In this interview, Kathy Gallagher draws on her own journey with the Lord and years of counseling, to help identify forms of pride that betrayed and hurting wives often struggle with.

Host: Kathy last week we talked with one of our counselors about the way that a selfish lifestyle and a proud heart go hand in hand with sexual sin. I'm sure that you've experienced firsthand when your husband Steve was in sexual sin, that there was a very proud heart and a very selfish lifestyle that was giving birth to this sexual sin. Today we want to look at things from a wife's perspective.   We've found that pride and selfishness are also major issues for the wives that we counsel.  I'm sure you've experienced this yourself and seen it in the lives of the many wives you've counseled throughout the years. To start off, could you talk about some of the ways that selfishness and pride present themselves in wives that you've counseled?

Kathy: Yeah, I would really like to start off with my own testimony because we all respond in different ways.  I think many people will understand where I'm coming from with this. Because of Steve's sexual sin, I eventually began to see how the Lord was using that to expose what was in me.  He was using Steve's sin to reveal to me what was in my own heart. And I was mostly looking for relief from the pain and a way out of the mess. I was not looking at me; I was looking at him, and what he was doing to me. I fell prey to the whole victim thing, and in a sense I was a victim.  However, the decisions that I was making, especially in the early days, were very selfish and very sinful. I naturally justified. What I mean is, in my nature it was easy for me to justify adultery. As in "he did this, and now I'm justified with what I do"? Yes, I was justifying adultery.  I was justifying anger and bitterness.  I was self-righteous.

My attitude was: "look at what he's doing to me!"  And that phrase, "look at what he's doing to me" is the gateway to justifying sinful attitudes and sinful behaviors. Those natural human responses are what God was after in me.  He was going after my own prideful and arrogant responses to what was being done to me. I know that sounds hard, especially for women who are really hurting right now. They don't see it that way. I didn't see it that way, for sure.  It took the Lord years to convince me and to show me what was coming out of my mouth, out of my heart and out of my life. I was standing outside of the scriptures.  In my own mind, my title as wife put me in a different category. I don't think anybody thinks this through, it's just the response that comes out: "I am a wife who's been betrayed by my husband." So my feelings and my pain from what he was doing dictated my responses. I assumed that scriptures like first Corinthians thirteen didn't really apply to me; at least in my marriage they didn't apply to me. "Blessed are the meek," I was anything but meek or humble. I wasn't looking for that path. I think that's where a lot of women find themselves at. They are lost in a sea of hurt and anger.  And God is going to go after that because He's good. He's a good Father; and a good parent doesn't let their children just go on and on and on in their "bad behavior."

Host: I'm glad that you brought up the role that God plays in our life as Father, because that's something that we often don't see amid trials and difficulties. The other thing that we often don't see is the role that the enemy is playing, and the role that sin is trying to play in our lives.  Because, obviously the feelings of hurt and betrayal are not sinful, and I'm sure that Jesus keenly felt the betrayal of mankind and even from His disciples.  But in that betrayal He never sinned.  We're different, however.  We're corrupted, and pride is relentless in its attempt to overcome us.  It's trying to ensnare us and dominate us in situations like this. Can you talk a little bit about that, so we can come to understand the enemy behind all these things?

Kathy: Sure. This is a powerful tool in the devil's arsenal and he wields it continually. He's always looking for an opportunity to ensnare us through pride. Most of us betrayed wives didn’t even think about pride, you know?  But I've never met a person who did not struggle intensely with the pain of an unfaithful husband. And I have never once felt that it was wrong to experience those feelings. As you said Nate, God Himself experiences the pain and betrayal of his own unfaithful people every day. He lives with it. It's a constant and unending grief in His heart. He also knows what we're going through and He understands it.

However, women still have pride issues in their human nature. I think the biggest pride issue I have seen in women is those who take absolute control over their husband.  They feel the need for constant updates and information.  Their compelled to say, "where were you?"  The feel a need to know, "what did you spend money on?"  Feeling anxious that he's looking at his phone and looking at his computer. They're driven to call him throughout the day.  It's a fear driven pride. There's no other word really to describe it. Because what's behind it is, "I'm protecting myself" and "I'm going to keep myself together," as well as "I'm going to control you."  Her motivating belief towards her husband is: "I'm going to make you do the right thing;" and "I'm going to fix this thing." I have probably dealt with that issue more than anything else.

There are others who try to control it in the way of seeking peace at any cost. I could categorize myself in that because I was willing to do things that were unthinkable to make him do the right thing. I really thought that I could get him to see things my way by going along with his sin.  That was such a horrible, horrible grief to me, and I know it was a grief to God.  But the older I got and the more I've started to really see things from God's perspective.  Perhaps the ugliest thing I saw in myself was that I didn't care enough about Steve to step in and say "no."  From the standpoint of caring for his soul, not in being a control freak, this would have been the loving thing to do to him.  But for too long in those early years I failed to say, "stop, I am not going to live like this." But I would think to myself, "this is not what God has called me to." I didn't care that much about spiritual things. I didn't care that much about my husband. I cared about me, and I was willing to go along with whatever I needed to go along with to keep the peace and make him do the right thing. So the bottom line is that all of what is in us is just selfishness. I hate to say that because I'm talking to women who are hurt. They want to be comforted, and they need to be comforted.  But this isn't the path. The path of pride will always lead you to ruin, and that is what the devil is going for.

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Host: Yeah, the path that seems like it's leading toward wholeness can actually be taking us toward ruin.  Satan is able to create these images and unrealities, and to just keep us coming toward something we desire.  You think it's leading you in a good way, and then it's revealed to not be the case. That's what we've found. That's why we're saying these things. It's because we know where that path of pride and selfishness goes. So we're earnestly telling you: don't go there.

Kathy: You know I'll tell you something Nate. When people continue going and being led down that path they become hardened in their hearts.  You can become callous because the enemy is leading you.  And indeed he is cajoling you, and is wooing you to fight for your rights. He'll say, "defend yourself," "do not put up with this stuff," and "I'm not going to put up with it!" There's something in that attitude that is hardening. I know that path from experience.  But I also know the path of brokenness. I needed the Lord to step in and start exposing me. So that's what He was doing. He was showing me what I was doing wrong.  When I started looking at what the Word of God is actually saying I couldn't get away from my failure to God as a believer. I'm a Christian first and a wife second. There were all these emotions and all these feelings. But God revealed my sin! The sin was just so destructive, and the pride that was in both of us was destroying us both. The enemy was having his way. But then the Lord started leading me down His path of submission. Not to sin, and not to my husband's sin, but to the Lord. It was a long and arduous path, but there's something valuable we gain in the suffering for Jesus, if we will allow the Lord to use it. This doesn't mean we're going to get it all right, and that it'll be rosy, but we'll get a few things right. It's a path of brokenness and humility. It's the path that Jesus himself took and He is our example.

Host: Yes, obviously I'm not a wife and I've never been through this, but from my own testimony I've experienced the entrenched self-righteousness of believing that I am better than anyone else. That prideful belief runs so deep. It takes so many revelations of our sinfulness and the cross, as well as the holiness and the love of God to break us out of that self-righteous belief. To destroy the belief that says I'm good and that I have anything to recommend me to God, that I'm better than other people. It is a hard pill to swallow.  This is coming from a person who's done horrible things. Most wives, I would guess, haven't done that.

Kathy: You know that's not just what Jesus died for.  He didn't just die for sinful behaviors, but for attitudes as well. And the attitude, "I would never do that" is what He's going for.  He's going after that. I'm sure most Christians have probably heard this before, but I'm going to say it again: under the right circumstances, given the opportunity, there isn't much evil you wouldn't do. We're evil, and that is a revelation that every believer needs to come to.  You cannot come to the cross until you understand your black heartedness. Jesus did not come to heal the healthy; He came to heal the sick.  He came to redeem us from every lawless deed. Whether or not we've ever committed sexual sin, or whether or not we were Hitler in our hearts, that doesn't matter. We are fallen. The thing that was a game changer for me was Luke chapter eighteen: the publican and the Pharisee.  These two, the righteous one and the sinner went to the temple. They went to church to pray. The self-righteous Pharisee who thought he was good said "I would never do that!" If you finish that passage, the scripture says he did not go home justified in God's eyes. The tax collector on the other hand wouldn't even look up to God because he was so ashamed, so guilt ridden, so beaten down and fully aware of who and what he was.  For him his sinfulness was real.  And for me it wasn't just sexual sin, I came to the point where I saw myself in that man.  That's who I was. I couldn't even look up to heaven.  And just like him I came to beat my breast and say "God be merciful to me the sinner!" As Jesus said that man went home justified, that is what He did for me.  When I saw that Jesus had hung on that cross for the "good little girl" I had thought I was, God’s amazing love became real to me.

In my book "When His Secret Sin Breaks Your Heart," chapter five is called a level playing field.  That's where I describe what I went through when God used the cross of Calvary to break my heart.  It put me on level ground with Steve. I saw that I had already committed so much sin by that point, and that I was actually a sinner. Until a person wraps their head around this truth, they can't have the compassion, and the understanding and the willingness to go through with another sinner until they've had that real revelation. And calling yourself Christian means nothing. It doesn't mean anything to say "I'm a Christian, I go to church and a prayer meeting on Wednesday." Whatever!  It's what is flowing out of you as a believer in your daily life towards your enemies that matters. At least what we think are our enemies.  

Host: As you were talking I was just thinking about how the enemy paints a picture to lead us into destruction, and he also paints a picture to keep us from life.  The idea of me seeing and finding out just how wrong I am as a person; he's always telling us, through our sinful nature, "don't do it," "That's suffering, misery and pain," and "God would never want that." It's like a barrier keeping us from real life and freedom in God. Because like you said, that publican went home right with God. That's real freedom.

Kathy: It sure is. And you can live with anything and practically anybody when you are that meek. That's what it takes is meekness, and a real humbling of your pride. God is faithful, and He knows how to take us that way. The question is do you want to go that way? And are you going to argue against Him? Because our natural responses are part of the fall, and those are what Jesus came to redeem us from. That sinful and fallen nature in every form it takes.

Host: Ok, so if a wife is going this way, as you've said, the path of brokenness, humbling herself and receiving God’s forgiveness, and her husband is a repenting of His sin, and their relationship, is in that sense restored, there is still a lot of rebuilding and a lot of struggle for both people I'm sure. In the early stages, the self-life still needs a lot of dying.  It's on the cross, but man is it painful. How do you counsel couples to go through this early period without just being totally beaten down with discouragement?

Kathy: It's not easy, and I'm not going to pretend like it is.  It's very difficult. But once both of them are on the path there's so much hope. This is brief but I think it's life-changing If a person will just sit and think it through: quit looking to and at each other. Start there and then learn to say, "I was wrong, would you please forgive me?" You have to quit looking to that person to meet some need inside of you. We have a forced version of marital love in America, and it's probably worldwide. But it's been in America especially. It's a forced version of love that consists of a big wedding, a big house, lots of kids, all my personal needs being met by another person, marital bliss and the happily ever after deal. But true love is the tossing aside of personal happiness as trivial. True love is planting deep in our hearts the interests of another person. It is us meeting their need.  Not insisting that they meet our needs. If people can turn it around if they can start to think in terms of "I'm here for him" and "I'm here for her." As well as "I'm not here for me," "she's not here to satisfy my needs," and "he's not here to satisfy my needs," that selflessness is what makes marriage excellent.

This means a willingness to quit looking to that person to be your all in all. Doing this will eliminate and deal with so many problems! Perhaps just as important is the ability to say, "I was wrong, please forgive me." If you can do that marriage, you will have a very healthy and long marriage together.  You will become affectionate friends. You will have such deep camaraderie, such deep fellowship and intimacy.  Many people are grasping in their own strength. They're trying to do it in their own strength and desire, and they say "I'm going to make it happen!" But that's not the way God laid out for His people, or for any human being. It's through self-sacrifice and it is through selflessness. It's Jesus' life lived out in us and through us.

Every single person is vulnerable to the sin of pride. You might be the kind of person who loves being in the background or maybe you’re a people person. It makes no difference; our self-lives will find a way to express themselves. And It will do that in many ways, leaving us blind to the way pride takes root in our hearts. This week we’ll start with the type of pride found in those who want to be at the ‘top and in the center.’

Last week we began to explore how our prideful self-life is the root of all sin. Today we dig a little deeper, looking at what allows pride to flourish and grow. We’ll look at life in America and examine the ways it encourages us to be proud. We’ll also be talking about trials in marriage, and how they can nurture the growth of pride in unexpected ways. Both topics will help us see more clearly the way God deals with pride, and the consequences of its unchecked influence.

At Pure Life Ministries, we've discovered that the root of sexual sin is the result of a proud heart that is self-indulgent and self-promoting. The key to finding real freedom is in putting that self-centered lifestyle to death. We brought Luke Imperato, a biblical counselor in our Residential Program into the studio to help us get a better understanding of this connection between pride and sexual sin. (From Episode #422 - Exposing How Pride Takes Root in Our Hearts)

Nate: Luke in Pastor Steve Gallagher's book, i: the root of sin Exposed, he defines what the self-life is, and how it is the source of sin in our lives. What I want to do now is offer some more pointed teaching to men and women who may be listening because they want help with sexual sin. I want them to see how the truths in this book will greatly help them uncover the root of their sin issue.

Pastor Steve wrote in the intro, "A man's sexual addiction is merely the symptom of a much deeper problem. A toxic mixture of pride and self-centeredness has created a hot house where sin of every variety can thrive." Since you're one of our counselors, I was hoping that you could take a look at the subject from a counseling perspective. Most of the men who have come to us are coming out of the church. I would guess that the vast majority of these men are aware that self-gratification and pornography and visiting prostitutes are sinful practices. And they have all probably asked God to help them and to forgive them. Some have read books and gone to seminars, but continue to give themselves over to sexual sin. So then, they come to Pure Life Ministries to understand why none of these things have helped them. And we tell them that their real issue is pride. That can be really confusing to somebody, so I want you to help people understand what is the connection between pride and sexual sin.

Luke: Sure, thanks Nate. The struggle that you're describing was my story.  I came from church. I grew up in church and was involved in ministry and so when I came to Pure Life Ministries, I was certainly looking for the formula - the missing piece of the puzzle - as to why I was still struggling with sexual sin even though I'd tried all those things you mentioned. I tried the fasting. I tried reading the books. I tried, you know, crying out to the Lord for him to take it from me. But I thought, "OK, there's something that I'm really."

So when I got here, like you say, what got challenged was the self-life or pride, and I was like, "Well this is an interesting approach. I've never looked at it this way before." I think what it came down to is, for me, I was making a lot of excuses for my sin. I was blame shifting, justifying, and in many ways minimizing and not taking personal responsibility for the sin that I was in. But if I'm not taking personal responsibility for my sin, then when someone comes at me saying, "You know you are willingly doing this sin. There's no excuses. You need to take responsibility for the sin that you're committing." Then it becomes a battle of the will. And for me, I saw that my will hadn't been surrendered to the Lord because I was committing sin on a regular basis. So then it started to make sense why they were getting after a self-life, a prideful life, because the fruit of how I was living showed that I wanted to do things my way, and not God's way.  

Nate: Which is pride.

Luke: Which is pride! I was raising my standards above the standards of the Bible. And when I saw that, I began praying for God to break my will because that was the real problem. It was me! I was doing these things. So my whole view changed. it was a different way of dealing with sexual sin that I'd never approached before.  

Nate: So let's zoom in on a specific kind of a guy that we encounter a lot. It sounds like maybe you were in this same camp.  They hate the consequences of their sin, the shame, the misery, and sometimes it's led to financial ruin.  It's also led to the ruin of their marriages.  They don't like the guilty feelings, but like you said they're still holding on to the sin because they are willingly committing it over and over and over.  So can you help us understand a little bit more how that kind of a mindset, which holds on to sin but hates the consequences, is self-centered and proud?

Luke: If you look at Christianity from a humanistic point of view, where the purpose of serving God is to better please myself, better fix my circumstances and ultimately to get me to heaven instead of hell, this could make Christianity become a very selfish religion. We get focused on the many side effects of our sexual sin: the shame, the embarrassment, the loss of money, and the inconvenience that messes up our personal lives. We focus on how it messes with family life, our jobs, our incomes.  And if we're going to church as professing Christians it doesn't make us look good. But what we're missing is that the purpose of serving God isn't just to fix my circumstances. It's about the testimony of Jesus. It's about honoring the name of Jesus. When we want freedom just to fix these areas of our life without trying to glorify Jesus, it's really all still just selfish.

Nate: Luke, let's make a clarification real quick. I think some people get tripped up over this. The idea that a person could be crying out to God and asking him take their sexual sin away from them, and yet there will is still engaged in their sin in such a way that they don't really want to be free. How can that happen?  

Luke: You've got to be brutally honest with yourself. Because when I was struggling with regularly viewing pornography after a bad night, I would cry out to the Lord in repentance.  At least a kind of repentance to remove the guilt that I was feeling.  It was terrible and I didn't want to feel that again, so I would close my laptop that had unfiltered Internet and I would put it down next to my bed and go to sleep. The next evening I would come home from work, take out my laptop with the unfiltered Internet again, and just start surfing the web.  The next thing you know I was viewing porn again.  On one hand we really want to be free, but when Jesus describes battling sexual immorality, He tells us to cut off your right arm and pluck out your right eye.  He charges us to take radical maneuvers to really fight this sexual sin.  

I didn't do that.  I lied, I didn't get my computer out of my room, I didn't talk to anybody, I didn't do anything other than a cry for help when I was feeling guilty.  I wasn't really fighting sexual sin or doing everything in my power to break free.  We naturally just do what we want. If we really want to break free of our sexual sin we would do whatever it takes to break free from it.

Think of the amount of effort that we put into pursuing our lusts.  We will hide and come up with elaborate plans. We will work out every detail of how to hide our tracks. We'll cover things and sneak around to get what we want. I've traveled hours to meet up with someone. It's insanity that we'll put forth all of that effort to pursue our sin, but when we're trying to get free of it, if we don't get an answer from a five minute prayer then we blame God. Well, that's just not true. It's not reality. We have to be honest with ourselves. In many cases, we're not really fighting.

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Nate: One of the things I've heard from Jordan Yoshimine, our Director of At-Home-Programs, is that it's totally possible to go through one of our counseling programs and yet never deal with the self life. You can do a great job in your homework. You can keep all the rules. You can even abstain from giving over to your sin for nine months.  Yet there's a danger that you're still not dealing with the root. Why do we say that?

Luke: Yes, that's a good point, and it makes sense when you think about it.  We can think that if we go to Pure Life Ministries to deal with our sexual sin, and then we leave with it gone, mission accomplished right? This way of thinking is a distraction technique, because the real issue is the self-life. The real reason we've committed sexual immorality is because our sinful nature has been in charge most of our lives.  Paul helps us out with this in Galatians five when he talked about the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh. These are the two forces battling within us.

He shows us that sexual immorality is one of the many works of the flesh. So we can take sexual immorality out of our lives altogether, and we still have five or six other works of the flesh in full operation and not actually be producing the fruit of the Spirit. Paul tells us that to really be a follower of Jesus, our whole sinful nature needs to be crucified, needs to be dealt a decisive blow, so that the Holy Spirit can take charge and produce His fruit of love, joy, peace and so on.  So the issue is when you just take away sexual sin but you don't deal with the deeper issue of why they're living in sexual sin, your staying superficial. Then this person will just act out in another way.  

Nate: I know we've had some guys who've made it through the program, but when you really try to dig deeper and ask them who's in charge of their lives, who makes the decisions and what they're do after the program, it's obvious they are still in charge they're not going to be told what to do. Then we know it's just a matter of time before they go back to sin.  

Luke: You know Nate, it's interesting. It seems that my entire life can just be a battle between my will and God's will. We can end up frustrated and saying woe is me, because all we see is the continual crucifixion of our sinful nature.  It may appear like that at first, but it's my personal testimony that once you really deal a death blow to your self-life, and you really let the Lord take over and the Holy Spirit is now running your life, then you really begin to experience a true joy, peace, patience, kindness. Then you really begin to experience all the fruits of the Spirit coming out of a life that is fully surrendered to the Lord.  You begin following the Holy Spirit's leading in every way, where every good thing we have is coming from the Lord. That's my testimony. It's a praise report that we have an awesome God who, when we surrender our life to Him, fills us with good things.

One truth has forever shaped our work at Pure Life Ministries. And that is, that a man’s sexual addiction is merely the symptom of a much deeper problem; pride and self-centeredness are the ruling force in his life. If transformation is ever to occur, then these must be dealt a death-blow. Over the next nine weeks, we will be exposing the root of all sin: the self-life, and its many insidious fruits.

The apostle Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The path into a life filled with Christ is the crucified life, a life marked by profound brokenness and dependency. But those in sexual sin cannot live the crucified life, because their lives are marked by self-will and hardness of heart. But it is our testimony, again and again, here at Pure Life that God is able to transform anyone’s life that will earnestly seek Him and surrender to the truth that true life is when Christ lives in us.

New Year's resolutions usually don't have real power to change people—the kind of power people in sexual sin desperately need to experience. But this episode presents essential truths that can produce lasting change. Counselor Jim Lewis explains why it's crucial to take responsibility for sexual sin, Dr. Daniel Berger clarifies the term “addiction” from a biblical perspective, and Pastor Ed Buch defines biblical repentance as the ultimate pathway to victory.

The world tells us that hope comes from an expectation that something good is going to happen. But if that’s true, how can a wife have hope when her marriage is failing? You see, we need a hope that anchors itself in something beyond this world of suffering. We need a living hope flowing to us despite the difficult circumstances of this life. Kathy Gallagher joins us again to talk about the true hope of all believers, and she helps us see how to anchor ourselves in it.

We were made for love. To give it. To receive it. And no wonder, because the God who made us in his image—is love. Maybe this is why a husband’s betrayal is so painful; because first and foremost, it is a sin and an offense against love. Kathy Gallagher joins us to talk about the love of God, and why the knowledge of His love is crucial if a wife is going to find her way through the devastation of a husband’s sin. Plus, Stephanie Ehrenberg testifies to the grace of the Lord even in the midst of difficult trials.

In our recent series for wives, Kathy Gallagher talked about faith, love, and hope and how these can be an anchor in the Lord for a woman facing a broken marriage. But what she has to say can be applied to any circumstance you may be facing. And in light of the trials of 2020, and the uncertainty of the future, we can take courage in the living hope we have to anchor us through any storm. (From Purity for Life Episode #419 – Hold Fast to a Living Hope)

Hey everyone, welcome to ANOTHER Christmas episode of Purity for Life! In our last episode, we took time to reflect on the wonder of Jesus—his lowliness, his love and his sacrifice. This week, we'll do it all over again!

There are a lot of things that are trying to keep us from fixing our eyes on Jesus this year. People are stressed out about the pandemic, no one knows what Christmas will look like, and many people's lives are broken. But we want to help you allow Jesus to take center stage during this holiday season. No matter what's going on in your life, please take some time to stop everything and focus with us on the greatest gift ever given.