I'd love to hear more about that and what that looks like for you guys.

It's been a lot of fun and it's been very redeeming because, you know, you think about and I'll just kind of give this preface.

You know, Satan meant the cross to be and it was evil.

He meant it to be the end of what God was going to be doing.

And instead, God turned it around for his greatest glory.

And we've seen God take my what I did that was evil.

And we've seen God take that.

And I recognize for some people, they're more verbal or they are better with the pen they can write it out quicker so maybe for the spouse that isn't as gifted in that way they can just say I prayed today for our children and you but you're still you're still getting the point across that this is becoming a habit and of course we say it's best if you can do it together but recognize if your husband or your wife is overseas that can't always be but that doesn't mean that you have to stop there you can you can still be praying for each other.

And how did you walk through that piece of it? And, you know, pursue healing rather than just living in the shame?

that's a really great question tammy um one of the things that i'm very grateful for as well is that god gave us a wonderful counselor christian counselor that we worked with and uh and i talked with him about the shame that i was carrying over this and he was so helpful for me to kind of help me distinguish the difference between shame and conviction or guilt um you know the holy spirit brings conviction on a person's heart and shows you what's wrong or you know reveals that to you shame doesn't come from god shame comes from the enemy And so, you know, walking that journey of kind of recognizing every time I felt shame, that really was an attack of the enemy, trying to keep me in that place of not being able to be used by God, not being valuable, not being able to, whatever it may be, not being able to recover.

I would actually just, and this might be a little off topic.

Difficult for those who aren't Christ followers that are listening to understand this, but I would just verbally rebuke or resist what the enemy was doing.

And I'd just say, Satan, shame is not from God.

Shame is from you.

And I recognize that.

Would you speak to that? Like, why should we maybe do something like that?

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.