When my husband, Sam, was in elementary school, he heard a few words around the lunch table, which he did not understand, but the way older children laughed and looked at each other wickedly, he knew they were not words in which he could question his parents.
So he waited until the house was empty and sat in front of the family’s new iMac. At 10, he wrote his first Google search.
- This afternoon.
- Did a lifetime struggle against pornography and homosexual attraction begin?Fight that could have ended our marriage if we had treated him badly in these four ways:.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately one in five women in the United States is a victim of rape. According to Barna, 41% of young Christian men in the United States seek pornography regularly, and 72% of non-Christian youth do. It is a statistical impossibility that your family, your friends, your church, and your marriage are in no way persecuted for sexual sin.
This situation is not new. A quick reading of Leviticus 18 is enough to shake even the most cobbled pornography user. Paul wanted to say to the Corinthians, “Run the impurity?(1C 6. 18) because he knew that his culture, like ours, was drowning in this impurity. “But even if it’s true, didn’t you have a temptation that wasn’t human?(1C 10. 13), it is also true that, like the ancient Israelites and the early Church, we do not know the risk of sexual sin.
Sexual sin is an epidemic, but it doesn’t have to be a terminal illness. Sexual sin that remains secret is dangerous and deadly. Our spouses need to know what we’ve done and what they’ve done to us. And our churches must be places where sexual sin can come to light gracefully and fight in community.
On the day of the wedding I kissed two boys in total, I expected true love, like a good Christian, while my new husband was a discreet porn addict who struggled with homosexual attraction and I was no fairer than him.
Without Christ, I was dead in my sins (Ephesians 2. 1), he was corrupt (Psalm 14. 3). He was not worthy of that (Romans 3:12). My acts of righteousness were dirty rags before a holy God (Is 64:6). I am as sinful as my husband during the worst years of his addiction.
For our marriage to survive, my husband must choose daily to deny himself the things his flesh desires, but I have to do it too. I am as capable of destroying our marriage as he is; I have no right to belittle him for never committing the sin he committed and to make him empty the life and joy of our marriage as effectively as adultery.
I had many reasons to marry Sam. Es, he’s brave. He is pious, kind, and I love Him; However, it was not these things that overcate my fear that he would betray me on the other side of the altar, the only reason I can trust my husband is because I trust in Christ.
When we consider people like my husband to be irretrievable and unworthy of communion, we mock the Christ beaten, mocked and crucified, and say, “No, I’m sorry. That’s not enough. ” And if Christ’s sacrifice cannot redeem dependence on homosexual pornography and attraction, then he cannot redeem anything, our faith is useless, and we must mourn our illusions (1C 15:12-19).
Yes, is it absolutely true that: neither filthy, nor idothers, nor adultery, nor effeminate?(1 Cor 6: 9-10). But let us never forget this, so were some of you; But you have been washed, but you have been sanctified, but you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God (1C 6. 11).
Still, I know that marrying Sam was risky. This can fall back into pornography. He can fool me. He could abandon me and abandon Jesus, and if you do, God will always be good, God will always be sovereign and God will always be faithful.
Isn’t that incredible faith? It is the same faith to which every Christian is called, we all live on the brink of many disasters: a cancer diagnosis, the death of a child, an incomprehensible attack, a fire, a flood, and we are faced with a swarm of witnesses who they contemplate all this and worse and say with faith: “Even if he kills me, will I wait on him?” (Job 13. 15). Even if it does not free us, we will not bow our knees before the gods of this world (Dan 3).
My husband can’t bear the weight of my faith. Putting this burden of expectations on my husband’s shoulders would crush him, just like our marriage. God is not good because our marriage survives. Our marriage survives because God is good.
By: Jaclyn S. Parish. © The Gospel Coalition. Website: thegospelcoalition. org. Translated with permission. Source: 4 Ways Sexual Sin Can Kill Your Marriage.
Original: 4 ways sex sin can end your marriage. © Faithful Department. Website: MinistryFiel. com. br. All rights reserved. Translation: Camila Rebeca Teixeira. Review: Renata Machado Gandolfo.