The Sins We Hide: Brian Goins, Ed Uszynski, Darrin Mabuni, Aaron Ivey

I want to find out what makes my wife tick. What she loves, who she is.

And a lot of times she doesn't even know herself. So I need to ask the second and third question. I need to follow up. So good. Because it's so easy for her to go, I'm good. This is Family Life Today.

All right. Day two of Man's Day at Family Life Today. I've got the three greatest men that I know in the country. We've got Brian, Ed and Darren back in the studio. That is exciting.

I'm trying to get you guys to like me. Back in Dave's Den. I thought it was awesome. We talked about Ed and I are ones on a scale of one to ten in our prayer life with our wives. And we're mediocre.

Mediocre one to ten. So we feel good about ourselves. Wait, did you talk about prayer yesterday? What are you doing here? This is Man's Day. This is Man's Day.

This sounds interesting. Seriously, how did you get in the building? I just came in and sat down like this looks like a good group of guys.

Before you leave, and you do have to leave. This is all us men only, but we talked yesterday about how to love and cherish our wives. Ephesians 5 25. You're a wife.

I am. There's women listening. There's guys listening. What would you say is one of the best ways a husband can love his wife?

I think automatically as a woman we say to serve our family, to love Jesus and to lead spiritually. Really? Does that mean we have to pray together? That was actually at the top of my head.

Is that what you're talking about? I'm going to leave so you can talk more. I said to these guys, and they all said the same thing, that when I pray with you, you feel loved and cherished.

Absolutely. I feel like we're a team. What is it about that? That you say automatically we feel like a team. Why does it make you feel like a team? We're on the same page. We're fighting the same battle. It's not us pulling our husbands with us. Like, hey, do you want to pray?

You know, I think a lot of wives feel like it's not a priority and they're the ones always initiating and that can feel like we're not on the same team. So to fight the battle together arm in arm, you guys are strong. We want to follow you. We want to be with you. We want to be side by side. And when you do that, I think our families feel safe.

We feel safe and loved and cherished. What else, Ann? What else goes into just leave? Hey, she's got to leave, Ed, you know?

No more. Leave spiritually. So we did. We talked about praying and taking the initiative to have those kinds of conversations. But what else makes you feel cherished when it comes to leading spiritually? That's a big word.

Put some other pain on that. I think what happens is when Dave even has the conversation about, hey, this is what I read. What are you reading? What do you feel like God's saying to you, teaching you? For me, it's the most important thing in my life. And so when he enters in and we enter into that together, there's something about, I don't know, guys, I just feel loved. I feel like you care for us.

And it is, it's almost like our families are in this bubble. And when Dave enters in, and some of you will disagree as a listener, I feel like there's a power source that walked in and a companion and a warrior that walked in that helps me to fight the battle. It energizes me like, yes, I'm not alone. He's in here battling stronger than I am. And I want to be on his team.

I've always felt like that with Dave. I want to be on your team because you're going somewhere. Don't leave me behind and don't disengage because I think we can do this together really well. Nice. Wow. I love that. I want to be a warrior.

I want to be a warrior. Play with your wife, man. What are you doing? What are you doing?

What are you doing? Can I point one thing out? She didn't talk about her. She didn't talk about me. She talked about our family. Love God. Love our family.

Lead us. And that's where our wives come from. When we talk about what we need, I talk about me. She didn't say rub my feet.

Or pamper me. It struck me, and even afterwards, talking about Cherish, when you asked her, she's already assuming we're one. But she didn't talk about her needs. And I think that's something for me to continue to tune into, that my wife doesn't ask about her needs. And I need to continue to pursue her to know what she wants and know her in a way that I'm understanding the things that she likes and enjoys.

Because they always put everybody else first. Yeah. When somebody asks me, how can I serve you? I typically think, well, there's a lot of things that you could do. I think about the type of food I want.

I think about the trips I want to go on. But when you're caring about the things that she cares about, which is family, God, moving forward together. Security.

Yeah, it gives security. Yeah, I mean, she said the word engage. And I think a lot of wives feel like we don't engage. Especially in their world as the kids, the home. And again, not saying that's not our world too, but that's what they're thinking about.

That it's other centered. I mean, I've watched Ann, I don't know if it's your wife, same way. She'll do anything for our kids.

And now for our grandkids. It doesn't matter about her needs. They don't matter.

It doesn't matter about my needs. Yeah. We've had this discussion like they're more important than I am. And that's been hard, but she'll lay her life down. And often I'm not thinking the same way. And when I engage and join her, like she said, as a partner, they feel loved. They're like, you're with me. You're in this. It isn't just about you and your needs.

Yeah. And I think asking good questions helps a wife feel cherished too. You know, when you think about even finding out some of those things. I think some guys are probably like, well, I don't even know what, what does she most care about?

What does she most need? It's like, just ask, just say, you know, what's the most stressful part of your day? Where could I help lift burdens? What do you feel most burdened by? How can I help come alongside you with that?

I met a guy that said he starts every day before he leaves. Like maybe this is almost his form of prayer. How can I make your, your load lighter today? It's a good question. Is the question that he consistently asks his wife.

How can I make your load lighter today? Someday she's got something for him. Someday she says nothing. But I want to push back a little bit on what you said, Brian, because I agree.

I think we need to ask our wives. I think we settle with when they say, well, you know, I'm okay. Like, oh, good.

Well, I asked. So we move on. And I think we need to continue until we get to a point where we're actually hearing what they want, where they're at, who they are. Because then we're really connecting because I think they do need a safe place because all their lives, I think a lot of times what I'm hearing from my wife is it's been all about everybody else. And they've been trained or really enculturated in this idea of, yeah, I'm here for everyone else. And that's part of who they are, which is one thing that's so appealing. But to be able to push past that and just say, okay, you don't know, like runaway bride, you don't know how you like your eggs.

You know, they want to please us. And so I want to find out what makes my wife tick, what she loves, who she is. And a lot of times she doesn't even know herself. So I need to ask the second and third question. I need to follow up because it's so easy for her to go, I'm good.

Tell me about good, right? Put some more words to that. Yeah, I've learned three words and Brian, you said it earlier, use these words. When your wife says she's struggling, she's having a hard day, she's having a good day, say, tell me more. Just say, tell me.

And as a parent, as a dad, say you're a teenager, tell me more. Because I often go quickly to, well, you're having a hard day because, and I can help you fix that. And man, when I say to her, I'm not seeing, I see her eyes light up, like, you want to know more about my struggle?

She's saying, I feel loved. I feel like you're wanting to listen to me. And everything in me is like, I don't really want to know. There's a game on or stuff happening.

I got to fix up in the garage. It's like, no, stop and go tell me more and engage. They're going to feel cherished and loved. Isn't it something when you do that to Dave, you may maybe don't, aren't really feeling it, but as she is telling you more, you realize I'm the only person in the world that can play a husband to this woman. Like I am her husband and she's trusting me now with her heart, her mind. And when I'm at my best, I see that as a stewardship. You know, I see that as something I need to cherish. I need to put weight to this. And again, it causes me then not to be sloppy or to slap an answer onto it. But again, Lord, what do I need to do with this right now to give me patience?

Is there some advice? Is there some way I can make her load lighter in this or do I just need to ask the next right question? But it's like what you said, Dave, if I'm really honest, like when I asked that question, how was your day today? Oh, this is this.

I'm already on my second or third thing on my list that I know that I'm just checking off. Okay, cherish. I asked the question. So I think it's good to be able to, am I really going to take the time for the interruption in order for me to cherish my wife? Well, she needs to know that it's okay to interrupt whatever my agenda is. And her answer might cost you something. It will cost me something, which goes back to what you were saying yesterday about dying, about the idea that it is about the daily deaths. Darren, you talked about the daily deaths to whatever my agenda is, is going to cost me a little bit more in that moment.

Just to go to, because tell me more, that's going to open up some doors, some drawers that I don't know that I want to be into. And I heard somebody say that the definition of love is focus, that when we actually focus and when our wife knows that we're the object of that focus, she feels cherished. When they just feel like, oh, you're just checking off a list or asking the rudimentary question, they don't feel that love. And we can do it too easily as husband and wife. Just get back to our schedule because we're both busy. Well, I want to ask you this, and this is a different direction I thought we were going to go, but when Anne was in here and she said, you know, I just love it when you pray with me, here's what just hit me.

Why don't we? Besides, we talked yesterday, it's fearful, it's pretty intimate, we're busy, whatever. Here's one of the things that hit me is I think sometimes we don't pray with our wives. Maybe I'm just talking personally because I'm struggling with some sin in my life. Because you really want prayer with your wife or anybody to be an overflow. I'm doing this anyway with God and it's natural. I mean, we say this all the time about dads, they're going to catch what you're doing, not what you're telling them. They're going to watch, and if a dad's not walking with God, we always say, you want your teenager to walk with God, walk with God.

Youth group's great, get them to church great, you walk with God. So when Anne said, we just love it when you pray with it every day, I thought there have been times in my life where I've struggled with porn, where I've struggled with some sin that's secret, and so to pray with her, I can do it because I'm supposed to, but it's not an overflow. Let's talk about that a little bit. I just brought up a topic that a lot of men do struggle with, porn. I'm talking about a day when I struggled with it, there were no devices, there was no digital.

It was magazines, you had to go looking for it. Now it's in every one of our hands, we have phones and devices. We all know, we talk to a lot of men, speak at men's conferences. This is an issue for men, and I think a lot of us as men want to cherish and love and lead in our home. And whether it's porn or something else, that sin, that sort of secret, and we don't even have another guy in our life we've told, keeps us from loving her the way she wants to be loved because we're not willing to deal with that darkness in our life. I was just thinking the word darkness. And sometimes it's porn, sometimes it's harboring a bitterness or just rehearsing a negative, bitter attitude towards people creates a darkness.

What else creates darkness? I was just thinking for me, and we could certainly talk about my past with pornography, I'm sure we all have our story, but I think a bigger one for me was depression. Talk about that. I think depression, someone's defined depression as anger turned inward. It's just a different way of dealing with anger. I didn't know how to deal with some of the darkness in my own heart, some of the feelings of not feeling worthy, adequate, bitter about just the direction my life was going in and not knowing where to go with it. So the last thing I wanted to do was pray about. Pray with Jen, pray with whatever's going on because I just felt so dark inside my own heart. So do we want to talk about specifically about porn or should we talk about the darkness that's there? And what do we do with that darkness as far as treating ourselves as men? Because I think there's a lot of guys that probably are nodding their heads right now if they're listening and just saying, I feel that inside, I'm not sure what to do with it. Whatever the darkness is.

What would you guys say? What do you do when you recognize that there's something that's inside of you that is blocking you not only from your relationship to your wife, but even to God? What do you do with that?

I mean, my first thought is I need a man or two that knows that darkness, knows that struggle, that I feel the freedom. And it takes courage to do it, but I go to Darren or I go to somebody and say, I need to tell somebody this. Get it out.

I'm carrying it all by myself. I'm ashamed. I'm confused. I'm waking up discouraged or depressed or I'm struggling with porn or whatever it is. It's the last thing I want to do is tell somebody.

And we live this lie. I'm going to get a grip on this. I'm going to handle this. I'm not even going to tell my wife.

I'm just going to manage this. And then a week or two weeks later, you're like, I'm not winning. And maybe it's porn and so you get three weeks or a month and then you dive again and you're like, if you're going to be honest, you're like, I'm not winning and nobody knows.

And until it comes into the light, you're never winning. And so you're married because if I'm walking with Jesus and it's rich, I'm saying to my wife every day, hey, let's pray about that. It's just like, hey, you got a concern? Let's pray.

And she's like, I'm loving you. But when I'm not there, the last thing I want to do is pray with my wife because I've got something that I'm carrying that nobody knows. I was going to say, here's the truth about the darkness. It's going to come into the light one way or the other. Either porn is going to lead you to a place or depression is going to lead you to a place or whatever you want to put in that. I'm medicating through entertainment, sloth, go through the seven deadly sins. If I keep going down into that road of darkness, it will cause me to do something that's going to bring me into the light.

It's consequential. The secret sins will always be brought into the light. Or I could choose to follow Jesus and expose the darkness to others and find healing. When we confess our sins one to another, God forgives us. James says, if I confess my sins to each other, I get healing.

So God will forgive me. But healing doesn't happen until I actually bring him to the light with other guys. So isolation, if we want to be the kind of men that can love our wives the way we're talking about where she feels cherished, isolation is not an option. Again, I think we just need to keep reminding ourselves of that because we live in a cultural moment where isolation sort of is the norm for people, for men, for everybody. We have to choose to say, on my watch, I'm going to initiate getting connected to some dudes. That's really good because even bringing this together, we think about men.

I think about another guy, friends of mine that I want to talk to. But why don't I go there? Because it's scary. And we are also taught in our culture that men, I mean, we are rugged individualists. I mean, I know that sounds somewhat dated, but it's still very much separate. We're isolated. We're siloed. And so to do that, we're crossing, we're basically battling against what the world is continually bombarding us with, that we are self-sufficient. But we need to make that step. And what I found is when I do take that step, and it takes a lot, but when I take that step, I find that a lot of times this guy is struggling with the same thing.

Or similar things. And all of a sudden, I'm not alone, and he's not alone. But it's not easy. Well, and we were joking yesterday just about hotel rooms. And I mean, just this week, I was in a hotel room, and there was a moment where I was alone. Ed wasn't there yet. And I switched it over to a show that I wasn't expecting, wasn't expecting to see anything. Boom, it was there.

I wasn't planning on it. And in that moment, I could either keep watching it or change it. And it grabbed you. And it grabbed me.

And I kept watching it. And you know what I, the thing that I felt like, even as I was watching it, I was going, I don't want to confess this to Ed. I don't want to confess this to anybody, because I should be farther along. Why am I falling back into something that I felt like I dealt with ten years ago, or five years ago, whatever it might be? And I think for a lot of us, there are certain plateaus in our Christian life where it's like, no, that struggle is behind me, whatever the darkness might be. And so the last thing I wanted to do was go, Ed, man, I got caught last night.

And I lingered on a show that I shouldn't have lingered on. Well, and how did you do that? I mean, I do think it's worth talking about. Like, how do you do that? We're driving in a car, and just kind of out of nowhere, Brian just brings it up and just says, I just got to get this out, right?

Which I totally appreciate, been there myself. And we start talking about it a little bit. Is this a bigger pattern? Is this something that's been going on for a long time?

No, it hasn't been. Okay, go and send no more, right? Like, we didn't need to really talk. I didn't need to have a bunch of answers for him. Like, I get it.

Because I know it inside myself. I've had my own moments that way. Get it out into the light. Let's keep going.

And it lost its power in that moment. And then you have somebody else going, reminding you of the gospel, because that's what Ed did. I don't need to stay in my shame.

And so then there's freedom. You're clean. You're going to be clean again. And it's like the Christian life isn't about getting cleaned up and staying cleaned up.

It's like, I'm going to be dirty again tomorrow. In some kind of way. And in that moment, Jen's not there, but her marriage just got better. She's feeling loved, even though she's not a part of this conversation.

You're loving and cherishing her by telling Ed your struggle. Well, tell me this, Brad. You talked about darkness. And you've talked to me about this concept called plain hurt. Is that stepping out of the darkness?

I don't know exactly what that means. Well, it's from a book that I put out not too long ago. And just the idea, it's from Ephesians 5. But when it talks about how Jesus loved, we love our wives like Christ loved the church. And when you think about how he loved the church, he loved it sacrificially. He died for it. There's a lot of pain involved.

Even the suffering of Jesus, the pathos, the passion of Jesus, it comes from the word suffering, from pain. And it's like, as a guy, I love stories of other men that have played through pain. Whether we're talking about the old stories like Kirk Gibson in the World Series when he was playing against the Athletics. And he hadn't played the whole game and he comes up to pinch hit at the last... He limps up. Yeah, he limps up because he had the stomach flu, he had hurt his leg before.

And you guys know the story. And goes down 0-2 against Eckersley. Eckersley throws this, he somehow battles back to get to 3-2, full count. Winning run is on the first base. And then Eckersley throws a slider and Gibson just, all upper body strength, he's got no leg strings, nothing.

Launches into the cheap seats. He starts pumping his arm back and forth. Every guy that hits a double in softball now does that.

He's like, please just stop. Our hands are all sweating right now, just listening to you tell the story. And it's like, I wasn't even a baseball fan when I saw that.

My dad was a Dodgers fan and I remember just us jumping up and down. And I'm crying, you know? And I think about Jordan and the stomach flu. I think about Kerry Strug and the Olympics when she lands on one foot because the team was more important to the pain.

Playing hurt. And I think about guys that have played through pain. And I go, I want that moment. I would love to have that moment. And I'm willing to do that in a moment on the battlefield, in any kind of a sports arena. In the business community, I'm willing to play through my pain. But the minute that Jen hurts me, my ego, whatever it might be, I go for the bench. And that's when God's going, I need you to get in the game. And one of the areas that we can go to on the bench for guys is with the darkness. And when I feel the darkness, I flee.

We talked about fight or flee. I flee, I medicate, which is easy to do with devices. You can get lost on a Netflix show, feel good for a little bit.

But the darkness is still there. You haven't dealt with it. And that's when God goes, I need you off the bench here. And off the bench means maybe I need to go confess my thoughts to another guy. Maybe I need to confess something to Jen. Maybe I need to engage in a conflict that I've been avoiding for a long time.

Maybe I need to change. In some kind of way that I don't feel comfortable with. There's a story I've been telling for years. Early on in our marriage, Amy and I were having what I thought was a conversation. And it turned out she was crying. Just sitting on the other side of the room and she was crying.

And I was like, what are you crying about? And she said, you're yelling at me. And I said, Amy, I'm not yelling at you. I really didn't feel like I was at all.

I wasn't upset. I don't remember what we were talking about, but I'm not yelling. And she kept pushing back saying that I was. And then I started to raise my voice more.

I'm not yelling. Now I'm upset. I feel like she's accusing me. I'm like, this is just how I am. This is how my family is. Your family is super quiet and you're more passive with each other. This is what you signed up for.

This is what you said I do too. She's crying. I'm trying to make my point. I was talking to my five year old son at the time who never says a word, comes around the corner and he says, daddy. He said, you're scaring the kids and you're making mom cry. And I turned around and I yelled something at him to get out of here. Like, again, I was kind of losing it at that point. And I stormed out of the room.

And I remember later that night just rehearsing to myself. It was kind of between me and God. Like God, this, you know, this is wrong.

This is unjust. Like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. This is just how I am. And it was like, I heard the spirit of God say, this, this is how you are. And how you are scares the kids and makes your wife cry. And so how you are needs to change actually.

If you, if you want to be moving closer to her and for her to trust you, if you want your kids not to, you know, and I was very convicted by, I've been talking about it for years, right? There's been a bunch of little moments like that where it's like, ah, you brought us together so that I would become something different than what I would be and was becoming on my own. Like that's built in. So we're talking about cherishing, right? If I'm going to cherish her, I have to be open and willing to change the narrative that I've been telling myself about myself. This is just how I am. This is always who I've been. Okay, well, some of that's going to need to change now.

Still be true to who you are at your core, but how that manifests itself is going to need to, is going to need to change. Dude, I mean, I'm over here in tears. I've never heard that story yet. I mean, I've heard a lot of, a lot of your life. I mean, seeing your little boy, who I know now is a man. It messed with me.

It did. That's why I keep telling it because it stuck to me. And I just remember, I don't know if the babes, you know, it's like God speaks in such a power.

And I think, I think a lot of times God speaks through our wives. We're just not listening because we're so offended. And so the tell me more thing that you're talking about, one of the best times you can use tell me more is when you're most offended and most irritated and you're hurt and you go, the way I play right now is to go, I'm mad and I'm angry.

Tell me more rather than just react. Why are you crying right now? Pride's hurt.

We're all crying a little bit, right? That's right. Well, I would end with this and we all know this. The only way we're going to change is Jesus.

Yeah. You can't, Ed, you can't change yourself. You've tried, I've tried.

If we don't fall on our face and say, Jesus, I am helpless without you. You have to change me from being an angry screaming guy or whatever. And I did the same thing. I can't do it. I've tried. I have to surrender.

Yeah. Remember when the prodigal son came back home and he's saying, make me into one of your hired servants. He hits rock bottom.

He realized he can't do it anymore on his own. And he comes back and he says, make me into a slave. And it's like what you're saying, David, is we need to keep coming back to God recognizing we can't do the things we most want to do or feel like we should do on our own. Make me into something I won't become on my own.

And the way I interact with my wife, with my kids, with the people I work with, somebody at Walmart, make me into something different. I mean, I'm sitting here, I'm picturing men all around the country, literally hearing that story and hearing what we've been talking about. And I'm going to encourage you. Turn off the radio. Turn off the podcast. Get on your knees.

Put it in your bedroom, in a closet, in your kitchen, in your car. Get on your knees right now. The best thing you can do for your wife, best thing you can do for your kids is surrender to Jesus.

I'm literally picturing men going, okay, this is my move. All the stuff they talk about, this is what I got to do. I got to start here. And then I can take the steps to cherish your wife.

I'm telling you, start there, right here, right now. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave Wilson with Brian Goins, Ed Yuzinski, and Darren Mabuni on Family Life Today. I got a question about your small group. Do you have a small group? Do you have a small group? Do you have a small group? Do you have a small group? Do you have a small group? Do you have a small group? Do you have a small group? Do you have a small group?

Do you have a family life today? I got a question about your small groups. Could your small group use something a little bit more kind of inspired? I mean, if you're looking for a study that's connecting and thought-provoking with materials and discussions that really help everybody in the group grow closer to God and closer to one another, the art of marriage is for you. We're talking about vulnerable, relatable stories, spoken word poetry, man-on-the-street interviews, hopeful and helpful input, hopeful and helpful input from marriage experts. It's the all new art of marriage.

So you can go to the show notes or artofmarriage.com to learn more and grab your leader kit today. We're really excited to share the all new art of marriage with you and hear how God is using it in your life. Okay, I wanna encourage you right now, as soon as we're done, to do what Dave said.

Get on your knees and pray for your wife, pray for your kids, pray for your marriage, pray that God would use you and help you to walk with him in ways that overflow into every other part of your life because it starts with him and moves out into every other direction afterward, not the other way around. Now tomorrow, the men are gonna be back again and talk about modeling parenting behaviors and exposing children to other positive influences besides just you and your wife. That's tomorrow, we hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.