, if it is a physical affair, just the act of sex is not just a physical act. It's a soul act. And as a couple before the Lord, you are knit together as one, and you have ripped that knitting, and you have connected with someone else. There's just something very foreign to that in the design of God.
Speaker 1:There's something that's very awkward from God's perspective, from the biblical perspective. What we see is that that's against human flourishing. It's against your design. And so there's you're going with your heart, you're going with what you feel, but it is contrary to the way that God designed you. And so it just it hits like a thud.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's a tearing. And it's interesting you bring up I mean, it's it's all about it. Right? Physical intimacy and sex because the design for sex, as you said, by God is the knitting together of two people.
Speaker 2:The two shall become one. And even in sexual encounters before you are married, there's a knitting of the soul. I mean, it's just the the act of sex alone was created by God. We even heard someone recently that well, it's a little while back just talking about sex and in their lifestyle that they were living. Their thought and comment was, well, it's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2:It's just sex. And the reality is that's that's not true.
Speaker 1:That's not true.
Speaker 2:That we didn't create sex. We don't have the copyright on sex. The God who created sex by design created it to bind two people together. And so even outside of marriage, the act of sex creates this bond. And many times what'll happen I'm just talking for a second outside of sex is I mean, outside of marriage, sex outside of marriage.
Speaker 2:Many times what happens is that the longer we go in that lifestyle, the more partners that we have, the harder our heart grows. Yeah. And we begin to lose feeling, if you will, anesthetized in our soul to the connection God always created, and there's a hardness there, and underneath that hardness, there's a great distrust.
Speaker 1:So we talked about sexual affairs, but there's also emotional affairs. And are they the same? Is it the same impact? Is a fair affair? If you've had an emotional affair, is the pain the same as a sexual affair?
Speaker 1:I have my opinions, but I'm gonna let you answer first.
Speaker 2:Well, sure. I think there's degrees of pain, but you don't I mean, pain is not a competition. Mm-mm. No one wants their marriage wrecked, and I think that the baseline of marriage is trust. And so when trust is broken, there has to be a rebuild for that marriage to thrive again.
Speaker 2:And and what I was gonna say, you know, I wanna talk about the emotional and the and the sexual. But what I was gonna say about the sexual, you know, there's that outside of marriage sexual experience. But then you combine the sexual design by God, combine that being broken, being shredded, then with the covenant that is only true in marriage. There's something about marriage. People in our culture today like to say, oh, it's just you know what?
Speaker 2:It's a piece of paper. Right. It's a piece of paper. And God says, oh, no. I designed this.
Speaker 2:I have a blueprint for marriage, for human flourishing, for family, and the marriage covenant is is huge. It's a part of that. And so not only are we ripping and shredding the design for sexual union, but we're also ripping a covenant of which God was a part of. Genesis I mean, not Genesis. Malachi chapter two.
Speaker 2:Seriously, go read it. It's think it's go read around verse 13 ish or fourteen fifteen. Go read it. And God says, wasn't I a witness? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I, the Lord God, made you one
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:By with my spirit. I mean, it's it is a god covenant, and so there's a ripping there. And so when it comes to emotional affairs, honestly, that's a precursor to more. And for some people, what's interesting and, again, the ratios can change. But for many women, if they're in marriage, sometimes they might say if they had to choose, the emotional connection is even prioritized or felt in their heart even before a physical connection.
Speaker 2:In other words, they it's difficult to have a physical connection if there wasn't an emotional connection, where a man might be able to have a physical connection and not feel necessarily that drive for emotional connection. And so when you talk about an emotional connection
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That rips the heart of the person
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:On the other end.
Speaker 1:Right. It rips because you're you're you're attacking covenant, and covenant is not just bound by sex. Yeah. Covenant is covenant, and the emotional affair attacks that covenant. In our experience, I would say the journey back from an emotional affair is a different journey than a journey back from a sexual affair.
Speaker 1:And I'd love to know, in counseling, if that's true for you, but in church, when we help families, when someone, you're almost stopping it sooner. Yes. In most cases.
Speaker 2:Yes. And that would also include the degree of physicality.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right.
Speaker 2:Kissing may look different than going further. And then ultimately, you know, consummating it, having sexual intercourse, that's a different level of healing that's going to be required. Again, all sin breaks things. I mean, that's what we do. Our sin just destroys God's good gifts, kills things that we love.
Speaker 2:And so the further we go in our sin, the more damage has been done and the more trust has to be rebuilt and healing has to happen. But the beautiful thing is that I personally have witnessed when two people turn to God and their primary goal isn't even their marriage anymore. It's it's God. It's I wanna love God with my life. Then the when both husband and wife come to that that place, at least in my counseling offices in the past, that's when you see God do a miracle.
Speaker 1:Okay. I wanna ask you, though. There let's say we're we're we're in the high ninety percentile of success rate with seeing couples who, and I'd say one hundred percent of the couples that are following Jesus and they put down what you said, they're utterly devoted to Christ, both of them. But there are those marriages we weren't able to save. I'd be curious, has there ever been a marriage that had adultery of any kind where they both were loving Jesus, they both were humble, they both were coming back and saying, We want to work on this, but there's distrust, there's hurt, there's all this.
Speaker 1:Has there ever been failure when both were in that posture?
Speaker 2:I've never seen it.
Speaker 1:I've never seen it either.
Speaker 2:Never not once.
Speaker 1:Yeah, never, not
Speaker 2:Almost thirty years of counseling.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's think about, we hadn't planned, I had not thought of going here beforehand, so this is unplanned, so I'm putting you on the spot. I want you to think about the couples that didn't make it. Yeah. And I want us quickly, off the fly, if we have more time, we could do a better list, let's come up with the top three or four things that we see as patterns for those that after an affair, they came to us, the church, or they came to you, counseling, or some mixture of both, and it didn't work. What happened?
Speaker 2:I can immediately start to see case studies fly around in my head and and themes. Honestly, I think one of the first themes is dishonesty. If the person is not honest, if the person doesn't come clean, if the person is continuing to lie, then it's a no go. Yeah. It won't it won't it won't make it.
Speaker 1:It won't Big wall. Big door.
Speaker 2:See you. And and what's fascinating, I'll say this to whoever, you know, our hope today is twofold. Ultimately, to prevent oh, let this be a preventative conversation. Let this help you affair proof your marriage through Christ. But, also, this is a message to the person who says, you know what?
Speaker 2:I've already been through a really hard thing. I've already broken trust or I've already my spouse has broken trust with me. This is for both to just take and say, God, do a new thing. Create beauty from the ashes. So either way, there's hope here.
Speaker 2:But a a pattern I've seen is sometimes people when particularly if they've been busted. Now praise God for the person who makes a mistake and comes forward immediately. Okay? That that in that, again, is a building of trust. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:There's something about that very, very different than getting busted. But a pattern I've seen with people who get tend to get busted or get caught is if they are not already pricked in their spirit with the holy spirit's conviction, then there is a immediate, almost fight or flight, like, I've gotta protect my sin. I've gotta protect my situation or my name or my face. And so they might confess a little bit, but then there's all this other other that's behind that confession. For example, one of the wildest cases I ever saw was an individual confess to five different affairs to the spouse.
Speaker 2:Yet to me, confessed eight. Yeah. I mean, at that point
Speaker 1:Like what?
Speaker 2:What I mean, what's three more? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I don't mean that, but it's but but why? Why not just say the total
Speaker 1:We say make this the worst day of your life.
Speaker 2:You do.
Speaker 1:Before you can have any better day, make this the worst day of your life. Let me give you another one. You had lying. I would say pride. One of the couples will not bend, they will not break, and it could even be the one who's been hurt.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But one of them will not have humility, and the one that's been hurt, there has to, and look, you are the victim here. There's no robbing you of that. You are the victim here, But because you're the victim here doesn't mean that there wasn't something that you need to look at in your own life.
Speaker 2:That is true.
Speaker 1:And there must be humility whenever you're dealing with an atomic bomb like this that's gone off in your marriage. I think pride is the second big one.
Speaker 2:Two things can exist at the same time. Never forget this. We say this over and over again. The person who committed the adultery is completely in the wrong. There is no excuse.
Speaker 2:That is that is their choice. That is all on them. And at the same time, there could be things in the other person's life where I have things I did wrong in our relationship. I set our relationship potentially up for temptation. And there just needs to be, as you said, a true humble evaluation of what have what sin have I brought to this marriage?
Speaker 2:What weaknesses? What mistakes have I made? And again, it's not a either or, but it's also not saying, oh, well, lessens the affair or that lessens what you did. Right. No.
Speaker 2:It's being honest enough and humble enough to look at all of it. I think another pattern that I've seen that marked marriages that did not make it, miss Woods Hugge, is unforgiveness. Yeah. I I think of it of just a a couple even now, and it's just heartbreaking as I saw the residing anger in the husband's face at what his wife had done and just the refusal and the continue continued pattern of bringing it back up in words and in moments of heaping shame upon shame. And, you know, eventually that marriage couldn't stand
Speaker 1:it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Couldn't stand the
Speaker 1:I mean, that's three big, big patterns that that can keep us busy. Yeah. If you're evaluating yourself, lying, pride, and unforgiveness, bitterness. One of the things that I believe biblically so deeply about adultery, about affairs, is that before it's an ever an emotional issue, before there's affection that drifts, before you wind up in the wrong bed, before it's a physical issue, or a sexual issue, or a kissing issue, or a holding hands issue, or texting late night issue, before it's any of those things, it is a heart issue. And that's what we see in Matthew five twenty eight, anyone who looks lustfully, Jesus said, at a woman has committed adultery with her in his heart.
Speaker 1:And so before it's a, it doesn't just happen, it's like people say, I fell in love, right? I fell into this, hey, it just happened. No, didn't. No, you allowed your heart to happen day after day, night after night, time after time. There was a slow drip, and again, I'm talking to Christ followers Right.
Speaker 1:Right as a Christ follower, yes, I'm talking to Christ followers right now, you are not immune, and you don't have a superpower to protect you from this.
Speaker 2:Other than Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you let it go, your heart is vulnerable, just like someone who doesn't know Jesus.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And so talk about the heart a little bit and how it starts there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you wanna affair proof your marriage. We wanna I mean, let's just say, we, you and me, Brandon, we want to affair proof It our starts with understanding the dynamic of how we even get there. And it starts with going to the root. And when you have a worldview based on the Bible, God's so good to diagnostically expose, hey, how does sin happen? Because sin happens.
Speaker 2:How? And it starts in the heart. James chapter one talks about this. We refer to it all the time that temptation comes. And what happens is it is that your heart, your desires, they're lured away by that temptation.
Speaker 2:And when your heart is deceived and it it just unites with that temptation, then it ignites sin. That's the very next step. And out of that sin, which is those thoughts, the things you're fantasizing about, you're thinking about, because out of your heart come the thoughts you think is coming from somewhere. And then we take action, and those actions always lead to results. The bible says death, something you love, is gonna die.
Speaker 2:In this case, it can very likely be, if not careful, your marriage. And so what do we mean when we say heart? Your heart is actively reaching. It actively has these desires, these motives. It's grabbing for something that it wants.
Speaker 1:We have active hearts.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Your heart doesn't turn off. Your heart is always always always on, reaching, hungry, and it was made to be that way. Our hearts were made to worship God constantly, perpetually, and our hearts were made to constantly, perpetually be satisfied with the presence and the person We of were made that way, but when sin infected and broke everything, our hearts were detached from perfect worship of God, and so we try to worship other things. We have right worship, wrong God, and so our hearts are untethered, and they're looking, they're trying to get back to the garden, they're trying to get back. We have a desperate need.
Speaker 1:As has been said, we have a God shaped hole in our lives that can only be filled by God. It's not a sex shaped hole. It is not a food shaped hole. It is not a friendship shaped, it's not a kid shaped hole. It is a God shaped hole.
Speaker 1:And if you're turning to your spouse to meet all of those godlike requirements for your happiness, those desires will idolize your spouse or idolize what you think they need to bring you.
Speaker 2:You bring up a great point and it creates a question. What do you think the desires are behind an affair? Let's just talk about some of the desires that could be underneath the surface, the things that we're reaching for.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, okay. So we may need I'll throw I'll throw something out there, and you may wanna peel deeper. Or you'll throw something out there I may want to peel deeper, but I would say first, I think of affection for a woman, respect for a man. A man wants to be seen, a man wants to be honored in his own home, a man wants to have, the man may feel like he needs, you don't need, you need Jesus, but it is a felt need that a man, there's, even the Bible says, respect your husband, and it says, For the man, live in an understanding way with your wife.
Speaker 1:And so, it could be affection, it could be tenderness toward a woman that she's missing, it could be respect, honor for a man. It could be sex. I mean, it could be that you're in a sexless marriage, you're in a cold marriage, you're in a sexless marriage.
Speaker 2:Everything, all those desires you just mentioned, we could put in front of it, I desire blank.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I desire blank. I I think I agree with everything you said, others that popped to my mind. Just I desire to be adored. I desire to be loved. I desire to be found interesting.
Speaker 2:You know? Oh, he's not interested in what I have to say, or we don't talk anymore, or she's not she doesn't pay attention to me. She disregards me. She disrespects me. You know, underneath those statements of accusation, there's a desire on the other side.
Speaker 2:She withholds sex from me. He doesn't wanna have sex with me anymore. I'll try and he doesn't want to. These are examples of, again, under underlying desires of I desire maybe it's I desire pleasure. I desire I want this to be fun.
Speaker 2:I want this to be exciting again. I want this to be special. I mean, the list goes on and on. And what's interesting, at least maybe we'd have to play back the tape, I don't think we said anything that's innately evil. I think every desire we just spoke Yep.
Speaker 2:Is a good desire. Mhmm. Even a God desire. But that's the problem is that we take good desires, and as people, we break them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we break them by saying and you're like, how do we break them? By saying, you know what? I don't trust God to meet these desires. I'm gonna take matters into my own hands. And in the case of this topic, what that looks like is I'm gonna reach outside of my marriage to get that desire met.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you end up getting these bad patterns of take, take, take, fight, fight, fight, I'm gonna withdraw, she's withdrawing. You both retreat to your corners, that never works. If you're in a marriage where one of you is retreating and withdrawing, you just keep giving them the love that God gives you. You just keep doing that.
Speaker 1:You see another biblical pattern in David and Bathsheba. You see David, he was at home when he should have been fighting and leading his people in battle. He was late at night, bad, late at night, drifting and wandering around and without purpose. He was looking, he saw, and then he pursued. And he pursued, and then when he pursued, so he had bad patterns, lack of purpose, then he had desires that weren't being fulfilled because he was following those bad patterns and lack of purpose.
Speaker 1:He was off purpose, so he had off desires. He fed the off desires, and then eventually it created death. And you have the fall of a great man. And you have this woman's life being wrecked, and it's brutal. It's a brutal, brutal story.
Speaker 1:And it shows us the path. And I would just say that for somebody right now, you may be listening to this, and I would just say, if you're starting to express some of the symptoms of being off purpose and off desire, if experiencing the symptoms of pornography, if you're experiencing the symptoms of fantasizing about another man, or how he might treat you, these little internal brain things that you think are no big deal, you start wanting to be away from them. You start wanting to look for ways to be alone. All these are symptoms and signs that, hey, there's some, these are blinking red lights on the dashboard of your life saying, check engine, check engine, Yes. Check because you're gonna wind up behaving in a way that you're shocked.
Speaker 1:All it takes is maybe you're drinking and you drink too much, and then those desires are there, and now your internal self control is gone, and you give in to those desires.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. And meanwhile, not only are those desires blinking red lights, understand this. God is very clear that we have a an an enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour. So even on your best day, this was kind of a revelation to you and me one time when we're talking about our own marriage. Even on the best day of our marriage, when we are strong together as a couple, and we are humming and there's health, and there's spiritual, you know, unity and all the things, we have an enemy absolutely determined to steal, kill, and destroy John Tenten.
Speaker 2:That's that's the commitment the enemy has. And so never underestimate that as as you walk into temptation and begin to allow your desires to be in control rather than God to be in control, there is an enemy waiting to pounce and And partner with your
Speaker 1:we've said this before, the years of helping others, we have come to a firm conviction. If you're not led by the Holy Spirit, you'll be led by another spirit. And what we've seen is when you have the spirit of lust, the spirit of lust is attracted to you. So lust finds lust.
Speaker 2:Crazy
Speaker 1:finds lust. Crazy finds searching. Crazy finds screaming for attention. Lust finds it. And so what you end up doing is you end up attracting people in the supernatural who are broken, who are lost like you, who are not in the right place, and it is a mixture that is death.
Speaker 1:You got two people that are finding one another because they're being led by dark spirits Absolutely. Toward one
Speaker 2:And look, You know, sometimes I think we oversensationalize the demonic, and we need to normalize it and understand that God said it. This isn't a battle against flesh and blood. Ephesians six chapters 10 and I mean, verse 10 and on makes it very clear. This isn't a battle of flesh and blood, just people, you and me, people, humans, that it's a darker battle. There's there's the demonic that is very, very real.
Speaker 2:And so when we understand that that's real just because we can't see with our eyes, it's just as real as the breath that we breathe. Then when we partner with the demonic in our sinful state, the demons can see each other. Like you just said, they can find each other, and they're like, oh, these two people would be great. And off we go.
Speaker 1:For our purposes.
Speaker 2:For our purposes. These for our destructive deadly purposes, these two would be great. And so our heart and our hope is to armor up. Yeah. Help us all to armor up.
Speaker 1:And to armor up, there's a biblical design for that. God doesn't just say, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. God says, do, do, do, do this, do this, this, run to this. So let's talk a little bit about the design. What I'm really talking about is your battle plan.
Speaker 1:And not the wisdom, the practical stuff that we have extrapolated from the Bible. We've got some things there that we can share for sure, some time tested things that we've learned the hard way, or things we've shared with others that have helped others. Biblically though, God has a lot to say about how to affair proof your marriage, how to protect yourself from those places. And we've already started with the problem. But what's the solution?
Speaker 2:I like the first one.
Speaker 1:Okay,
Speaker 2:go. I can't
Speaker 1:help got it. Can't help you. Go.
Speaker 2:I think and now we're just getting practical, right?
Speaker 1:We're getting biblical practical.
Speaker 2:Biblical practical. Biblical Okay. Biblical practical. Well, I don't know if this this is both.
Speaker 1:This is God's design. God has a lot to say Yeah. About what a marriage should look like.
Speaker 2:Yes. Go. Well, now I
Speaker 1:don't know. Song of Solomon. Okay. Let's start.
Speaker 2:Okay. You go.
Speaker 1:Song of Solomon. So where do I go in the bible? Does God what does God have to say? All he says is don't. All he says is David and Bathsheba.
Speaker 1:All He says is that, well, what does God say that's awesome?
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:And we have Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon, you have a husband and a wife. You have, in this book, you have conflict. In this book, you have intimacy. So it talks about how to praise one another.
Speaker 1:It talks about how to compliment one another. It talks about how to honor one another. It talks about how to lift one another up. God has a lot to say about that. In Ephesians five, God has the design for marriage.
Speaker 1:And I've already thrown out one, where in the word of God it talks about, how, husbands love your wives, wives respect your husbands. You know, husbands, love your wives like Christ, love the church. That is a tall standard. Okay? So you wanna fair proof for your marriage, love her like Jesus loves.
Speaker 2:Which by the way, I have a running belief that anything that God tells us to do in the bible is because we are bent to do the opposite. Right. And so if he's telling wives, wives, you need to respect your husbands, does that mean the husband is not to respect their wives? No. And there's issues on all sides.
Speaker 2:But there must be something about women where we are bent to disrespect. Or God would not go out of his way to say, wives, respect your husband. And same thing for husbands. I I there's probably not a man in the universe other than Jesus who's naturally bent to love his wife like Christ loved the church and laid down his life for her. That is not natural.
Speaker 1:First Corinthians seven is another place in scripture. It is so shockingly real.
Speaker 2:Very real.
Speaker 1:And it talks about sex and how long have you gone without sex. And here the apostle Paul is saying, hey, you should only refrain from regular intimacy with one another.
Speaker 2:Four parameters. Go ahead. Remember? Okay, you have to help me. It is.
Speaker 2:One is you both agree.
Speaker 1:You both agree.
Speaker 2:It's for a limited time. Limited time. You are praying.
Speaker 1:You're praying, then Limited
Speaker 2:might be the last
Speaker 1:one. You know, you're praying and then you come back together
Speaker 2:Praying, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he reinforces the other one. And we may have gotten that wrong, but I think it's right. But it's a limited time, and regular. Regular sexual activity is not gonna solve if you have a bad desire, if you have needs and all, but it is part of it, that regular but that's that's in there.
Speaker 2:Well, in the very next scripture after he gives those parameters of how to refrain from sex inside your marriage, he says so that you will not be tempted.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So, again, the lord is so like, don't try to get more spiritual than god. I mean, god is being very clear like, oh, you know, no. Not me. Not tempted. God's saying you will be tempted.
Speaker 2:And so as a guardian of your marriage, this is one of the ground zeros, is your sexual intimacy is a God decision, not a you decision. It's not something that you created nor you define. God already defined it. God gave us a template of what it's to look like. And so it's on the part of the husband and the wife to say, will I follow God's design for sex in my marriage, or will I not?
Speaker 1:The ultimate scripture that's pro marriage and pro fidelity and pro we're gonna last the the distant we're gonna go the distance is first Corinthians 13. I saved it for last.
Speaker 2:It's
Speaker 1:the love chapter. It's love is patient. Love is kind. Love is love is. And really just ask yourself, am I being that?
Speaker 1:Not are they being that, am I being that? And start with yourself before you ever look at them. Am I being that? And when both of you are striving to be the first Corinthians 13, lover to one another, then it's amazing how things get good.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's so powerful. Those are all verbs. It's action. And so many times, we just slip into the world's definition of love and think it's purely a feeling and how you make me feel, the experience that you give to me. And it's a very selfish, very self absorbed definition of love.
Speaker 2:And it's no less than the feelings between one another, but it's anchored on so much more. It's anchored on something that's a rock, a foundation, rather than just a feeling that's going to ebb and flow. And we live in a world that with the ebb and flow, no wonder we find ourselves in really, really hard places.
Speaker 1:Okay. So let's give some practical wisdom.
Speaker 2:This is the one where I had the next Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where where we are looking at what have we learned, what's an example in our own life, What is something that we've seen from others? What have we heard others say? Let's give some real land the plane kinda stuff. Yeah. And I could go or you could go.
Speaker 2:Well, my first one, I think that you would agree, And I'll say it, and then I'll explain it. Never say never.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's the first stop.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Too many of us I have heard this. People will say, I would never do that. I would never or he would never cheat on me. Mhmm. Listen.
Speaker 2:The bible says, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god. No one underline no one is not guilty of sin and not capable of the unthinkable.
Speaker 1:And that can be really scary to hear that for people because that makes that triggers maybe they came from a broken home, and there's some deep, deep seated father wounds, mother wounds, whatever, and that could be very hard to hear. But just a word about the gospel, and this is what I mean by the gospel, the good news that the crucified and risen Christ is Lord. What this means is, I want you to look hard and be willing to see your total depravity, willing to see your utter fallenness. And that's what scares you, is you're scared of their fallenness. You're scared of their depravity, that that depravity could bite you.
Speaker 1:That depravity could hurt you, and that's true. And you just gotta wrap your brain around that. But here's the deal. When you understand that, it makes you desperate. You realize how desperately lost you are, but it makes you equally desperate for the power of God, because the power of God is the answer.
Speaker 1:So it's this inversion thing where as desperate as I understand how totally lost I can be, how totally depraved I could be, that's the quotient that I will run to God for my help. When you think I'm only a little bad, you only go to God a little bit. And I wanna encourage you to absolutely lay it out, absolutely open yourself up that, hey, he could be that bad, and he really needs Jesus. I could be that bad, and I really need Jesus. We can't play games.
Speaker 2:There's no room for game playing. I mean, that's unbelievable. What how'd you say that again? Say the little bit part?
Speaker 1:Yeah. If I'm only a little bit bad, I only need a little bit of God.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's just that's
Speaker 1:only little
Speaker 2:Yeah. I only need a little help. And so that's the first stop, is the humility to really understand my situation and my capabilities apart from Jesus in my life. The holy spirit transforming, changing his word, everything transforming me. That's the that's my capability.
Speaker 2:That's my potential. And so with that understood, we progress in a different kind of way. There's a heightened sense of awareness. There's a heightened sense of urgency. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that kinda gives us some more practical sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so one of the things that I tell men is, whenever I'm in a small group with men, and I'm equipping them, this is an example, is I say, Hey, try to envision life after that affair. When you're starting to see somebody at the office that's looking at you and giving you attention.
Speaker 2:Laughing at your jokes.
Speaker 1:Laughing at your jokes, they put their hand on your back and you feel it, and man, I haven't felt that kind of feeling in a long, long time. As a matter of fact, my wife won't even touch me or look at me at the time. When you begin to have those, I want you to fast forward. I want you to put yourself in a living room, and I want your kids sitting in front of you, as you tell them what you have done. I want you to imagine being at a soccer game, and your spouse is over there with another guy at the soccer game, and there's conflict.
Speaker 1:The daughter who's playing soccer is looking, Which sideline do I go to? I want you to look into their eyes, and I want you to see the pain. Now for me, this is a powerful tool. What I'm really up to is trying to get you to think beyond the moment of infatuation, the moment of adrenaline, the moment of pleasure, and I want you to taste the death. I want you to see the darkness.
Speaker 1:And just sniffing that, just whiffing that can cause you to go, Ugh. And the way I'd say it, it makes me want to throw up. The thought of you bent over crying because of a confession that I made, you heaving and crying, and the darkness in the home, and you in that kind of pain, makes me want to throw up. I just believe it's a powerful tool to look beyond this moment and try to imagine, hey, this is where my sin has had been.
Speaker 2:Yes. And I think that that is, just my opinion, is most effective because it's like you're visualizing. It's like you're projecting of where would the enemy take this thing, is most effective on the far front end
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Of this process. Yes. Because once you dab your toe, once you stick your toe in the water, once you get a little further down the road of walking toward an affair, it's it's wild how the hardness of our heart no longer carries the same care of all of that. I mean, it's it the you would think that family and and children are enough to stop it, but we reach a certain point where the freight train is out the gates. And so Yeah.
Speaker 2:What we're doing is we're saying that's an example. It's a tool on the front end that will help us before we get to that other place. And it's very powerful on that front end to see. Let's just talk about the death before we look at all this desire I'm feeling. Let's look at the death.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's very, very powerful. Just some practical things that I would tell men and women, you know, I've talked about, is awareness as we engage the opposite sex. That there's a genuine I have some wonderful men in in our lives that I love dearly. They are dear friends, but there is an awareness in how I engage
Speaker 1:A physical awareness.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Oh, a physical awareness. The things that I would talk about and not talk about awareness.
Speaker 1:These are really good friends.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Love Jesus.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Their heart really good friends.
Speaker 2:Their wives are my dearest friends. Yes. And and there is a awareness that I seek to have, a, to honor God, b, to honor you and follow God's design. And just, again, we have an armor up when it comes to this issue. But that wasn't always the wisdom when I was that little college girl.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's tell this story.
Speaker 2:So, you know, maybe some of you identify, but when I was in college and you two, I mean, we're all
Speaker 1:in the
Speaker 2:same bubble. We're just all in the same bubble. Guys, girls, we're single, we're all friends.
Speaker 1:And you're all running like a pack.
Speaker 2:Yes. Running like a pack. And I remember graduating from college and moving into the business world and just having that same mentality of just I'm a I'm an outgoing person. I enjoy people. I love people.
Speaker 2:Love relating with people. And so I'd find myself in conversations with men that I worked with. I mean, it was very regular for me. I mean, you and I were dating at the time.
Speaker 1:So you were in medical at that time?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I was working for a medical group. And so there was a whole group of medical practitioners. And at any given work day, I would be at a lunch with one of my colleagues. And, you know, he's married.
Speaker 2:I'm not. We're just at lunch doing our work thing. And this is the way of the world. And many of you are like, yeah. That's how you do it.
Speaker 2:Well
Speaker 1:Do you remember me giving you a heads up about one of those doctors?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, I do. There was a doctor that I didn't
Speaker 1:We were dating.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We were dating. And, again, this is a quote Christian guy, but all of sudden, you find yourselves in conversations about the loss of his wife and his, you know, relational journey. And there's things that we're delving into in passing conversation that quite frankly was a danger, especially when I'm dating you.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And you brought that up and it that was like a first step to beginning to open my eyes. Yeah. And so then fast forward working for another company and being in an environment where I'm a training manager at some point and I have territories and I'm traveling. And I really wanna talk to the people who are traveling right now. First of all, to maybe the brand new person out of college that that my story may help you really early on in your in your journey.
Speaker 2:But there's others right now that you're way into your career and travels at just a part of your regular life. Either way, armor up. And I'm gonna bury the lead. What I would say now is, you know, we advise don't ride in a car with the opposite sex, just the two of you. I mean, when you can help it.
Speaker 2:Don't that's not a wise choice. Having meals with just you and that other person of the opposite sex, not a great choice, try to avoid that.
Speaker 1:Especially if a relational kind of thing. I mean, if you're, you know, I just think it's very, very caution, caution, caution, caution.
Speaker 2:Caution, caution, caution.
Speaker 1:Big
Speaker 2:time. So, yeah, so I'm traveling, I mean
Speaker 1:I would not do it.
Speaker 2:Right. We I wouldn't.
Speaker 1:We would not.
Speaker 2:We do not do it.
Speaker 1:We do not do that.
Speaker 2:We would not do it, and we would not advise others to And do it's again, it's just armor up. You're like, oh, you're too strict. Well, we are. Yeah. And we just because we believe that that can open up doors unintentionally even.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, I'm thinking we're all friends. And finding myself in these different environments traveling and and doing trainings and having a partner from another state given to me, and that that person's a man. I'm a woman. We're the only people training this group of people. And I found myself in these environments and and really in a company where there was just an environment that didn't see any problem with that environment.
Speaker 2:And there was a time when it's like my eyes opened and God was like, wake up, girl. Armor up. Eyes up. You need to have a higher guard in the things, in the conversations, all of it.
Speaker 1:You begin to see the people you were working with.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:There was an environment that facilitated that facilitated this tension and pull of a too familiarity because you're just spending all this time together.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. All a sudden, you're having conversations, you know, that, hey, I don't think that's necessarily appropriate. Or all of a sudden and you may have found this in your in your travel. You're you're in a work environment and and you witness somebody's drinking too much, and next thing you know and here's what's interesting. And I and I I found a pattern over time now.
Speaker 2:If only you know, it's like, what you know then is different than what you know now. And working with people and seeing patterns in marriages that have faced this very difficult reality of adultery, there's patterns that emerge. And and with people who travel, one of the things that I've heard is it's not the first meal. It's not the fifth work meal with the with the group that goes out after hours. It's not the twenty fifth meal.
Speaker 2:All of sudden, it's that twenty sixth.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Something happened. He drank too much. She drank too much. And next thing, they they wind up in bed together
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Having to face their spouse when they go back home. And these are realities that will slip up on us if not aware. And so that's a practical measure that we have decided is, you know what? Have a filter when it comes to you how you relate, how you engage with the opposite sex.
Speaker 1:The last thing I'd say is these are all so good, but I would start while I'm single. I would start on these practices. It's not like you get married and now I start to affair proof my marriage. You need to start affair proofing your future marriage because it's a matter of the heart. If you have decided, I'm going to be a person who seeks heart after the Lord, and I'm only going to date people who are like that.
Speaker 1:I'm only going to marry people that I know, remember that fallenness quotient, that they understand and they walk in the fear of themselves, which proportionately lives in the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the living in the awesome realization that you have me. The fear of yourself, when you begin to understand, man, if I do not have the fear of the Lord, then nobody has me. Nobody can catch me. Date that way, marry that way, and then finally, healing.
Speaker 2:Oh, healing. I mean, as we talk about such a profound topic that has hit, as we read, potentially one out of four marriages, someone listening to our voice has experienced this pain. Either you've been the one who made the mistake or another person, you know, has made that mistake in your marriage. And what we wanna tell you is that there is no relationship that's gone too far for God to heal. There's no soul that's gone too far for God to be unable to heal it.
Speaker 2:And we said it earlier, but I can say from my experience that when two people, no matter how devastating the circumstances may look, when two people, a husband and a wife, turn to God and they commit to follow the Lord and love the Lord, that out of that can overflow the most amazing miracle stories you've ever seen. I can personally think of couples right now that by the world's standards, they were already done. It was over. But God
Speaker 1:But God.
Speaker 2:But God. God stepped in. The people responded, and their marriages are flourishing. And this is not a one case. This is many cases.
Speaker 2:And so there's so many steps. We don't have time in this conversation to hit them all of rebuilding trust and what that looks like to build back a marriage. And there are steps for that. But what we will say is that commit to rebuilding trust. If you broke the trust, commit to rebuilding it.
Speaker 2:If they broke trust against you, commit to the journey of forgiveness and healing and evaluating your own part.
Speaker 1:And I'd say you need to find a great, bible loving, holy spirit empowered church that's alive. Do not expect your marriage to be healed in a dead church, in a church that is an unbiblical church, a church that is a soft church. You need to find a strong church, a church that's growing, a church that's doing things, a church that has vibrant ministry because your marriage is on fire. You need the right doctors. You need the right team assembled.
Speaker 1:Get in there and put yourself in a position for good things to happen. This is what we've seen. If people have come to us, they're like, We came, and it's the greatest story. And what I love to tell people in that moment, your worst day, is that you will one day experience an intimacy with one another that exceeds what you had before.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:That's the power of the healing God, is He can actually take you further, you communicate better, you relate to each other better, you're more sensitive to one another, Your intimacy is better. It's all better. And that's the vision we have for you. Well, today, that's it for us. That's it for this time in The Overflow, how to fair proof your marriage.
Speaker 1:And we will see you next time on The Overflow.