And so just give us a little bit of background on the Mitchells.

Well, I'll start out.

My parents moved around a lot.

And when I was growing up, dad was a doctor, but he kept taking different job opportunities.

One of those took us to Bismarck, North Dakota.

And because both of my parents were Christians, they kept looking each place for the best Christian church, Bible teaching church.

And so when we landed in Bismarck, the best one in Bismarck at the time was the United Methodist Church.

Things like that.

And what did

you do? My first job there was a driller helper, driller's helper.

There was a lot of granite there that had to be blasted away so they could put the interstate in.

And my first wife's grandfather was a blast master.

Her stepdad was a driller and I was his assistant.

They would mark out where we needed to drill holes and how deep they needed to be and we'd sit there with a drill, big old giant inguinal saw ran pneumatic drill and drill holes all day and get covered in granite dust.

This was before OSHA existed.

But you were learning that, doing that process, too.

No.

And, um, so that's the piece I'll just, I'll reference here that, uh, I think a lot of people that are listening or watching can, uh, relate to un- unfortunately.

Um, and that is that a number of years ago, I was unfaithful to Heidi in our marriage.

I broke the covenant of marriage.

Uh, I committed adultery, and, um, the, you know, for everybody who's been through anything like that, I mean, you know the consequences of sin anyway, and this, the devastation that it created on Heidi, uh, what it did to our family, uh, you know, and the, the waves of influence on people.

Uh, I was a pastor at the time, and so you add onto that a whole congregation and all the people that they know, and then oth- other congregations that I had served.

And, um, we were homeless for 10 months, uh, because we didn't have anything but Heidi's part-time job really to support us.

... a half an hour, something like that.

Yeah

... into it.

And, and so one of the things a lot of guys that we found really struggle with is, you know, the whole label of being a spiritual leader.

You're supposed to be the spiritual leader.

You gotta step up and be the spiritual leader, and they hear that a lot.

And again, then they, they're like, "Well, my wife knows more of the Bible than I do.

She's been in Bible studies longer.

Mm-hmm.

the stress about it.

Yeah, I can remember.

We, Nancy and I have talked about this a lot of, and I don't know when we started doing it, but we would struggle with something, and going back and forth and talking about it without praying about it.

And I think probably Nancy said it first, said, "Why don't we just pray about this?" I think we were at lunch somewhere.

I thought, "Well, that's a novel idea." [laughs] You know, why not? And we did, and then it's like, uh, before we finished lunch, we were in agreement.

The an- the answer was there.

And I think it just showed us, hey, God wants to be involved in things, even though it's, it wasn't a big deal, but it was something we just couldn't quite figure out, you know? And, and it just showed us that, yeah, if you bring anything toward to Him, you know, He's gonna help you figure it out.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

I broke the covenant of marriage.

I committed adultery.

Um, and, uh, Heidi didn't know about it right away.In fact, she found out about it after the relationship had ended, after I'd ended the relationship.

Um, but you know, kind of to jump into that piece, as any of your listeners know, uh, that is not only devastating, it's cataclysmic for a family, for a marriage, for relationships, and in ministry, of course, I was immediately, and should be, immediately done, uh, in my role.

Um, you know, God's not gonna be mocked, nor should he, and the layers of deception that go into something like that just really in, you know, you've gotta be done.

You, you can't continue in any way, in any fashion in that role.

Yeah

Talk to me, Brad, a little bit about the practical aspect of this book, what it gives people, because really the truth of the matter is we always hear the power of prayer, but that is indeed true, and the Bible has many examples of that throughout Scripture.

Absolutely, that's right.

And David, it's great to be with you on American Sunrise.

We appreciate all that you all are doing and really enjoy the show.

I wanted to mention just a couple of things.

Statistically, what Heidi just said about how many couples don't pray together, 95% of couples don't pray together.

And yet the stats show that while the divorce rate in the United States is somewhere between 40% and 50%, For the couples that pray together, it's one out of every 1,152.

You can pray independently, still do it because sometimes we've disagreed and we prayed independently and you know what? We've come back together and lo and behold, we agree.