Our Community Carried Us
God began doing something new in our lives as we progressed several years into our marriage. God’s desire isn’t just to save us but to make us look increasingly more like His Son. To that end, God surrounded us with community. I remember taking the first 4B assessment in that community group and transparently scoring myself low when it came to devoting daily, scripture memory, and more. And I wasn’t the only one. Those guys made it a point to, over that next year, memorize several dozen new verses. We checked in daily about what we were reading in God’s word and what we were learning from it. He was laying the foundation for something He was about to do.
My personal transformation with the Lord began a little before this. You’re going to see a common theme here! Our community group at the time (I think the Lord likes to use His people!!) strongly encouraged me to consider Regeneration after hearing a summary of the major events in my life. My girls noticed that I struggled deeply with my identity, feelings of unworthiness manifested in emotional affairs, and truthfully, with God’s goodness. During this time, I participated in Equipped Disciple in Dallas, where I was encouraged to read my Bible daily and memorize scripture. During this year, the Lord poured the concrete foundation for what he was about to do in our marriage and my personal relationship with Him.
In September 2016, God used Rob Barry preaching a sermon on confession to begin breaking down the walls of pride, selfishness, and insecurity in my life. You see, early in our marriage, I had an affair and I kept it secret, afraid of the consequences and not trusting what God’s word says around confession, prayer, and healing. I thought that by confessing, I would lose my wife, kids, community, and boy, he had a different story in mind. My confession hurt Amanda, but her first words to me were, “I’m not leaving.” I called the community group guys shortly thereafter. Fifteen minutes later, they were at our house reminding me what God’s word says about who I was and what to do next. Over the next year, I had the opportunity to sit with other believers taking a fearless moral inventory, confessing my sins to others, and being fully known. As Josh Wilhite said a couple of weeks ago, “For the first time in my life, I was fully exposed and fully accepted.”
There are times in my journey with the Lord where he teaches and exposes idols gently, and there are other times he comes in with a 2x4! Let me tell you, Mike’s confession was a 2x4 kind of moment! I had a choice. Was I going to retreat and fall back to what I thought was the right thing to do? What I thought I deserved or what culture expected? Or was I going to trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding, but in all my ways acknowledge and trust that He wasn’t surprised by this? This was the moment the rubber met the road for me. I actually had to trust what I had learned about God through Regen and Equipped Disciple. Spoiler alert! I stayed!
Our marriage transformation didn’t end with my confession and the years of recovery and trust-building thereafter. He is still at work in both Amanda and I today.
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to be encouraged by my wife to step away from my career and into something dramatically different. We had no idea what the outcome would be. In the interest of looking more like His son, he was poking right at our desire for control. He was saying, “Trust me. I’ve got this. You don’t know where this is going to end up, but I do.”
