The Gift of Trust

Bob Lepine: According to Dannah Gresh, rebuilding trust after your spouse sins against you involves a conscious act of the will.

Dannah Gresh: The day you say, “I do” to someone, you are risking everything. You are putting your trust in that relationship knowing that person is going to hurt you. So, trust is the gift you choose to give.

Bob L.: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Brokenness: The Heart God Revives. It’s February 15, 2023. I’m Bob Lepine.

If you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts for the first time this week and wondering, Where’s Dannah, and who’s this? I'm Bob Lepine. I am a longtime friend of Revive Our Hearts. I’ve been on the Advisory Board for more than twenty years.

I have been sitting in Dannah’s chair this week because Dannah and her husband, Bob, have been joining us to share about the most difficult season in their marriage and how God walked them through that season.

It involves the subject of pornography, and as a result of that, you’ll want to decide as a mom whether you want your younger children around as you listen to this program. Of course, you can always listen at ReviveOurHearts.com or through the Revive Our Hearts app. So if later is a better time, you might just want to pause and listen later.

But this has been rich this week as we’ve been hearing from Bob and Dannah about the very real challenge they’ve experienced in their marriage, and about God’s very real grace to them.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: It has been beautiful for me to see that in Bob and Dannah’s marriage over the nearly twenty years that we’ve known each other.. But, you know, there are no quick fixes to these things, there are no quick turnarounds.

It takes time when there has been the exposure of sin in a marriage or damaging sinful habits that come to light. There’s a process. Even after the sin has been opened up and confessed, brought into the light, there’s still a process to move toward healing and toward rebuilding trust.

Bob L.: And even after forgiveness has been sought and granted, that doesn’t mean trust is immediately rebuilt, which is what we’re going to talk about with Bob and Dannah today. And I think a lot of couples can stumble here, Nancy.

They can think, “Well, I forgave him. Trust should be reestablished,” but there’s a process, as you said, to rebuilding trust when it’s been broken. 

Nancy: And that’s why I think Bob and Dannah’s story, and the book that Dannah has written, Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage, is going to be such a great resource—if not in your marriage, then in the marriages of others who are part of your life. 

Bob L.: Regular listeners, of course, know Dannah. She’s the co-host of Revive Our Hearts. Bob and Dannah lead a partner ministry called True Girl. Bob helped found Grace Prep, a Christian high school in Pennsylvania. They’ve been married since 1990.

And, as you said, Nancy, Dannah has just written a brand-new book called Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage. 

Nancy: And so, Bob, let’s continue that conversation that you had with Bob and Dannah Gresh.

Bob L.: We have heard this week about the point in your marriage, Bob and Dannah, when, Bob, you confessed to an ongoing struggle with pornography and the emotional explosion that brings into a marriage relationship, how the two of you processed that, how the Lord met you in that. 

I think today we need to talk about the path to where you are today, because your book is called Happily Even After. There are listeners who are thinking, Is it possible to get from the emotional bombshell of a confession like that to a place where you would say, “We are happier today than we were early on”?

And Dannah, I think that starts with helping a woman know, “How do I deal with the emotional turmoil in my own heart and soul when I learn that my husband has been unfaithful with either his eyes or with his body? How do I deal with the sense of betrayal and the pain?” What was your experience with that?

Dannah: Well, I’ve used an analogy that seems to really resonate with women when I share it. I felt as if when Bob confessed that he had been driving our vehicle, intentionally drove it into a tree, and we were both terribly bloodied. But when the ambulance arrived, the EMTs assessed his body and my body and they realized, “Oh, he’s in much graver danger.” So they put him on the gurney, they put him in the ambulance, and they drive away leaving me sitting there bleeding alone in the dark.

That’s how you feel because, in many ways, when you triage both hearts it seems like one of them is more the patient. You’re going to feel like, “People are taking care of him and nobody’s taking care of me!” You have to take care of your own heart. 

Here’s a sentence that our marriage counselor said to me. I hated it when I heard it! He said, “The one who did the damage has no ability to heal your heart.” I wanted Bob to be my hero! I wanted him to fix what he had broken! But he did not have that ability, and I was turning to the wrong source when I wanted it to come from him.

I had to put on my big girl pants and grow up. I couldn’t do it myself, but in a sense I had to be responsible for getting the help I needed for myself. And one of things that was really different about us having what I would call a more sustained victory in this battle . . . My grandfather didn’t have to grow up in a world where he had to drive by Hooters billboards and all that stuff. Lust is always going to be a reality in this sad, fallen, sinful world. I don't expect my husband to miraculously not see those things. I do expect him to look past them, and he walks in integrity these days.

But I had to get to the point where I realized that he wasn’t going to be some Prince Charming that had no flaws and who was the solution to everything that hurt in my heart. I can’t even believe that as an adult, maturing Christian woman. I believed that lie because I wouldn’t have looked like I was a woman who believed that lie, or lived like a woman who believed that lie. But when I got under all of it, that image that I just shared with you is proof that I did. It’s also proof that I wasn’t turning to Jesus Christ as the ultimate solution to everything that hurts my heart. So I had to do the work of finding the Christian women in my life.

I had to do my own therapy and my own work. I had to participate in our couple’s therapy. And this is so important, I had to let him go do the work that he needed to do alone . . . alone. There can be an enmeshment in Christian marriage, where our oneness gets confused with him standing alone before a holy God and me standing alone before a holy God in some aspects of our lives. When he did that well and I learned to do that well, then our oneness became really healthy and holy. 

So you’ve got to go get the help that you need. Bob mentioned in yesterday’s program . . . or I did. I mentioned that I threw something at him.

Well, a woman who’s experiencing the “trail trauma,” as sanctified as she may be, her brain is not at its best! A good example of that would be a widow who for many months experiences a brain that isn’t working at its best. Her memory is not going to be as sharp. Her capacity for function is going to be diminished for many months. 

When your husband confesses something to you, there is a great likeness to that kind of experience that you have. And you can’t do this without help. You may be the pastor’s wife, you may be the Women’s Ministry Director, you may be the co-host of Revive Our Hearts. You can’t do this alone, and God doesn’t expect you to.

So you’ve got to go find who’s going to help you with your heart. Put the marriage aside for maybe a short few weeks or months, depending on the severity of the hurt and the infidelity or betrayal in your marriage or how long it’s been going on. How long this has been a pattern in your marriage may determine how much help you need. Go get the help you need, because as you become healed, you’re going to be a better healer in your husband’s life.

Bob L.: Were there lies you were tempted to believe in the process of going through that healing?

Dannah: Well, one of the lies I really believed was that I had to hold it all together. I think this is a lie that a lot of Christian women believe. “I have Jesus, so I’m not supposed to fall apart!” So, put your red lipstick on and go to the wedding and pretend everything’s okay.

And when people ask you, “How are you?” You say, “I’m fine.” Well, you’re not fine! And one of the passages in the Bible that really spoke to me during this time . . . I called my counselor Tippy, and I said, “Okay, he’s confessed. You were right; he did relapse. He’s getting the help he needs now. He’s where he needs to be. What do I do?”

And she asked me, “Well, what are you doing?” 

And I was like, “Well, I’m living life as normal. I’m still doing my job. I’m still taking care of my family.” 

She was like, “Really? Is that what you should be doing?”

And she assigned me the task of studying the book of Lamentations, which I will tell you is not a party on the pages of the Scriptures! As she nurtured me through that whole book, I realized that the Bible is full of people who mourn over sin, people who experience grief over sin. That’s what Christians do, we grieve!

We understand the severity of our separation from God and each other. And when we just say, “I’m fine,” and we just keep living life pretending everything’s okay, we are believing the lie that we shouldn’t grieve when sin happens.

And so I had to get to a point where I really did fall apart. I really, really did grieve. I pulled back. I didn’t travel and minister and speak for a season. I did a little bit, but not much—very little, very limited. It created a great havoc in our ministry in terms of finances, but it was essential. You don’t have to hold it all together.

One of the things our world finds hard to believe about Christianity is that we don’t grieve when life is lost or when life is disrupted by sin . . . at least that’s my experience in talking with unbelievers. So it’s okay to fall apart a little bit. Find the people that will help put you back together through Jesus. 

Bob L: And when people are recognizing that things have fallen apart a little bit for you, how open, honest, transparent about what was going on were you? And would you coach people to be? Did you say to people, “Well, Bob confessed pornography to me”?

Dannah: Well, Bob and I use the term “lust and pornography,” because we think that better characterizes what happened in our marriage. But you don’t get to hear all the details, I’m sorry. You just don’t get to.

Bob helped me write a few sentences in the book that says: “Bob wants you to know that what he did is worse than you might think, but not as bad as you might imagine. In his opinion, this ambiguity is another consequence of sin. So, we’re not telling you everything. In full disclosure: this was ugly and hard.”

But there are people in our circle who know all the ugly details. Some of them are professionals who helped us, because they had clinical understanding, which we think is really important. It’s important to have biblical therapy and counseling—biblically informed counseling—because you just can’t find healing and redemption without it.

But you also aren’t going to understand what you need in the Bible if you don’t have clinical understanding. So there’s that segment of people that know all the details. And this is what is scary for some Christians, we confessed all the details to our ministry Board. They hold both of our feet to the fire in accountability, because they can, because they have all of the information. A close circle of friends know all the details, every last one of them.

Bob L.: One of the areas that was going to need healing was your relationship, your marriage. Bob, talk about how your confession left you isolated for a period of time, and how you worked your way back from isolation to oneness in your marriage.

Bob G.: Well, one of the hard things about confessing, the aftermath of confessing is, you see your wife go through all the grief stages and all the stages of intimacy within your marriage. In the sense of, there were times when I was in such shame that she would reach out, and she’d be like, “We’re going to get through this.”

I’d be the baby in the thing. I’d be needing to be lifted up. I feel even worse about that. And then it could be fifteen minutes later, and I’d walk in the room and it was a completely different emotion coming out. We can watch a movie or something can happen, and it triggers something. And so, that’s one thing people have to work through.

Dannah: It’s messy. It’s very messy.

Bob G.: It’s really messy. It’s consequences. One of the things I will say just as an aside here. When I said Dannah didn’t do anything wrong, I have a fix to that. The one thing she did wrong was not hold me to boundaries.

She probably wasn’t stubborn enough over months and years to say, “We’re just going to keep that in place for my security.”

Bob L.: Boundaries like, for example? 

Bob G.: Boundaries like being in a discipleship group, having a couple guys I tell everything to. We’ve always had filters on our computer. I don’t travel alone. 

Dannah: But I think before we started to become healthier and whole, we would do the thing where you’d be in a men’s accountability group, or you’d be in counseling or whatever. Instead, we’d be like, “Oh, it’s been so good for so long now, you don’t have to do that anymore.”

And rather than being a wife that says, “I love you enough to say, ‘Dude! You’ve got to stay in that counseling. We’re not done with that yet!’ or ‘I’ve noticed you haven’t been going to your men’s accountability group. Like, what’s up with that?’” Now that is how we operate more, but we didn’t previously.

Bob G.: She believed in me, and I would abuse that belief. 

Bob L.: How long did it take for your marriage to feel good again? 

Dannah: Well, years—like two years. It wasn’t like it felt better in two weeks or two months. It wasn’t like it felt better one day automatically. It was a gradual healing, like when your body’s broken. It handles more and more without your awareness of it handling something. It was like that. 

Bob L.: One day you feel pretty good, and then two days later it’s like, “Yeah, there’s still emotion at work here that hasn’t been resolved.” 

Dannah: Oh, yeah! We were in Baltimore on a vacation, and I got triggered. It wasn't going well. It was supposed to be a sweet romantic weekend. We thought we were ready for a sweet romantic weekend. We left early. We weren’t ready. So, you have to be patient with yourself and with each other.

Bob G.: One of the things that we learned was about trust. One of the things that happens to the man is, once you confess and you’re healing, she has no basis for her to trust you. And minute by minute goes by and days pass slowly. And so what do you do?

And then you get into a situation after a month, two months, three months where it’s easy to get into conflict. Where it’s like, “Look! Why are you suspecting this of me? I’m not doing anything! I’m doing better than ever in our marriage! And now I’m going to deal with this!” And there are times when that can get into conflict, because it’s no fun to be accused of things all the time.

Dannah: Trust was the hardest thing to rebuild.

Bob G.: Right, and so we worked through that, through some friends.

Dannah: We had some friends. One of my friends who knows everything and walked with me through this is a pastor’s wife named Lynn Nould. I just said, “I don’t trust Bob, and I don’t want to trust him! Can I ever trust him?”

So she and her husband took us out to Duffy’s Tavern. He said to me something I’ll never forget. He said, “Dannah, trust isn’t something you earn, it’s a gift you give. At some point you have to decide if you’re going to give that gift back to Bob or if you’re going to withhold it.”

So that put me on a journey where I started researching what the Word says about trust. I found out God doesn’t want me to trust in mere humans. That’s scriptural. God’s Word says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, [don’t] lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him . . . Be not wise in your own eyes . . . fear the Lord, and turn away from evil” (Prov. 3:5–7).

If I can’t trust my own understanding, how am I ever going to trust Bob’s understanding, because he’s external to me. But the Word tells me to trust in God. I’m not supposed to trust in mere humans; I’m supposed to put my trust in the Lord.

So my trust in my marriage has to ultimately be rooted first and foremost in my trust in the Lord and in me seeing that Bob is rooting his trust in the Lord. And then, the fact is, it’s still risky! The day you say, “I do” to someone, you are risking everything! You are putting your trust in that relationship knowing that person is going to hurt you. So trust is the gift you choose to give.

I had to really process through this by looking at, “Well, what are the things that Bob does that makes me feel like he is trustworthy?” Because there is an element of building trust, right? And I would look at the fact that he confessed his sin to me.

I work with women all the time whose husbands won’t, or they minimize it, or they defend it, or they make them feel crazy. I have that gift, he has confessed it to me. Bob will answer any question I have, no matter what. We have an agreement about that. 

I know all the details I want to know. Now, do I need to know all the details? That’s a question my Christian therapist has challenged me with, that I don’t always need to know everything. So I have to ask, “Is this going to bring our oneness to a better place?” or “Is this just me feeding my hurt?” I have to make decisions.

Bob G.: I have to ask that, too. I don’t just blurt out answers real quickly, because there are times when we have to kind of talk about why we are asking questions. 

Dannah: He is pursuing community with other men, that’s building trust. He is regularly meeting with our body of believers. He’s a leader in our community. He stays in counseling, because he just finds that to be really helpful for him to stay anchored in the Lord.

He’s patient with my sin. Nobody has forgiven more! I confessed my past to my husband, and he is a beautiful forgiver! He’s a great forgiver. He is still a great forgiver! I see him changing and growing and growing closer to the Lord.

He’s committed to our covenant love. He’s committed to his covenant love with Christ. These are all things, when I start to write a list, there are a lot of reasons why I can choose to give my husband the gift of trust.

And every woman has to arrive at a place where she says, “Okay, am I going to give him this gift that I pledged at a wedding altar, or am I going to withhold that?”

Bob L.: And I think it’s important for listeners to understand, there is a difference between forgiving and trusting.

Dannah: Yes, big difference.

Bob L.: We are commanded to forgive, and we do that because we are recipients of the grace of God. We extend grace to others. That’s Christ-like behavior. You can forgive someone and still need to have trust rebuilt over a period of time.

It is not a lack of forgiveness if you still don’t trust someone, but also you can’t hang on to the bitterness and the hurt that you’ve experienced and say, “I’m clinging to this! I’m not going to forgive you until I can trust you again.” That’s not the biblical pattern for how we go through this.

Bob G.: And true repentance for me is that I understand the triggers I placed in my marriage, and I understand the hurt I brought into it. So I also understand that there are things that will stay with us—not that she hasn’t forgiven me—but there are things that will stay with us for our lifetimes. It’s reasonable for me not to push those boundaries. So, I don’t travel alone, she knows where I’m at.

Dannah: I know who his two accountability partners are, and I check in with them from time to time.

Bob G.: I’m in a STEP group, and I try to maintain consistency with that. There are times when I get out of that for a while. Here’s what’s interesting. I’ll get out of it for a while—we’ll be traveling or we’ll do whatever—and I’ll say, “I think I need to go to a STEP group again.” I’m afraid to say that to her because I’m afraid she’ll think I’m doing so terrible that I have to go back to a STEP group. And she said . . .

Dannah: I said, “You going to those groups makes me feel safe every time you go!”

Bob G.: And I think the word “safe” is a good one for me. I want her to feel safe. So that’s a good piece of language to use.

Bob L.: We just have a little bit of time left, and we haven’t talked yet, Bob, about what you went through, the process you followed to get from being stuck in a life-dominating, ongoing sin pattern to the place of freedom and sobriety that you’re in today. Can you summarize that for us briefly, what you went through from your moment of confession to get where you are today?

Bob G.: Well, a one sentence summary is that I went from being in accountability with men once a week to once a day. It was an everyday walk, and I love the steps. I love the way the twelve steps work and those kinds of groups. There are Christian groups—Celebrate Recovery and things like that—but men are responsible every day to check in and do things like that.

It was a daily walk, not a weekly walk or a monthly walk, and it was that community. We are not meant to walk through things alone. That’s why the church has to stay together. That’s why men have to stay together.

Bob L.: That began for you with an extended period of time away where you got intensive help, right?

Bob G.: I went away right away. I went to a treatment center that was where the Hollywood stars went, so I went to the best one. That’s not what healed me at all!

Dannah: I should say two things about that: one is, someone gave us a financial gift to do that. We could have never afforded it. And two is, a Christian man in our church who was an elder at one point said, “Get the best help that exists!” 

So that’s why we ended up there. We believed, “Well, if this is the gold standard, that costs the most and where all the big names go, of course they’re going to be able to help us!” But they didn’t have Jesus there.

Bob G.: No, and it was a waste in most cases. 

Dannah: We thought, “We are strong Christians, and we can integrate our faith.” We asked them, “Is there a faith-based track?” They said, “Yes.” But, that never really materialized. It wasn’t. So what we found was . . .

I want to encourage anybody who’s on the wrong path and you’re like, “This therapy isn’t working!” That looks different for everybody. Sometimes it’s like, “Oh, this is my free therapist according to my healthcare plan.”

That person doesn’t necessarily have a specialty in understanding the brain trauma that comes with pornography addiction and abuse of the gift of sex or the clinical aspects of betrayal trauma. So, they don’t know what they’re doing, honestly.

The recovery industry has an incredibly sad failure rate! My publishers would not let me actually publish what I found in terms of the failure rate of programs like the one we went to, because it’s not studied widely enough.

I asked Bob just this morning. I tried to study the recovery rate of the place where he went, and I said, “I couldn’t find it.” And he said, “Well, they don’t really want to know. They never asked me how I did there.”

Bob G.: I know the group of guys I went through with, and there wasn’t a lot of success. But again, when you get out of that, if you have a counselor, if you have a once-a-week friend that’s not enough. 

One of the things I needed to have was a friend who talked hard things to me. I was supposed to be in a meeting one time, I don’t know if it was a holiday or something. I said, “I'm going to miss the meeting this week.” 

And he said, “Well, why don’t you come back and talk to me when your recovery is more important than missing that football game,” or whatever it was.

That was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I thought, Wow! That’s good! So, if somebody's just going to feel sorry for you and have sympathy, that’s not what you need.

Bob L.: Okay, last question here. Dannah, if you found out six months from now that Bob had relapsed, what would you do?

Dannah: Well, I want to know within hours if Bob relapsed! I wouldn’t say we check in daily. There really is a fine line between a wife being a part of her husband’s sobriety and holiness and a wife controlling it. So, I’m not asking him on a regular basis. 

But I’m watching the things that I know he does when he’s walking in sobriety: talking to these two men, knowing they’re on his calendar from time to time. That’s good news. Meeting with his business mentor/Christian counselor once a week, when that’s on the calendar, I know things are going well.

Going to his twelve steps meeting or going to his men’s accountability group, when I see all that happening, that’s the instruments on the dashboard of my car saying everything’s going okay. When one of them doesn’t happen, eh, it’s okay. When two of them don’t happen, I’m starting to say, “Are you okay, Babe, are you feeling okay?”

Bob G.: There’s an interesting thing we’ve done. There’s a thing out there by Patrick Carnes called The Personal Craziness Index. You pick five things, five basic things you do every day, because people who relapse tend to sort of relapse in slow steps. So you pick five basic things you do each day and your spouse can watch that.

This is how ridiculous it is: one of them is making the bed, that’s one of mine. And so Dannah can see that (and she knows I’m going to be confessing that I haven’t made the bed for a long time, so I need to do that).

And so, that was something that was a reminder to Dannah right in the morning, that was one thing that made her feel safe, was making the bed.

Dannah: Because he told me, “These are the five things I’m going to do to demonstrate there’s discipline in my life.” And this was, of course, during our healing phase. When one of them didn’t happen, when the bed didn’t get made, that was a signal to me, something on the dashboard that said: “Dig a little deeper!”

So we have some of those things that we talk through. I am not concerned about the bed right now, because I also didn’t make my side of the bed this morning!

Bob G.: Well, I started to slip by only making my half of the bed, but I have to get back into that!

Dannah: But here’s where that is biblical: Proverbs 5:23 [NIV] says, “For lack of discipline they die, [they will be] led astray by their . . . great folly.“ It’s not that one day when I was a teenager and I woke up and decided, “I think I’ll have sex with my boyfriend today because that’s going to make me really miserable for the next ten years, and I’m going to walk around in shame and pain.”

That’s not how it works. Bob didn’t wake up one day and say, “I’d really like to ruin my wife’s life by using pornography and struggling with lust.” That’s not how it works. Lack of discipline in our lives takes us down a path to where we are willing to make decisions that create that level of sin.

And so it is important for me to see that he is getting up on time, that he is doing the things that we’ve agreed are the disciplines in place that lead him to be a man who walks in life, rather than a pathway of death.

Bob L.: So I see how you are monitoring progress and keeping trust present, but back to the question: if you found out, for whatever reason, six months from now that he had slipped, and he came to you and said, “You just need to know, last night after you went to bed, I looked at stuff I shouldn’t have looked at, and I want you to know that.”

Is there a point where you say, “Okay, look. Enough is enough, Buster!” Or do you just roll up your sleeves again and go, “Okay, let’s get back in the fight!”

Dannah: I believe and I have counseled young women who aren’t married to men yet who fight this battle with lust and pornography, and I have given this advice to wives who are in marriages where their husbands are fighting it. 

I believe that a man who humbly confesses his sin to you and walks in the right direction in repentance is a safe man. I believe a man that hides his sin . . . and there are women listening right now who maybe have experienced some of the same problems in their marriage that I have, but haven’t had a husband who’s humble in his confession.

There does come a point where a repeated pattern of—even if it’s “just pornography”—that’s really an abusive and unsafe pattern. When your husband continues to do it and belittle your marriage and the value of who you are without walking in the right direction of repentance and doing whatever it takes to walk in holiness . . .

And so, I am in a marriage with a man who hates his sin, and I’m in a marriage with a man who if he would relapse tomorrow, he knows that my covenant is forever. He knows that. But he’s also a safe man, because he hates his sin and does the things that he needs to do to fight!

Nancy: Wow. How much I love seeing that heart in Bob Gresh and in other men of God who have said, “Look, we’re not going to let the sins overtake us. We’re going to press into God’s grace and deal with them!” And what a beautiful work God has been doing in that marriage as a result—the work He could do in your marriage as well.

That was my co-host, Dannah Gresh with her husband Bob having a conversation with you, Bob Lepine. What a helpful concept I think it is as we listen to this conversation that trust is a gift that the spouse who has been sinned against chooses to give!

Bob L.: It’s also important to remember that when we have violated trust in a marriage, the way to rebuild it is with consistent behavior over time, and that can be a slow process, sometimes a frustrating process. We’re thinking, I’m doing my best! You should trust me now! It takes time to rebuild trust when it’s been broken.

Can I just say to husbands who are listening to this program this week. I’ve talked to many men over the years who have struggled with the same sin that Bob Gresh struggled with. I’ve said to them, “If you find yourself caught in that sin, you keep going back to it . . .”

I think there are three steps. I think first you have to confess to God that it is sin, not just that you’re sorry, but you have to recognize, God calls this “sin” for a reason. You have to get on the same page with Him and say, “God, I see this as a sin against You.” David did that with his adultery. He said, “Against You have I sinned in this” (see Psalm 51:4). So I think that’s step one.

Step two is, you need to get accountability from some godly friends, some other men who will come into your life who you can let them know about your challenge. You can hold one another accountable in this. 

I think there will probably be a day where you have to do what Bob Gresh did, and that is to confess to your wife the struggle that you're having. That will be a hard day, she will feel (rightly) betrayed by what you have done. You will think, I don't want to do that!

But if you want to get free, and if you want there to be healing and cleansing in your marriage, this is one of those hard things that God is going to call you to do. You may need pastoral guidance and counsel before you do that. You may need to have a friend with you as you confess that.

You need to know those dynamics and be prayerful about how you do that, but I think it is one of the things that is probably going to have to be done. And in fact, Dannah’s book gives you one example of how this has been done, in a helpful way.

So, let me encourage you to get a copy of Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage, by Dannah Gresh. It’s available for a gift of any amount. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 1-800-569-5959. 

Nancy: And, Bob, I think we should just mention again that Dannah is always careful to say in this book and when she speaks on this subject, that her comments apply in marriages where you feel safe. If you don’t, you need to get the involvement of others who can help get you into a physically safe place so that you can deal with the issues that are coming to light.

Isn’t it an incredible thing to walk in the light? All of us sinners, all of us in need of God’s grace! And when we hide, we cover, we get no grace. But as we step into that light, God pours His grace into our lives.

That’s what we’re helping women do day after day through the outreaches of Revive Our Hearts. So when you support this ministry, not only do we want to send you this book by Dannah Gresh, but we also want you to know that you are investing in hearts, in lives, in marriages, in families, in multiple generations that will experience the redemption and the freedom that God gives when we walk into the light. So thank you so much for your support for this ministry!

Bob L.: Well, tomorrow, everything is going to be back right with the universe! Dannah will be in this seat, and she will be back co-hosting Revive Our Hearts. We’re going to hear from Nancy. We’re actually going to continue hearing what we’ve talked about this week—how a lack of confession in a marriage can be a symptom of pride. 

Tomorrow, Nancy helps us diagnose pride in our hearts and shows us what God’s Word has to say about the importance of humility. I hope you’ll be back with us for that tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

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