Meekness When It’s Difficult

Bob Lepine: When you’re in bondage to a sin like pornography or lust, the first step toward wholeness is to tell the truth about it. Here’s Dannah Gresh.

Dannah Gresh: Every sin that we experience in our life starts with a lie. When you are living a lie, you aren’t ever going to experience the intimacy that God wants you to experience in your life. Honest confession, though, is the beginning of healing.

Bob L.: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for February 14, 2023. I’m Bob Lepine.

For those of you who are joining us for the first time this week and scratching your head and going, “Where’s Dannah? And who’s that man starting today’s program?”

I’m Bob Lepine, a longtime friend of Revive Our Hearts. I’ve been on the advisory board for Revive Our Hearts for more than two decades now and have been at all of the True Woman events. I’m sitting in Dannah’s chair today because we’re going to be hearing from Bob and Dannah as they share from a new book Dannah has written called Happily Even After, about one of the most challenging seasons they’ve been through in their marriage.

And here on Valentine’s Day, which we think of as a day of hearts and roses and flowers, a lot of couples are experiencing pain today because there has been sin in a marriage. The couples are isolated. They’re divided. And today is not a day when they’re thinking about love and passion. It’s a day when they’re thinking about frustration and sadness.

And we should just say here as we begin, the subject matter we’re going to be talking about today is subject matter that younger listeners may not need to listen to. You will want to decide as a mom whether you want your kids tuned in to this. We’re going to be talking about pornography, and so you make that decision about whether you want younger listeners to be involved, or whether you want to come back and listen to this later.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And, Bob, I’m sitting here thinking about the many times that women have come to me with tears in their eyes and frustration, and maybe anger in their spirits, dealing particularly with this issue of pornography in their marriage. Never has it been more accessible, never has it been more prevalent, and it is so, so damaging.

If this is something you’ve experienced in your own marriage, as you’re listening to this conversation, let me just remind you that this is not God’s intent. This is not a good thing. This is not something that is acceptable.

Ephesians chapter 5 gives us God’s standard. It says, “Sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among saints.”

The New International Version there says, “There should not even be a hint of sexual immorality in your life or in your marriage.”

Now, we all fall short of God’s perfect standard for our purity and for our marriages, and that’s where the gospel comes in. That’s where confession comes in. That’s where the grace and mercy of God comes in.

Bob L.: And wives who are listening to the program today need to be aware of the fact that the question is not: “Has my husband stumbled in this area?” because almost every husband listening has stumbled at some point.

The question is: “Is he caught in a pattern here?” That’s what we’re going to hear from Bob and Dannah, and “How can I be an ally in helping him get free from this snare that he has found himself in?”

Nancy: I think we also need to realize as wives that both partners in every marriage are sinners. Both partners need the grace of God and need grace from each other.

So, as I’ve talked with Dannah over the years about some of these situations in her own marriage, she’s shared openly about how she experienced God’s grace through her husband Bob early on in their marriage when she confessed her past sexual sin in her teen years to her husband. And now today, we’ll hear how Dannah has had the opportunity to extend God’s grace to her husband Bob.

Yesterday on Revive Our Hearts, they shared about a moment when Bob had them sit down in some red chairs to tell Dannah something that he knew was going to break her heart. Now, picking up with that story, here’s Bob Lepine talking with Bob and Dannah Gresh.

Bob L.: You have shared with us already about the moment in your marriage when it became clear to you, Dannah, that pornography was an issue that you thought had been dealt with, but it had reemerged. Bob was looking at porn. He confessed that to you. And we talked about how you responded in that moment.

I know you had to feel a sense of betrayal. Jesus said when a man looks on a woman to lust, it’s the same as, in one sense, as committing adultery. I think any wife has to feel, “My husband has been unfaithful to me.”

Dannah: Yes. I’m not sure, because my husband hasn’t had an affair, but when I sit down with women whose husbands have had an affair, the emotions they experience are very similar. A lot of times when I talk with women whose husbands are struggling with pornography, they’re not aware of the risk of escalation, that this is going to morph into something if it’s not handled well. If you together don’t work to assault and confront this sin in his life, it will escalate into something.

And what we tell ourselves is the lie that my response isn’t reasonable because he didn’t have an affair. And ,every man is struggling with this, because that’s what we’re told.

Well, the fact is not every man is struggling with it.

Are the majority of men struggling with lust and pornography? Yes, that is true.

Are all of them struggling? No.

Are all of them struggling without fighting it? No.

But we tell ourselves every man is struggling, so this is just how it is these days in this modern time, and we believe that lie.

But I want to tell you something, as long as you have the Holy Spirit in your life, you will never be content and satisfied in a marriage where you are equivocating in the area of accepting lust and pornography as a part of your marriage—never.

Bob L.: And we don’t want to say there’s an equivalence between being married to a man who has confessed looking at pornography and a man who has confessed to being in an affair. Those are on a different gradation, a different level of impact. And yet, there’s a similarity that exists in both of those situations.

Dannah: Yes. Right. Your husband is going to experience shame. Categorically, that may be a little different, but shame is a relentless, evil tyrant that will create a gulf between you and your husband.

The devil is such a double-minded being, because he will lie to a man and tell him, “It’s not that bad. It’s going to alleviate the pain in your life. God will forgive you.”

I mean, I don’t know what the lies are, Bob would better know what the lies are that caused him to do this, but all I know is this: after my husband acted out, I saw the devil telling him, “You are worthless. You have no right to be in this relationship. You have no worth in this world.”

I saw a man completely tormented and tortured by the enemy. I mean, there came a point when it became godly conviction and a calling back to wholeness. But I also saw the enemy torment my husband. And I had to be a wife that rose up to fight beside him, not with him. Bob was not my enemy.

Bob L.: That’s so important, I think, for a wife to understand if there’s going to be a work of God in this marriage to bring about healing, reconciliation. She has to become an ally in the fight rather than being an opponent of her husband. She has to figure out how to deal with her own hurt, betrayal . . . all the emotions. You were feeling all of these emotions of hurt, betrayal, confusion, “Am I not enough?” You’ve got to work through that and get to a point where you can come alongside and be an ally with your husband in this battle.

Dannah: Yes, because what I now know, and what Bob and I have done . . . We don’t have a degree in anything. Well, we do have degrees, but not in terms of sexuality or pornography or behavior science. But we’ve read enough, been through enough course work for our own marriage, that we now know that a man’s brain is really traumatized and compromised by pornography use when it happens over time.

What began as a sin problem does become a physiological brain problem. And so you do have to rise up as a partner, as a wife, as a spouse, to say, “I’m going to help you through this.” Even as if my husband’s legs had been damaged, if his spinal column had been damaged, I would need to help him.

The same way yesterday I was talking about how I enjoyed Bob’s support and nurture when my back was damaged. He was my arms and legs and feet. He fed me. He helped me put my socks on because I couldn’t bend over to reach my feet

I had to do some of the same sorts of things for Bob when we finally recognized this is not just a simple sin problem. This is also a very complicated brain problem. We needed clinical understanding and biblical help in understanding the clinical impact of what his pornography addiction had done to his mind.

Bob L.: I want to explore the path from where you were to where you are today, the process that brought you through the valley and out of it. But, Bob, let me go back to your decision that evening to sit down with Dannah and confess what was going on. The pain of concealment had to have become greater than the pain of revelation. Just talk about why you got to a point where you said, “I have to be honest with my wife about this even though everything inside me wants to keep it hidden and make it go away on its own.”

Bob Gresh: Well, one of the things that happened was that, in many cases when I was really acting out, I did penance in the marriage. So, to make up for what I considered myself to be a real dirtball husband, I did more things to say, “If I’m doing this, I can at least be taking care of Dannah more.” So sometimes that would happen. I’d live in that kind of cycle.

So, oddly enough, sometimes when I was at my worst, I was actually serving Dannah more than usual. Sometimes our marriage was seemingly closer, from her perspective, but I was doing it out of guilt.

And then there’d be a timeline issue. So I’m like, “When am I going to wreck our life in the next three, six months, or a year? When do I want to wreck that?”

So, there had been times in my life when it’s going on, and we have an event coming up, or we have this coming up or a vacation coming up, or birthday, or whatever. Around this time we had a major event in the family that was coming up–a year from then, or whatever–and I was, like, “I can’t mess this up. I can’t break this up in the next year. I can’t confess this.”

I lived in real misery that year. I remember not taking communion. I’d go through the line, taking the communion, and walking out the back door and getting rid of it. I wouldn’t take communion out of fellowship, and that was a long year.

I’ve never really been caught. What happened was I couldn’t stand it anymore. The guilt overwhelmed me.

Bob L.: The conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Bob G.: The conviction of the Holy Spirit overwhelms me. And, I guess I’m thankful for that, because otherwise I could actually have lived in this because I didn’t get caught.

Bob L.: Dannah, there are some wives who would think, You know, honestly, I’d rather my husband just keep it a secret and I don’t know about it. I’d rather live in ignorance. But that’s not God’s design for a marriage, is it?

Dannah: No. He designed us to be in emotional intimacy with one another. There are wives who say that. There are marriages who live that way. The wives will say, “Just tell your friends. Just confess to your friends.”

Honest confession, though, is the beginning of healing. If the person in the world that I’m supposed to be the most one with, the most intimate with, has a deep, dark secret, I am not one with him. There is a great barrier between us.

But as you confess and as you reveal sin, it begins to reveal the lies in your heart. Every sin that we experience in our life starts with a lie. The most easy example of that is Eve believed the lie that if she ate that piece of fruit, she was going to be like God. It led to complete devastation for all mankind.

There is a lie in our heart when we reach out for any piece of forbidden fruit on this planet. When you are living a lie, because I don’t know who you really are, or you don’t know who I really am, you aren’t ever going to experience the intimacy that God wants you to experience in our life.

Emotions are an essential ingredient of intimacy. Bob was hiding his emotions from me so that he couldn’t hurt me. And, you know what? I did not like hurting. There were many times when I, in those beginning weeks, thought, I wish I didn’t know this. Ignorance is bliss. I’m fine with the fatigue and muscle pain. This is worse.

But then our marriage counselor, Pete Ciper, said two sentences I’ll never forget. “Pain is not the problem. It’s the gift.” Because the emotional pain was the buoy on the surface that helped us find the lies in Bob’s heart, in my heart; that got us to the place in our marriage where we were willing to live for it. It really was a period of, I would say eighteen months or more, where we both knew, “There’s something not right,” but we were willing to live in the lie because we were both afraid of how painful it would be to figure it all out.

Deep down, a husband who’s using sex or pornography as a medicine to numb his emotions is experiencing a separation from God and a separation from his wife. And his loneliness is this deep pain that he’s hopeless to remedy on his own.

And so, rather than press into being honest with God—not taking communion, and honesty with your wife—not confessing—you keep self-medicating, and you go deeper and deeper and deeper into the sin.

What I want to tell every twenty-five-year-old wife, or every thirty-year-old wife, or thirty-five-year-old wife, what I wish is someone had taken me by the shoulders and said, “Listen to me. This will escalate if you do not fix it. This will escalate if you don’t take it to the Lord together and get the help that you need.”

But as long as you’re allowing that lie to be a refuge . . . There’s a passage in the Old Testament where one of the prophets says that the Israelites made a lie their refuge and falsehood their hiding place. And it’s written about the Israelites when they didn’t feel safe. They didn’t feel like God was giving them the safety they needed, so they made alliance with a Syrian king, and they thought, This is going to keep us safe. And it just led down to a pathway of more and more lies and more and more deception.

Well, that’s what we do in our marriages when we’re aware that there’s something that your husband is making an alliance with to make him feel safe, make him feel soothed. But if you’re not doing what you need to get that sinful alliance out of your lives and out of your heart, he’s going to keep going back to that. And every time he does, because of the way pornography works, he’s going to need something different or something more. It’s going to escalate, and he’s going to get further and further away from you. His shame is going to get greater. His pain management need is going to get greater. And so the sad cycle goes because he’s so afraid of emotional intimacy.

His emotional intimacy is going to require your pain and his pain, but it’s the very medicine that his heart needs to overcome that sin.

Bob L.: So should a wife who’s listening be proactive and sit down with her husband tonight and say, “I want to know if you’re looking at pornography. I want to be your ally if you are to help get you free from this for the sake of our marriage and to honor God”?

Dannah: Well, here’s where I feel like Bob is one of the wisest men I know. “What did I do right? And what did I do wrong?” It’s okay to say that, too.

Bob G.: Well, because Dannah was kind of an expert on purity and sexuality and stuff and the things she’s been studying for her whole life . . . I can’t remember anything she did wrong, honestly. That sounds ridiculous, but I can’t remember anything.

Dannah: What did I do that was helpful?

Bob G.: Well, I want to say that there’s a phenomenon here that I think you’ll find very interesting, and that’s that it was much harder for me to lie to Dannah than it was to do all the lust, pornography, and all the other stuff. That was compartmentalized away. But if she asked me a direct question, it was very difficult for me to lie, which is strange.

In my mental code, there were some rules. And one of them was to not lie to Dannah when in fact, you know, I was doing all kinds of things that were harming our marriage.

I’ve found that many men are like that. And so, I think the way you phrase it, Bob, is excellent. It’s okay to sit down tonight and say, “I’ve heard this on the radio, and I wonder if you struggle with this, and if you did, would you allow me to help you with it?” That’s going to be really hard for a man, but after a while they might—even if they lie that night—they might come back and later tell the truth.

Bob L.: A wife who’s going to ask that question, if a husband says “yes,” then she’s going to be ready to face whatever the devastation, the emotional devastation of that is. Here’s where I would point her: Galatians 6:1. It says, “If you see a brother trapped in a sin, you who are spiritually prepared for this moment . . .” So, you’ve prayed about it. You’ve sought counsel. You’ve prepared your own heart spiritually. You’ve looked at the logs in your own eye. “You who are spiritual, the goal is to restore the one who is trapped, and you do it with a spirit of meekness or gentleness, being careful that you don’t stumble into some sin yourself” (paraphrased)—a sin of anger or bitterness or whatever else it could be.

So you have to be ready to ask that question. You’ve got to be spiritually ready to ask that question. But then, some wives are going to ask the question, and some husbands are going to go, “No, that’s not an issue for me.” She’s going to walk away going, “Okay, I think he just lied to me.” And now she doesn’t know what to do because she’s wondering if he’s looking at porn, and now she’s wondering if he’s looking at porn and lying to her. That can leave her emotionally sidelined.

Dannah: Right.

Bob G.: It’s easy to go through Scriptures and do that, and that’s what we all hope for. But what many, many women will do is ask that question as a matter of course, “They told me to ask this question.” And then be completely shocked and devastated if the man says “yes.” There will be a flood of emotions that they will experience because most of them will say, “Well, it wouldn’t be my husband. I would know that, or my child, or whatever.”

So that’s something they’ll have to be prepared for, and I’m not sure you can be fully prepared.

Bob G.: No.

Bob L.: If you get a “yes” answer to that question, you may think you’re ready for the betrayal you’re going to experience. But until you get the “yes” answer, you don’t know what that punch in the gut really feels like.

Dannah: Yes. And here’s where it’s so important to have that community, whether it’s a godly woman that you know and trust or a counselor. When I suspected that Bob had relapsed, but he wasn’t being forthright with me. I wasn’t asking him. He wasn’t lying directly to me, but I didn’t want to ask.

My counselor said, “Has he relapsed?”

I said, “I don’t think so, but maybe.” Like, that was kind of our conversation.

And she said, “You’re afraid of the truth.”

And I said, “A little bit.”

She turned me to Proverbs 3:5 and 6, and she said, “Dannah, we have to pray, because we can’t lean on our own understanding, but we can trust in the Lord with all our heart. We can acknowledge Him in all of our ways, and He’s going to make your path straight, ultimately, Dannah. So let’s go to Him and let’s say, ‘Lord, would You please bring such holy conviction to Bob’s heart that his life is miserable unless he brings truth and confession, first and foremost to God, and also to your heart.’”

That was Tippy’s advice to me. So we prayed together. For months we prayed that, that the Lord would make Bob miserable.

Bob L.: Sounds like it worked, Bob.

Bob G.: She was great at that prayer. But it was a gift. It was a gift of consequences and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

There’s a concept called, “Crazy Making,” and that’s where the wife will experience something, see things that she thinks are off, have an instinct about things, but the husband will tell her, “It’s not true. You’re crazy. I’m not doing this.” Sometimes women should trust their instinct.

And it’s also okay to ask your husband to have some boundaries so he doesn’t slip. It’s okay to say:

• “I’d feel really good if you’d have Covenant Eyes or a blocker on your computer.”
• “I’d feel really great if you’re not on your computer at night without me.”
• “I’d feel safe if you were in a group of men talking about this stuff.”

I think that’s reasonable. For how many men struggle with this, I think it’s reasonable for wives to say, “There’s a pretty gigantic chance you’re going to struggle with this, or you have. Maybe we should put some easy boundaries in that I would feel safe with.”

Bob L.: A husband who is committed to loving his wife needs to be ready to accept those kinds of boundaries as a way to demonstrate his love for her. Right?

Bob G.: Absolutely. I have boundaries, very high boundaries. They still, and always will be somewhat aggravating to me. But that’s a consequence and a safety for me and for Dannah to build trust.

Dannah: You just said the word “meekness” a few moments ago, Bob. That’s really a word for a woman who is going to enter into this battle for her husband.

There’s a verse in 1 Peter 3:1–4, that a lot of women aren’t really comfortable embracing when their husband is struggling. But it says, “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands . . .”

Right there, some of you whose hearts are hurting from your husbands, you want to turn off. I want to encourage you, don’t do that. These verses are written for wives whose husbands are not walking in rightness with the Lord, so they matter.

It says, “Be subject to your own husband, so that even if some do not obey the [Lord] . . .” Your husband might not be obeying the Word right now.

But then the verse goes on to say, “They may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair, the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear . . .”

It’s almost like the Lord is, “I know you’re going to want to get your boy-getter outfit on to try to turn your husband’s eye when your heart is hurting like this. That’s not going to help, Girl. That’s not what he needs.”

But let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle [and the word there is—I’ll probably not pronounce this correctly, but the Greek word is— praus and it means “meek” a meek] and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.

Now here’s where I really want to be careful to say that meekness is not being a doormat. It’s having a mild and gentle manner, but you are exercising God’s strength under His control. I don’t think there was a time when Bob would have thought I was blindly being accepting of the sin or turning a blind eye. There was strength. Did you feel strength in me, Baby?

Bob G.: Yes. And there were times when emotions got high. We can talk about meekness, but there was some truth telling, and there were some inanimate objects that . . .

Dannah: Just once. (laughter)

Bob G.: I think it’s important to say that it’s okay for women to be upset and angry and loud.

Dannah: I broke a vase once.

Bob G.: That’s okay. There’s that range of emotions, like the stages of grief, that are normal. And one of the things that are really hard for a man is that there’s certain things that trigger the wife. I can say, obviously, women can struggle with pornography. 

There’d be times she’d come home, I’d clean up the house, make dinner, do all kinds of stuff, and she’d respond in some weird way. I’d be, like, “What is happening?”

And she’d say, “This is what you did before you confessed to me. You’d be . . .”

Dannah: You’d be helpful. You’d be penance.

Bob G.: And I’d be, “Oh my word.” I mean, I had to be patient, but I actually got nailed for doing something good.

Dannah: But then, when he didn’t do the dishes, I didn’t like that either.

Bob G.: But I understood the triggers. I understood the triggers that happened. Those red chairs had to get out of our house for a long time.

Dannah: We took the red chairs out of the house for a while. They were just too painful for me. That was where all the worst things I’d ever heard in my life filled my ears. But my point is this: I certainly wasn’t perfect. You’re hearing that, and I don’t want to pretend to be. But my goal was to live this out. To be able to be a wife who did behave in such a way that I could win my husband’s heart back from the enemy’s grip.

And that sometimes means the gentleness and the quiet spirit is full of a whole lot of strength of saying, “No. There are boundaries for our marriage. God created a boundary. The boundary was our marriage covenant. That meant your body was mine, and my body was yours. And that included your mind. And right now your mind has been captivated by Satan, and unless you’re willing to fight in a way that that is no longer going to be the case, these are the boundaries.”

And for every woman that’s different. For us, I’ve slept in the guest bedroom for a while. And meekness does not preclude you from saying:

• “You are going to see that marriage counselor, or this is the consequence.”
• “You’re going to see that marriage counselor, or I’m going to talk to the pastor.”
• “You’re going to talk to the pastor, or I’m going to talk to the pastor. But one of us is going to have a conversation with him tonight.”

Meekness doesn’t necessarily preclude you from taking some of those steps.

Nancy: And, of course, the greatest example of true meekness we have is Christ Himself, and from Him we learn how to be humble and how to deal with sin, when it needs to be dealt with, in appropriate ways.

We’ve been listening to Bob Lepine as he’s talked with Bob and Dannah Gresh. And what a helpful conversation this has been.

I really appreciate how Bob and Dannah are so transparent. It’s not easy for them to do that, but they have seen God’s grace be so active in their lives. I’ve watched this in their marriage, and I’m so grateful they’re willing to share out of their own hurt and their own hard journey in a way that is ministering grace to others.

Bob L.: And I was thinking, as we were talking and having the conversation about 1 Corinthians 13, verse 7, that says, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” I think what that passage is saying is that our heart and mindset in marriage, as we seek to love one another, is that we want to believe the best about our spouse. We want to be patient. We want to bear and endure. We are long suffering in a marriage relationship.

Dannah mentioned that she responded to her husband with meekness, with a gentle and quiet spirit, but she was quick to clarify that if you're in a marriage where you’re experiencing physical abuse, you don’t feel safe in your marriage, meekness doesn’t mean you allow the abuse to continue. In fact, you’re not loving your spouse well if you are allowing them to continue with an unhealthy sin pattern in their own lives.

You have to get some godly counsel. You have to set up appropriate boundaries. You have to call in other people and get the help you need.

And if you’re the one stuck in a sin, you need to confess. Come clean. Don’t let it continue to fester. Don’t isolate yourself. You’ll be tempted to.

I was reflecting recently, Nancy, on the fact that Judas’ betrayal of Jesus came as he was harboring secret sin in his life. He was stealing from the disciples’ money bag. When you harbor secret sin, you are set up to betray the Lord. I think that’s part of what happened.

So we have to keep short accounts. We have to confess our sins to one another as James tells us. That should be more normal in our marriages and in our churches.

Nancy: Yes. I hope that gives you hope that there is grace where there is humility and forgiveness.

And let me say that even if your marriage is strong and there’s no sign of any of these kinds of issues, the fact is you’re going to church with couples who are struggling with these kinds of issues and some of them you have no idea.

But there may be a moment when a wife comes to you and says, “I’ve got to tell you something. We’re dealing with this in our marriage.” You want to be prepared to encourage, to help point them in a godly and biblical direction, and that’s why I want to encourage you to get a copy of Dannah’s new book called, Happily Even After. The subtitle is: Let God Redeem Your Marriage.

Bob L.: Yes. This is a book you may want to just have in your library so that when you have that conversation with a friend, you can say, “Let me give you a gift. Let me pass this on to you.”

The book is our gift to you when you make a donation of any amount to support the ministry of Revive Our Hearts. We depend on your giving to keep bringing the message of freedom and fullness and fruitfulness in Christ to women all over the world. So thanks in advance for your support of Revive Our Hearts.

You can donate by going to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Request the book, Happily Even After, by Dannah Gresh, when you contact us.

Nancy: Thank you so much for your support, enabling us to minister God’s grace, His redeeming power to couples in need all around the world.

Tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts, Bob and Dannah Gresh will be back to share more of their story. They’re going to talk about how to rebuild trust in marriage when that’s been trampled. Be sure and be back with us for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants you to walk in the freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness of Christ.

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