Well, on Monday, we looked at the apostasy of impatience. We will no longer forgive as we've been

forgiven. If we will no longer return good for evil, if we will no longer do good, if we will no

longer endure the hardships of this life without giving up on Christ, we will be lost.

The apostasy of impatience is what we looked at on Monday, and that leads right into

today's question about hard marriages.

We get a heavy dose of hard marriage questions on the podcast, true for many years now.

And I mean, you can see that proven out in that whole section

in the Asper John book on hard marriages. And to top it off, we're reading the book of

Josea together for the first five days of December. It's a season for seeking answers to the

hardest questions, including this one, how to hold together marriages teetering on the brink after the pain of

adultery. An anonymous woman, right then to ask this. Dear Pastor John, my husband and I have been

married for several years and are walking beside several other couples who are struggling. We pray

for them often and do the best we can to encourage them to seek the Holy Spirits leading in their lives, while also keeping healthy boundaries in what we can give.

Specifically, do you have any advice for couples impacted by adultery? These are the hardest

situations for us to handle. How can trust be rebuilt between these spouses? From your pastoral

experience, what are some biblical realities and hopes that we could use to serve couples

whose marriages are falling apart due to the devastation of infidelity?

Two things about this question make me especially thankful.

And it's not the pain of the adultery being addressed.

First, it's that this couple has enough courage and compassion to lean in to other people's sorrow rather than leaning

away, which is the easy thing to do. And second, they're not assuming that divorce is the right

counsel. We live in a day where people are trying, it seems to me, to see divorce as

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