As the son of pastors, a preacher, and a youth and worship leader in the course of nine years of marriage and with a five-year-old daughter, I stopped communicating with God in prayer. It all started when my wife stopped giving me attention. Because of her work, school, and taking care of my daughter, she stopped fixing herself up for me. Whenever I wanted to be intimate with her, she always made excuses.
Even though I know that she loves me, about two years ago I began a relationship with another woman, but I’m dying inside!
Dear Friend,
Thank you for listing all the roles that you have. It shows us that you are acutely aware that you are living a lie, both to the people of your church and to your family. It’s no wonder that you feel like you are dying inside! Living a lie is very stressful.
The consequences are severe for anyone who is living a double life, but they are especially severe for someone who is a leader in a church. Your choices have made you unfit to continue to serve. That means you must resign immediately (today or tomorrow) from all church responsibilities and confess your sin to the senior pastor, not because he can forgive you, but because he is your spiritual leader.
Your senior pastor will decide what comes next. He will decide how much the church should be told, and whether you can still attend the church while you go through a period of restoration. (Of course, if you are not willing to give up your relationship with the other woman, then you will not qualify for being restored.)
What you have done has the power to cause some people to give up on God. They will tell themselves that you stood up in front of them and pretended to be close to God, all the while lying and committing adultery. Some will believe that all spiritual leaders are hypocrites, just like you. And for your wife it will be more difficult than for anyone else to endure the situation.
While you admit that you stopped communicating with God, you also list all the things that your wife did, or did not do, to cause you to be interested in another woman. If you had been close to God, as you pretended to be, you would have known that there are much better ways to deal with these common marital issues. God could have given you wisdom, but you chose to ignore Him completely.
Your wife may choose to forgive you and give you another chance, but she certainly doesn’t have to do so. Your adultery gives her the Biblical justification for divorce. So we recommend strongly that you try to not blame anything on her, but rather take full responsibility for betraying God and for betraying her.
The good news is that God has promised to forgive you if you confess your sins and make things right. His Son Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sin when He died on the cross of Calvary.(1) Thankfully for you, God will give you another chance even if no one else will.
We wish you well,
Linda
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1 Jn 3:16; 1 Jn 1:9