Dear Mr. Bales,

I have been enjoying your newsletter for over a year now. Thank you for sharing your story and glorifying God with your life.

The following is Our Story. Almost two years ago, our marriage hit the depths. My husband was asked recently to be a deacon at our new church. He prayed about it and decided that he didn't want the position unless the leaders of our church knew his past and then made their decision with full knowledge. We would accept their decision as from the Lord. He once again publicly confessed his past sin. I also felt led to write our story down. If you can use it in anyway to glorify God, please do so. I only ask that you use our first names only.

Thank you,
Mary

Every Christian has a story to tell of the goodness of God. This is ours. - my husband's and mine.

About two years ago, my husband publicly confessed to adultery. But that is like reading the middle of a story without reading the beginning or end. When I first met my husband, I felt that he wasn't sharing his spiritual life with me. I assumed that it was a "manly thing" ----this reticence to share his privates self. I respected that because I knew how deep one's relationship with God can go. We were very close, otherwise, in our early marriage I was told by more "liberated" Christian friends that I was too submissive; that I pandered too much to my husband's desires. We were constantly together; we worked together and we enjoyed our time off with each other; we were best friends. Looking back, our close relationship probably helped my husband to ignore the fact that he needed a more intimate walk with God. He had not fully shared himself with me, and, I believe he didn't acknowledge his past before God either. Later he told me that he felt that if I had known him completely, then I wouldn't have married him. Perhaps, somehow, however unlikely, he felt he was hiding himself from God as well. Outwardly, he walked the walk and talked the talk. Inwardly, he was in a prison, but didn't know it. Nor did I.

But God knew. He allowed Satan to expand the walls of the prison. Soon I was on the outside. We were separated by a wall that became thicker and thicker with only an occasional window to look at each other's lives. My husband felt the emptiness inside himself now. I no longer was a substitute. I couldn't meet his deep needs and that made him angry at me. There is always one word that comes into my mind when I remember my husband in those years: anger, hanging like a cloud over him. I walked on eggshells because everything I did set it off. Soon I withdrew from my husband. Self-protection, perhaps, but it was wrong. How I wish I had recognized those prison walls for what they were a soul being separated from God by sin. Instead of taking it personally, why didn't I recognize it for the spiritual warfare that it was? When we allow ourselves to withdraw from the one we were made one with, we are breaking faith with our spouse and with our God before whom we made the pledge. I should have been in constant prayer for my husband. I failed him and so I became guilty of his sin as well. No longer his sin, but ours.

The prison of sin grew as my husband desperately searched for something else to fill his hurt, his pain, to heal him. The wall that separated him from God had been built with one small lie laid upon another, and another, and another, until the lies themselves began to grow as well as the wall. We wrongly label sin as small, big, and gross. Scripture says he who is guilty of breaking one, is guilty of breaking them all. Perhaps because the one, unchecked, opens the floodgates to them all. Never, never excuse the smallest sin that the Holy Spirit convicts you of committing. Repent and cleanse yourself quickly before your heart is hardened.

I remember when I was nine and I stepped out of the baptismal waters. I felt as light as if I was walking on air! It was as if a great burden had been lifted from me. Later, when I reflected on this, I thought, "How much sin can a nine year old bear?" Then God gently impressed on me the true realization that it wasn't just the sins that I had committed to the age of nine that was lifted that day, but every sin that I would commit in my lifetime. How beyond our full understanding that is!

When Rick was baptized that long ago New Year's Day, God forgave all his sins. God set Rick for Himself that day ----- God set him apart, not Rick himself. And our God is a jealous God. I praise Him for that. It is an attribute that I am deeply grateful for, because I know what it means. God will fight for us. Fight! He doesn't say, "Okay, I gave you another chance; it was up to you, and you blew it." No, the Psalmist says, "He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock" (Ps 40:2). God, our Savior, our jealous God, does not leave us to crawl out of the hole ourselves and then redeem us. No, He reaches down into that slimy pit and pulls us out. What an awesome God we serve!P So, it was, one day, that God called an end to the fight for Rick's soul. He had allowed Rick to reach the deepest, darkest depths, where he no longer desired life. The power of God had been resting on me for months prior to this as well. For months, I had been awakened at night by the oppressive sense of evil, and felt the need to pray. Sometimes for hours before it would lift. I didn't know what to pray for, but simply prayed for a hedge of protection against evil for each of my family members, including my husband. Finally, I was being a faithful wife and servant of the Most High God and pleading intercession but for what I did not know. One particular night, near the end, I awakened, sobbing with the weight of evil, and I touched my husband and begged him to pray with me. He shook me off in anger and left our room. I found out later that he had been lying there contemplating taking his own life with his hunting rifle.

Oh, how I believe in the power of prayer! God knew, and His Power was at work. Rick had come to the point that he had nothing to lose; he determined before God that he would speak the truth, no matter what it cost him. That very day, I asked the question. He gave the truth. Oh, how perfectly right is the Scripture that says, "and the truth shall set you free!"

A few days after we had separated, I met with Rick briefly for the first time since his confession. I couldn't look at him, but said, with my eyes averted, "We were one; you ripped us apart and I don't know if I will ever feel whole again." He said to me, "Look to Jesus. He can make you whole. I know, because I am; my only regret is that it was at the price of your pain." I looked at him then. It was obvious that he hadn't been eating or sleeping well in days, but in the midst of that haggard face, were his eyes --- and they were at peace. No anger. Suddenly, I knew that for the first time since we had met sixteen years before, I was seeing my husband set fully free. Have you ever seen a loved one transformed from the inside out by the power of Christ? Have you ever felt it yourself? It is too marvelous for words! I felt at that moment the stirrings of hope.

In the days that followed, while we were apart, we each found a new relationship with the Lord - one of total dependency and total allegiance. God comes first to each of us, not each other. I claimed a Scripture for my own --- Isaiah 54:5-7, 'For your Maker is your husband ----- the Lord Almighty is his name --- the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The Lord will call you back, as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit ----a wife who married young, only to be rejected, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back."

Through one of the great paradoxes of life in Christ, each of us, separately, gave each other up and sought only God and He, who abounds in Love and Mercy, gave us back to each other ---- only not the same. New lives, new hearts, and a new marriage. New hope in Christ. Looking back, I can see that from the beginning of our marriage, God knew my husband's deepest need was to be known fully and loved fully. He knew that Rick was afraid to trust in His love, or mine, if we knew him completely. As Rick tried to hide himself, he opened himself up to worse things. God let the events of our marriage unfold in order to bring about the miracle of a life completely open and honest before God I humbly paraphrase the words of Joseph at the end of Genesis. The evil forces conspired to harm the soul of Rick, but God intended them for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of a life.

Praise His Holy Name!

"Praise the Lord, O my Soul,
all my inmost being;
praise his holy name.
Praise the Lord, O my Soul,
and forget not all his benefits ---
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Psalm 103: 1-6

Our first thought is that you cannot say anything to change his mind. It will be better if you say nothing. Show by your actions how important serving God is to you and if you have children and he does not forbid the children to go, show them how important it is to serve God. Then if anything will work it will be the promise of 1 Peter 3:1, "Wives in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives."

Ironically just last week, we read the comments of a man who had resisted his wife's efforts to influence him to faithfulness. When he finally did turn toward serving the Lord, he said, "My wife First Peter threed me." Our advice would be to "First Peter three" him. There is one other course of action open to you that can be practiced at the same time you are doing what we've just suggested. After you have given the situation to God, pray fervently, daily, that God will soften his heart.

Don't expect instant results. It may take years. We had a wife at the church we worked with in Iowa who practiced 1 Peter 3 for ten years before her husband came to Christ. Another wife in Texas practiced these principles at least fifteen years before her husband became a Christian.

That's probably not what you wanted to hear, but we strongly suspect that we have not overstated the obstacles. May God bless your efforts to walk more closely to him.

Grace and Peace,

Norman and Ann

Congratulations to Monroe Hawley, who has contributed to Perceptions in the past. He and his lovely wife were recently honored by Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas as "Distinguished Alumni of the Year." We were privileged to share that special moment with them. Today we feature some of his thoughts on confrontation. It's relatively easy for us to find occasion to confront others when we don't like what they are doing, but how anxious are we to confront ourselves? You can read his thoughts on the subject