From Satan Worship and Drugs to Serving Christ

Hey, marriage after God family. This is Aaron Smith with the Marriage After God podcast. And what you’re about to hear is an interview that I got to do with Mason and Courtney Skaggs. And they share an incredible testimony of God moving in their life before they’re married in their marriage, and even to this day from Satan, worship, drug use, drug dealing to just being totally transformed, seeing healing and restoration and redemption in their marriage. And I hope that you are encouraged by this interview that I got to do with them and their testimony of what Jesus Christ has done in their life and in their marriage, and that you know that God is and wants to work in your marriage as well. And you may not have their story, but we all have a story like it. And so I hope you enjoy my interview with Mason and Courtney Skaggs. Hey, I’m Aaron.

And I’m Jennifer.

And we’re the host of the Marriage After God podcast. Our desire is to help you cultivate a marriage that chases boldly after God’s will for your life together.

We want to invite you to subscribe to our show wherever you watch or listen.

We are so glad you’re here, and we pray that our discussion truly blesses you and your marriage. Welcome

To the Marriage After God podcast.

All right, Mason and Courtney Skaggs, welcome to the Marriage After God podcast.

Thank you so much for having us on Aaron. We’re big fans.

Yeah, it was funny how we got connected Mason because you texted me and it took me a half a day to respond because I was like, how did this guy get my phone number? And you’re like, I have my connections.

Yeah, Courtney thought it was weird. She’s like, he’s going to think that’s really weird. But I shot my shot.

You know what? I get texted a thousand times a day sometimes from political stuff, and I don’t even know how they got my number and I unsubscribe from everything. So it’s not weird when I get texts, I just usually think they’re spam. So it’s rare that I get a text from a real person. I’m like, I’m going to ask this guy a question.

And

I was like, Hey, that’s interesting. By the way, how did you get my number?

Thank you for being gracious, man. I was thrilled whenever we actually started talking.

Yeah, well, I appreciate it. We had a good long phone call after that, and I just thought your story was interesting. And then we chatted a little bit after that and I was like, let’s get on a podcast and let’s talk your story and let’s see what we can get some encouragement out of it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we’ve been listening to Marriage After God for four and a half, five years, and

Man, that’s awesome.

Yeah, when you went on your, I think it was one of the first breaks you took for, Hey, we’re going to take a pause having, I think you were having more kids at the time. It was like the summer of 2020 or 2021 or something, and we were like, oh no, they’re gone. But yeah, we’re huge fans and it’s not so much we’re huge fans. We love you guys, but your Bible people and you have, every time I’ve listened to an episode, I come away with more adoration for Christ and more driven to pursue him. And I think that’s what makes your podcast good.

Yeah.

So Courtney, you guys listened to it together.

Yeah, sometimes that’s so cool. Sometimes would listen, I feel like we would listen to it really often in the car, on car rides. There was a really big stent of where Mason would travel for work, and so we would just turn it on. And so it was really when you guys had that maybe second conversation on the phone, I heard him in his office and I was like, this is very surreal. I was used to your voice. But yeah, we started listening early on in marriage. I don’t even remember how we found you guys initially, but

Then in desperation.

In desperation, yeah,

That’s what it was.

And then just came back to it anytime an episode would come out, but very specifically when we were going through really hard struggles. And so the first two years of marriage, it was just rough.

Oh, yeah.

So it was very edifying for us and just a lot of the conversations that you and Jennifer would have just really spoken to what we were going through in that season of our marriage. Yeah, yeah.

It’s amazing what technology has allowed us to do, but if you think about it, Paul and the other apostles writing letters to the churches, this is exactly what they’re doing. They couldn’t be everywhere all at once to disseminate the full gospel early in the early church. And so they wrote these letters and now we get to mimic that with podcasts and blogs and social media, and it could be used to encourage believers around the world.

That’s right, man. It’s awesome

Psychology. Why don’t we jump in? My audience doesn’t know who you guys are. Why don’t you guys share a little bit of your story and then maybe it’ll expand and go into more of your story. Of course. A lot of testimony here. And why don’t you just, I don’t know where you want to start, but probably pre-marriage and then going into marriage and

Yeah. Do you want to start it off or you want me to? You can start, yeah. Okay. Well, I’ll tell who we are now first. So I’m Mason Skaggs. This is my wife Courtney, and we’ve been married five years in some change, and we have three children. One on the way. I’m a director of musical worship at a Emmaus church in Kansas City, Missouri, and I came out of living a life of total, I mean serious depravity and Satan worship, homosexuality, just all kinds of addictions, addiction to drugs and corn, I will say, so that YouTube doesn’t flag us. Yeah. So now I am part of a ministry called Sovereign Fire Studios on YouTube and all the podcast platforms. We do testimonies of awesome God stories. We do theology in the Christian life, so if your listeners like Truth Unites or your podcast or remnant radio, those kind of things that are kind of talking about theology in a relational way and how it applies to life, and that’s what I do.

(06:38)
Awesome. So starting in our story, well before we got married, I’ve already given some hints, but I was just off the tracks, man. I started using drugs when I was 13 or 14, and I quickly became just enthralled and controlled by substances. And so I started using opioids and methamphetamine and shooting up and selling drugs, and I was a musician, and so I really found my identity there. I always struggled with wondering if people would love me, if they really knew me. I felt rejected and neglected by my biological family, my dad and my stepmom. I lost my mom really early on, and so I was just trying to fill all these holes in my soul caused by sorrow and trauma and nothing. I mean, it just left me more empty than before everything I would try, whether it was a new relationship or immorality of any kind, I just ended up more wasted and hopeless and fell into ashes.

(07:55)
So I was a musician. I had gone to rehab multiple times. I had an overdose where I threw up and inhaled it or asphyxiated is what they call it, and still didn’t change. Got out of the hospital, was using drugs that same day. So I was just gone and my dad gave me an ultimatum. I went to another rehabilitation center per his wishes, and God started, I mean, he was always pursuing me. I rejected him. That’s why I was a theistic Satan worshiper. I believed in God, but I thought I was headed for hell. I’ve already sinned so egregiously in my life. I might as well get as much as I can from this life, embrace it, which don’t recommend. And so I was trying to gain power from worshiping demons, practicing blood magic and rituals. And so I went into this Christian rehab and I hated every second of it. I was hearing voices, suicidal ideations, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that. So let me say, wanting to hurt myself, those kinds of things, and ended up leaving there. But I felt God pursuing me. He wanted a relationship with me and wanted to love me. And after I left there, started the band again, was playing music live, and I’ll let Courtney kind of take it from there around the time we met.

Yeah, so that was around 2019, I want to say. No, 2018. That’s when we met. We got married in 2019, but I come from a semi Christian household, and so I was lost in the sauce as well. Not coming from a background of addiction, but I was just very the most depressed I had ever been. I was going to college at this time and living on my own, and so I was just drinking very heavily. I was addicted to Xanax at this point, and so just medicating myself and just going along with what everyone else was doing, it seemed like, and I had a knowledge of God. I would say even then I was a Christian because in my head it made sense. God made sense, and Jesus dying for your sins just made sense. But I very clearly wasn’t repentant of my sins or actually trusted in Christ as my savior. And so yeah, me and Mason met online on a dating app and we talked for two weeks, and then he was very, I don’t know, hit or miss, I guess.

Yeah, I was flaky, pretty

Flaky.

What’s interesting is the last interview I just did as a young couple also, and they met on a dating app.

Hey.

Yeah, it’s very common I think these days.

And so I literally told him, I don’t think it’s worth my time to be your friend. And so we stopped talking. So that was summer of 2018, and then we actually met in person in the fall of 2018. Mason was doing a Halloween show. And

Real quick, just Mason, had you already given your life to Christ and then went on this app. So you were not yet?

No, I was just looking. I was continually throwing things in the void of my depression and anxiety and sorrow to see what would stick, and then I had a girl. So you

Both were in a similar position when you started contacting each other? Okay. Yeah. Sorry, keep going.

Oh, no, you’re good. So yeah, he was sending out just mass invites to this Halloween show they were doing. I always say, because I still don’t know why, but I was curious enough to want to meet him at this point many months later after not having any contact. And so that was late October, 2018, and we met, then we went on our first date two days later, and then we started dating. And that was a spiral of sin. It

Was wild

And sadness.

It was wild. I mean, things would seem to be going well. And I would even say things as a non-Christian, I knew enough to know, okay, I’ve seen evil. I’ve seen darkness of all shades. And I would say things to her, if God is not the center of our relationship, we will just fall apart. I knew that, but also I wasn’t a Christian, but I loved it.

What do you think was saying because you were pursuing the totally opposite spiritual direction, you’re like, I know of God, I’m going to run from him as far as I can, but actually go to his enemy and tri be on that team. What was in it in you that was making you say that?

I knew I had mean, the Bible says the law of God’s written on our hearts and we see it in nature. We can’t deny even his divine attributes.

Romans one and two,

Romans one, then so I knew the truth, but I just suppressed it in unrighteousness like Romans again. But when I met Courtney, I saw in her a person that was worthy of being pursued correctly and someone worthy of love and tenderness and faithfulness, and I wasn’t able to provide that. And so I was still practicing manifestation. I would do positive affirmations every morning for an hour and would do rituals to try to gain prosperity and wealth. But I knew I was trying to synchronize Jesus and bring him into my private demonic practices, and you can’t do that. But I loved this woman and saw that she was already really hurt, had issues from her past, and I felt guilt for my sin for the first time. And so I knew God has to be part of this in some way.

Courtney, even though you had a knowledge of God and a upbringing of Christianity, but you weren’t personally walking with Christ, was there some level of expectation on Mason when you were coming into this relationship of, I want you to be Christian, I want you to also follow God and believe these things. Was that an influence from you?

I think that not in the first few months, definitely. It was like six to seven months into dating when Mason was radically saved. And even then I was very hesitant, but I had been sending him, I don’t know how long it had been, but I’d been sending him some podcast clips from Elevation Steven Furley. And so I don’t know why they started showing up on my reels, but I was encouraged by them. And so I was like, Hey, Christianity is, I was in my head morally good or uplifting. I would send him these clips, be encouraged or something, but I didn’t know what he was actually saying. It just sounded good and made me feel good on the inside. And that was six months into our relationship. And then when Mason was saved, and I’ll let him get into what that experience was like, I was very skeptical. I think just in the Midwest, very cultural Christianity is

Being

A good person. And I think the morality of Christianity, I thought to myself, this will be good for our relationship or this will be healing for Mason. And so I just kind of went along with it.

Yeah. When that change happened, you said you were skeptical. It’s an interesting thing, I think when you guys come together and he is a way, and you kind of like, you’re like, well, I’ve accepted this way. Of course there’s things I want him to change, but when there’s a radical transformation, it’s like, whoa, I wasn’t ready for that. And did it feel like you almost had a hard time accepting it? This is too much. Are you the same person? Do I still think of you the same way? Did that happen

Mean? Yeah, there’s definitely moments where I was like, who are you? And I don’t know. There was one specifically, we had started living together very early on, and when Mason turned his life over to Christ, he was very convicted about us being celibate and not living together. And I was just like, what are you even talking about this? Do you even love me? Yeah, this no sense to

Me really. No, that was the questions. It was like we would be getting hot and heavy and making out or whatever, and then I would fuel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. And I’m like, I hate what I’m doing. I do not want to offend God. And Courtney’s like, why are you rejecting me right now? We’ve been doing this a long time. What’s the deal? Yeah,

That’s amazing. So Mason, let’s talk about that conversion experience. I would imagine, Courtney, you also had one, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so let’s start with Mason’s. Why don’t you tell us about what happened?

That’d be kind of funny if you were like, you had one, right? And she’s like, yeah, to Mormonism. What? I was not

Expecting this.

So yeah, I’ve kind of touched on the brokenness that I had. It was a profound darkness. Everybody has kind of their own things that they struggle with. I struggled really hard. I just hated myself. I hated my sin. I had so much shame and guilt, and I knew my sins were wrong. The ways that I had hurt people, the ways that I had led people to, I loved turning on people to different drugs, and I had sold so many thousands of deadly drugs to people. And so I had tons of guilt,

Misery lives company. You’re trying to draw people into that with you.

Yes. And in the new age, it’s this gnostic idea of I have this knowledge. I’ve done DMT, I’ve done LSD, I’ve, I’ve seen the other realms and made contact with other entities. And so I wanted to be a shaman, and I introduced my ex-girlfriend to tarot readings. So she was reading tarot cards and practicing mediumship. And so I had this weight of sin on me all the time, but it got unbearable to where drugs were not working, sex wasn’t working to numb that pain anymore, and my life was unmanageable. And so I had been listening to sermons that Courtney would send me, just shallow, I would say now kind of shallow surface level Christianity stuff, but it really was powerful to me and it was what I needed at the time. So I was also reading some of the Bible and I had grown up where the gospel was preached to me. I came out of a very devout Christian family that just fell apart when my mom died. And it seemed like nobody’s faith was sincere. It at least seemed like that. I don’t know whether my dad was still saved or he was in a deep dark depression for 10 years or whatever. He doesn’t really know either. But he is born again now. Praise

God.

Yeah. That’s amazing. Him and my youngest brother are born again. I have 11 siblings and oh my

Goodness,

That’s all of us that are Christians, my dad and my youngest brother right now. So this weight was unbearable and I had no other route to turn to. And so this one day I was at work alone and just bawling my eyes out, searching the internet for how to be healed from addiction, how to be set free and didn’t find anything good, found some weird, happy, sloppy hin type stuff for healing, like automatic healing. And it didn’t really work. And so I just put my keyboard, just shoved it away, put my head in my hands, and I felt I had worshiped demons and had seen things manifest. So I had felt unclean spirits.

(21:04)
Everybody probably knows. You’ve probably had an experience where you meet somebody or you walk in somewhere and you’re like, something funky in here. This something’s not right here. That kind of discernment. And I discerned that there was a presence, but I felt it purity and holiness, and I felt afraid in a wonderful way that thrilled me. So I was crying and I knew it was Jesus, and I had this conviction, almost like a life review type situation where all of my sins were brought before me, and I felt the weight of my sin, and I was like, get this off me. Jesus, help me. I remember saying, whatever you have to do to forgive me, I believe you can forgive me. I believe you died on the cross for my sins in my place. You have to change me. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’ve tried everything that I believe you can forgive me and heal me. And I just felt this peace overflow in my all over. I felt it in my physical body emotionally. I was overwhelmed with peace and with the love of God and knew my sins were forgiven. So I called Courtney and I’ll let you tell that part.

Yeah. So I got a phone call and Mason, I could tell he’d been crying and he was late getting home from work, and so he asked, Hey, can you find us a church to go to tonight? And it was like a Wednesday evening and

We need to go right now.

Yeah, it was getting close to seven. So I was like very just Okay,

You said, I guess.

Yeah. I was like, okay. I guess he sounded very emotional, so I knew something was up, and so I found this church. It was right down the road from us. And so we went there and we walked.

Were you guys married already or was still dating? Okay.

Yeah, just dating. Yeah. And so we walked in and they were doing a prayer circle for a missions trip that they were going on. And so

Nobody talked to us when

We came in. No, they just walked

In. They were all praying,

Sat in the back. It was very awkward for a long time. And

I

Cried, yeah, just sat there. I just sat there next to him kind of watching people pray. And Mason had this insane encounter with the Lord, and we met a woman, I can’t remember her name,

I can’t either. I think it was like Mel or something

Maybe.

Regardless.

Yeah, she was just so tender towards us and kind to us, and they were just very welcoming and open. And so we started going to that church. I think the next Sunday we started attending pretty regularly.

I mean, we didn’t really miss a week after that. We were,

(24:10)
I needed it. And then it was several months, like your listeners, I love your audience because Min, it’s a place where you’ve been very open about your struggles with corn, with immorality and those kinds of addictions. And so I had those hidden sins still, and I had lots of sin that I had committed as a satanist that I felt like if anybody knew this, not only would they not love me, they would be disgusted with me and would hate me. And so even though shortly after that I proposed and I wanted to do things, it was a different kind of weight. It was like the person of the Holy Spirit was convicting me. And the more I read the Bible, it was like, I’ve got to be honest with people now, and these are not things that I can shove to, oh, it happened so long ago, it’s not going to affect my marriage. Get out of here with that. That’s not true. This is your own flesh.

I’m nearly 18 years into my marriage and realizing that stuff from our past still creeps in and is still affecting us, and it’s stuff that we have to continually surrender. And something I want to make a note on with your testimony, because there’s a lot of listeners that probably have never experienced anything like what you’re going through or what you experienced, the things that you did, but in reality, you were looking and you could tell me I’m way off base or not, but you were looking for some form of control, some form of something to grasp onto in this life. And you were finding it in very spiritual things, anti-God, spiritual things where a lot of other people, our listeners, maybe they, I’m sure some of them have experienced things that you went through and pursued, things like that, but alcohol, drugs, pornography, lust, work, money, they are pursuing something and they’re trying to grasp onto something. And just like you felt, none of it made sense, none of it worked, none of it was enough because none of it can be enough.

Right.

And the other thing I wanted to make note on was you mentioned how there was little, like Courtney, you were sending him little messages from Steven Furtick and some other people, and those little things played a huge role. And the image I got was when you’re in a pitch black room, the littlest light is almost as bright as the sun. And how we as believers or the wife who is wanting to see their husband saved or mature, or the husband who’s wanting to see their wife saved or mature, can be doing the exact same thing if their spouse is walking in darkness. I mean, the Bible tells us, as I believe it’s in two Peter about the influence a wife can have on her husband

Just

By her conduct and the way she walks out her faith before him, and those little bits of light that we can be to others. I just want to give that as an encouragement for my listeners because there’s so many times that we think like, man, I’ve been praying for this person for so long. I’ve been praying for my spouse for so long. I send them verses. I send them the daily prayer emails, I send them encouraging messages and nothing’s changed. And I just want to say that those things, they’re all, as Paul says, one plants, one waters, but it’s the one that brings the increase.

We

All get to participate in the planting and the watering and to never grow weary and doing good because for Indu season, you’ll reap a harvest of righteousness. That’s good. And so you experienced that yourself. You had all of this darkness and the little bit of light was enough to illuminate it all.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that you said that those two things tie together too. I’ve made the analogy of whether it’s a shopping addiction or food or sex or whatever it is that you try to satisfy yourself and satiate your thirst with. It’s like eating gravel and sand, and that’s something that God talks about. I think it’s in Jeremiah when he talks about, no, it’s in Isaiah 66. He talks about as people have committed two sins, one, they’ve forsaken the fountain of living water, God, the water that actually satisfies, and then the second they’ve hued out, cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, they don’t even work. You lose more than you gain. And Jesus comes along and says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. He is the eternally satisfying person who will meet the needs. You don’t even know he was touching parts of me I didn’t even know needed healing. And so that is a powerful word. Thank you for sharing that, man.

Courtney, sorry, I kind of interrupted your bit of the story. So you guys went to church and they embraced you guys, which is exactly what the church should do. They saw you guys broken and they came and wrapped their arms around you, which is amazing. So continue.

Yeah. So that was April into June of 2018, and Mason proposed in June of 2018. At this point, I was still just going along with this Christianity thing. I was like, well, this is Mason is not so crazy now and it is a little more tamed, and we really loved each other. So the thought of being married at this point, I clearly really wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. And so yeah, I was just along for the ride and he was baptized in June of 2018, and I had a false baptism as well, just going along with the flow of everything. And then it was several months later, we got married in September of 2019, and I still was not a Christian. I proclaimed Christ and was just kind of checking off the marks of a Christian. And we were serving in our church in ways that were really detrimental to us as individuals, but also to our very new marriage. They really threw Mason into serving a lot or in a leadership role way, way, way too soon. And so I think

They were like, you can play music, do it all the time.

And so here

You go. Here’s a jump.

And so for me, being newly married thrust into all of the secret sin or addiction that Mason still had, and then just seeing that abuse from the church, it just left me more skeptical, especially the first two to three months of marriage. It was just so hard. And my parents divorced when I was really young, and so I didn’t really grow up with a father figure. And now here is this man who I’m supposed to submit to and trust, but he’s hurting me and

Out of nowhere

Exactly

Supposed to do it perfect right away,

All the while he’s sinning against me and hurting me in these egregious ways.

(32:02)
And so it was really hard for me to trust the Lord and to trust that he is who he says he is, and that he sent Jesus to rescue me when all of these things were just tearing me apart on the inside. And so for me, it was several months into December or January of 2020, I think that’s 2020, 2020 when I truly gave my life over to Christ. It was like little by little, the Lord just showed me his compassion and his love for me. And I think a really big hurdle was just the realization that no matter what I had done in my past or the way I grew up with without a father, I think had a big just impact on the way I saw God as I was just some burden to him. And so just the tenderness of the Lord through prayers of Mason and just reading the word just really softened my heart to his love for me and my actual need for a savior, not just like, oh, this is morally good, or it moved from being head knowledge into actually penetrating my heart. Just the realization of I am going to go to hell if I don’t turn my life over to Christ. This is the end of the line.

(33:44)
Yeah, but God though, but God,

But God, it’s a huge transition from knowledge to belief,

Right?

Often we atheist people, they’re still seeking the same knowledge that was tempting to Adam and Eve in the garden. It’s like, unless I have enough knowledge, I can’t believe, and it’s the knowledge that deceives us into thinking that we know something and that we have some sort of level of understanding. But it’s not until it turns into belief that he is the way and the truth and the life

And

That no one goes to the Father through him. And that’s where, like you said, it goes from the head to the heart. It’s like, well, now I believe what Jesus said, and that’s how the gospel works. It’s got to be believed. It’s got to be believed on.

That’s right. Yeah.

And so that’s amazing. Did you know Courtney, was his past known to you before you got married?

Oh man,

Some.

Yeah,

Definitely. I left some bombshells for later discovery,

Which

I just don’t recommend that you guys, I mean, I’m kind of making a joke out of it now. It sounds so stupid to do, but some of the biggest sins I’d ever committed and traumas that were committed by me and to me, I left for discovery later on.

Yeah. Yeah. I knew the past of addiction and some things that Mason had struggled from a really early age. And so like he said, there was some things that I knew and then there was just a lot that I didn’t, especially those first few months of marriage, just how real and how deep the struggle with lust was and how that just the way it manifested itself in our marriage and the hiding or even the

Lying.

Yeah, the lying,

Isolating,

Isolating.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was really, really hard. And before that I had had boyfriends who I’m sure partook and I just didn’t care, was there a need to care or even think about it as an unbeliever. But it was in February, right?

Yeah. It was Valentine’s Day.

You can kind of share about that. Yeah,

It was Valentine’s Day and for

First year of marriage,

I was hoping that whenever I came to Christ, I was baptized. I was looking for a magic bullet that would solve all of my problems.

Well, it’s the same way you’ve been dealing with your whole life.

Yeah. I mean

You’re looking for the quick answers to magic

Feel better.

(36:48)
I was looking for God to zap me and make me better. And it’s like my true desire was to not go through the painful process of transformation and sanctification that God uses through his word, through his church, by his spirit. As we behold Christ, we are transformed into his likeness. And I didn’t want that to take time. So I was constantly seeking prayer for these things, hoping that my lust would go away, that I wouldn’t keep falling back into watching corn or these other just really dark thoughts that I had of my past memories of, and I was plagued by it and I was not managing. I was open with a pastor one time and the pastor was like, there’s an umbrella of God’s grace and when you do that stuff, you’re stepping outside of it. And that’s what he said. That was the whole of our conversation. I was like,

That was the extent of his counsel to

That does not inspire confidence in me to continue to come to you with this. So I was trying to be open about it, but still withholding. And I had a relapse where it was just hours of down the rabbit hole. I was even in public looking for women and just I went off the rails and

Can I ask you a question, Mason?

Yeah, please.

What do you wish the pastor would’ve told you?

I wish a couple things. I wish he would’ve told me this is an unacceptable behavior for a Christian. Number one. Two, I see you. I love you. I’m not disgusted by you. This is something you must bring out into the light and you have to continue to confess it. And I wish he would’ve steadied me by the reality, the somber reality, that this is going to be a long, hard fought battle. God might take it from you instantaneously, but it’s likely that you’ll struggle with this for a long time. And so let’s find some resources together and let’s meet together regularly about this. I wish you would’ve pressed in with questions too. What type of stuff are you watching? How long has this been going on? How often is it happening and what happened that your past man that you’re looking at these kinds of things and pursuing safety, pursuing numbness in this behavior? Those are a few things I wish he’d said and applied the gospel to me. There was no, Jesus Christ is the answer, is the key to this problem, this addiction. Seek him, seek him in his word, be transformed by his word. It was kind of like I knew it was shameful that he was ashamed to talk about it with me.

Yeah, there’s a lot of people, most people I would imagine it’s hard to discuss these things and I don’t think I don’t know this man, but from experiences I’ve had, the response I get when I would confess that sin and that struggle was more along the lines of Welcome to the club.

Everybody does it rather

Than this must stop. And this is not the behavior of Christian. I mean I think it’s Ephesians not even a hint of sexual immorality, as is proper among the saints. Sexual sin is highlighted in the Bible as something completely unique in the nature of all sins. Not that other sins aren’t deadly and destructive, but it gives very specific instructions on specifically sexual sins.

And

So it’s something that we need to, as believers, men and women, it’s so amazing how now women, it used to be like 10%, now it’s like 50 50 women and men are struggling the same way, but it should not be taken lightly in the church at all. And the church is totally taken in lightly like, oh, we’re just going to treat this. Anything else.

And there’s not, lots of people aren’t equipped with the biblical truth that they need to speak into somebody like you mentioned Ephesians five, let there not even be a hint of this. And in later on it says, don’t because of these things don’t be deceived. The wrath, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience for these things, don’t become partners with them. And sexual immorality is like, how do you partner with them in that? Well, back in the day it was maybe attending an orgy or something. Now it’s virtual of your back pocket and you’re contributing to trafficking, you’re contributing to abuse, to the degradation of the image of God, and it is satanic. I was going to say that earlier you mentioned I’m very spiritually minded. I saw the substance of the thing. I was going directly to Satan, but you don’t even have to try as an unbeliever. You’re under the influence of the prince of the power of the air. You do his

Thing. That’s what Jesus said. He’s like, you’re partnering with the devil. He’s like Peter. He’s like, get the behind me. Satan, what you’re speaking is not your words. Those are Satan’s words.

And

We do that as believers with pornography, with drugs, with alcohol, with you name it. When we were partnering with the devil, I’m not saying specifically drinking in general, but the relationship with it, but all the things that we’re talking about, these are all spiritual things, and with the current age, we’re living in this postmodern age. Everyone wants everything to not be spiritual at all. Like,

Oh, this

Is just biological. This is just mental. You’re like, well, no, actually this is absolutely spiritual. Courtney, the things that he was doing in secret,

(43:15)
The sins that you didn’t know about. And this is something I experienced in my own marriage, and I know all my listeners on some level have experienced this, whether they’ve acknowledged it or not. And I hope that they hear this and think, oh my goodness, that’s what’s going on. My hidden sin, things that I don’t repent of and I keep in the background absolutely affect my wife without her knowing it. We’re going, something’s happening. And she could, she’s not going to pinpoint like, oh, are you doing this thing over here? But spiritually is affected because we’re one. Did you experience that? Was there some level of this doesn’t feel right, something’s off. We’re going through this thing and because of hidden sin?

Yeah, I would say so. It’s hard to think of a very specific thing that felt off. I know very early on we switched churches right around the time I had given my life to Christ. And so we were in this new community that was just so healthy and so Christ honoring and that walked with us through really, really hard stuff. We have these friends who we would just sit on their couch yelling at each other over maybe a relapse mason had or something that had happened that day, and we would just sit there baffled at one another and they would just share, continually share the love of Christ with us and point us towards the gospel. But I think in terms of his hidden sin and how it might’ve affected in the background, I think it was really, really hard for me to submit at all. I didn’t trust him during that time,

Understandably, I was not trustworthy

As a new Christian and as a new wife. I just found it really hard to find my worth and to find, I think my relationship with Jesus was really rocky just because I was like, well, if this man that God has ordained and willed for me to spend the rest of my life with is hiding these things and taking part of these things, I directly correlated it to my worth with my relationship with the Lord that I wasn’t worthy of the love and the adoration and the sacrifice that Jesus had for me. So that was, I don’t know. That was just really hard.

Courtney, what changed that perspective? Because I want to point out that you’re probably not the only one that has felt that way, and my wife has felt that way. I felt that way about my wife, this like, God, why have I been given this spouse? But that’s not true. Your value wasn’t found in the fact that Mason is a sinner.

Right?

So what changed? What did the Lord do in you

And

How did it happen to change that perspective of you realizing like, wait, this is not where I find my value and worth and that God does love me and Mason is who he is, but God’s working in him. What changed?

Yeah. I think the relationships we formed at our church, women that I could confide in and women to just speak the truth over who I am in Christ. And then we started biblical counseling, I think that fall. So we had been married for almost a year dealing with these issues, and we started seeing a counselor, and I think that was really monumental and instrumental, the resource that the Lord put in front of us. With that, just being able to communicate the trauma that caused and and just continually being reminded by our counselor and also by sisters in Christ of the love Jesus has for us, and that me and Mason weren’t and aren’t enemies. We have a common enemy and just continuing to ask the Lord for help to forgive every single day. I had to just plead with the Lord to help me to continue to forgive and to remember that my sins are just as egregious and not to see Mason as the enemy, and we’re fighting for our marriage together. Yeah. Yeah.

Mason, did you have a similar, so Courtney had godly women

Loving

On her and reminding her of the truth. Did you have men doing that for you?

Yeah, dude, I kind of paved the way for relationships because we didn’t have any friends. We came out all of, when we got converted, we dumped all of our friends, all of our identity changed the way we dressed, the way we talked, everything changed. We weren’t partying, so we didn’t have any friends. And once I had fully disclosed all of my sin to Courtney, past, present, these are all the things that I’ve done. This is why I’m crying at four 30 in the morning, and this is why one day she woke up and I was just sobbing in the living room and she’s like, okay, what is going on? And so we told pastors and got our biblical counselor. And so after I had fully disclosed those things, which I did in a setting with a third party mediator, I recommend that, don’t haphazardly do that. You could really wound your wife worse than you need to. And so once we had done that, I knew I had to aggressively pursue community because the promises of healing, internal spiritual growth, discipleship are tied to community, we’re made for community. We were made for eternal community with God and even God. There’s a sense of community, the triunity of God. And so I aggressively pursued guys and was rigorous in honesty with them.

And you’re not outgoing at all, so I’m sure

It was very hard. Yeah, no, but I mean even being outgoing, I’m calling this, I call the guy every day, his name’s Sage, Seman, love him. And I called him every day for over 90 days and just would be like, dude, this is what I’ve been thinking about. I can’t get these lustful thoughts out of my head. I just would share everything with him. I realized I am not a good judge of what I need to keep inside and what I need to share now, because I’ve tried that and it’s left me here. And I also made the mistake of trying to share everything with Courtney too, and guys will use that part of a recovery ministry now, and lots of my audiences is in that recovery space and trying to break free from sexual bondage and brokenness. And guys and gals will use that as like, well, I don’t want to hurt this person I love, so I’ll just keep it to myself, or I don’t want to share and make someone else triggered or whatever. But I would not, don’t use that as an excuse. We’re told to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another that we might be healed in James.

(51:43)
Yeah, it’s tied to community. That promise is so yeah, I was pursuing guys really hard. Courtney found it very hard to trust women because for one, her husband’s, you can speak more to this, but my struggle was with women. And so that made it really difficult for her to then trust women. And it made her sanctification process a lot harder too, because I’m declaring these truths about God that are true. And I’m walking in a way contrary to those truths, and I hated it and I was confessing it, but still that’s not good spiritual leadership,

A little bit unlike what Mason was talking about for I feel like two years even. I mean, I struggle with it now. We just had an instance of where I was really struggling with this, where it was really hard to trust women or to be really intentional, to have deep, deep relationship with women out of just fear in the back of my mind of, and I think control, wanting to control Mason’s sin or mason’s thoughts of what is this person going to just, I don’t know, overanalyzing every interaction with our close friends or females that I was close with, whether it be something they were wearing or the way they maybe said something or laughed at a joke, Mason told, I was just so insecure and so distraught over letting other women get close to us. And so that really hindered my relationship of just, there were some women who I felt safe around, but then I very sinfully would act just mean towards other women that I felt as a threat or that I compared myself to. And so that’s a sin that I still struggle with is comparing myself to other women or just making these scenarios in my head of wanting to control the situation or wanting to control

Police. My brain.

Your brain. Yeah.

That reminds me of so early on in our marriage and still happens, trying to be your spouse’s being the Holy Spirit for your spouse, trying to be like, well, they need to be this way and do this thing and not think this and not do that, instead of just trusting the actual Holy Spirit to be working in our spouse. But the other thing I was thinking is Mason and Courtney, Courtney, what you’re describing, I think probably nearly every woman on some level experiences this, especially when their husband has hurt them in this way.

(54:54)
But even if they have a great husband and the husband has never hurt them in that way and has never walked in lustful behavior and actions, that insecurity of knowing who you are in Christ, knowing who you are in your flesh, knowing how God sees you and thinks of you. But it’s something that I know men sometimes struggle with as well. So I don’t want to just pretend it’s one sided because it’s definitely not. But Mason knowing she deals with that. In circles of that, do you, and I don’t know if you have or not, have you found yourself trying to go above and beyond when it comes to reaffirming who she is to you,

Who

She is to God, and then also going above and beyond in an extravagant way, setting up safeguards and boundaries that are very noticeable to her to reassure her that I am not alone in rooms with other girls. I try to be very, make sure I’m not in any way sounding like I’m flirting, being too nice, being too laughing and friendly. That may be something that you guys could work toward in the future, but if that’s something that she’s still at, do you find yourself trying to walk that way so that it’s building her up and reaffirming her of your love for her and who she’s to you?

Yeah. For the first question, reaffirming her and trying to make plain her identity in Christ to her and discipling her in that way. That’s something I’ve grown in a lot in the past couple years. I think just little things like writing notes, praying over her, praying with her and reminding her of something I’ll say often is that, I’ll quote the verse from Isaiah when God says that, he’s like, the Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me. Kind a nursing woman. Forget a woman, forget her nursing child, that she should fail to have compassion on the son of her womb. Even these may forget, but I’ll not forget you, your name is inscribed on my palms, basically. And so I’ll, in prayer, I’ll kind of speak those things over her, and I affirm her identity as she’s a princess of the royal king, the high king.

(57:25)
And so those are some practical things that I will do. But actions speak louder than words. So something that we’ve done and something that took a long time for us to finally get in order. But when we started agreeing upon boundaries, because I’m very outgoing, I’m extroverted, I like to talk to people. And also there is a way to deal with sisters and love them and do the one another commands, bear their burdens, pray for them and not cross emotional boundary thresholds and not be their shoulder to cry on and not build emotional intimacy with them. So that’s something that we worked through with guidance and with counsel, and we have firm set boundaries for what’s acceptable and what’s not. If she feels like there was a time, a number of months ago where she was like, this action that you did made me uncomfortable, whether it’s resting a hand on someone when I’m praying for them or whatever, she will let me know, and it’s wet cement. So it’s like there are hard and fast rules and then there’s in seasons, there’s ways to navigate. And I trust her discernment wise. Yeah. She has the Holy Spirit in her.

Yeah. I think we need to be careful as husbands and wives and his men, even single people, spiritual things in the church that you could easily be like, well, yeah, I need to pray for people, so I’m going to go pray for this young woman. And we, we tell people all the time, prayer is one of the most intimate things you can do in your marriage. It’s literally one of the most intimate things you can do, period. And so whenever my wife and I, and if there’s a couple or a young woman, I’ll go get my wife and be like, Hey, can you pray with us or pray for her?

That’s good.

And being very careful on not just whitewashing things and saying, oh, I’m just doing a Christian thing. Be like, well, no, actually I’m also a Christian man and I have to, the Bible tells me to treat. The other Christian woman was sisters in

All purity,

In all purity. And so just being very careful of how we behave and how we treat people. And also I love that when you do something unintentionally, Courtney has the freedom as your wife to be come to you and say, Hey, that thing you did, it didn’t look intentional, but I just want you to know it made me feel uncomfortable. Could you be aware of that next time?

And

That’s a key factor in a healthy marriage. Is your spouse being able to tell you things like that?

Yeah. To be honest, I still react. My knee jerk reaction is defensive. Yeah. I’m like, nuh. But we have grown to the point where did

You say it? Just like Thatuh?

Yeah, I stomped my foot too. No, but we have grown to the God has by his grace, given us a new communication through resources like marriage after God, through biblical counseling and just seeing other couples

(01:00:40)
That are more godly than us. So we were able to overcome the defensiveness. I’ll confess it. I’ll ask for her forgiveness and we can move along with it. But I also, I wanted to say, because we didn’t really put a bow, there is no fancy bow. Put a bow on this struggle. We have problems in our marriage today that we are working through, but at the same time, I want to give, especially men and women who are struggling with pornography or whatever it is, I stopped calling it corn. You said pornography, so I might as well.

I know it’s too late.

It’s just so hard. And I’m like, I don’t want to censor myself, but so I want to give hope. God’s will is expressly that you walk in freedom and that you keep yourself unstained from the world that you have sexual purity. He says it plainly, I think it’s in Thessalonians for this is the will of God for you that you abstain from sexual immorality. And so it is his will. And there is freedom. We’ve had years of freedom from this thing, and there have been big setbacks along the way. I’ve had relapses, but there’s been years of consecutive freedom. And so I just want to say God has that for you. Believe him for it. Press and use whatever resources you can find. Biblical Christ-centered resources and community is key. Just be open about it. There’s freedom.

There’s a verse that is very violent and it says, you have not yet struggled to the point of bloodshed in your fight against sin. And there’s two points to it. Essentially, only one man did struggle to the point of bloodshed for all of our sin, Jesus Christ. But secondly, we haven’t had, often we don’t have the same heart towards sin, that Jesus was willing to go to the cross for it. Are we willing to go to the cross for it? Are we willing to do whatever it takes to put that thing to death?

Because

That’s what it is. And then I agree with you about the freedom thing. This is what brought me freedom from this. And again, I’ve struggled with lust since then. I’ve had to confess those things to my wife. Any relapse was nothing like it was when I was walking in addiction to pornography. But I’ve been walking in freedom for 10 years,

Praise God.

Not because God chose to give me freedom at that point. It’s because I finally believe that the freedom already existed.

It exists.

I’m already free. And that’s where the deceptiveness of sin is deceiving us into thinking a couple of things. We are not free. We are not forgiven. We are not loved by God. Therefore, do what you did Mason and run the other direction and go just, and that’s the deception of sin. And it leads us into more and more rebellion. So as believers, we’re to remind each other. It says, do this every day. Remind each other, exhort each other, rebuke each other. And our job is to not go to a believer and say, oh, once you’ve done this, this and this, then you’ll be free. No, we go, no. The gospel of Jesus Christ has sets you free right now. That truth isn’t true tomorrow. It’s not true in 10 years. It’s true. This very moment. And Courtney, you had the head knowledge. I had head knowledge. I would read the Bible and be like, it says, I’m free. I don’t feel free.

I

Didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe I was free. And it wasn’t until the moment that I believed I was free already, that I could actually walk in that freedom. In one Corinthians, there’s that verse that I think a lot of people that struggle with things like specifically pornography, I did. I looked at this verse and I was like, this verse is lying to me. And in reality, who’s the liar? Me? Not the scriptures. It says that with every temptation, the Lord will provide a way of escape

That

We might rise up underneath it. Is that true or not? With every single temptation, doesn’t mean that we’re going to be perfect. Doesn’t mean that every single time we’re going to take the wave of escape.

But with

Every temptation that comes to us, the Holy Spirit brings a wave escape through his conviction. And so I tell believers, I’m like, you hear the Holy Spirit every single time you’re tempted.

You do. Yeah.

And the problem is we ignore the Holy Spirit

And

Bible warns us. Do not do this. Do not, what’s the word that’s used? Grieve the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, yeah.

Do not harden your hearts. When the Lord speaks to you, do not push it away. So when we hear that conviction, and that was a huge thing for me, was first believing that I’m already free. Second believing that every temptation that comes, the Holy Spirit’s already talking to me.

Hey,

That’s not you. Don’t do this. You can rise up underneath this, you do not need to give into this. And so that’s part of our sanctification process.

And those identity verses were super important for both of us because my consistent sin actually created one in Courtney as well, and she can speak to that. But those identity verses like you’re holy and blameless and above reproach in Christ. You’re seeded with Christ now in heavenly places. You are seated in Christ with Christ right now in some mystical, spiritual way. And that you’re, that you are a holy nation, that you are a people for God’s own possession to proclaim his excellencies, that you are a new creation and created in Christ Jesus to walk in good works. And so those identity verses were so important and are so important every single day for us as our marriage has healed. Do you want to talk some?

Sure.

You guys have kids?

Yeah, we do. We have a three-year-old, a six month old, and I’m two weeks away from my due date with our third.

Oh, congratulations. We just had our sixth, two and a half weeks ago.

Wow.

By the time this airs, three and a half weeks.

Amazing.

Yeah, she’s special. That’s amazing. Congratulations on, you said number three. That’s

The

Third. That was so cool. So let’s just for a little bit, just talk about your kids for a second. You’ll have to tell us about the kids. But having children, this is, I would imagine brought a whole nother layer of we need to figure things out

In

Our lives so we don’t pass this stuff on to our children. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I think our first was a girl too, and I think that just also hit different, especially for Mason, and you can speak to that as being a man, but just wanting to protect her. And we’ve seen so much the Lord restore so much, especially for me, having a husband who loves the Lord and having a man who fights for our marriage and is willing to do the hard work to kill his sin has just been so redemptive to me and such a grace from the Lord, just healing that little girl who didn’t have that in a father. And I just sometimes I’m struck with Eliana gets to have that, to have a father who she can look up to and who loves her unconditionally and just, yeah, that’s a really sweet thought to me, to have this young girl who has a man and a leader who she can trust and love and who turns leads her to the Lord.

Yeah. Having children, it definitely puts your sins under the microscope.

(01:09:11)
And there’s a really prime example of that in my life. When I had chosen to look at pornography, I had acted out in that way and I had confessed it to brothers, and it was the same day hours later, confessed it to brothers, felt all this guilt and confessed it to Courtney. And Courtney had to go to the grocery store, and my daughter, Eliana, was maybe one and a half or two. This would’ve been, no, it would’ve been over two years ago, maybe even two and a half years ago. She’s just a baby. And Eliana looked over her shoulder as Courtney was walking away, said, bye dadda. And she was so happy to see me, and I was sitting on the porch and I just remember it broke me. I was just like, I’ve sinned against my daughter now and let this evil into my house. And it does affect, Courtney was affected even when she didn’t know I was struggling with things. She noticed my withdrawal. It would make her very defensive or it created when I send that time even, or there was a year and a half ago where I had acted out with lust and she was looking for something to numb her as well, because that pain that I had created and the betrayal trauma I will use, that word was so profound if you want to speak to that at all. I know you’re not alone there.

Oh yeah. Not kind of related to kids, but the salve that I turned to was shopping. So Mason was struggling with this thing, and I would be so hurt and so betrayed in times of relapse or in times of struggle for Mason. And so instead of turning to the Lord and continuing to turn to him until that burden was lifted, I turned to online shopping or just covetousness, really scrolling on social media and filling my brain with, oh, if I had these things, I’d feel better. And it was very similar to drugs or pornography, just like an instant release of dopamine. So it was like Mason would relapse and I would withdraw and just scroll social media or scroll Amazon or scroll whatever shopping app I had. And so that caused a lot of Sid in me of hiding this addiction that now I had and that I would turn to in moments of despair instead of turning to the arms of Christ continually, I would turn to this sin.

This is something that Jennifer and I experienced quite often early on in our marriage, was seeing the other person’s sin as a permission for you to sin. Like, oh, they did this thing and that’s way worse than what I’m doing. And so now I’m going to go do this thing over here. And so there’s this quote, I always say, your obedience to God is not dictated by the actions of your spouse. So we tend to think like, oh, because they did this, now I’m allowed to do this. And God doesn’t see it that way, but that’s interesting too. That’s something you recognized you were doing. He hurts you, and then you would drive yourself into this, distract yourself so that you don’t have to focus and deal with the actual issue at hand.

Yeah. And I feel like, I think it was just having that sense of control too, of like, oh, well, I can’t control when Mason has a relapse or when Mason chooses to sin against me in this way, but I can control, it’s a better

Way to describe it.

Choose to sin. Yeah. Relapse kind of makes, it sounds like something that happened to you.

It

Tripped over something,

Not quite how that works. But yeah, it was just something that I could control and that brought me some sense of stability. And so I didn’t see it as an issue for a really long time. I amassed credit card debt and just spent on very frivolous things or would say things were in budget and they weren’t in budget. And it just became the snowball thing for two-ish years, little under two years. And the Lord would continually convict me about this of I need to stop hiding this. I just need to confess it. Especially in sermons where it’s like, what is the one thing that you are not turning over to the Lord? What is the one thing that you’re saying? No, God, not this thing. And yeah, I’d be continually convicted about it, but out of fear and

(01:14:47)
Just a sense to control my, I don’t know. I just felt like we’re dealing with all of this stuff already. I can’t be the one to add on another thing to our marriage. So there was a lot of shame surrounding that as well that kept that sin in the dark. But the Lord said, no, Courtney, this is coming out in the light. And it wasn’t even me actually coming to Mason confessing. It was him finding out about it. And then me having to confess all of this secret spending and the debt that I had racked up over the years, and that was really freeing. For two years, my relationship with God was just strained. I just felt strained. There was this thing that I knew the Lord knew, and I knew the Lord saw. I just didn’t want to relinquish that control of that sin. And so that was incredibly freeing when,

Yeah, that was when our marriage started. We started seeing profound healing in every area is like we’re not hiding anything from each other. And I was able to extend the grace that every way that I wished she might have treated my sin. I had enough experience by this time to be like, I’m very angry and very hurt and betrayed. I need to take a moment and come back and be like, God forgives you. You are a new creation. Jesus died on the cross for this sin, and the Father sees Christ’s righteousness in you. But I would still have times where I’d just wake up angry and I’m like, what is going on? Especially

What’s amazing when we all my listeners, I want you guys to consider this. Your marriage is meant for more than just you guys, not sinning, right. Your unity and your oneness and you’re coming together and your purpose in this world isn’t just that you guys have a copacetic marriage and one that is just like, oh, it’s nice and we like each other and we love each other, and we have kids and the children and raising them to know the Lord. But you can’t do that well with hidden sin. You can’t do that well with hypocrisy. You can’t. And then the other part is when we allow those sins, like the shopping, the debt, those things, of course God gives us in Jesus Christ, but the consequences of those things hinder what God can do through us, not forever. He uses them to transform you. He loves you specifically, but then he also loves what he can do in and through you. He likes all of that. He wants all of that. So we always encourage couples that it’s not just our heart is not that you just have a good marriage. That’s a great thing. We want to have great marriages, but we want the Lord to use us.

(01:17:55)
And it’s hard to be used when we’re stuck in this mud over here and God’s like, well, I’m going this way. And you’re like, oh, I’m going to be stuck over here. Thanks. And so it’s important that we surrender and be honest and transparent and not just try and muscle through our faith with our talents, but we actually surrender to the Holy Spirit because we’ve seen this over and over and over again with very talented people. Some in the media right now that did this their whole life. They muscled through with their spiritual gifts and their talents, and they did good things, but their private life disqualifies all of it.

I imagine what God could have done had that brokenness been disclosed by a person. God only uses broken people he only ever has except for his son, he is God. And

That he broke,

That He broke for us. For us. Yeah. Praise God. That’s so good. That’ll preach. That is the part of you that’s most broken and most needing the gospel. And most ugly is often the part that God is going to use to do his mission, which is to call all people to the cross, to call people to Christ. And so we’ve seen that in our marriage, for sure.

Yeah. Well, Mason and Courtney, this was a really awesome conversation. Is there anything that you want to end with? Is there any encouragement you want to give to our audience or where can they find you? I know you have a podcast, Mazen.

Yeah. Aaron will be on Sovereign Fire Studios. If you type in sovereign fire basically into Google, it’ll be one of the first things that come up. Or you can type in my name and you’ll get a mix of me as a non-Christian singing with blue hair or you, yeah, just look up sovereign fire studios instead. And I’m on all socials through Courtney. She manages all that. So TikTok, Instagram, all that

Stuff. Teamwork. I like it.

Yes. Yes. And I guess the one takeaway is there’s no sin struggle. There is the relationship problem or marital brokenness that Christ is not powerful to heal. He will reach out and touch the most unclean and broken part of your life, and he can make it whole. His word is sufficient for all of life and godliness and practice and community. Having a church, being part of the church and being open, and I will say aggressively pursuing relationship is key.

Amen. Courtney, you want to say something?

Oh, I was just something that you said earlier, doing the work and egregiously killing your sin. We’ve seen the Lord work so powerfully over the past five years in our marriage of just the Holy Spirit giving us the power and desire to kill sin. And just being open in community about that and being just incredibly vulnerable with other believers will bring that healing.

Yeah,

Amen. And you’re absolutely right. We talked about community all the time. We didn’t get into it much with this episode, but yeah, community is so important, so important. It’s what God used the church, the people of God to come alongside my wife and I, and it totally transformed our life and marriage. So

Yes, we’re

All about that.

And Aaron, thank you so much for letting us tell our story and having us on. We’ve used the phrase killing sin quite often. That’s the phrase that the Bible uses. I just want to tack onto that. The only sin that you can kill is canceled. Sin is Jesus. Jesus has freed us from the penalty of sin. I just want to

The bonds of sin and death.

Yeah, that’s

True now.

And for our legalistic, leaning people like myself, it is important to recognize there’s rest and beauty and joy and peace now for you and freedom from sin right now. And so kill it like a victor. Jesus. Jesus mortally wounded Satan, and he wants you to stand on his head and says, I’ll crush you beneath his feet. So that’s all I’ve said too much already. So Yeah.

Yeah, you’re right. And I’ll just add also, the Holy Spirit’s, the one doing the convicting.

Listen.

Listen. Because it says that he disciplines those that he loves.

Otherwise,

We’d be ieg legitimate children. The fact that the Holy Spirit even makes us think about our sin is because he loves us.

It’s grace.

Yeah. So, amen. I love you guys. That was an awesome conversation, and I just pray that everyone that listens is blessed by the testimony of what Jesus Christ has done in your marriage and is continuing to do because he wants to do it in all of our marriages. Amen.

Yeah. Amen. We love you too, man. Thanks for having a song.

All right. God bless. All right. Thank you.