Faith Or Fear

Are you still in your marriage because God told you to stay, or because you’re too scared to leave? That single question can expose the difference between faith and fear, especially when you’re married to someone battling addiction and you’ve been surviving on hope, adrenaline, and responsibility that was never yours to carry.

We talk honestly about why staying in faith and staying in fear can look identical on the outside, yet feel completely different on the inside. I walk through 2 Timothy 1:7 and what it means that God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear, then I name the patterns I see constantly in partners of addicts: losing your identity in the fixer role, staying to avoid church shame or people’s opinions, believing their sobriety is your job, and getting so used to chaos that peace feels foreign. We also confront the painful spiritual confusion that treats suffering as proof of obedience, and we replace it with a clearer picture of love, power, self-control, and healthy boundaries.

You’ll get a set of reflection questions you can take to prayer or your journal, including whether you feel peace or dread when you pray, whether you’re growing in your identity in Christ, and whether hope is paired with real boundaries. If you need support, I also share how to connect with a faith-based community built specifically for spouses and partners affected by addiction. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more partners of addicts can find real help.

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Transcript

Faith Or Fear Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Are you still in this marriage because God told you to stay? Or are you still in this marriage because you're too terrified to leave? Those are totally two different things. And if nobody ever asked you that out loud, I'm asking you that right now. Because today we're gonna find out which one you're living in. So hang around. Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity, a podcast dedicated to providing hope, healing, and support for married individuals whose spouses are battling addiction. Rooted in the truth of your identity in Christ, this podcast offers practical guidance and biblical insight to help you navigate the challenges of addiction within your marriage. Here we'll find encouragement and embrace God's plan for restoration in your life. Let's walk this journey together, one step at a time. Hey,

Who This Podcast Serves

SPEAKER_00 0:54

is this your first time here? If so, this is a place for married folks who have a spouse that is battling an addiction. You could be just entering this and figuring this out, or you can have been dealing with this for a very long time. But this podcast is hopefully helpful for you, and we're glad that you're here today. Today's episode is called When Staying in Faith or Staying in Fear. This is a big one. This is a big one. Today's episode, I have to be honest with you, sat with me for a while. It sat with me for a long time before I decided to record it. Because it touches something that most of you have never been given permission to speak about out loud. It's a touchy subject. Are you staying because of faith or are you staying because of fear? And I want to be very clear before we move on. I am not asking you to leave. I'm not telling you to stay. That's a decision that you have to make once you get clarity and start to get some healing. And quite honestly, it's between you and God. You guys have to figure this out. I can't direct you in either way. I'm just laying all the details out to see where you're at today. What this episode is about is what you're doing and why you're doing it. That's what I'm here to help you with today. Because I believe that once you have clarity, while it may be very uncomfortable, it's one of the most freeing things that you can experience, even if you're in pain. So why don't we jump into it?

Why Faith And Fear Look Alike

SPEAKER_00 2:37

I want to start with something that's pretty important for you to understand. Staying in fear and staying in faith are completely identical from the outside. They look exactly the same. Same house, same address, same vows, same sit next to each other in a pew on Sunday morning, or maybe not, but completely different internal reality. Someone staying in faith says, I know this is hard. I can't fix this person, but I have heard from God and He wants me to stick by this person. I have a covenant connection and I'm standing in something that is very real. Someone staying in fear says, I don't know who I am without this role of being an enabler. I'm terrified of what people will think of me. I'm terrified of being alone. And if I leave somehow, I'm gonna feel like a failure. Faith stays from a place of strength, calling, and covenant, even when it's hard. Fear stays from a place of shame, survival, and control, even when it's destroying you.

What Scripture Says About Fear

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Can we go to the Bible for a moment? We're gonna be in 2 Timothy 1, verse 7. And it says this for God will never give you the spirit of fear, but the Holy Spirit who gives you mighty power, love, and self-control. And right off the bat, we can say that God does not give you a spirit of fear. He won't give you a spirit of fear. That means fear as a foundation of your decisions is not from him. If you're making decisions based off of fear, that's not coming from God. You're not hearing from God. You're hearing the lies, you're listening to the accuser. Because God will not allow you to make decisions in fear because he doesn't give you a spirit of fear. Now that doesn't mean that every hard feeling you have is fear. Faith can coexist with grief, faith can coexist with doubt, and faith can coexist with not knowing how things are gonna end. But when fear is your primary source and reason that you're staying, when it's the thing that's really holding you in place, that is what we need to look at. So why

Signs You Are Staying In Fear

SPEAKER_00 5:19

don't we look at it? I'm gonna walk through some signs that you might be staying out of fear. And I want you to hear this with grace. I don't want you to feel shame. I don't want you to feel condemnation. Because recognizing fear is not a failure. It's actually one of the bravest things that you can look at. It's one of the bravest things that you can experience. So why don't we look at a couple of these signs? Number one, you stay because you don't know who you are without this role. You have become the enabler, you become the savior, you become the fixer, you have become the most important person to you that you feel in this relationship. Because you're in you think you're in control of everything, because I'm gonna fix it, I'm gonna mend it, I'm gonna make it better, I'm gonna be the hero, I am gonna be the savior. I know exactly what all that is. I thought if I could fix my ex-wife, I thought if I could fix her, that everything would go smoothly from then on out, not knowing that I was a complete wreck. So if your identity has become so involved in that role, leaving, you're gonna feel like a wreck because you're gonna feel like you've lost your identity, because you felt so important through that lie. The second sign is you stay because you're afraid of what people might think of you. You're afraid of what the church might think of you, you're afraid of what your Christian friends might think of you. And it depends on the church you're going to, and I'm gonna be quite honest with you. Your church community could be one of the most profound sources of strength. But maybe your church community could be one of the most profound sources of shame. And I've seen them both. I've been in both. If fear judgment is keeping you in the relationship that is harming you, that is not faith. That is people pleasing with a religious tag attached to it. And out of these first two signs, I can tell you personally, I felt both. I was a pastor in a pulpit. I kept this hidden because I felt shame and I felt that I would be condemned. I didn't know whether people would stand beside me and come around me and help me through it, or they would just shame me out of town. So I decided to walk away and shame myself out of town because I could not handle it. Also, I couldn't handle the thought of not being the hero. I needed to be validated. I need to be the hero. I couldn't just roll over and be nobody. So I understand those first two signs. I lived them. So let's look at sign number three, which says you stay because you feel that they're your responsibility. Them getting sober is your responsibility. You totally feel that. Totally feel that. I felt that. My ex-wife getting wrapped up in an addiction, it turned into my job to make sure she got sober. It was my job to make sure that she made it through and stopped doing the addiction. And at first, we talk about this a lot. At first, it's a general love and care. I want this person to get better. But somewhere along the line, it morphs into this codependency, this less than feeling, it morphs into almost an addiction yourself. I was addicted to my wife's addiction. I was addicted to stopping her addiction. That's what I was addicted to. And I was addicted to it because I didn't want to stop, because I felt like I would have no role. I didn't want to stop because I felt like it was my responsibility. I didn't want to stop because I couldn't leave because what would everybody think? So if you're staying because you feel that fixing them is your responsibility, you're completely wrong. And this one is so common. This is the biggest one, usually, with the people that I speak with. Here's what you think. If you leave, they're going to use again, or they're going to continue to use. If you leave, they're going to fall apart. And if you leave, the destructive things they're going to do are going to be on your hands. You can't live that way. That is prison. That is manipulation, that is control by an addiction. Listen to me carefully. Their recovery is not your responsibility. It never was, it never will be, and you never caused the addiction. You cannot control it, you cannot cure it. It's not going to happen. And I'm here because I know that firsthand. And I had to learn that the hard way. But they're not going to stop by anything that you do. They can only stop by what they want to do on the inside. It's just the plain truth. So you're believing that lie that you could fix it. You believe that lie that it's your fault. You believe that lie that you could control it. You believe the lie that they'll stop because of you. You'll believe the lie that you have everything in you to get them to change their mind. It's not gonna happen. It's a lie. Sign number four. You stay

When Chaos Feels Normal

SPEAKER_00 11:10

because you can't live without chaos. You're afraid of what no life of chaos would mean. If you were to step away tomorrow and not have any chaos and detach from this person and not have any chaos in the life, that fear that's a fear you have. That's crazy. But that's where we come from. What am I gonna do now? This has been my life for 13 years. I've lived in hell and chaos. What the heck am I gonna do? I'll tell you what you can do. Take a deep breath and go, oh my gosh, it's so peaceful. And it doesn't mean everything's better. I had kids that were still involved, I had plans I had to make, I was going to figure out where we go from here, but just getting enough clarity for me to get separated from my wife just to take a break, not having chaos in my life 24-7, was such a relief. And it's superhuman. The familiar is what we live in, the unexpected is what brings us fear. Going through the chaos feels such more comfortable than facing the unknown.

Suffering Is Not Devotion

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Number five, you stay because you've confused suffering with faithfulness. This might be one of the hardest ones to cover. Somewhere along the way, maybe in a church, maybe in your upbringing, maybe you picked up this from family, I I don't know. A religion does this a lot, but somewhere the idea of enduring pain and suffering was honoring God. That if you just suffer enough, you love enough, you sacrifice enough, somehow that equals obedience and honoring God. But friends, let me tell you this. Listen to it clearly. Jesus did not go to the cross and shed his blood for you to live in a self-destruction cycle and call it devotion. He didn't. And we've got it all wrong. I remember thinking I was being so faithful. I remember thinking I was being honorable to God in my vows. I remember thinking that I was doing the right thing, and if I could just provide a little bit more that God would honor what I was requesting. That's religion, folks. That's fear. That isn't the love that Christ has put into us when he died upon the cross. So those are the signs that I give you today. And if they resonate with you, then you know you might be living in fear. And then if none of those resonate with you, then maybe you are standing on a faithful ground. You've heard God, He has a plan, you're part of that plan, and you guys are going to work this out together. But

Journal Questions For Clarity

SPEAKER_00 14:29

let me ask you some questions now. You don't have to answer them right now, you don't have to write them down. You don't you can go back and play this, but these are questions I want to have sit with you, and I want you to answer them at some point in a journal, maybe pray about them. But you do with them as you feel. Question number one. If I knew without a shadow of a doubt that no one would judge me either way, in whatever decision I made, would I still be making the same choice? If the answer changes when you take other people's opinions out of the equation, that should tell you something. Question number two Am I staying with healthy boundaries in place or am I making a sacrifice and have hope that eventually they're going to change? Hope is very powerful, but hope without boundaries is not faith. It's wishful thinking. And there's a big difference so ponder that question. If you don't have any healthy boundary in place while you're trying to go through this, then you're just attached to their addiction and you just have wishful thinking and hope that they'll get better. But it's not the hope that God provides. This is a big one. Question number three. When you pray, when you generally pray about this, a deep prayer, a heartfelt prayer, when you're in your alone time praying deeply about this situation, do you feel peace or do you feel dread? That's a big one. Peace that surpasses understanding is a real thing. So is persistent dread. Both need to be thought about. Question number four. This is an identity question. Am I growing in my identity in Christ, inside this marriage and inside this addiction? Or am I shrinking and feeling like a nobody and losing it all? Did you know that God's design is always towards wholeness, toward freedom, toward peace, toward becoming more fully alive in the image that he created you to be? If stain is constantly making you feel less than, not just harder, but less than, then that is worth bringing to him in prayer, honestly. Because he didn't design you to burden all of this and go backwards in who you are in Christ. That's not how suffering works. Suffering makes us better, suffering makes us more holy, suffering brings us through because we know who we're connected to and gives us strength and gives us peace to move on. And we grow and we nurture from that. But if you're not, if you're stale, if you're moving backwards, you're feeling more less than you're feeling like crap, and you're just not moving anywhere, then that's something to really consider.

To The Ones Staying In Faith

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Before I close this out, I want to speak directly to two people. First, I want to speak to the one who is staying in genuine faith. I see you. I see what you're doing. I see that you are connected to God. I see that you are showing up every day in a horrible circumstance, but you're strong and you have the faith that God's going to bring all of you through this. It's not weakness. It's one of the most costly, the most courageous acts of obedience that you can have if you're hearing from God and He's telling you to stay, and you have healthy boundaries, and you're in control of this without emotion. I hear you and I see you. Don't let anybody take that away from you. Don't let anybody tell you that your faith is naive and that your hope is a fairy tale. God sees that you have stayed and chosen to take a stand, and every day he notices that. So I commend you, I praise you, and I'll be praying for you. But there's probably just a few of you out there that are truly headstrong, rooted in your foundation of Christ and who you're created to be, and hearing from God, and He's got a great plan to restore that entire family. That's amazing. So I'm gonna speak to most of you like me that are staying because you're in fear. I see

To The Ones Staying In Fear

SPEAKER_00 19:47

you too. And I know the hell that you're walking through. And I have to tell you something. God is not honored by you suffering alone. He's not sitting in heaven writing down scores of how much pain you can absorb before he's satisfied. That's not who he is. That's not who you were created to be. And it's completely wrong. He wants you whole, he wants you at peace. He wants you to know, deeply know, how much you mean to him, how much you mean to him, and how much he created you to be in the image of his son Jesus Christ. He doesn't want you to believe who you are in relation to somebody who's an addict. He doesn't want you to gain your identity as the one that holds it all together because you're just so tough. Fear was never meant to be your reason. And it's never too late to bring it to God and say, look, I think I might have been doing this all wrong. What says you? Help me figure this out, Lord. He'll speak to you, he'll tell you. You can tune in to him. He will meet you in that prayer, I promise. You may not hear a clear answer right away when you pray it, but the spirit will start to move in you. I promise you that. You'll start to get a nudge of what is starting to feel like the right answer. Again, if it's any answer that is based in fear, is not him. You're listening to the wrong voice. There's two voices that you can listen to. The one that steals, kills, and destroys, or the one that promotes, loves, and nurtures. You have to tune into the right one. As

Community Support And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 21:48

we come to a close, I'd like to take the opportunity to invite you in to walk right community. It's a community I've created that is faith-based. In the identity of who you were created to be in Jesus Christ. It's not a religious thumping community. It's a community that promotes love, transformation, and healing by the power of God. It's a community where other people like you are helping each other out. It's not the Steve Show, I facilitate everything, but it's a place where people can heal together. We were never designed, never designed to heal in isolation. Community has always been important. From the very first pages of the Bible, man was not meant to be alone, and that is why God created community. And you may not find this in your church. You may feel shamed or condemned. And if you are, then this place is for you. Because we're not going to condemn you, we're not going to shame you. We know exactly what you're walking through. And a lot of us in there walked through it already, and we're here to help you. Everything's going to be in the show notes. You can click on the link, or easily you can go to partnersofaddicts.com. Partnersofaddicts.com has all the information about the community. In fact, if you fill that out, you'll go straight to the community and I'll make sure that you receive my free guide, The Ten Truths Untold or Unspoken, that I wish somebody would have told me while being with an addict. And

Share The Show And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_00 23:31

if you would, would you please like, subscribe to this podcast? If you're watching on YouTube, will you like, subscribe, and follow me? And would you forward this to somebody? Because I know that there's somebody out there that needs to hear this. Because for every addict there is, there's at least five to seven people connected to that addict. That addict controls five to seven people's lives. Can you believe that? They're the ones getting all the help into churches. They're the ones getting all the help into groups. They're the ones that are in all the programs. And that's great. Don't get me wrong. But what about the five to seven people? There's nothing for them. The church is failing miserably at that. That's why I created this community. That's why I created the podcast. And I'm here for you because I lived it for 13 years. This is not a textbook. This is not a clinical study that I can give you answers from. This is true life walking through hell, what you're walking through that I've experienced, and that I can share with you and help you and guide you. That's the power God has given me. That's the ministry He's given me. And this is how I help other people. So please forward it, like, subscribe, all that good stuff again. And I will see you in the next episode. And remember, as always, as always, don't forget this. You're loved, you're holy. I'll see you soon. God bless.