With poetic beauty John Newton made it clear in his famous hymn, Amazing Grace, that there are many dangers, toils and snares for those who choose to walk with Jesus. He eloquently depicted suffering as being an integral part of the past, present and future reality of the journey of life. These dangers, toils and snares come from the battles that rage against us through devils, other people, or even our own flesh.

The third stanza of Amazing Grace tells the story,

“Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.”

Newton presented in this hymn some practical, everyday theology. If you read his life story, you will find that he wrote this heartfelt hymn through the agony of personal experience. Not only did he know the perils that accompanied a sailor’s life in the natural, he also knew what it was to face the “dangers, toils and snares” of the spiritual realm. He suffered before coming to Christ because of his sin and then suffered after coming to Christ as a result of his pursuit of God.

Life would be easy if we didn’t have to face all these trials and temptations. Yet ever since Adam and Eve’s terrible rebellion this has been the world in which we live. The idea that we will face many “dangers, toils and snares” is Newton’s concise way of communicating some of the ways that Christians will experience suffering. They may come through persecution, spiritual attacks or the inward battles we face in dealing with our sinful nature.

Sometimes our suffering is little more than an irritant; other times it has the potential to be devastating. Yet in each danger, toil and snare there lies an opportunity to grow a little more like Jesus. This isn’t how most Christians think in America despite the fact that trials and tests are an integral part of developing a Biblical faith.

Before Paul came to Christ, he persecuted the church and even thought that he was doing service for God. When the Lord confronted him on the Damascus road, he was terrified by the divine encounter, especially after the Lord declared that he was literally fighting against God.

For three days Paul was in agony of soul and mind through the knowledge that he had been self-deceived into believing that it was God’s will for him to persecute Christians. The Pharisee was slowly being purged of his Pharisaism through the gift of repentance.

After three days of deep conviction the Lord sent to Paul a disciple named Ananias. The Lord told Ananias that He would show Paul “how much he must suffer for my name.” (Acts 9:16). The Lord didn’t paint a rosy picture to Paul by telling him that his new life with Christ would be happy and free from trouble. No, the Lord told him the truth because He wanted Paul to count the cost to be a disciple.

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In today’s church culture many want to remarket Jesus by sanitizing Him of all the supposed negativity that surrounds Him. They want to scrub Him up and make Him look relevant to this modern culture. There is one major problem with this—such thoughts are not based in truth, but an incorrect knowledge of God and man’s great need. Mankind has not changed in six millennia—we are still sinners in desperate need of a Savior.

Many people would like to erase what Paul told the believers in Philippi because it doesn’t fit today’s motivational preaching where people want a happy religion. He wrote, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” (Philippians 1:29). How many pastors have preached from this verse? How many self-professing Christians even know this verse exists?

The fact remains that Newton was right in stating that we will go through many dangers, toils, and snares until we see Jesus face to face. Paul knew what it was to suffer for Christ, and this became part of his preaching. An example of this is found in Acts 14:22, “Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”

Notice that Paul was encouraging the disciples with the message that they must go through much tribulation before they get to heaven. The importance of this message is lost in the watered-down motivational talks that many pastors give today. People need to be prepared for the trials and temptations we are sure to face—not with the psychobabble that comes from so many pulpits today, but with the truth that a victorious Christian life comes by dying to self and living totally unto Christ.

We cannot help people live triumphant over sin, self and the world by giving them cutesy sayings, funny antidotes and sugar sweetened coined phrases that are void of substance. We all need to hear the truth, even when it hurts. To sugarcoat the truth to make it palatable to more people is to turn the truth into a lie.

The apostle Peter told us that “…the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10). Here we see the wonder and mystery of how God works in our fallen world. If we will submit to Jesus through loving obedience, then He will make all the dangers, toils, and snares work for our temporal and eternal good. They will help purify our faith so that we can hear our Savior’s joyful “Well done” when we stand before Him.

This roundtable discussion offers sound advice to Christian singles about following Jesus and living in purity. Leaders from Madison Place Community Church offer biblical insight into how and why singleness can be a blessing for Christians. Plus, PLM Director of Ministry Outreach Nate Danser offers an inside look at the brand-new resource The Overcomers Series.

Karla Buch, who is part of Pure Life Ministries' senior leadership, shares how she persevered through the tragedy of her husband's betrayal and found faith, restoration, and "a love we never had before."

Brooks: Karla, you and Ed went through a fiery trial in your marriage. But before we get into what happened, can you share a little about how you met?

Karla: Well, I grew up in a Christian home, where I had very godly parents who taught me about the Lord from the time I was very young. I went to a Christian college after high school, and then I worked for two different missions organizations. When I did meet my husband, it was a church, and we knew each other for about 15 years before we started dating. We both wanted to serve the Lord, we both sat under the same preaching and teaching, and we went to Christian seminars together. So we knew we really had something in common—a life where we wanted to serve the Lord.

Brooks: What were your ideas of how marriage would be as you started life together?

Karla: We really were hoping that we would both be serving the Lord full-time. Even in the process of planning our wedding, we had gotten introduced to a Christian organization that was looking for Christian counselors, and that was my husband's field of work. So we really expected that we could be more effective serving the Lord as a married couple then each one of us would be individually. I was looking forward to a marriage that would be very fulfilling for me, because I had trusted the Lord to bring the right man into my life. I was looking forward to that companionship and just to having a godly husband who would be a good husband and potentially a good father to any children we might have—that we would really be living for the Lord in all that we did.

Brooks: What were some of the first things you noticed that led you to believe that something wasn't right in your relationship?

Karla: Very early on, I sensed that he would go into long periods of withdrawal—where he would be very quiet, very hard to reach and hard to talk to. He could never give me a reason why. I would ask what was wrong, but he would always tell me that nothing was wrong, of course. We would be constantly arguing about household duties or time spent away from home, how much was correct. He immersed himself in his work and took on a position with his work where he had to be gone almost every weekend. So he would retreat into his work environment, and I would go home and stay with my parents for the weekend. It was like we were still living under the same roof...but almost in two different worlds completely. But yet, all the while, we were maintaining this facade that we were the perfect Christian couple, perfectly happy, and that everything was fine. So I knew something was wrong, but I really couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. There was no outward sin that I was aware of, but you just know somehow—I guess, from the Lord, maybe—that something is wrong.

Brooks: Did you question God during this period when things weren't going like you expected them to go in your marriage?

Karla: Well, of course, because I had waited a long time before I got married and wanted the Lord to bring the right one into my life. And so now that he did, I was really beginning to question, "Was this the right one? Was this God's plan? Have I made a big mistake here?" But even in the midst of my questionings and my doubts, the Lord was working things out behind the scenes. One day, I was at the office, and a magazine came in the mail to my desk—and it came to my desk because it wasn't addressed to anyone in particular in the organization. It was Unchained!, the magazine from Pure Life Ministries. When I read through that magazine and heard about Pure Life Ministries' programs and about men that had been set free, for the first time, I had hope that maybe there was something out there that could help our marriage. I ordered Kathy Gallagher's book, When His Secret Sin Breaks Your Heart, and I began to read her advice to women who had been through the same things I was going through. It really helped me to see that we need to keep our focus on the Lord during these times, even when nothing seems to be happening.

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I remember one night when I was just at the end of my own self, my own resources, and I was on my face before the Lord, just crying out him. First of all, I was just asking him to intervene in the marriage, and I was praying for my husband, praying that he would have a heart to change. But also, at the same time, it was just a time of surrender to the Lord, where I had to lay down that marriage and the all of the ideal expectations that I had for the marriage. And I remember saying to the Lord, "If this is the way that you want this marriage to be, then I accept it, and I am willing to continue to be committed to my husband and to allow you to be the One that I am looking to for all of my needs." At this point, I didn't know the full extent of his sin. I just knew things weren't the way I wanted them to be, and that was what I had to lay down before the Lord. It was probably only a few months later when my husband sat down with me one evening and confessed everything.

Brooks: Later, Ed attended the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program, and you enrolled in the Wives Program. How did God work in your lives in this time?

Karla: In the Wives Program, I learned, first of all, what it really meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Like I said, I had grown up in the church, but I think my Christianity was more of a mental acknowledgement of the Lord—knowing about Him, reading about Him. But I came to learn that it has to be a personal relationship with Him, and he has to be real inside a person, and that's what happened for me when I did the Program. I also had a lot of pride. I had a lot of unrealistic expectations about what marriage should be. Fear of man was also a big issue for me; I was so self-conscious and worried about what others thought about me. Through the Wives Program, I learned to be more concerned about the needs of others.

When Ed was in the Residential Program, the Lord did a marvelous work in his life. The Lord has restored our marriage. We no longer have those doubts or fears or periods of silence. Nothing's hidden anymore. The Lord has given us a love for each other that we never had before—one that's based on true godly love, not just our own interests. We've been serving here a Pure Life Ministries since 2005, and we're very grateful for all that the Lord has done for us. It's not just that my marriage got fixed. It's that the Lord has come into my life and my husband's life in a way that He is the center of everything. We're not just living for a happy, comfortable life in this world. We now see that the Lord and eternal matters are much more important than anything we could ever hope for in this life.

Brooks: Do you have any closing thoughts for other wives out there who are hurting?

Karla: I would definitely say that your best weapon is prayer, both for your husband and for yourself—to have the ability to be able to endure through what might be very difficult circumstances. Just know that the Lord is working behind the scenes...maybe in ways that you're not even aware of. And if you just keep looking to Him, He will be the one that will meet your needs and be your security. He will be your comfort and your stronghold during this time.

Have you been devastated by the pain and rejection of an unfaithful husband? Whether your husband’s problem is pornography, an adulterous affair, soliciting prostitutes, or even secretly struggling with homosexuality…we can help you.

WIVES PROGRAM

Fear often contributes to the formation of an addiction, and then seeks to keep us bound in it. PLM Pastor Ed Buch shows us how to face our fears and overcome them.

Interviewer: Pastor Ed, you previously wrote an article titled, "Why Sex Addicts are so Afraid.” I suspect that nearly anyone can think of many times in their lives where fear has been an issue. I think we can all relate to the idea of fear.

Pastor Ed: Yeah. Maybe I should say at the outset that I've certainly had a lot of experience with fear over the years. As a child, I was a very fearful individual, especially of the dark, as many children are.

Interviewer: Yeah, me too. I still don't look under the bed!

Pastor Ed: Right. I still don't walk up to windows at night. A couple of things stood out to me as I looked at the Scriptures and my own experience kind of side-by-side when it comes to fear. One thing is that as a human being, fear paralyzes me. I get stuck, and I think that's true in general of people - we are paralyzed by fear. But on the other hand, Satan our adversary is animated by fear. It is an atmosphere that he thrives in; and I think works very, very hard to incite and keep immersing us in because that's where he can do his work to corrupt and destroy lives so effectively.

Interviewer: Yeah. No doubt about that. Well, hopefully we can encourage people to have hope that they can get free of the fear that the enemy is so often trying to keep us in. One of the classic examples of fear in the Bible involves Peter.

Pastor Ed: Yeah. One of the probably most well known stories of fear in the Bible is Peter walking on the water. A number of the disciples are in the boat and headed across the lake; and Jesus comes walking on the water toward them and their reaction is fear. He says some reassuring things to them and eventually Peter says 'Well Lord, if it's really you, invite me to come walk on the water to you.' Jesus does that. He says 'Come.' So Peter gets out of the boat - I'm sure many of us have heard the story - and he loses his focus. He makes a decisive error here and takes his eyes off of Jesus. He begins to see the boisterous waves and the storm around him, and starts to sink in the water. Of course, he calls on Jesus. Jesus reaches out his hand to him and says 'Oh you of little faith. Why did you doubt?'

Interviewer: What does that question that Jesus asks reveal to us and about us?

Pastor Ed: What we see here in this passage with Peter is that fear is literally drowning faith and that is true in so many of our lives. We can get stuck in unbelief. I personally have felt that at times. When I was in my sexual sin in particular - feeling powerless to stop the behaviors that I knew were sinful, as well as powerless to put into practice the steps I could see and read in scripture or other biblical materials - Jesus was inviting me toward that freedom, but I was paralyzed it seemed by the role that fear was playing in my life. And that's because we're dealing with a lot of fears.

I think this is very true of sexual addicts or others dealing with sexual sin - that fear has played a huge role in our lives. Probably many are dealing with something like a fear of intimacy, a fear of emotional pain and rejection, a fear of inadequacy, just feeling insignificant and unable. Those are all things that feed and propel us into those sexual addictions.

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Interviewer: I had a check box next to each one of those as I look back on some of the things that drew me into sexual sin. I’ve heard you say that fear not only leads us into sexual sin, but can also hinder us from getting out of it.

Pastor Ed: Yes, that's what I mean by fear animating Satan. Now he's got us in this trap of fear - I was propelled there by fear and I can't get out because I'm afraid of getting caught or exposed, afraid of losing my reputation, afraid of the consequences that I might have to deal with when my sin is exposed. It's really a horrible trap and a pit. I believe many people out there today might be stuck in that pit, and it is my hope that they will understand that they don't have to stay there.

Interviewer: Can you expound more on that? How can we escape this fear-based prison?

Pastor Ed: Yeah. The only way to get out of this prison is to face our fears. Proverbs says very clearly that the fear of the wicked will come upon him and that's exactly what happens in many cases, unfortunately. As we let it go too long, the things we fear happen. In my case, my sexual sin got exposed and I was caught; and all those things that I feared came upon me. I think many people experience that, but we can at any point make the choice to face those fears head-on and overcome them. And the Lord would have us do that much sooner than many of us opt to do.

Interviewer: You say that coming to grips with our fears is not complicated. It may not be complicated, but if you're in the grip of fear it very often seems elusive. How do I do that if I find myself driven by fear or controlled by fear?

Pastor Ed: In my mind, there's kind of a two-pronged approach. We need to replace that fear with faith, and the faith is going to come from the Word of God. There's no way around that. You need to be immersed in the Word of God and letting the Word of God take a higher place in your thinking and in your heart than the fears and the emotions behind those fears. At the same time, you mentioned while it's not complicated, it's not easy either. I don't want to minimize that because I'm not even sure a person can literally do that alone. My experience - and I think the experience of most people I'm familiar with - is it takes a group of believers who can come alongside and help pray you through in that regard, before you can really overcome fear in your life.

Interviewer: You close your article by talking about the woman with the issue of blood, which I think really spoke well to the love of Jesus in the midst of our fear.

Pastor Ed: I think everyone's probably familiar with that account in scripture. This woman had a twelve year issue of blood. She's bound in her fear and her uncleanness, very much like someone in sexual sin. She gets just enough sight of Jesus in her desperation to reach out and touch the hem of his garment; and gets the healing she needs. But the reality of that story is when she touches him Jesus immediately stops everything. He's on his way to heal somebody else, but he stops.

Interviewer: And he's got quite a crowd around him too.

Pastor Ed: Exactly. In fact, Peter said that. When Jesus asked 'Who touched me?' Peter's response was 'Master, you're surrounded by this large group of people; it could have been any of us. Why do you even care?' And when we think about that, I think the reason Jesus really did care was because he loved that woman perfectly. In that love, he understood that while she had been healed of her uncleanness, her fear remained. We see when he finally calls her before him, it says specifically 'She came in fear and trembled before him.' But she confessed in that moment everything to him. His response to her was 'Daughter, your faith has made you well.' She overcame all of her fear by the faith that he drew out of her and imparted to her.

Interviewer: He really laid the foundation for hope in her that she did not have before. Even as you're talking about that, I think of the man that was healed by the pool at the Sheep Gate. When he was asked 'Who healed you?', he didn't know who healed him. I've always loved the fact that Jesus arranged a second meeting, so that he could know who healed him. He wanted to heal his heart, of course, and he wanted to give that man the hope that he didn't have just by his healing, as wonderful as that was.

Pastor Ed: That's right, yeah. I think maybe many of us today would settle for just physical healing, but God is always after something much much deeper.

Interviewer: Yes, and much more wonderful. Amen. Hopefully for those who may be experiencing fear in different ways in their life it will provide some hope to them—that Jesus is not only aware of their fears, but he wants to set them free from the fears and the consequences of them.

When someone is pursuing purity, they can count on facing a tidal wave of temptation. But just feeling tempted isn't wrong...so how can you tell the difference between temptation and actual sin? Ed Buch, the pastor of Pure Life Ministries' Residential Program, offers his own answer to this internal struggle. Plus, Steve Gallagher shares a preview of the 2019 Annual Conference, and Jeff and Rose Colón encourage struggling couples to pursue God's true path of blessing for their marriage.

Headlines abound with stories of sexual sin's devastating impact on women, and among those affected are countless wives who must face the devastation of their husbands' betrayal. Following up on the last episode, biblical counselor Carol Bourque and Pure Life Ministries co-founder Kathy Gallagher return to offer hope and the answers that can help wives navigate this painful trial, and Karla Buch shares her own story of tragedy, faith, and restoration.

Pure Life Ministries’ co-founder, Kathy Gallagher, shares some of her personal perspective about the severe inner turmoil of a wife who has just found out about her husband’s sexual sin.

When I discovered my husband's sin, the sense of betrayal was profound. I had always been raised to believe that marriage and the union between a husband and wife was totally sacred. So when Steve had given away that sacredness that we had together as a couple, it was just devastating, and it is for every wife. There's the sense of betrayal—that you've lost something through this process. And there's the aloneness and the fear and all of the emotions that come in because of that sense of betrayal. And it's not just the sense of betrayal but the actual betrayal—that my husband has either been with other people physically or that he has viewed pornography. Either way, it's just devastating; there's really no other term I can think of to describe it.

Betrayal in a marriage is almost the worst thing that can happen. You can think of lots of other things that can happen in a marriage that can really rock your world, but when there's been betrayal—sexual betrayal—it's the worst thing that a man can do to his wife or that a wife can do to her husband. It happens both ways; mostly it's men in sexual sin, but there have been women that have been in sexual sin. And the devastation that the spouse goes through! Everything falls apart. What you thought you had is no longer there; it's gone. And you're reeling. “Where do I go from here? How do I put this back together?” And I think there's aloneness and fear and...lostness is the word that keeps coming into my mind. You feel so lost. This person that I love, that I've completely given myself to and have devoted the rest of my life to, has betrayed me. The person that I counted on and depended on and needed and wanted and was one with has betrayed me. He has, in a sense—this is maybe overly dramatic—he's put a knife in my back...or, at the very least, put a knife in this relationship.

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Mistrust is enormous, because you don't just land on your feet after you find out that your husband has been unfaithful. It's more like you're on your back and you don't know how to get up. How do you move forward? If there has even been repentance, how do you go forward from this reality? How do you go into the future with this man? How do you ever know that you can trust him again? How do you build trust in this mess? Mistrust, for me, wasn't as big of a deal as it is for a lot of women, because I was very naive, and I wanted it to work, and I was just ready to move forward. But it kept happening, and that's when mistrust was really becoming a part of my world. And how to deal with it was a real problem for me. I know it is for lots of women. You just don't know how to move forward.

The sense of rejection for a woman is...it brings me to tears to think about it. As a woman, you start to think about what he's doing, especially if he's with other people. You're immediately questioning yourself—at least, I did. I questioned myself: “What's wrong with me? What's so wrong with me that he needs to be with other people?” And it just cuts at the heart of who you are as a woman, as a person. “What is so wrong with me that he needs to go somewhere else for sex?” And even if it's just pornography. I would say that when a man commits physical adultery, there's no comparison to that rejection. There really isn't. You can't compare pornography to adultery. But what was so painful for me when Steve was viewing pornography was that he was leaving me out. He had a separate world that was his and that didn't include me. But it included all kinds of images and situations with strangers. And I was out of his world—not that I wanted to be a part of that world. But the statement that was being made (whether he was vocalizing or not), the statement that he was living out was, "This is who I am; this is what I want; and I don't want you in there." And that is hard to reconcile.

I would say that the worst thing that can happen to a woman, far more than lost love, is losing respect for her husband. Because if you don't respect him, you're not going to fight for him. You're not going to get in his corner, and you're not going to do battle. I'll just use my own story. Time after time after time, Steve would fail...without repentance. And I just got to the point where I started seeing him differently. He wasn't the strong, confident guy that I married. I saw him as weak; I saw him as kind of sleazy; and my respect was just going away. And I kind of didn't even care. In fact, I wanted him to go away. I didn't want to fight for the marriage. There was nothing to fight for. I just couldn't imagine living with him. Literally, I could not fathom living with this man anymore. I had such disdain and disgust inside for him that there was nothing left to fight for.

There's a lot of fallout from a man in sexual sin. And the outcome for a wife—the symptoms, the outcomes, the results of the sin he's been in—it's pretty hard to sum it all up and say one thing. There are so many things that happen to a woman and to their marriage as a result of infidelity.

Have you been devastated by the pain and rejection of an unfaithful husband? Whether your husband’s problem is pornography, an adulterous affair, soliciting prostitutes, or even secretly struggling with homosexuality…we can help you.

WIVES PROGRAM

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No wife expects to make the painful discovery that her husband has a secret life of sexual sin. This episode explores how unfaithfulness impacts a wife through the eyes of two of the PLM wives' counselors. Pure Life’s co-founder, Kathy Gallagher, reveals the most painful effects of a husband's sin and speaks honestly about the struggle against unforgiveness and bitterness, and Carol Bourque describes unhealthy reactions wives often experience.

Pastor Steve Gallagher explains how the battles against sexual sin and spiritual pride often go hand-in-hand.

Brooks: Pastor Steve, you wrote an article, “What Sex Addicts and Pharisees Have in Common” that described how sex addicts and Pharisees are similar. In the article, you said that Christians who struggle with sexual sin can tend to get trapped in "modern formalism" instead of a "vibrant life in God." How do we get these two things confused?

Pastor Steve: The predominant characteristic of Pharisees was that they were focused on outward things rather than the inward life. Jesus constantly focused on the heart—what's going on in a person's heart, what's the interchange between that person's inward life and God. God is a spirit-being. He's a person. He's not a set of rules and regulations. Yes, there is the law that we must keep in regard to our relationship with the Lord. But rules and regulations are not what Christianity is about. This Christian thing is all about our relationship with God. And when you are walking with the Lord, you are focused on him. You're in constant communion with him. He's real to you! That's so different than what I would say modern Pharasaism would be—which is just the American church thing: going to church, keeping some basic rules (we don't do this; we don't do that; we don't say those things; we're against these things); and just adapting yourself to a church culture. That is completely different from really walking with God and having a vibrant relationship with Him.

Brooks: Speaking of the Pharisees, in Matthew 9:13, when Jesus confronted a group of Pharisees, he said, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." What was his point to them?

Pastor Steve: Another one of the predominant characteristics of a Pharisee is that a Pharisee has a critical, judging spirit. And what they do is, they have their outward things they do—their own rules that they keep. And when other people don't keep those rules, their rules, then they judge them and they look down on them and they're critical of them. And Jesus said, "You weigh people down." And that's what he was talking about. He said, "You weigh them down with burdens, and they're too cumbersome—too heavy to bear." And that's not what Christianity is about. Christianity should be full of joy, and there should be life and liberty in it. But that's what the Pharisees did back then in their own way, and that's what Pharisees do today. When they're focused on certain outward laws and rules to keep, then they pick other people apart who don't keep those particular things that they deem as so important.

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Brooks: Back to sexual sin. In the article, you mention that one reason why sexual addicts become Pharisees is that they are deceived by their own efforts to hide their sin and pretend everything is OK. If you confronted a person who thought they were a "pretty good Christian" but only had a "small problem of sexual sin," what would you say to them?

Pastor Steve: I know that I would focus on the enormity of sin—the blackness of it, the evil nature of sin. And especially sexual sin...especially pornography, the pornography industry, all of it. It's black with Satan's touch. And I probably would come at it from that standpoint. So when you think about a Pharisee and a sexual addict...let's just look at these 2 people side by side. A Pharisee is walking in the flesh; he's not walking in the Spirit. And so everything he's doing is coming from a carnal mindset. Jesus told the Pharisees that they were "the blind leading the blind," and they were blinded by their own self-righteousness. And that's exactly what you're talking about: "I'm a pretty good guy." That's self-righteousness. That's different than the righteousness of God. A sex addict is deceived, because sin always deceives. Every time a person sins, whatever the kind of sin it is, it works deception into his soul and makes him increasingly more blind to the reality of his spiritual condition. So you have two different kinds of people that you would think have nothing in common...but what they have in common is that they're walking in the flesh and they're deceived by their own lifestyles and they are separating themselves from God.

Brooks: You also mentioned "powerless religion" in the article as a common characteristic of Pharisees and sexual addicts. When someone realizes that their Christian life has not been powerful enough to produce victory over sexual sin, what can they do?

Pastor Steve: Let me take you to something that Paul said. Remember that Paul had once been Saul the Pharisee. He knew what it meant to be a Pharisee, because he was a "Pharisee of Pharisees"—those were his words. And he eventually came to the place in his life where the Lord was able to show him that in his weakness, God's power would be manifested. That was completely the opposite of what Saul the Pharisee had lived in! He was strong in himself—his ability to keep the law, his ability to do all these outward things, and his ability to look righteous to other people. He was strong in that way, and God had to break him and break him and break him...and get him to the place of such weakness as a person that God's power could come through his life. That's the difference between powerful Christianity and powerless Christianity. So, for a guy in sexual sin, it's the same kind of thing; he's strong in himself—his "self life," his carnal nature, is strong and vibrant and in control. And that's got to be broken. So it's through the process of God breaking us down and weakening us that his power can come in and set us free from the hold of any kind of sin.

Biblical counselor and Pure Life Ministries pastor Ed Buch contrasts the power of true repentance with powerless resolutions to change and gives a clear definition of what the process of repentance looks like.

Brooks: We want to talk about why repentance has the power to change someone who is struggling with sexual sin when just making a resolution doesn't. But can you start by explaining why repentance is so important biblically?

Pastor Ed: I'd love to try and answer that question, because repentance isn't important just in terms of overcoming sexual sin; it is critical in terms of our faith and in terms of whether or not we're actually saved. The Bible says that we either repent or we perish. One of the places that we can see that clearly is in 2 Peter 3:9, which says, "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." In other words, it's not God's desire that anyone should perish, but he warns us that anyone who does not repent will, in fact perish—meaning that person parishes with the unsaved souls and is doomed to eternal torment in hell. So I don't think it would even be possible to overemphasize the importance of repentance; it's the critical dividing line between the saved and the unsaved.

And you'll see that all throughout scripture, especially in the New Testament, where right at the beginning of his ministry John the Baptist preached, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And in a chapter later, in Matthew 4, Jesus opens his ministry with those exact same words, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And when the disciples were sent out two by two, Mark 6 records that they preached repentance. When the church was birthed on the Day of Pentecost and the crowd asked Peter, "What shall we do?" his first statement to them was, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." And Paul even testified before Agrippa later in his life about his early years of ministry and said, "I declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do works fitting for repentance." So there's simply no way around this biblical truth that repentance is an essential component of true salvation.

Brooks: As we seek to understand repentance, can you first talk about what repentance is not?

Pastor Ed: A little while back, I did a Google search on repentance, and what you see as the top result is that repentance is "sincere regret or remorse." But regret is really just self-oriented. It's feeling sorry for yourself and the consequences that you're experiencing. And remorse is focused on feeling bad—maybe about what I've done to other people, but it's really still a feeling that's being emphasized. So remorse might be a step in the right direction, but regret and remorse will both fall short of biblical repentance. In fact, we have to really guard against the common mistake of defining repentance in terms of feelings—feeling sorry, feeling regret, feeling remorse, or even feeling guilty about something that we've done.

Brooks: What is the basic difference between just making a resolution and truly experiencing repentance?

Pastor Ed: A resolution originates in a person's will. Maybe even sometimes it originates merely in our emotions, but most of the time there's a determination to carry out a change. But the person is just aiming to accomplish this resolution through sheer determination and self-effort. Repentance is a spiritual act; it comes out of our spirit. Overcoming sin—especially when that sin has held dominion over you for a period of time, like sexual sin often has—requires a power outside yourself. No one is going to be able to repent apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. So resolutions are the work of a person's natural man, while repentance is the work of a person's spiritual man.‍

Brooks: If repentance is a spiritual reality, then what can we observe outwardly in a person that would help us determine when they've repented?

Pastor Ed: Good question. Repentance can be hard to detect outwardly, but one of the things that the counseling staff at Pure Life Ministries would look for, first of all, would be indications of brokenness. They are consumed, at least at first, with who they are, the reality of what they've done, and taking responsibility. And it kind of leaves them broken, and it shows up in their countenance; their countenance softens. And their interactions with others take on a gentler approach; they now have a better sight of who they are. You see it in their face, quite often, when it's real. When it's not, that's when you can really tell, because there's a flatness, a deadness, and an emptiness. They say all the right words, perhaps, but there's no substance in what they're saying—no life coming across from that person.

Another thing you would see in someone who's coming into repentance is a willingness to admit they're wrong—not just about the thing that originally started them down this path of repentance. But they're starting to see other things in their life, and they're quicker—much quicker—to say, "I'm wrong," and to ask others to forgive them.

Brooks: Let's get right down to it. Can you give us a simple, working definition of repentance?

Pastor Ed: The King James Dictionary, for example, says, "To change one's mind and purpose; to have regret." In addition, scriptural repentance is always combined with the notion of turning—turning away from sin and turning toward God. So, if you really want to keep it simple, here's the simplest definition I know to give you: repentance is a gift from God...to change your heart...to turn from your sin...and to turn back to God.

Brooks: For those who are ready to repent, what are the initial steps in that process?

Pastor Ed: You start with prayer—coming before the Lord and acknowledging my sin without making any excuses for it. The prodigal son and David's prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 are great examples. In fact, whenever I'm counseling someone who seems to really need to get a handle on coming into repentance, I encourage them to just pray over Psalm 51—to make it their prayer to God. At other times, I encourage them to picture the cross and maybe even seen Jesus hanging on the cross, and then I encourage them to look at him face-to-face and confess what they've done and ask Jesus if he would take the penalty for their sin. There's a brokenness that comes over you in that situation.

But it can’t stop there; there's always fruit. That's why sometimes it's difficult to tell at first whether someone's repented, but in a fairly short period of time—and I'm talking weeks or months at the most—you will know, because there will be a change that is bearing godly fruit now in their life, and they no longer do that thing that had them bound before. So when I counsel people about repentance and the fruit of repentance, I try and keep it really simple and focused on 3 things.

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First, I encourage them to think about turning their eyes toward godly things and away from their sins and the "worthless things," as the psalmist puts it. Second, I'll talk to them about turning our feet, and by feet I'm really referring to our walk—the direction we're headed and where we're going. We can't let our feet carry us into unholy territory anymore; we need to learn God's ways and walk in those ways. Third, and even more important, our heart absolutely must be redirected toward the Lord. Our affections and the things that we take pleasure in have to be directed toward God and His kingdom. Most of the time we're in that battle because we're discovering just how much of our heart is set on self—the things that I want. But many of those things are in direct opposition to the Word of God and the things of God. So we have to turn our heart away from those things and turn it toward God.

Summing some of this up, you can see that repentance is much more than just a one-time response at an altar or a one-time thing that a person has done in their life. Repentance is really a lifestyle; we're constantly needing to pay attention to where our eyes are going, where our feet are going, and where our heart and affections are. And if we really understand the fact that we're in repentance for the rest of our lives, then we can see that no one has gone too far; no one is in such a bad position or condition that they can't repent. We can always repent as long as we're still alive on this earth. We have the option, the possibility of repenting. And that's what God wants for us; he wants us to turn away from sin and turn back to him, and he really does have the power and the ability to change our heart.

A panel of counselors offers insights to church leaders about how to give meaningful help to people experiencing the hopelessness that often plagues those in habitual sexual sin.

Nate: Can a couple of you counselors share some of your personal testimonies about coming out of hopelessness?

Ken Larkin: I'd like to start by just saying that hopelessness is not necessarily a bad thing. It could be a tremendous catalyst for change—to bring someone to the end of himself and turn them to the Lord, who is the only one that can really help them and deliver them from this issue of sexual sin. And I found that was true in my own life. When I finally ran out of my own resources—when I finally became hopeless and realized I wasn't going to change through my own efforts alone—that's when I was willing to reach out for help. And that ultimately led me to come to the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program.

Ed Buch: I feel like in some measure I must be an expert on hopelessness, having gone through that period of my life when I was living under such an incredibly dark cloud. It was really the guilt of my sin, but I did not make that connection at the time at all. So I just thought that I had some kind of chemical imbalance or something else going on inside me that predisposed me to a dark outlook. It was the pessimistic, "glass-is-always-half-empty" thing, but it was much, much worse than that. It was to the point where I wanted to kill myself; I attempted twice to do that.

But even beyond those suicidal thoughts, all day every day I went around with a chant in the back of my mind, "Kill me; kill me; just let me die." In my mind, I was praying it to the Lord, but in reality I was probably just chanting it internally to myself. I did it laying on my bed at night as I was trying to fall asleep. It became such a natural part of my life that I quit trying to get rid of it. But when I came to the Residential Program back in 2004 and had been here for several weeks, one morning I just I woke up, sat on the edge of my bed, and said to myself, "I don't do that anymore. I don't chant like that. Those thoughts aren't there anymore. They're gone." And I really believe the Lord brought me into this heavily consecrated atmosphere and that this demonic voice couldn't coexist any longer. And I was delivered from it. But I've certainly been through a lot of hopelessness.

Nate: What are some things that you would say to a hopeless counselee, and what are some things you'd avoid saying to someone who's hopeless?

Ken Larkin: One obvious thing is to understand that the reason why they're hopeless is that they're focusing upon themselves. And as spiritual leaders, we really need to get people to focus upon the Lord and get them into the Word of God for themselves. We need to get them into the promises of God and get them to focus on the cross, what God has done for them, and the power of God to change their lives. There's tremendous hope in Jesus Christ, and there's no hope in their flesh of changing.

Jeremiah Eakin: One thing to avoid saying is, "Everything's going to be all right," or "you'll make it through this," or "things are going to get better." You don't know that. Lots of times, when you are dealing with these issues, things get worse. And those aren't true statements—to say that everything's just going to be are right. You have to equip someone to face reality, not just give them words that will make them feel better. Because once they get back to reality, those words will just fall away. And so, just as Ken said, we have to give them the truth.

Ed Buch: Hand in hand with what these guys are saying, I would just say that one of the most helpful things you can do for someone is identify their problem as sin. Because the world system has kind of given them lots of other descriptions for it, and we don't often use biblical terminology. For example, we don't talk about adultery, we talk about "affairs," "mistresses," and different terms for it. But if we stick to the biblical words and we call it sin, then the Bible has an answer for sin, and that's what we're really wanting to help people see. There is tremendous hope: "Oh, I have a sin problem, and Jesus is my answer; the blood of Jesus is my answer; the Holy Spirit gives me power to overcome sin." And that's where their hope is going to come from.

Nate: Let's look at two types of people: someone who's so helpless that they believe, "I can't change," and someone who is clearly trapped in habitual sexual sin but isn't very desperate yet. How would you deal with those two extremes?

Ed Buch: Well, let's talk about the person who says, "I can't stop," which is probably more commonly the guy who's coming to the attention of his pastor. He's the guy who's got this problem, but he feels like he's just enslaved to it. And he truly is, but he's saying over and over in his head, "I can't stop; I can't do anything about this." But the truth is, he can. What we constantly find is that it's a motivation problem, really, at the heart of it. For example, I've dealt with counselees who've said, "I can't stop self-gratification; I can't help it." And I'll say, "Well, what if I would pay you a million dollars to go 30 days without self-gratification? Could you do that?" "Oh, yeah; I could do that," they'll say.So we have a motivation problem, not an ability problem. And that's really what you're almost invariably coming up against, and trying to get them to see the riches of heaven and the life in God as worth it is key to overcoming that attitude of "I can't help it."

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Ken Larkin: Also, to say, "I can't stop" is definitely not true, from a biblical standpoint. If Jesus Christ can't deliver someone from sin, we're all in trouble. He came to save us from our sins, and Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has overtaken you but such as such is common to man." It's natural for you to to be tempted. But he also goes on to say, "But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it." So the Holy Spirit is at work in the believer's life; they have the promises of God; they have other believers; and they have different things to fall upon for support. But the bottom line is: there is power and there is deliverance from sin. And if they don't find they have that, then either they aren't availing themselves of what God has provided or maybe they have to realize they don't know the Lord and they don't have the Holy Spirit and they don't have the spiritual wherewithal to overcome their temptation—because they're not born again.

In contrast, someone else may come to you who has a legitimate issue of giving over habitually to sexual sin, but they may not see that it's a real big issue. So they're either not really willing to change or not hopeless or don't see it as a big deal. And definitely, as a pastor, it would be important to point out the seriousness of their sin. It's interesting: in many different places in scripture, especially in Paul's epistles, there's lists of categories of sin. And in three specific passages—one in Ephesians, one in Galatians, and one 1 Corinthians 6—Paul lists sexual sin in the forefront and says, "Don't be deceived; those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." So it is a really big deal from God standpoint. If you're going to call yourself a Christian, then "let those who name the name of Christ depart from iniquity," Paul says. And if they're living in habitual sin and calling themselves a Christian, it's a lot bigger issue than they probably think it is.

Ed Buch: I'm thinking of the letters in the Book of Revelation—the seven letters to the churches. And at least three of them mention sexual immorality in some form. And the call to all those churches is to repent. And so if you look at those letters as kind of a window into end-times events, sexual sin is going to be rampant. And God has a large problem with it; he is adamant that it needs to be addressed and that it needs to be addressed with repentance.

Pastor Dave Leopold shares how Jesus redeemed him from the bondage of life-dominating sin and describes how he developed his own relationship with God.

Brooks: Pastor Dave, as we start to explore your story and what you've learned about Jesus, can you share a bit about your younger years and then how you met the Lord?

Pastor Dave: Three or four years before I met the Lord, I was very lost, even though I grew up in a Christian home. I did a lot of drugs—a lot of psychedelic drugs which messed up my mind very bad and made me very unstable, fearful, insecure, and full of anxiety. So when I came to Christ, I had a lot to deal with. It was the drugs and the evil that I had gotten involved that pushed me back to God, because I was faced with the stark reality of evil and demonic influence. It was so real that it the Lord used it to push me back to him. I lost control of my life and of my mind, and I was so full of fear that I couldn't even function. So I came running back to Jesus, and he supplied the right people and the right situation so that I could turn back to him.

Brooks: Overall, where has your life gone since that point?

Pastor Dave: Well, the main thing is that, in the scripture, it says that He's our rock and our fortress, and in another place it says He's a very present help in trouble. And one of the things I'm most thankful for is His help in my basic life in those areas. I found that the presence of Jesus very much stabilized me and took away a lot of my fears. It was definitely a process; I've had a lot of trouble, a lot of anxiety, and lots of insecurity that I have had to suffer through. And just a lot of selfishness from the life I lived. And the Lord led me very young into marriage—led me to a woman that I've been married to for 43 years. And that rock, Jesus, really helped me to be a good husband. I have a family, four children, and Jesus was a tremendous help to me to be a good father. I am eternally grateful for God's help in that way, because I was so unstable that I could have never been in a relationship or been a father without the help of God.

He also led me into ministry. I didn't try to get into the ministry, but it just happened as I sought to walk closely with Jesus and sought to familiarize myself with the Word of God and spent a lot of time there. It just happened that I ended up in ministry and have had the opportunity to share Jesus with others.

Brooks: You mentioned the "struggles" you've had as you've experienced growth and change from the time you were saved. Can you elaborate?

Pastor Dave: Well, it was just the presence of God in my life that helped me get through. I had severe fear and anxiety problems from the drugs I did and the occultish things that I was into. I had a hunger for the mind of Christ. In Philippians 2, the Bible says that we've been given the mind of Christ, and He tells us, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." That mind is a very humble and lowly mind. Scripture talks about how that mind "doesn't seek its own" and "doesn't seek vain glory" or "just its own things" but it seeks for others and isn't worried about its own reputation. The Lord gave me a real hunger for that lowly mind and that wonderful presence of Jesus that is that sweet lowliness of God and abiding there and living there with Him.

Scripture says, "Great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them." It talks a lot about peace, and Jesus said he was "meek and lowly at heart" and if we would come to him that we would find "rest for our souls." And it's the personal presence of Jesus that has rescued me and stood by me and helped me throughout my life at different stages when some of the stuff from the past would come against me in spurts. I had another bad bout with it about 25 years ago when I had cancer and my children were little. And that brought on other problems and bouts and struggles inside at different times throughout my life. But it's the presence of Jesus, the mind of Christ, and the rest of God. It's a very, very real thing. It's a real substance. Jesus and His presence are very real. And it's calming and it's settling. And he's there—there in a very real way—when we need him most.

Brooks: Now, after all these years of walking with Jesus, would you say your experience is very different from how it was at the beginning?

Pastor Dave: Yes, it's vastly different. I was dysfunctional and had very severe anxiety when I was around people. I never knew when things were going to pop up. And there was just demonic oppression in my mind, and so on. And the Lord allowed at different times in my life for me to be tried and allowed it to crop back up here and there. But today, I'm a completely different person than I was in those early days. Though life isn't without trials—and sometimes severe ones—the Lord has made a vast difference inside of me and in my mind and in my ability to be comfortable with people and really love people and give to them. So I'm very, very grateful for the little things—the personal things: Jesus, and my family, and my wife, my children, my friends. But also I'm grateful that He's enabled me and allowed me to give back to others from what I've learned of the Word of God...and what I've experienced of the word of God.

Brooks: Do you have any word of encouragement or advice to someone who's not as far along as you are in their relationship with Jesus?

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Pastor Dave: I suppose the best advice I know that I could give would be to spend a lot of time in the presence of God. And spend a lot of time in His Word. Sometimes people look at a seeking life as kind of a life of work. They say that you don't have to work to be right with God. And I agree with that. But the seeking life isn't a life of works; it's a life of exposure. It's like exposing yourself to the sun. The sun does all the work, but you have to get out in it. And getting a suntan isn't anything you can brag about. Nobody says, "Oh, just look at how good I look after I laid out in the sun for nine hours and drank all that lemonade!" But you have to expose yourself to the Lord, and He changes us "from glory to glory," just like the scripture says. John said, "When we see Him, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." And we can see Him daily and change; we can be in His presence daily. And you know, I was taught when I came to the Lord at Teen Challenge by having godly people around me who were older than me. And I saw how they prayed and how they sought God and came into the presence of God. I got a great hunger to do that, and so I spent many hours with the Lord. And I didn't always feel a lot. Sometimes I did, but I came into God's presence a lot, and I spent a lot of time there.

And I also made it my goal to really become familiar with the whole Bible, and I memorized a lot of scripture. I started memorizing chapters and then the smaller books. And I just kept memorizing scripture and familiarizing myself with it. And by that exposure to the Lord—just getting into his presence and Word—it molded my mind and molded my heart, and I received revelation. Not anything special, but the revelation that will come to anyone who spends a lot of time in the Word of God and spends a lot of time in the presence of God. It just happens. So I think that my advice would be very simple: expose yourself to the presence of God every way you can: personally, corporately, being in church with God's people. And expose yourself every chance you have to God's Word. Make it your goal in life to become familiar with the whole Bible. That was my goal. I had no desire to be in ministry—especially the kind I'm in today! But I ended up there because I familiarized myself with the Bible and with the presence of God. The Lord can use you if you get to know him.