Discover the unexpected ways that cultural shifts and personal decisions can influence Christian values and societal norms in this enlightening exploration. Together, we tackle the complex landscape of sex outside marriage, confronting the justifications and examining the consequences through a biblical lens. This episode promises a deep look into the significance of our choices and their impact on the collective moral fabric of our society, challenging us to reflect on the importance of upholding steadfast principles.
With thought-provoking insights, our guests shine a light on the often-overlooked connection between private actions and public virtue. Is it possible that your most private choices are shaping the future of our society? We discuss the ripple effects of moral decisions on the community, bringing forth the concept of gratitude as a powerful guide to align our behaviors with divine teachings. Learn how living in accordance with God's commands is an act of profound thankfulness for His love and a testament to Christian identity.
Discover the unexpected ways that cultural shifts and personal decisions can influence Christian values and societal norms in this enlightening exploration. Together, we tackle the complex landscape of sex outside marriage, confronting the justifications and examining the consequences through a biblical lens. This episode promises a deep look into the significance of our choices and their impact on the collective moral fabric of our society, challenging us to reflect on the importance of upholding steadfast principles.
With thought-provoking insights, our guests shine a light on the often-overlooked connection between private actions and public virtue. Is it possible that your most private choices are shaping the future of our society? We discuss the ripple effects of moral decisions on the community, bringing forth the concept of gratitude as a powerful guide to align our behaviors with divine teachings. Learn how living in accordance with God's commands is an act of profound thankfulness for His love and a testament to Christian identity.
On today's episode, if this is a correct interpretation or whatever, but it's always where my mind goes. In Psalm 51, david's great psalm of confession, after his horrible spate of sin, starting with Bathsheba, he says my sin is always before me, and for me that just kind of pictures this idea that this is something he can't escape, even if he wants to. It's just always right there.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Christa Potratz and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson, and today we're going to talk about sex outside of marriage. Recently we've done some episodes on marriage, on finding a mate, on just different things, and we've talked maybe a little bit about this topic. But we really wanted to dive into this topic today because it really seems like one that is very relevant and has been for a while in our culture too, that it was maybe even just morally wrong or okay, you know, those people do it, but maybe not someone of good standing in society or that type of thing. That has changed. I think maybe that is the place to start, too, is just exploring this idea of maybe how it's changed and what the current landscape is in our culture today.
Jeff Samelson:I guess with a pastoral background. I'll start by saying that big change is the decline of, not just of Christianity but of religion, and the decline not just of religion but of religiosity. We used to be able to take it for granted that, even if many people around us didn't follow the sixth commandment when it came to marriage and sexuality or they weren't moral in terms of these things, that they at least understood that they were breaking the rules, that they were doing something that shouldn't be done, even if they decided they were going to do it. Maybe they'd say, oh, I don't feel guilty about it, but they still recognized there was a standard that they were breaking.
Jeff Samelson:And now we find this even among many Christians. It's as though they're not even aware that sexual relations are supposed to be reserved only exclusively for heterosexual marriage. It is just it's happened rather quickly in terms of historical span of things, but I guess also mentioned that related to that and this is more on the philosophical end is just the elevation of the subjective and relative over the objective and authoritative, more feelings over reason, desires before duties, and it's basically what's best for me is what's best period, and so there's not thinking of the other and there's not thinking so much of well. How does this affect the entire society? How does this fit in with a good life for the culture?
Bob Fleischmann:And when Jeff says it's happening, it's happened quickly, it really has, because we used to. The way it used to be is like, like you said, generations ago. It was just kind of understood, you know. And then there was this attitude like well before marriage playing the field, a little bit, that kind of thing, but certainly not within marriage. But even today, now there's this whole movement now where open marriage, where couples are, there's a commitment between the two of them, but when it comes to their sex life they can go outside of marriage. So you're getting a lot of that blurring going on as it keeps infiltrating, in which I think it's going to be one of the points that I want everybody to keep in mind, and that is nothing starts off as a bold, in-your-face violation of the clear teaching of Scripture. It usually starts subtly, small kind of creeps in, and then it begins to start manifesting itself in bigger and bigger ways.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, one big sociological change that people point to is the advent of easy and effective birth control, that once the connection between pregnancy and sex was severed, there was no longer the price, the consequence to free sexual activity disappeared, and so that freed people up. Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, apparently was very in favor of birth control because it freed men up to do things that previously women wouldn't have been so keen on. But another sociological change that people don't often think about, that apparently was also very involved in this, was actually the advent of the automobile, at least in American society, because prior to that there were very few opportunities for a young man and a young woman to spend time alone together without any supervision. But once the car was available that opportunity was there in a way that it wasn't. And some sociologists have apparently looked at the statistics on that and they've seen a correlation between the advent of cars, lots of people having them and level of unintended pregnancies and things like that.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, you know, thinking too just about how our culture has changed with this topic too, I mean, especially, I would say it's really reached the point where even Christians now are just kind of saying, well, what's the big deal with sex outside of marriage? I mean, really, why does it really matter? And there are a lot of arguments that they use, or that we do hear nowadays too, to kind of justify these choices or justify the culture today and where it's gone, and so we do want to go through some of these. We thought it would be helpful to talk about some of them. I kind of want to start with maybe what I think is the biggest argument, and that is everyone else is doing it and, you know, maybe that's the most scientific argument, but one that I think we just hear all the time.
Jeff Samelson:I guess my first response to that would be something along the lines of your mother never accepted that kind of argument from you. Why do you think that it works with something as significant as sex? I mean, if you told your mom, oh, everybody's going down to the river to play. And your mom said well, I don't care if everybody is, you're not allowed to do that, that's wrong. And yet people grown up or they're feeling grown up, they think well, I don't care if everybody is, you're not allowed to do that, that's wrong. And yet people grown up or they're feeling grown up, they think, well, everybody else is doing this, so it must be okay. That's really not a standard that anybody really should be accepting, but of course it's a very comfortable one.
Bob Fleischmann:One of the things interesting about the statement itself is one it's factually not true, I mean because everyone else isn't doing it. In fact, interestingly enough, there's been some studies that have, almost in a laughable way, has raised concerns because of the proliferation of pornography and so forth. Now, all of a sudden, they're concerned that there's not sexual activity occurring, there's masturbation going on, there's people voiding relations, and now they're becoming concerned about even with marriages and so forth, that there's going to be negative population growth, which of course is being predicted, all those kinds of things. But the bottom line is that when you understand the biblical teaching that every inclination of man's heart is evil, if you understand that, I think you should automatically be alarmed if everybody is doing it.
Paul Snamiska:Because if everybody's doing it and the inclination of man's heart is evil.
Bob Fleischmann:Maybe it should throw up a flag for you that I don't want to do that. Part of it, too, is the people who make the arguments. Are the people who want to do it Like, for example, let's pull it out of the area of sex for a moment? I've made it no secret, at least to you guys I'm losing weight. I got to lose weight, I've wanted to lose weight for years, and Oprah Winfrey left Weight Watchers and part of her argument is is we now know that it's a physical problem? It's not just habit, it's a physical problem. And of course, people like me are going ah well, then I can be fat, you know it'll be all right to be fat, but the reality is it's usually a combination of both. It's habit and biology.
Bob Fleischmann:There's something that happens to us when we get the idea that everyone's doing it. Of course, and where do you really get this idea? You don't get it as much from your friends as you might think. You get it a lot from television and from movies. It is amazing how everything works with the presumption that you know we're going to try before we buy, we're going to, you know, be sexually involved. We're going to find out where I'm good and where I'm not good. And that's all out there and it's presented to you in that way, and so you begin to start buying into it. And right now, jonathan Haidt H-A-I-D-T. Just came out with a book about the influence of social media on adolescents, and I just started reading it, but already you know he's starting to score on the fact that you get saturated with this constantly around you, that everybody's doing it, that you actually begin to believe it. It doesn't have anything to do with the morality of it if it's right or wrong, if everyone's doing it. The reality is, if everybody's doing it, be wary of it.
Jeff Samelson:I was just going to say. You know? One last thing to say to a Christian is but you're supposed to be better than that. You know that's what we're called to be as Christians. We're not called to be what everyone else is doing. We're called to be different.
Christa Potratz:Right. This made me also just think too and I was definitely thinking along the lines how you were too, bob about just how we get this from movies and culture and that type of thing. It was a couple of years ago I was watching a documentary with my mom and it was actually on women in Hollywood and they were complaining that, you know, back when they were little girls, that they're just the way women and girls were portrayed in movies was just so terrible and how there just weren't enough girls maybe like as lead characters in movies and how, you know, the boys got the better parts and the girls were always looked at as weak and just that type of thing. And my mom said to me she's like oh you know, did you feel that way watching movies growing up as a kid? And I said no, I never felt like that. I wasn't represented as a woman in movies. But I said I felt all the time that I was not represented as a Christian woman like adequately in movies, because anytime there was a teenage girl or preteen girl who was a Christian in a movie, she was always very unrelatable. Nobody really liked her, you know, if she was saving herself for marriage or just that type of thing.
Christa Potratz:I mean that character was always ridiculed in movies, were like thinking boy. I mean I don't really feel represented in mainstream media here. You know growing up as a kid and so I mean maybe there isn't this idea. Okay, maybe everybody's doing it is wrong. But sometimes, I mean, when you're portrayed certain ways or you see things in media, I mean it can make you feel like, oh well, am I doing everything right or I don't know you? Just you do start to kind of question some of your values as well. Yeah Well, you know another argument that we have here, we'll just keep going down the list. Sometimes people will say well, you know, we're two consenting adults and no one else is affected by our relationship, so what does it really matter?
Jeff Samelson:Mm, hmm. And again, what about God? He's certainly a part of this. He knows, he sees and he certainly is affected because he's offended by what you do. Again, somebody who doesn't believe in God or doesn't care, that's not going to be much of an argument. But to someone who claims to be a Christian, what God thinks of what you're doing should be the most important consideration. And so, yeah, you can't just say, well, no one else is affected, and then it is going to affect other people. Yeah, at the moment, yes, maybe it is just the two of you, but it's going to affect your other relationships. I mean, if you choose to do this thing with this person, well, that means there are other people, other relationships that you are not having, that you are not investing in. In the same way, it's going to affect possible future relationships and it's especially going to affect your future marriage.
Jeff Samelson:I had a college friend who told me before she was married, but she was talking with a friend of hers and just saying, oh, yeah, she was. You know, I'm still a virgin. And her friend said to her oh, you are. That is such a good thing for you, that's such a blessing, because that means that when you get married, there's never going to be anybody else in your bedroom. You're not going to be comparing your husband to anybody else. You're not going to be remembering your previous experiences. It's just going to be you and him going to be remembering your previous experiences. It's just going to be you and him. And that always stuck with me as just a wonderful reminder there that God's way actually is the best way. It's a blessing when you follow his will.
Bob Fleischmann:It's a naive statement. Sure, two consenting adults, so that makes it maybe 50% correct. How do you say it doesn't affect other people? Again, you know, and I've said it before, that a lot of times you get people who have like a thimbleful depth of understanding of philosophy, psychology and so forth. If you think there is nothing wrong with lying on your taxes and that's just one person, I can lie on my taxes and if I do it well enough, no one will ever know Do you think that that doesn't have any effect on the other parts of your life? When you think that something's all right to do, that's immoral, that that's not going to somehow show up in one way or another elsewhere, you're just naive.
Bob Fleischmann:You have no concept of how psychology works. You have no concept of how people are. I mean anybody who even remotely, you know, watches you, studies you, comes to know you. You know how many times hasn't your mother come to you and said something's wrong? I just know something's wrong and you're trying to say no, but the answer is yes, you know something is wrong. I mean, people know you, people watch you, they do it.
Bob Fleischmann:You know people have said to me you know well, in our marriage, you know we only fight in the bedroom, we only have. The kids aren't aware of it. They aren't aware of the problems Kids underwear, the proms Kids know, they pick up on it all the time and they catch on it in body language and everything. If you know anything about child psychology and how formative those early years of children are, they pick those things up. They pick up attitudes, they pick up priorities. When you're screaming and yelling, they pick all that up. So you think that you and another person because the two of you agree on some immoral act whether it's sex outside of marriage, whether it's lying, whether it's deception, something like that you think that that doesn't affect other people. You're going to have to surround yourself only with people who think like you so that you can reinforce that idea, because in reality it does affect other people. It always does. It always does.
Christa Potratz:Another one here is no sin is any worse than any other right. So what makes this one so different than, say, breaking the speed limit or losing your temper or anything else?
Bob Fleischmann:As the guy who just got pulled over for driving too fast on the way to the grocery store. I can, and I got a warning and I deserved it. Sometimes we forget why do I lead a chaste life? Why do I obey the speed limit? Why do I not lose my temper? Why is it because God will like me better and maybe save me, then None of that is the motivation for doing it.
Bob Fleischmann:I think if somebody were to say if you could only pick on one thing that you think is a problem with today's society in our country, and that is we've lost the ability to show gratitude. My first clue was you have an event, you send out an RSVP, please RSVP, and nobody responds, and some show up and some don't. You don't know how to plan. Why? Because they've lost some of that.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, when it comes to gratitude, saying thank you and so forth, a Christian's life—I was just studying this part the other day where it says this is love for God to obey his commands and my commands are not burdensome. And I'm thinking now wait a minute. Yes, they are. They are burdensome if I think I have to perform. I have to perform in order to be saved.
Bob Fleischmann:They're greatly burdensome because, like the Apostle Paul, the good that I would do, that I do not, the evil I would not do, that I keep on doing. But when obeying God's command, obeying the sixth commandment, obeying the fifth commandment, honoring my parents when doing those things are a way to tell God I genuinely appreciate everything you've ever done for me in my life, not the least of which is the sacrifice you made on Good Friday that all of a sudden it's not burdensome, because if it's not a burden for me to say thank you, then these are the things God says, these please me, and that becomes the motivation. So you are correct, is sexual sin any worse than any other sin? Okay, anybody who wants to play that game is kind of being a little bit silly, because really it's not about performance, it's about appreciation.
Jeff Samelson:That kind of argument also ignores the fact that and this is just something we know from observation there are certain sins that have what we might call more gravity than others, in that they attract other sins to them. It's like the thing that you do wrong that then you have to tell a lie about, and you have to tell another lie to cover that up, and then you're hiding this and you da-da-da. And unlike many other sins, sexual sin is not something that you can really treat as separate from who you are. It changes you when you do this thing. It's the nature of the act as well as its spiritual significance I always think of. I don't know if this is a correct interpretation or whatever, but it's always where my mind goes.
Jeff Samelson:In Psalm 51, david's great Psalm of confession, after his horrible spate of sin, starting with Bathsheba, he says my sin is always before me, and for me that just kind of pictures this idea that this is something he can't escape, even if he wants to. It's just always right there. But I think again, going back to the beginning, to Genesis, when God instituted marriage, he said for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and will remain united with his wife and they will become one flesh. Now, if that were the only reference to this one flesh union, you might be able to say, well, that's just kind of metaphorical or it's just kind of a physical description, but there's not really much meaning to it. But Paul refers to it later in 1 Corinthians 6.
Jeff Samelson:It later in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6. He's talking about how people there at the church have been kind of liberal, licentious in terms of sexual activity outside of marriage and even like visiting prostitutes, and he said do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For it says, the two will become one flesh. Darrell Bock, so he's referring back to this act of union as something that is deep, something that is real, and he's saying that when you do that outside of marriage, you're tearing at an important truth that belongs only in marriage. And so this is something deep, it is something significant and it's on a different level, not because it's a sin that is more offensive to God than others, but because it has more consequences and just before we get married or engaged or anything.
Christa Potratz:just another step in taking our relationship to the next level and building on that intimacy and everything.
Bob Fleischmann:What would we kind of say in response to that, as Christians too drifted into PG-13 here. But the sexual compatibility is a relatively easy compatibility to have. The compatibility that is central in my relationship with Diane is way, way, way way past sexual, and that's a compatibility that didn't require a sexual relationship. It's a compatibility of interest, of values, of a shared commitment of faith, because the time comes in a relationship where the sexual component of it, which was wonderful, which was great and all that kind of stuff, becomes way down the line. It becomes the hand-holding, the talking, the tears, the hugging. It translates into that and I think we have to remember that a lot of what we have and we talked about this in a previous episode a lot of what we talk about in terms of relationship and marriage is an American invention.
Bob Fleischmann:Before, sometimes your spouses were picked for you. That's kind of how it worked. So we've got to get to the point of recognizing that what we're doing is we're looking for excuses for sex, you know. So I want to see if we're compatible. Oh, shoot. Well, on to the next one.
Jeff Samelson:You know that's kind of how it works and that was going to basically be my point that this objection. It's begging the question logically because it's presuming the very thing that it's asking about. It's presuming that there are some people who are more or less compatible with you, which means basically, there's this menu out there that you need to sample, but if it's a one-to-one, exclusive relationship, there is no question of compatibility. If, after you're married, this area of your relationship becomes problematic, okay, you can work on that to make the two of you match up better there with your desires and interests and responses and all those sorts of things. But to presume that we should be having more of this that you know and that if this one doesn't work out, there's a better one out there, is presuming the very thing that you're pretending to argue for.
Christa Potratz:No, I think that's true. And you know, I think to another area. Maybe you know that just like with the young men is this idea. Well, you know, I need to sow my wild oats or get some experience in that area too. What would we kind of say to that as Christians?
Bob Fleischmann:I could never sell my mom on that one when it came to punching my brother or something. Well, he's just sowing his wild oats. You know, just again. You know she stopped that activity because it wasn't right.
Jeff Samelson:There's even a certain kind of irony connected to this. For a very long time it was somewhat accepted in our culture that men should come to marriage with sexual experience. Man should know what he's doing on the wedding night, but women no, no, no, they shouldn't. The math on that was always off. How can you have the one without the other? But with the rise of feminism, that inequality was challenged and, unfortunately, instead of concluding that neither men nor women should have that experience before marriage, they argued that women should be just as promiscuous as men, and that, of course, took things very much the wrong direction. But you know, to this whole matter of got these urges, got these needs, got these interests, God has provided a very good response to that. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 says I say to the unmarried and widows that it is good for them if they remain as I am, which was unmarried, but if they do not have self-control, no-transcript.
Christa Potratz:I had seen just a YouTube video type of thing too, with a conservative girl talking to somebody who was like that, a man who just felt like he just kind of needed to do all this, but he was very successful in business and you could tell he really worked out. And she just kind of said, like you're so disciplined in all of these areas, why can't you take that same level of discipline into relationships? And that he just said no, I mean absolutely not, he couldn't do that. But it was kind of just along the lines of what you were saying there too. You know, I think we've talked too about just how really the design to save sex for marriage is God's way of preserving us too, and I know we can probably point to some Bible stories where sex outside of marriage got some people in trouble too. What are some of those stories where it did show that it was a big deal to do?
Jeff Samelson:that I found one really good one on the positive side and a lot more on the negative, which I suppose is illustrative of the situation. I guess we can start at the beginning Already. In Genesis we've got Sodom and Gomorrah and the disordered sexuality that is there, and then Lot's daughters, which follows on that pretty quickly, and then Lot's daughters, which follows on that pretty quickly. We've got the story of Dina and Shechem, which follows that. One of the less known ones, even less well-known, is the story of Reuben and Bilhah. Reuben's the eldest, and it says he went up to his father's bed. I think they described it Basically he slept with one of his father's concubines. And then we've got also the story of Judah and Tamar, who was kind of his daughter-in-law, but he didn't realize it. He thought she was just a prostitute when he visited her.
Christa Potratz:So that made it okay.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, just all those kinds of things. And I guess one of the more famous stories that even is known outside of Christianity sometimes, the story of Samson and Delilah. It's often forgotten that they weren't married and this was Samson, you know, sowing his wild oats, so to speak, and boy did it get him in trouble.
Bob Fleischmann:And of course David, king David and Bathsheba. Part of this thing is I wrote a pamphlet early on when I came to CLR in 88, 89. One of those years I wrote this pamphlet for our affiliates and it was called Sex is Like Popcorn. Talk about how it's addictive. You know, it's like you can't just grab a few and pretty soon you want more and you want more and you want more. And part of it has to do with the sex drive and things like that, the Bible where they were talking about King David and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:There usually is some disaster down the road that comes with it and that's valuable to remember. But I think it's also valuable to remember that you're dealing with a force that oftentimes takes control of you. I mean to some degree, those who have robust sex lives, hopefully within marriage, know the deep attraction you have for your spouse and that attraction exceeds intellectual, it even exceeds emotion. It becomes a little bit of a drive and you start pandering that out outside of that circle. It's a cause for trouble. And if you don't think it's a cause for trouble, if you think it's something you can well manage, try stopping Now. You'll find that when you try to, if you've.
Bob Fleischmann:When I have counseled people who have been very promiscuous in their lifestyles and you try to get them to stop. I remember one fellow used to tell me every time you got this urge, call me. He was driving me crazy, he was calling all the time. But the point is that God has given you a drive that he uses to draw you close together with the one flesh concept. He also uses it for proliferation, for populating the world, and you've got to remember that. That's that kind of a drive that pulls you. And so once you step into that arena of being outside of marriage, becoming sexually involved if you think that this is just an old fuddy-duddy conversation about keep sex and marriage, then just prove me wrong and try to stop. Try to stop and you're going to find that there's a control in here that's a little bit more powerful than just your intellectual might to be able to say I'm stopping.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, say I'm stopping, yeah, yeah, back in the the 80s, um, there was a really popular song by the the pointers sisters which, fortunately, I was sensitive enough at the time to be able to say, yeah, this has things, things wrong. Uh, I can't remember what the exact title of it was, but you know it was a very hard-driving, kind of exciting song, definitely something you could take out on the dance floor or whatever. But I'm so excited I'm about to lose control and I think I like it. And that's precisely what you were talking about is just, it's losing control and giving into it and saying, well, this is fun, so yeah, let's. And that's again the the opposite of of what we're talking about. But you know, back there is one story that I think it's is particularly helpful for you, helpful for this idea of the objections and everything and Christians adopting some of these ideas.
Jeff Samelson:In 1 Corinthians 5, in that letter, paul's been addressing all these problems that have been reported to him about the church in Corinth, and he gets to this matter of something that's been reported among you that not even the Gentiles would put up with, and it's like a man has his father's wife and they were apparently treating this as something kind of to be proud of. Like, look at this freedom we have in Christ, we can even do this thing that nobody else would consider as normal or right. And he's just saying this should not just embarrass you, this should be something horrible to you and you need to convince this man of his sin. But he's not just saying this man is the sinner. You are sinning by permitting it, by having this attitude, where you're going to allow it, because, well, it seems like there's freedom to do things that there wasn't before, and he's correcting that in a very strong, strong way. And you know that's.
Jeff Samelson:I think there's a there's a lesson for us in that too, and that you know it's so easy to just say well, you know, we're free in Christ to do all these things. So I I guess it must be okay for us to do this, because everyone else in society is doing it and it doesn't seem, from my perspective, it doesn't seem to have any negative effects. So it must be great, it must be okay, and we as the church, as pastors, as parents, as friends, we need to have the courage to say, as Paul says no, this is wrong, this is something you need to repent of, and if you've been doing it, you need to stop doing it.
Bob Fleischmann:Which probably brings us back to the sad reality, in that some people listening to this are like dating and one party wants to go to the next step, wants to become sexually active, and there's this tension going on. What do you do? How do you do it? And, of course, when you get older and you look back in life, there's certain phrases that you hear when you're younger that you wish people would quit telling you because it doesn't matter. And yet when you're older, you look back and go. But that's absolutely right. And that is people who feel pressured to become sexually involved because everyone's doing it, there's no consequences, all those kinds of illusions that you have. And then somebody who a Christian, a fellow Christian, who's going to try to talk to you, talk some sense into you will say then maybe he's not the right one, or maybe she's not the right one, or maybe this will be your first test to find out how this relationship will go.
Bob Fleischmann:Just remember this that doing God's will never carries with it an eternal negative consequence. Doing God's will is always the right thing. It's hardly ever the easy thing, but it's always the right thing and I think it's valuable to remember that sometime when you get to the point where you have to put your foot down that it's going to maybe hurt. Doing what's right can be challenging and you've got to trust that God will work all that out for your good. And sometimes your good is protecting you for eternity. Sometimes your good is because Ms Right or Mr Right is down the road a little bit.
Christa Potratz:Well, we're going to end it there today. Thank you both for this discussion, and we thank all of our listeners too, for joining us today, and if you have any questions on this topic or any others, please reach out to us. Lifechallengesus you can find us, and we always welcome comments and feedback. All right, we'll see you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye-bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLifeResourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.