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Redeeming the brokenness

Hi there! Belah here. Today, I have with me Tony Ingrassia of powerofpurity.org. Tony had an incredibly challenging childhood and first years of marriage. You can hear in Part I the pain his wife and he endured. Now you can hear what happened through God’s grace to their marriage. What principle things God has taught Tony along the way.

Check out Part I at delightyourmarriage.com/73

You’ll Discover:

  • How God transformed their marriage from brokenness and pain into a marriage of joy and passionate love.
  • How to have sex God’s way.
  • How Tony brought this message of sexual redemption into the prisons and what happened there.
  • When we bring our brokenness to God He can do amazing things.

 

Books & Resources Mentioned:

Thanks for listening! I hope you are encouraged to live in wholehearted intimacy!

Love,

Belah

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Transcript

0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs, and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host, belah. Rose.

0:18
Hi, there. This is Bella, thank you so much for joining me today, I hope that you are doing well. And I know that we just had a holiday in the US. So those us listeners, I just want to say Happy Thanksgiving, I hope that it was a really good holiday. And as we enter the holiday season, I know that all we hear about is the really good things and the the fun and the warmth of family and getting together. But I know that a lot of times, holidays are hard because there’s hard things going on in our lives or hard things going on with our family or our spouses. And I just want to say that God hears you and he sees you and He knows your pain. And I just want to encourage you to run to Him with your hurt and your heart because he wants to carry it. And I think Tony today has a really good reminder of what God can do in our marriages. If we just trust Him and work his way and do things God’s way. And Tony’s got an amazing story. I don’t know if you heard part one yet. But if you didn’t go back and listen to his story, because you’ve got just just terrible things that happen even as a child to him. And and that informed what he brought into marriage. And then it led into lots of heartache for he and his wife when they were in marriage together. So it’s just a powerful story. But today is the second half today is we’re going to find out what happened, what happened to their marriage, how did it go? And what did God teach them in the midst. So Tony talks about doing sex God’s way he talks about redeeming the brokenness, I just think it’s a powerful interview. So I’m going to let us just dive in.

2:13
And I just, I just want to say, by the way, we’ve been married 32 years, and I am not kidding you. I am so deeply, madly, passionately in love with this woman. She is absolutely the most wonderful gift that God has ever given me in my life apart from God Himself. And we are absolutely on our honeymoon. We did it backwards. You’re supposed to start with your honeymoon, and then and then live your life. We live the life and we discovered our honeymoon along the way. And it’s so awesome who God is and what God can do. So I would just like to say to listeners out there that if you’re in a dark place, a Hard Place a challenging difficult place and in your heart, your life, your your past your story, your relationship, don’t give up, keep moving forward in God. And the Lord has a wonderful way of working in our hearts and lives and redeeming the brokenness of our lives. And that’s exactly what God wants to do. I like to think that God invites us into a what I call a working cooperation with him. And as we cooperate with God, and we let God do what he’s trying to do and accomplish in our hearts. He is very faithful. And he has a way of bringing dead things back to life. Yeah, praise God.

3:46
Yeah, amen. Oh, my gosh, that’s awesome. What an incredible story of healing and redemption that God wants to do in all of our lives and hearts. I love that. I want to ask you, you did talk about what your marriage looks like now. So I want to ask you, what are the chief three things that has been central to your marital success so far?

4:11
Well, that’s a good question three things? Well, absolutely. Without a doubt the the number one thing would be God. Yeah. You know, we believe that marriage is intended to be a three way street. husband, wife, and God. And if we did not have the Lord in our lives, I don’t. I have no doubt that our marriage would not have made it through. You know, God is the ultimate resource of life when we’re weak. God has strength when we when we are in darkness, God is alive. When we’re in bondage. God is freedom. When there’s death around us. God is alive when there’s torment around us. God is Peace. So God is the ultimate resource. And so we I give God the credit, God the glory. And I encourage people, you know, one of my main jobs as a pastor is to urge people toward God. And so no matter where you’re at, in your life, your situation, what’s going on how crazy it is, or upside down or how disoriented the situation is, or how overwhelming I urge you to move toward God. The more God comes into the equation, the better off you’re going to be. And the more access you’ll have to these resources of God, the peace of God, the wisdom of God, the healing of God, the redemption, the light, the, you know, the freedom of God. So, so God is absolutely the number one resource without a doubt. I think maybe a second resource would just be our love for one another. Even in the darkest of days, in the darkest of days, what I call the dark days of our marriage, and I’m using the word hate here, Bella, I hated my wife at times, I hated her. Because she was such a source of pain to me, I saw and she hated me, you know? Even when we hated each other, we still loved each other. Does that make sense?

6:39
Well, I’m thinking about it, do you? How how did that work?

6:43
I’m not sure how to put words to it. Other than Yeah, there was a deep abiding sense of love. I just I love this woman. I wanted it to work I. And really that that brings me to the third point that I want to mention. And it might seem kind of weird, but it’s what occurs to me. And that is just our own stubbornness. And what I mean by that is what we went through. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking that 1000 couples went through what we went through, I’m thinking 999, would have given up, they would have hit the eject button, and they would have got divorced. We are the one couple by God’s grace that made it through somehow. And I think there’s several different reasons for that. One is I think, because we love God, and we had an conviction that we weren’t supposed to get divorced. I think part of it is because we loved each other. I think a big part of it was our boys. We didn’t want to get divorced, because we believe that it would be better for our boys to grow up with the mom and dad in the home, you know. And a part of it was just our stubbornness. I didn’t want to lose, I didn’t want to give up. I just we couldn’t bring ourselves to give up. So. So we had a stick to itiveness. And I think that we get credit for that where that thing I was talking about earlier, where people give up too fast. You can’t give up too fast. You gotta you gotta hang in there. When the going gets tough. You got to you got to just see it through and do your best and not give up and give God a chance. Yeah. And if you do that God has a way of working things out.

8:40
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yes. And so So my next question is about sexual intimacy. Specifically, if you could give a tip or advice about intimacy that you wish someone let you in on earlier?

8:56
Well, maybe what I like to say, in my power purity conference, I mentioned I have these 23 sessions, and one of the sessions I do, session 10 is called love sex versus lust, sex. And these are two interesting words they both have four letters love and loss. They both start with an L. But they’re two radically opposing concepts of how to experience sexual intimacy. And for so many years in my life, without a doubt, the orientation of my sexual self was was one of lust. And that has to do with my story. You know, the pornography and the sexual abuse in my early sexual experience was very oriented in in a lustful way. Although I didn’t Stan that, you know, and later in the context of our marriage, my wife had difficulty responding to me. And part of that was because of her own issues that were unresolved, you know, with her past her rape, her abortion and all these things. But part of it had to do with the dynamics in our relationship. And my wife, like, I didn’t understand that when I would try to move toward her sexually and intimately. And when I would touch her, she would kind of resist against me. And I think rightfully so because she could intuitively sense that something is wrong with this, I believe belah that even in the context of marriage, the way a man moves toward his wife can be very inappropriate and sinful. And what I mean by that, for example, I know for a fact what a lot of what a lot of men do even Christian men, is they watch pornography for 234 hours for days at a time. And then when they approach their wife, they’re all lathered up and frenzied up with lust on the inside. And so the energy that they’re bringing to their wife, and I believe women are very intuitive. And I think Sherry could intuitively sense something is wrong with this, even though he’s my husband, the way he’s moving toward me, the way he touches me, it makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel like all those other guys who who used me there, she could intuitively sense this is an unloved thing. It’s a lust thing. And so in this session, I tried to help men understand this important distinction. And then what it means to shift your sexual orientation, from an orientation of lust to an orientation of love. Lust is something that takes lust is never satisfied. And lust is like, fire. You know, you hear about these huge brush fires out west, and you know, it’s burned 90,000 acres, you would think that fire, if it had a voice, it would say, after burning 90,000 acres, okay, that’s enough, I’ve had 90,000 acres, that’s enough, fire is never full, you see it once more, once more. And that’s what lust lust is like. So I try to help men understand what it means to shift your orientation from from lust, to love. And that’s something that I wish I could have figured out way, way, way earlier in the context of my marriage. And I would like to say that I think that’s something that’s so wonderful and beautiful, and rewarding. Now when when you begin to experience sex, that God way. It’s unbelievably wonderful and beautiful, and mysterious, and fulfilling and satisfying. And it’s love sex, it’s not less sex, and it’s about giving, it’s not about taking, it’s about sharing, something I learned is that the beauty is not in sex. The beauty is in people. And so

13:30
sexual intimacy provides the opportunity for me to be so close to my wife, this person that I love, and appreciate, and to be able to touch her and smell her and enjoy her and be present to her, and share with her and commune with her and connect with her, and to have intimacy with her. It’s it’s a wonderful, awesome thing. And that is so radically different than what we see in pornography and what lust has to offer us. It’s such a lie. It’s such a deception. God’s way, is life giving. It’s wonderful.

14:10
Yeah, well, I love that you’re talking about sex God’s way. And I just wonder if you might be able to clarify that a little bit. What does that mean?

14:19
Well, I’ll try to share a few thoughts. I think that most people if they knew how much God says about sex in the Bible, they might be shocked. The Bible has a lot to say. And God has a lot to say about sex. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Because the designer of a product, you know, if you buy a product like a toaster, for example, it comes with a little instruction manual. And the manufacturer is saying, Hey, we made this product we designed So we know how it’s supposed to work. So if you follow the manufacturer’s instructions, you’re going to derive the greatest benefit from the product. Well, who is the manufacturer of human sexuality? Got it, got it mended sex. It’s his idea. It’s his invention. And so God gives us this instruction book. It’s called the Holy Bible. And God has all kinds of instructions about how to do sex the right way. And, and as we begin to understand sex God’s way, and begin to shift the orientation of our life. It’s amazing how our lives can be heal. And as I said, for so long, I did sex Tony’s way and it leads to death and disorientation and destruction and hurt and confusion, and pain. And I came to the point where I finally thought to myself, Okay, okay, Tony, you’ve done sex your way long enough and look at the results that’s been getting you. Maybe we should try sex God’s way. And in so doing, maybe I can’t get any worse results than I’ve been getting, you know. And as we pursued an understanding of God, and who God is, and what God says, we find, we find life and hope and healing and redemption. Maybe that could be illustrated. First example, the one scripture that I shared. In our interview from First Thessalonians chapter four, I’ll read it one more time, it’s God’s will, that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality that each of us should learn to control his own body in a way that’s holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen. See, Bella, this teaches me the God says that it’s possible to control your body and sex Tony’s way, I was controlled by my body, my body had authority over me, my body told me when it wanted an orgasm, and I was enslaved, and I literally obeyed my body. My body controlled me, but sex God’s way. God says, learn to control your body. And this is possible. And so that distinction, right there makes an incredible difference in how you’re going to experience your sexual self if you if you learn self control.

17:37
Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I love that. Okay, well, so my question is due to the specific marriage that you’ve had, what opportunities have you had to serve or get to know God?

17:49
Okay, well, that’s a wonderful question. And I will say that be you know, through the context of our marriage and our dark days, and everything we went through, is we were coming out the other end, it was like a dark tunnel, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel, as we’re coming out, and God is healing and redeeming the deepest brokenness of our lives. Through a series of events, we came to believe that God wanted us to share our story with other people, because of these themes of brokenness in our lives. You know, there for a while, I thought we were freak shows that everybody else was normal. And we weren’t like freak shows. And we come to learn that these things are very, very common. Yes, that’s right. sexual brokenness is so common, you know, yeah. So we just believe that, that our story can help other people and inspire other people and urge other people toward God. So as we were coming through this, I began to share my story with men. And as I shared my story, I learned that men were hungry, and they wanted more, tell me more, because they had similar struggles. And so I began to share my story then it it’s some men’s breakfasts and men’s groups and Bible studies and God continue to open doors, I ended up writing three books on the topic of sexual purity and then developing the sexual purity conference, where we speak to people and try and we share our story. Our story is the centerpiece of the conference. And then we try to share principles on with people what it means to do sex God’s way, and how to bring your sexual self under the authority of God. And people can find a lot more than information at the website power purity.org. But I will share one other very interesting thing, an amazing thing that God did, and that is through a series of events. We were invited to come and do our purity conference. I’m at a prison in the state of Missouri northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green, Missouri. And there’s 2400 inmates incarcerated there. It’s a man’s prison. And they tell me that over 60% of the men in that prison are incarcerated for sexual offenses. So that right there shows you how common the theme of sexual brokenness is, right? Oh, yeah. So when we went into this prison, and normally I do my conference in one day, but because of prison life, what the way they set it up is we went eight Sundays in a row, eight Sunday evenings in a row, and we did this conference, about 100 inmates attended. And it’s hard to convey Bella, what God did in those sessions, but it was just suffice to say, God showed up. It was very, very, very powerful. God touched a lot of these men very deeply. And we left at the end, it felt like a home run for God, it felt like an amazing experience. And we were rejoicing, we never thought we get to go into a prison, you know, do this ministry and to share our story. Well, so we thought we were done. Well, several weeks later, my phone rings. And it’s a high ranking official from the state of Missouri Jefferson City. And he says, Tony, we heard about your program, we heard about what happened in Bowling Green, the response of the inmates. And we want to know what you bring your program into every prison in the state of Missouri. Wow, there’s 20 days, because 22 prisons in the state 24, and two for women. So for about the past four or five years now, we’ve been going in and out of prisons, several times a year, presenting this ministry, and we’ve been working very heavily in the women’s prison, which has been amazing. And I can’t tell you how the themes of our story are so common to these women in prison. Virtually every single one of these women has been raped, or found sexual hurt and brokenness in their lives and stories. In fact, we’re going to the women’s prison this evening, we’re going to have minister. So that’s an amazing door that God is open. And we’re very, very grateful.

22:27
Yes. And like you said, it’s specifically because of what God brought you out of in your marriage. It’s just incredible how he works like this man, praise God. Yeah, it’s so good. It’s

22:38
one of the things I love about God that he he doesn’t waste our pain. He doesn’t want to waste our pain. And, you know, it reminds me the story of, of Joseph and his brothers at the end of Jack Genesis, you remember, they come to get the grain in Egypt and all that, and they realize that it’s Joseph, he’s still alive, we threw him in the pit. And Joseph says what you meant for evil. God meant for good, and the saving of many lives. And so evil, had intentions to destroy our lives, to destroy this 13 year old girl, and to destroy this boy who has been sexually abused and who found his father’s pornography evil says, I’m going to I’m going to destroy these people. I’m going to get in there and cause pain and hurt and destruction. But what what evil what what the devil meant for evil and destruction. God means for good and he turns that around. God does like this spiritual Judo thing. And he flips the doubt and God doesn’t waste our pain of will allow him to use our pain. And I say kudos to you Bella. Because I saw on your, on your website I looked at the section about and you have a little thing there that says my story Bella’s story, my man, my passion. For delight, your marriage was birthed out of a painful marital past. I suffered in a marriage it was full of strife, anger, deep hurt and sexual difficulty. But now by God’s grace, I am in a wonderfully live giving faith supported and mission enabling marriage. God’s hand in my journey has shown me that marriage affects everything I need to help others avoid or heal from the pain I too have experienced. So you know what we become felon? Yeah, we be calm, wounded healers. We are that scared wounded healers and at the best I say, You know what I’m doing. I’m limping toward heaven. loving toward heaven, but, but I’m sharing Jesus and I’m telling people, here’s what God did for me. Here’s what God did in mind. And if God helped us, maybe God can help you to

25:04
say amen. Oh, that’s so powerful Tony. It’s so so powerful Praise God. Amen. Well, let me ask you, oh, a book a book or resource that you would specifically recommend to the listeners? Well, tell me about yours if you could, I’m interested in Okay. Sure. Once you have,

25:25
well, again, if anybody’s interested, if they go to our website, power of purity.org, there’ll be more information there. There’s 23 sessions that I teach, everything is free, you can watch the sessions there. And I have three books. On the topic of sexual purity, the first one is the story. Much of the story I’ve shared with you in this interview is in book form only much more in the book. And it’s called Stories of redemption of one man’s wounded sexuality. And it’s the bad news and the good news, the story of how God is redeeming the brokenness of my own heart and life. And the SEC, the second book is called The Power of purity. And it’s I’ve identified what I believe are six common roots to the sexual brokenness that men struggle with in their lives. And I, I share with men how to bring these roots under the authority of Christ and to bring your sexual gift under the authority of God. And then there’s a companion workbook that goes with that book also. But I really have on my heart to mention, I want to mention another little booklet that I wrote recently. It’s called God’s healing path. And the subtitle is how to experience God’s deep healing in your heart and life. And it really goes along with this concept of understanding your story. If you intuitively sense that, that you have business to do with God and your past, that there’s unsettled things in your past maybe that you’ve never really dealt with. Most of us deal with these things, you know, how we deal with them, by not dealing with. And that’s not helpful. And so this little booklet invites a person into the story of their own life and helps them understand how maybe they’ve been dealing with the pain of their life and soul in unhealthy ways. And how to shift on to God’s healing path and file and cooperate with God and His redemptive intention and find God’s healing in a deeper way than you ever have before. And people can contact me for a copy of that booklet. I’m not I don’t think it’s on the power purity website, but it is, I believe, on our church website, which is outpost, das dash church.com, outpost, dash, church calm. And if anybody’s interested in that booklet, it’s available.

28:18
Okay, and I’ll have all the links and everything at the delight your marriage. Sorry, the delight your marriage website. So it just to make sure you’ve got the power purity book 23 sessions for free about the is that what is that called? On your website?

28:36
The sessions? Yes, just the power of purity conference,

28:42
power purity conference. Cool. That’s exciting. I’m excited to watch that and read your book as well. It’s really sounds wonderful. Okay, well, my last question for you is if you could go back to your first year of marriage, and sit yourself down, what is one piece of advice that you would give to you?

29:06
That’s a really good question. I like the question. I think. I hope it’s not spiritualizing it too much. But just the the first thing that that occurs to me is I would try to inform that 26 year old Tony, who, like I said, earlier, you know, how you look back at your life and you’re, you’re, you’re horrified by what you see, you know, like, who was that person? What was he thinking? Why were you doing the things you were doing? Why were you making the decisions you were making? And I see a man that that that makes me say it very autonomous man, a very independent And, man, a very rebellious man, a very controlling man. And I would some, try to encourage myself just to surrender to God. And that Tony God’s way is way, way better than your way. And instead of fighting God for so long and so hard, just surrender faster surrender to God give up, turn to God, yield to God, and let God do his thing in your heart and life and marriage. And it’s going to go way, way better.

30:41
Yeah. Praise God. That’s good. Awesome. Well, so you did mention a little bit. But just to wrap up, I want to make sure everyone knows how to connect with you online.

30:55
Okay, well, we have several websites, but probably the main website is the power of purity website. So if you just go to power of purity.org, and then there’s contact information there. If anybody wants to email or even call, if I can be helpful in any way, I I’m honored.

31:21
Awesome. Well, Tony, this has been absolutely wonderful. I’m so grateful for your story and all of your insights. And, and I love so much of what you said, especially the wounded healers that we all are striving to be following Jesus surrendering to Him. So thank you, thank you so much, Tony, Bella,

31:40
God bless you. Thank you.

31:46
Awesome, thank you so much, Tony, what a powerful message you shared. And I just want to encourage anyone who hasn’t gone to his website yet the power of purity.org, or I think it’s just power of purity.org. But he’s got some great resources, actually, the easiest way to get all of his resources is just to go to delight your marriage.com/ 74. And I’ve got all of his books linked up. And most of them are free, if not just $1 or so. So they’re really affordable. And it could be something that will really impact your life. So I just encourage you to go go for that. And and the next thing I want to just share is just a thank you for everyone who has been so supportive of the dy M podcast. You’re just an incredible, incredible group of people that I’ve been able to interact with here and there. And I just want to say thank you and God bless you and I this Thanksgiving. I’m so grateful for you and your stories and how God is sharing other stories with you through the dy M podcast encouraging you and I just, I’m so grateful to be able to do this work. So thank you for your support and your kindness. God bless you. I’m praying for you and I love you. Bye bye.

33:02
Thanks for listening. If you’ve been blessed by this, why not share it? Until next time, live with love, wisdom and passion.

 

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