What role does faith and Christian affair recovery come in?
Some may ask, why do I have a faith page on this website and what is “christian affair recovery”?
Although I will probably take some heat for it, I felt it was important to share the whole truth of my story with you,
as God was the source of my own christian affair recovery.
I would be remiss not to share the whole story of how God was instrumental in healing and restoring our marriage too.
But if you don’t share my faith, that doesn’t mean you’re not welcome. You are very welcome here and I hope you’ll join
our community of women who are all learning as we go. Don’t forget to join our little private facebook group of women
who are in this healing and recovering process together! Request to join my facebook group here.
I decided to add a faith page to this site for a few reasons:
1. Jesus has been with you from the beginning.
You may feel like you’ve failed too much, or too badly, for God to ever forgive you.
But He’s not shocked by our sins. He just wants us to run to Him, not away.
I once felt like I sinned too much to be worthy of His love,
especially since I had an affair, AFTER I was already a Christian.
But it doesn’t diminish the closeness I had with Jesus for many years.
He saw me through so many trials, and even in the midst of my sin,
He was whispering to my heart what real love is, and convicting me to stop.
I knew on at least 5 occasions that He was speaking to me even
while I was at my worst.
There’s not too many humans that would love us even at our worst, right?
And He walked with me, and my family, through my own breast cancer later.
Even after a recurrence of cancer after my mastectomy, He was by my side and helped us through.
How could I not honor Him here?
And He’s right by you too, my friend.
2. God helped me personally heal from the shame of my infidelity.
First, my personal experience is that I would not have been healed in my heart,
or been able to forgive myself of my affair, if I didn’t have God helping me.
Shame has tried to silence me over and over again, because that’s what shame loves to do.
If we keep our secrets hidden, they still hold some power over us.
But when we’re authentic with others, and get honest about our mistakes, Satan loses.
(But I would advise being wise in who you share your truth with, not everyone can handle it and some people take pleasure in shaming others).
Guilt and shame are often the biggest obstacles to receiving forgiveness and
living authentically, after we’ve failed in some way.
Shame was one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome afterwards.
It’s been very difficult to forgive myself, and one of the biggest statements of condemnation I kept hearing
in my head was “how can you be a Christian and have an affair?”
Or, “your sin i
s worse because you KNEW God before you had an affair,
unlike others who may not have been Christians until afterwards.”
That was a hard one for me to get past.
But I remembered that even David, who was a man after God’s heart and loved God,
committed adultery with Bathsheba.
That’s not to excuse our sin, but to show that we are all capable of falling.
I truly believe it is when we say in our hearts “I WOULD NEVER DO THAT…”
that we are indeed at our most vulnerable of falling.
Then we get caught in the trap the enemy has set for us and getting free becomes very difficult to do on our own.
I had to recognize those words of condemnation as being the lies that they were, sprinkled with just enough truth.
Although I’m not proud of the fact that I was a Christian woman who had an affair, I’m willing to be vulnerable and honest,
in the hope that other Christian women will stop hiding in shame, and get the help from God that He offers.
Are you hiding away in shame over something’s you’ve done? It’s not the way to live, and there’s so much more
for you than that. There’s nobody that has it all together. We’ve all sinned and fallen short of the best we could be.
But don’t let that shame keep you hidden in isolation another day!
3. There’s an enemy of our souls, who makes it his job to condemn us.
If Satan can keep you in condemnation over committing adultery, or any other mistake you’ve made, then he’s got you under his thumb.
Then you won’t want to share your story with others, so they could get free too. And you’ll likely still hide and not heal in your own soul,
and in your marriage, when you’re still feeling condemned.
Sometimes, Satan will still whisper condemning thoughts in my mind.
And it’s hard for even me to understand how I could do this.
Satan will try to do and say all he can, to keep us in our pit of shame and guilt.
But if you come before God in humility and acknowledge your sin,
He is always faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from that unrighteousness.
Once you know you’ve done that, then continuously being tormented by the enemy is just him lying to you.
Even if you have to say it out loud “NO, I am a forgiven daughter of the Most High God…”
Satan loses when you reject his words of shame and condemnation and chose truth and vulnerability instead.
Using scripture to deal with temptations the enemy puts in your mind is also important.
3. God took any desires I had to be with the affair partner.
Jesus is the one who took the desire for this other man out of my heart, when I couldn’t do it by myself. (Believe me, I’d tried).
I know it was God, because once I finally got serious and asked Him to take it from me, I felt a release, and was able to let go.
Sometimes women will ask me if the feelings they have for their affair partner will always linger.
They wonder if they’ll always feel love for them, or always miss them.
I can answer only for myself, but my answer is no.
There is honestly no feelings for him, and if anything, only disgust for what I did.
I see it all from a distance now and realize the vulnerability I was in at that time, and this man knew it too.
True love rejoices in the truth, the bible says. So would someone who says they really love you, be encouraging you to lie and hide the truth?
Would that person want you to sin against God and your husband, and dishonor your marriage vows if it was real love?
No, true love wouldn’t.
Once God showed me this, my eyes were opened in other ways too. How could I long for someone like that anymore?
Let God show you too, my friend. If you’re still struggling with longing for and missing your affair partner.
Only God can truly free us from whatever trap we’ve gotten into, if we want to be freed bad enough.
4. God is the one that restored the love in our marriage.
God was the glue we needed to bind our marriage together as we began to pray daily together.
He also helped my husband to forgive me and replace the anger with compassion much sooner than I think he would have on his own.
As we prayed and invited Him into our messy recovery, He was there and bound us together again.
That is what I mean by Christian Affair Recovery.
So I hope you’ll join me on this journey of faith, I don’t claim to know all the answers,
but will just offer some observations, scriptures and devotions as we seek healing from our past.
If you’d like to learn more about how to have a relationship with Jesus, you can follow this link to my How to know God page.
If you’ve had an affair, thinking about having one, come get support from non-judgemental women who understand!
Join my private FB group called AMA women (for recovering unfaithful women)
The word affair or infidelity is not in the description either.
It’s just a growing group of women like you, who support one another through whatever stage of affair recovery they’re each in.
Since It’s a private group, nobody else but group members can see anything posted in the group.
Here’s the link to request to join my Facebook group and see that you’re not alone.
If you’re looking for posts for the unfaithful wife, click here.
“An open letter to the Christian woman who had an affair”
“How to forgive yourself after your affair.”
If you’re a betrayed husband, click here.
