Adultery Never "Just Happens," Nor Does Recovery

I didn't wake up one day and find myself in the pit of adultery. It was a series of life choices. I drifted through life, not growing personally and spiritually in the area of sexuality, self-worth, etc. I also didn't address the deep seeded pride, fear, foolish beliefs, and self-hatred in my heart and mind. I had poor habits, boundaries and thoughts that eventually led to my downfall. That's why owning up to my sin was so important. Blame wouldn't make things better or lead to healing.

I read an article (see below) this week that sums up why adultery doesn't just happen, PLUS why recovery and survival don't "just happen," either. The article doesn't talk about adultery recovery or prevention, but the truth found in the article can apply directly to it.

Adultery recovery AND prevention is a daily decision of choosing differently, choosing better, and working on yourself, your mind, your thoughts, your beliefs, and your direction in life, as the Lord leads. "Not my will but yours Father," is what Jesus prayed. If we are Christ followers, then that's the statement we need to live by as well. I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!

I'm thankful for people who share their wisdom and insights to make a difference in the lives of other people. It's about paying it forward. That's our prayer as a couple - to pay it forward and be difference makers in the lives of others. Lord willing, that will happen.
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Wake Up—Start Making Empowering Choices
by Darren Hardy, SUCCESS magazine publisher and author of The Compound Effect

We all come into this world the same: naked, scared, and ignorant. After that grand entrance, the life we end up with is simply an accumulation of all the choices we make. Our choices can be our best friend or our worst enemy. They can deliver us to our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away.

Think about it. Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something. Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. Choose poorly, and you just might find yourself back at the drawing board, forced to make new, often harder choices. Don’t choose at all, and you’ve made the choice to be the passive receiver of whatever comes your way. 

In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you. Every decision, no matter how slight, alters the trajectory of your life—whether or not to go to college, who to marry, to have that last drink before you drive, to indulge in gossip or stay silent, to make one more prospecting call or call it a day, to say I love you or not. Every choice has an impact on the Compound Effect of your life.

By employing the same idiot-proof strategies I’ve used to catapult my own life and career, strengthened by the Compound Effect, you’ll be able to loosen the mysterious grip of the things that are unwinding your life and pulling you in the wrong direction. You’ll be able to hit the pause button before stumbling into idiot territory. You’ll experience the ease of making decisions that lead to behaviors and habits that support you, every time. 

Your biggest challenge isn’t that you’ve intentionally been making bad choices. Heck, that would be easy to fix. Your biggest challenge is that you’ve been sleepwalking through your choices. Half the time, you’re not even aware you’re making them! Our choices are often shaped by our culture and upbringing. They can be so entwined in our routine behaviors and habits that they seem beyond our control. For instance, have you ever been going about your business, enjoying your life, when all of sudden you made a stupid choice or series of small choices that ultimately sabotaged your hard work and momentum, all for no apparent reason? You didn’t intend to sabotage yourself, but by not thinking about your decisions—weighing the risks and potential outcomes—you found yourself facing unintended consequences. Nobody intends to become obese, go through bankruptcy, or get a divorce, but often (if not always) those consequences are the result of a series of small, poor choices. 

You’ve allowed yourself to make a choice without thinking. And as long as you’re making choices unconsciously, you can’t consciously choose to change that ineffective behavior and turn it into productive habits. It’s time to WAKE UP and make empowering choices.
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Matthew 13:31-32 (NASB)

The Mustard Seed

³¹ He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; ³² and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the ^[r]air come and nest in its branches.”