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There’s Value and Hope in Your Mistakes

Do you hate making mistakes?

If you’re anything like me, you probably hold yourself to really high standards.

If you’re a Jesus follower, you’re actually called to be perfect as He is perfect.

But because you’re not Jesus, you will fail.

So, what happens when you mess up?

Understanding the Fear of Making Mistakes

Do you feel like a failure, try to run away, numb the pain, isolate, ignore, do some negative/sinful addiction (porn/drinking/eating…) just to stop feeling the terrible failure-feelings?

The problem is, even though we know we’re saved by His sacrifice, we often still struggle with shame and guilt for our mistakes.

But here’s the truth: understanding mistakes the right way can change how we view them, how we can grow from them and how they make us feel when they inevitably will happen.

The Three Types of Mistakes and How to Handle Them

Mistakes generally fall into three categories:

1. Mistake: Rebellion– When mistakes become a pattern of intentional sin consistently. This requires a lot of focus and all the advice given in #2, below.
2. Mistake: Sin – When we go against God’s Word, we need to humbly own, repent and turn back to Him. AND from that, we get to be washed by His amazing sacrifice.
   • There may need to be actions taken to repair the situation of others involved or you need to find healing for yourself so these sins won’t happen again.
   • But because of Jesus, the actual guilt has now been paid for by the only one who can pay for sin — someone sinless — Jesus.
   • So you no longer need to take the punishment of the shame/guilty feelings anymore.
   • Action does need to happen to rectify the situation, and let any negative feelings motivate you to put the structure, healing process, boundaries, people, community, in place to walk in freedom and righteousness.
3. Mistake: Wisdom– These are simply errors in judgment, strategy or approach. It’s essentially making a mistake in walking out wisdom. A lot of times we know better and we can’t seem to get ourselves to do the wise thing every time.

• • It’s not an outright sin, as clarified Biblically. It just was kinda dumb (yeah, I know the feeling well.) Or you realized later how you made someone else feel and realized you did the wrong thing. Or maybe you didn’t so something as perfectly as you expect of yourself and you feel ashamed.
  • Even though maybe it wasn’t capital S, “Sin”, it can make you feel just as failure-like as if you DID something horrible. As if you ARE something horrible.
  • The sad part is, sometimes that failure-feeling can make us want to run so bad that we metaphorically run and actually do something horrible (a real Sin: porn, addiction, rage… fill-in-the-blank SIN).

The Cycle of Perfectionism and Failure

But what if we didn’t HAVE TO strive to achieve in perfection?

Moving Forward with Growth and Grace

Here’s the plan regarding mistakes:

Keep high standards on righteousness issues, try hard to meet them—lean on Jesus for His perfection and sacrifice when we Sin. Have high standards on Wisdom things, but when we make mistakes be really happy if we aren’t making that mistake 80% of the time.

When you handle mistakes in the right way, they actually help you move forward instead of holding you back. I dive deeper into this in today’s episode, and I think you’ll find it really encouraging—because if you’re anything like me, you’ve made plenty of mistakes.

And the good news? God has so much hope for you, and every single mistake has value.

Transcript:

Belah Rose  00:02

Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me Belah Rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truths about intimacy. Learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. Delight your marriage. You

Belah Rose  00:23

Belah, Hi there. Welcome. This is Bela rose. I’m thrilled you’re joining if you are anything like me, a human who is not a robot, you likely have made a mistake. It’s at some point in your existence there has been a mistake made. Now I’m one that does it a lot, but you likely do it less or just as much. Who knows? But I’m excited to talk to you about this topic, because a lot of times people listen to this podcast because they’re just similar to me, and they kind of we’re kind of kindred spirits. So if you are like me, we have very high standards for ourselves. We are followers of Jesus. So yes, Jesus is our ideal. But aside from that, we like we’re pretty driven. We like getting stuff done. We like being at the top of our game. It’s, you know, we want the boxes checked. We want to take on life with vigor, passion, confidence, get it done. So if any of those things resonate with you, great. If they don’t, that’s okay too. Maybe you’re married to one of those, so it’s helpful for you to get inside their head anyway. But we all make mistakes, and if you have high standards, or maybe you kind of struggle with perfectionism, that’s a lot of the people I work with because I do too. It’s a well, we’re gonna get into it. So before I do, I just want you to know that we are here to help you. If you’re happened upon this podcast, because you have made mistakes in your marriage and you don’t know how to build trust again, you’re throwing things at the wall, hoping something sticks, and it just isn’t working. We’re here to help. It is a process. There is a order to it. I love that you’re listening to podcasts to get help. That’s wonderful. I do know, in doing this work now for 10 years, praise God, that the best results I’ve seen, even though people tell me their lives have changed just by listening, which is awesome, and I know God’s gonna continue to do that, I just wonderful, but you might be one who listens and really feels that God wants more for you, that you’ve been really trying to do this on your own for a long time, and it might be time To get some people involved, to get some humans to really encourage you on this journey and help you identify what should come first and second and third and so the first step of all of that is to find out where you are right now. Because if you’re six out of 10, your next step is going to look a lot different than if your marriage is at a one out of 10 hanging on by a thread, or if you’re eight out of 10 and you’re just like, gosh, this area of intimacy, whether it’s emotional, physical or spiritual, is just not clicking. Somehow. We’ve got all these other things in place, but this part just seems to not be working. I can’t seem to get it to work. Okay, we have to figure out where you’re starting in order to guide you on your next step. And so I invite you to take our free marital health assessment, which gives you insight into where you specifically are based on our 16 questions to help you in those four vital areas of markers of marital health on the spectrum that we we do this whole thing strategically, and that’s why God does so many really cool things through it. It’s another word for strategy is wisdom and vice versa. All right. Without further ado, let’s get into the value of mistakes. That’s right, there’s value to it.

Belah Rose  04:36

So I really do love throwing myself under the bus as much as possible on this podcast, because I want you to know that you can be human too, and we’re going to be human together. I will say that I absolutely coach people on for wives, specifically on our tendency to want to control their husbands out of a place of fear. You. That somehow, some way, some need is not going to be met. Whether it’s we don’t think our husband is going to deal with the kids the right way, and so I want to jump in there and tell him how to deal with the kids the right way, or whether it’s just something random about a neighbor that I think he could have handled differently, or some decision, I think I need to jump in and save the day on and disagree with him. I’ve been in all those scenarios, and sometimes I slip into that again, and it’s it’s embarrassing, because I teach the opposite of that, and if you’ve listened to the podcast, you’re like, Belah, what? So here’s the deal with mistakes, though, if I or you beat ourselves up over mistakes at the end of the day, we’re gonna try less. We’re gonna beat ourselves down by our own thinking so we don’t walk in confidence, so we don’t try. Is it better for me not to speak on what I know is actually true because I fail sometimes at it, or is it better for me to give what I know to be true and it’s still something I’m aiming towards, and sometimes I fall short. Now the problem would be, is if I pretended that I always get it right, that’s that’s when we we have an integrity issue. But if this is just a wisdom thing that I fall short in, then I’m okay telling you the wisdom thing, and also telling you I fall short on it sometimes. And so what do we do when we fall short? Well, let, let’s take it seriously. Let’s not, you know, be childish and act like it doesn’t matter, because we don’t want to face reality. That wouldn’t help. So let’s take it seriously, but beating ourselves up over it doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help you. It doesn’t help the situation, and it doesn’t help the other person. Take it seriously, and at the end of the day, Lord, I rely on your grace. I’m okay because I’m loved. I’m okay because I’m loved by the God of the universe. I don’t have to, I don’t have to prove I’m worthy by my perfectionism. By getting it perfect will not prove I’m worthy of love. Getting it perfect does not mean you’re worthy of love, which means when you make a mistake, it doesn’t mean God takes away his love from you. His love is unfailing. It never ends. Does it mean he’s disappointed? Does it mean there are no consequences? All those things are absolutely true. There are consequences to bad behavior, to mistakes to non wise actions. Yeah, there are consequences. People get hurt, people get angry. Results are bad, absolutely there are consequences. So we want to take our mistakes seriously so we can learn from them. We can grow from them. We can do the right next step, to repair to fix it, to help heal the situation. But God doesn’t stop loving us because we’ve made a mistake. So I just want to reach through this microphone and let you know. Give you a pat on the back. You are loved. You are loved by God, yes, you made a mistake. Maybe one’s coming up in your mind right now. Yeah, that was a mistake. Okay? The God of the universe says you are worthy of love. He says you are worthy of a second chance. He counted you worthy before you were even born of the very precious blood of His Son, so that you could be forgiven of this mistake. So that you could be forgiven of this mistake, he counted you worthy. I want to really encourage you. Yes, whatever you’re dealing with, it may be very serious, and maybe it’s more than just a wisdom mistake, maybe more than just a misstep. It might be downright sin. It might be terrible. I just, I just want to, I just want to say I’m right there with you. Oh, my goodness, if you could see my ledger of sad sin I have committed, I’m right there with you. Oh, it’s bad. It’s really bad, and God loves me still, and God loves you still, right now. He loves you right now, and that’s the love that can give you the strength to pick yourself up and get on the other side of that shame and that pain of that mistake, of that sin. Now there’s something important that I want to distinguish. There are mistakes and there are sins and there is rebellion, and here are the distinct distinctions I want, I want to make. Sometimes we are intentionally sinning. We are intentionally going away from God’s way. And you might be listening, and maybe you’re not 100% sold out on the Bible. Maybe you really like some things that it says and really don’t like other things that it says. And I gotta tell you, I, I get that. I I’ve struggled with, I struggle even with some some aspects, like hell, oh my gosh. That sounds so hard to swallow, because I know God’s a God of love. Why would he have that as as a consequence of I mean, is it, doesn’t he love these people? Why would that happen? So these are good questions to have, important questions to wrestle through. I I’ve come to a place of peace that I know God’s character and I can trust him. And the great news is I don’t have to be the judge. The more I look at any issue in the world, I see how complicated it is. So if I, if I kind of assume I know the best for any situation, but if I just look at it hard enough to be honest with you, it becomes so complicated that that it’s beyond me. I mean, just, you know, thinking about you, you likely are maybe listening to me on a cell phone. I mean, there’s a lot of sadness that happens in other countries to make that cell phone so that it can sit in your pocket, and you know, child labor and sweat shops and just painful stuff, and yet, you know, does that mean at the end of the day, I should be judged based on whether or not I went out there and, you know, vanquished that evil in our in our world today. I mean, I’m likely guilty of it, right? Because I’m, I’m buying into it, literally, maybe, you know, if I’m guilty of it and I have the cell phone, you’re guilty of it, you have the cell phone, right? So, I mean, at the end of the day, we’re all guilty. We’ve all we’re all needing a savior. We’re all needing. We’re needing his grace. And I just have to, I just have to, I just have to say, God, I gotta trust you. At the end of the day, I trust your character. I trust that if you would send your only son to save me, then somehow, some way, you are going to be the judge, a fair judge, of everyone else, and what I don’t get to do as a person who has such a finite, limited way of Thinking and perspective, I don’t get to just distrust you and say I like these verses, but I don’t like the other one. So I’m going to only stand on these and say, it’s got to be right. It’s 100% right. But these other ones feel bad to me, so I’m no, I’m not going to do it, because what a lot of people do is they take, they take the morality of Jesus. Love your neighbor as yourself, kindness, goodness, gentleness. They take these good qualities because they just feel so good, and yet they totally miss so many other

Belah Rose  14:36

words that he says. And so how can you stand on one aspect and use that exact aspect to undermine these other aspects that he himself said, you can’t take half of his morality and leave out the other half. So at the end of the day, mistakes matter. Our sin matters. Is hell to pay for these sins? How do I get to sit in America in the lap of luxury, compared to 95% of the rest of the world, where people are literally starving, starving and I haven’t Well, I guess there. There was a week in my life where I had to, I had to buy a a box of protein bars because I didn’t have enough money for anything else, and I ate one protein bar a day, aside from that week, probably the only time I can specifically remember, but um, that has that just doesn’t cross my mind, that I would go hungry because of like it, just come on. I wasn’t close to starving. I could have gone the week with zero food, and it wasn’t like I was I was gonna die at the end of it. Some point I would get some food. Anyway, funny story, praise the Lord, how he’s brought me out of stuff. But anyway, I just want to encourage you. I just want to encourage you that if we zoomed out of our life, the little things that we think we are such a huge mistake right now, in this moment, we’ve got hundreds of 1000s of more that we are not even thinking about right now, as I talked about, like there’s so much injustice in the world that we’re not even lifting a finger to try to fix, and I mean, it’s just true. So, so are we gonna be overwhelmed by that? Are we going to get to a place of, I can’t do anything because I just do everything wrong, and there’s too much to do, and there’s no I can, that’s not, that’s just not God’s way. That’s just not the way he operates. He knows we are finite. We are His children. I mean, we are, we are ants compared to him and his perspective and his view. He is the righteous judge and and I just, I get to raise my hands and say, hallelujah. Thank you that I don’t have to judge, and thank you that you gave me Jesus. And so every bit of my hundreds of 1000s of mistakes and things that I don’t even care about, that you deeply care about, but maybe it’s, it’s not, not something that I can do much about. But in any case, I have to trust him, and I get to trust Jesus sacrifice and and I get to do my best to well, am I doing my best? I get to try. I get to try to focus on what I discern he wants me to focus on.

Belah Rose  18:09

So the distinctions I wanted to make were mistakes versus sin versus rebellion. So what I would say is rebellion is intentionally sinning, and it’s consistent as well, so we can all rebel in a moment. And I, I do it, I’ve done it, I make a mistake, and then I’m like, God, goodness, and sometimes it’s, it’s a few days of rebellion and and I’m just like, and is it rebellion? And like, you know, cheating on my husband? No, that. That’s outright sin. It would, it would absolutely preclude me from speaking to you. So there are aspects of of outright sin and walking in that that that would not allow me to speak to you, that that would not allow me to do this work. And so I want, I want to, I want to make the distinction that, yes, there are strategy and mistakes, that you know our intention is right by our execution is wrong, that we still need to apologize and clean up and ask for forgiveness of the people and God’s forgiveness and all that. But don’t let any of us think that sin that the Bible is clear will exclude us from ministry that the Bible makes clear is a big deal, stealing, murder. I mean, the 10 Commandments are serious. Let’s take them seriously. If God thought they were so serious he needed to get Moses to come up on a mountain top so he could write them with his own hand, we had better take it seriously. If taking the Lord’s name in vain was penned by God’s own. Hand. Why in the world would we say Oh my g flippantly or Oh my J? Are we? Are we kidding ourselves? And if you’ve made that mistake, okay, that’s not a mistake, that’s a sin. If you’ve made that mistake, slash sin, let’s get it repented of. Let’s get to the other side and fall on Jesus grace and mercy and say, Please forgive me. And I’m not doing that. I’m not going there anymore. Help me, Lord to break that. And he did not withhold his love in the midst of your sin, he has not withheld His love in the midst of your sin. So rebellion, sin in the mistakes different categories. Here’s something I like to think about that helps me avoid perfectionism, that helps me avoid I don’t deserve love unless I’m perfect, is I am satisfied with 80% I’m satisfied with an 80% now he’s a really good student in school. Actually, pretty cool story. When I was in fourth grade, I was a pretty average student, maybe C’s and B’s, I would say something like that. But we had a we grew up on a farm, so there’s always, like, lots and lots of work to do. So before elementary school. Actually, funny story is, I would milk our goat every morning. Her name was Vivian, and she would, if she didn’t get milked in the morning, she would get, ultimately, I think, mastitis, and she would stop being we’d stop receiving milk from her if she if we ever stop. So the point is, that was my job every morning and so, so we would bring up the half gallon of milk that she would provide us every morning and afternoon. We’d have to do it again and and they’d have to put it in the fridge, otherwise it goes bad. But that was what we drank with cereal. I’m sorry, that’s what we put in our cereal was goat’s milk, I will tell you, maybe it tasted good for a while, but week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out, cow’s milk became a delicacy in our house. I mean, we begged our mom for cow’s milk so we could eat it with our cereal. And it’s not like we were eating fruit loops. Oh no, no, no, no. These were, you know, stale sugar, no sugar, corn flakes. But if we had cow’s milk, man, we were dancing around in the kitchen. I’m one of five kids, so we, yeah, we we were scrimping, for sure, but that’s just an example of we had a lot going on. We had horses and pigs and 45 goats and sheep and chickens and, Oh man, what else, donkeys and turkeys and, yeah, anyway, whatever else. We had lots of lots of things. And the point is that there was always a lot to do, but I wasn’t a really great student, because I was always doing stuff like mucking out the stalls and throwing the Hayley bales around and running around in the woods and as a fun childhood so when I was in fourth grade, I came up with my mom to a prayer and worship service. I guess the other kids were there, but they were in a different area when it was happening, maybe they were in the youth group area or something, and and they asked the congregation, if anyone who wanted to come up for prayer. And so I was fourth grade, I needed to get up there. I was just so hungry for God. I loved Jesus in my youth, my gosh, I just loved him. He was so good to me, and I would just worship Him and sing songs when I was by myself and just loved him. And so I was hungry. I wanted God. So I got up there, and the gentleman asked me to put my hands like I almost like, cut my hands in front of me, and he put his hands under mine. He asked me to close my eyes. And he said, What do I want prayer for? And I said, Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything. I just wanted prayer. So I was like school. So he prayed for me. Had his hands under mine, and my eyes were closed, and then he put his hands, I guess maybe put a hand on my head, and then that was it. And I stayed up there, my mom said, for like, 45 minutes, and they, you know, the whole church had moved. Moved on. I guess they were, you know, worshiping, and people went back to their seats. The whole thing, I’m still up there with my hands cupped, with my eyes closed, because I felt hands under mine for 45 minutes, there were hands under mine. I felt them. I didn’t move because I thought the guy was still praying for me. It was incredible. It was an incredible moment. And I only found out he had like, when I finally didn’t feel hands, I opened my eyes and realized I was up there by myself, and there was no person that, um, that was around me. The guy was that nowhere near so pretty incredible. But I will say something pretty cool was that was the miracle that happened after this experience. I told you I was kind of a BC student. Well, after that experience in fourth grade, all of a sudden my grades shot up. I was invited to be part of the math competition and some other, I don’t know, gifted student program and stuff like that. And that was, like, just not, it wasn’t an interest for me because we were so busy. But school became so easy, which is such a weird thing for it to just happen in a snap like that. And my, my, you know, I became getting A’s and B’s, but not out of probably A’s, is probably all it like, just turned into, but it wasn’t really out of effort. It was out of just this miracle that happened eventually, that that kind of wore off, I guess, in late middle school and high school, and I became a, just a B student, like I was in some upper classes, but I hung out with people who were way smarter than me and way more serious about homework and stuff. I just had too much going on at home. I didn’t even know where my books were half the time, I don’t know we had too much going on anyway. So I think that’s a fine way of looking at life. Is you don’t have to be a perfectionist. There’s so much good to life that if you are trying to get 100% all the time, you miss so much good. You miss so much good. Yes, you might become the valedictorian, great. But is it worth missing all the fun and good I mean missing the opportunity to milk a goat every morning a muck out stalls? I’m trying to tie this into a good metaphor. Hope it’s working so 80% if you are doing anything. Can you give yourself the grace to say, You know what? I think I got 80% on that, whatever

Belah Rose  27:49

it is, whether it’s a work project, whether it’s a thing you’re doing with your spouse, whether it’s whatever it is, like some habit you’re you’re cultivating, like I think I’ve been doing that about 80% of the time. And why is it important to say that to yourself? Because if you think you have to have 100% or you are a failure, what that’s going to do is knock you out of the game for being a human. And that’s not good. It zaps your motivation, and we need motivation like don’t sacrifice your motivation to continue the hard journey you’re choosing to do because you’re a high standards individual. Don’t do that because you require 100% of yourself, or you’re a failure. No require 80% and you’re still the person that you strive to be. So there are some pretty intense habits I have in the mornings that set me up for success for the rest of the day. But I have to do them. But I will tell you I didn’t do them this morning, and I’m not I don’t care, because 80 plus percent of the time I do them, and because I do them, 80 plus percent of the time, I’m not thrown off today, and I know tomorrow, absolutely 100% I’ll do them, and likely I’ll do at least some of them that after this. But anyway, I just want to encourage you, don’t count yourself as a failure when you don’t get to 100% choose 80% that is going to encourage you. Because here’s the other thing, I think it’s so true that people who have high standards for themselves, who are bent on perfectionism, I think sometimes they get so they have so much pressure on themselves that because they’re aiming for 100% But if they do anything less than that, they almost, it almost puts them into a tailspin. And and they have so much pressure, it’s almost like some way, somehow they need a pressure release valve. There’s some way, somehow, and a lot of times that comes out in some level of sin. So sometimes it’s, it’s pornography, because you just feel worthless, like a failure because your standards are so high and you couldn’t meet those standards. Maybe it’s standards for yourself in marriage, like you feel like a failure of a husband because she got angry at you. But come on, if you’re doing the right things, 80% of the time, okay, so 20% of the time give yourself some grace. You have fouled up today Dagnabbit, and she’s angry. Okay? She can be angry, and you don’t have to feel like a failure. You’re doing a good job. Don’t let the enemy lie to you that you’re a failure and you’re worthless. And so the thing that historically, when you were a boy made you feel okay is maybe pornography. And so the you go towards that as an adult, when you feel worthless, I just want to encourage you, 80% man, 80% you’re, you’re hanging in there, you’re you’re doing your best. You’re, you’re you’re having a full life again with the farm animal story, don’t, don’t sacrifice all sorts of good in your life, because you’re not perfect in certain areas. And certainly don’t let that drive you to sin, because you you’re allowing perfectionism to make you feel like a failure, because you can’t be perfect, because you are a human and you don’t actually want to be and you can’t be anything else. So the value of mistakes is that it drives us towards Jesus, because we need him. The more we understand life, the more we realize how mistaken we are. Does that happen to you? I feel like when I when I hang out with an expert in some area, I’m so easily humbled. I’m like, my gosh, I was, was completely oblivious to this person’s life experience and what they who they are. And I Golly. I’m just humbled in that moment and and I can internalize, like, wow, I have misjudged. I have making, made a mistake in my own mind and heart about this person, or about this scenario, or about this field of study. Who knows I made so many mistakes? Okay? So we can again, that can be our focus, and we can feel worthless and like an idiot and silly and embarrassed and all that. Or we can say, You know what, I’m I’m doing pretty well 80% of the time. So thank you Lord for this new piece of insight. So I so I can conquer this one. Like, okay, cool, this is another one, but I’m not. It doesn’t it doesn’t count me out. And I don’t want it to count you out. Make a mistake. Own it. Repair, right? We we talk about, sure, apologies in the work. Make those apologies. Own it. Don’t let that go and and think that you can just ignore those things. No, no, no, do, do the work for that but, but don’t let it swallow you up. Let it make you better. Let it make you better, so that you know the next time, maybe, as a woman, for me, I’ll be a little less likely to control my husband, or maybe I’ll apologize a little faster when I figure out I did it again. Or, like I said for coaching clients, my gosh, when I when I step in it, I I own it. I get better. Our team gets better. I’m, you know, we’re we’re growing from that so we can love people better the next time. Let’s not waste our mistakes. Let’s not ignore them. And then the next time it happens, we approach it the exact same way that potentially harm somebody, or at least doesn’t give them their best shot at the transformation and and knowing Jesus love that they could have experienced through us, through our time, at delight your marriage. And because this, you know, couple recent scenarios are on my mind. That’s why it’s coming come into mind. But I just want to give God all the glory for his help in helping me see these things, because our standards do need to be high. I mean, we’re looking to Jesus. He’s perfect. We want to be perfect like him. But guess what? In the context of him saying be perfect like I’m perfect, is his love? God loves so. Much his perfection is his love for us, and how he sacrificed it all to love us. So yes, let’s look to Him to help us to do it his way. And let’s not get into rebellion, and let’s not explain away our actual sin. Let’s repent, get closer to Jesus as a result, and also not let perfectionism take us down and make us feel like a failure, and then we respond in sinful ways. Whatever your potential is for that. Maybe it’s overeating. I’ll raise my hand to that, but God’s freed me from that, for the most part. The other thing is, porn used to be a thing for me, too, and God’s freed me from that. And that’s the cool thing, actually, so porn, he freed me from, and that’s like a capital S sin. Jesus makes it really clear that it is, that it’s on the same level as pornography, sorry, as as adultery, like take it really seriously, but don’t, don’t allow yourself to feel the shame That makes you no longer God’s son or daughter, he loves you. He really, really loves you right now, even if you are actively struggling with pornography, he loves you, and that love, knowing and feeling the Father’s love for you is going to give you the strength to do the steps necessary to get out. Really, really, it’s the shame and the darkness and the feeling like no one would understand and no one would care enough to help you or to you know, you feel like this monster. And maybe it’s not pornography, maybe it’s actually acting out. Maybe it’s actually humans that you’re sleeping with, you know, in private, and you feel like this icky monster. And listen, that’s the conviction of the Holy Spirit. You need to stop that. You need to get out of it. You need to get freedom. But another way of looking at it is, you need healing. You need Jesus love to heal, because that’s what he’s into. He’s into healing.

Belah Rose  37:27

I if that’s if that’s what you are specifically struggling with, I want to encourage a book called unwanted by Jay stringer. Shout out to Bob from the MRG advisor. He’s our MRG advisor. He’s a wonderful man, and he went through MRG several years ago and has just stuck around, and we are so much better for it, but he’s the one that recommended this book to me long time ago, and now I’m I’ve read it, and it’s been powerfully impactful to me. And yeah, so I encourage you unwanted giving you it’s about, it’s about perceiving your sexual brokenness as an opportunity for Jesus to heal you. And yes, we don’t want to lower our standards. The Bible is our standard. It does need to be taken as seriously as Jesus took it, but you don’t. It’s kind of like a child wandering into the street. Take it seriously. Act now. Do something significant so that the bus doesn’t hit the child. But here’s the response you wouldn’t do in that scenario. You wouldn’t get out in this middle of the street and start hitting the child, punishing the child for getting in to the street. That’s that’s not the right response. It’s not the right response to an extremely serious situation. The right response is to grab the child and run out of the street. And that’s what I invite you to do, the sin and rebellion that you are caught in with sexual sin, sexual brokenness, unwanted sexual behavior that needs to be taken extremely seriously, and the right approach must be done so you can heal and get free. And so I just encourage the book is a great starting place. Our community is a wonderful community for men to not be doing this journey by themselves. And then, of course, we’ve got, we’ve got this program that is very specific to help you in a lot of areas that that are connected to this as well. So that’s um, that’s the aspect there, if, if that’s the the the sin that just is, can. Continually, continually, a snare for you and something that you you want freedom from, but don’t know, don’t know the next step. There’s value in recognizing your mistakes, because it draws you to Jesus. It draws you to his love and his opportunity to heal you. So there are some things that are considered mistakes for me that won’t really be considered that for you, you’re not going to have the same proclivities as me. You don’t have the same thorns in the flesh. Second Corinthians 12 is a wonderful passage to read. I would encourage you to because you have thorns and I have thorns, and some of those are going to be different. There’s an episode that I really love that I recorded maybe a 8989, months ago, maybe a year ago, anyway, and it’s called Embrace Your Thorn before it kills you. And the point of that is really around if you don’t know what the enemy is going to tempt you with your personal struggles, your personal temptations, your personal tendencies, your thorn that Paul talks about, and I got that interpretation of that scripture specifically from Tim Keller. I listened to a preaching of His years ago and from years ago, and that’s how he interpreted that scripture, is that the thorn very well may be sexual temptation, for example, and not everyone struggles the same way as other people, and that’s okay, that that is your suffering, and it is a suffering. I know it because that’s my suffering. What? Why is this thing all about sex? Because that’s a suffering for me. I told you about the porn addiction, but, but my goodness, if I wasn’t a Jesus follower, I know exactly the nonsense I would get myself wrapped up in, the evil nonsense. And so it’s just by God’s grace that He saved me from that he’s he’s literally freed me from those things. And I need his grace every day to stay free of those things. I need meditation on his word. I need that to be an 80% of the time every single day I’m in the word. That’s a habit that I at least I’m doing 80% but I’m not beating myself up if I miss a day, because that would make me feel like a failure, and then I probably would miss very many more days, but instead, because I do it at least 80% my identity that I view myself as is a person that reads the Bible every day, and so the vast majority of the time it’s true. And so it helps me to keep that identity strong, and I want you to have that the things you do 80 plus percent of the time are who you are. That’s your identity. Stick with that. Don’t. Don’t allow one day or couple days, couple moments to take your identity away. Then no, no, no, no, no. So the value of your mistakes, God speaks us through that. Don’t waste the pain, the guilt, the embarrassment. Don’t waste it so that you’ll walk into it again. No, no, no, no, no. Take it seriously. Do what needs to be done, and then we get to own it and move on. Grow from it. Say, Lord, thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to grow and help me, because I will tell you, if you respond to this mistake, rightly, this mistake, rightly, six months from now, you’re going to look back and thank the Lord, you responded seriously, but rightly so that you’re not you’re not even close to where you were six months ago. Take it seriously, my friend, you can do this. You can do this. So let me pray for you, Lord Jesus, you are so good to us. Thank you for this mistake that my brother or my sister can learn from and gain freedom through and get healing because of and grow in their dependence on you and reliance on your forgiveness and your grace and recognizing who you really are Jesus and what you really took to The cross for us, and how good you really are and how much love you really have for this one. And Lord, help this person to distinguish between S sin, capital S sin and maybe a strategy, slash wisdom mistake that’s going to have consequences because. Because wisdom matters, but something they need to seriously repent of and take, very seriously to gain freedom from and get healing from, or something that’s really just a proclivity for them that they they need to take care of, that they need. Like me, I need to to have some significant habits so that I’m able to do God’s will in the world. Not everyone needs all of the things I do, but but some people do and and help them in that help them develop the strength for those things. Lord. I thank you. I thank you for the opportunity you give me to grow every day. Help me not to fall into temptation of getting overwhelmed with our need for growth, but instead to recognize, wow, I really need Jesus, and I get to have Jesus in a moment. In a moment I get to lean into him, Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, and you will find rest for your souls. That’s what Jesus says. So I encourage you, dear listener, when you when you get done with this, why not just turn off your phone? Why not pause pull over in your car? Why not pause your whatever you’re doing, I want to spend just a moment in prayer to your father, just a moment say, Lord, I ask you for rest. I ask you to take this burden. I ask you to forgive me, and I ask you to lead me into righteousness, into the path of righteousness. And maybe this is a healing journey that I need to take seriously to move forward from

Belah Rose  47:18

maybe this is a consistent pride, thing that I just haven’t been willing to look at and own, apologize for and get help with. Lord, you know what you’re telling this one, and give them the grace to see it, to walk free in it, free from it, grow through it, Lord, you’re such a kind father. You’re so gentle to us, you’re patient with us, and you help us. We love you, Jesus, Amen, amen, amen. Oh goodness. Thank you for listening. I’m I’m honored to have your attention. I’m so honored that we got to spend this time together, and I I really want you to spend time with Jesus as a result of this conversation, it’s easy to be distracted, but maybe he has, maybe he has real rest for your souls, for your soul. Real rejuvenation, if you, if you give them a space in your heart to do that, even right now, we’re here for you if you want to take the next step to come into a program specifically you’re you’re ready. Delight. Ym.com/ dot com slash CC. CC means clarity, call delight y, m.com/c, C. And the other thing, if you want to do that marital health assessment, delight Your marriage.com/m. H, a marital health assessment. The other thing is, you could go to the delight Your marriage.com website. It’s right there on the on the front. Alrighty, my beloved listener, I’m so honored to speak with you and take some time with Jesus. All right, God bless you. Bye. You.