My sister bought it for me for Christmas off my Amazon Wish List, and it was an easy and fascinating read at only 68 pages long, being a small yet power-packed book.
And with all the people Googling "sex" and "cheating" and "adultery" and "Christian" and "church" and topics surrounding those terms and how they meld -- I'm just bursting at the seams to write about this tonight.
I'm already going to pass it on to a woman who knows another woman who is caught up in a dramatic situation like the ones described in the book. Thank God I never experienced the sexual sin in church that these women have, but I could relate to how one's mind, emotions and will can be caught up in a soul tie that the Lord breaks one way or another. (Better earlier than later.)
All this reading is helping as part of the "fixing me" process that my husband talked with me about. (I'm also soaking up Every Woman's Battle, so stayed tuned for more goodness...)
The pastor's wife who refused to go to church with him until he stopped talking to a woman...
She is pretty open about a woman who kept talking to her husband -- and how he let his guard down, because he was not physically attracted to the woman.
Betty Price said that the woman was a "spiritual woman" who kept having a word and so-called prophecy for her husband at church so much that she was monopolizing his time.
The pastor's wife realized that this woman was not fostering a Godly relationship, so she asked her husband to stop talking to the woman. But he refused initially because although he had already made a covenant not to pursue any sexual cheating with his body, he didn't feel threatened because he was attracted to the word in this woman's mouth -- not her body.
Anyway, Dr. Betty refused to go to church with her husband one Sunday, and that hurt him enough to open his eyes to see what his wife was saying. So he stopped talking to the woman.
In another instance, a woman came and sat right across from her, and began wearing tight and revealing clothes. She got an appointment with Dr. Fred Price, and told him, "I want you!"
He said to himself, "My body says, 'I want you, too' but my spirit says 'No!'" so he showed her the door.
Dr. Betty made sure to reveal that she loves women, and that she's barely a jealous person. She said it's okay to let her husband compliment another woman on looking nice or whatever -- she just knew certain situations weren't about jealousy, it was about a wrong spirit trying to mess up God's plan.
The woman who couldn't stop lusting after her husband...the guys who gave women herpes and more...
Dr. Betty Price also talked about appreciating another woman who came up to her and admitted that she couldn't stop lusting after Dr. Fred, so the woman left the church. Dr. Betty talked about that other church man who had been cheating on his wife -- and his wife didn't know (although Dr. Betty said she didn't know how she didn't know), but she would notice that some women would just disappear from the congregation from time to time.
And then there were the men who messed around and gave their women herpes and the like. Oh yes, one major point was that some of these women who were cheated on put up with so much because their men brought home the bacon -- and they were afraid that if they broke up with him, they'd be left destitute.
But Dr. Betty told them that they have to trust God as their provider more than their husbands. She seems so strong-willed and straight forward. I can see why all these women emailed her and confessed their situations (from the wives to the mistresses to the men) all these 20 years or more...
There's so much I keep thinking about in this book and the response was so overwhelming, with people urging and wanting more, I can see it as a movie. I can see the black church audience (and other races as well) eating this up, because unfortunately it's a prolific situation in some places -- and hush hush in others. But thank God there are plenty of men and women of integrity in lots of churches, as she discusses.
I like that she says people should use their faith not only to believe our Lord for money and provisions, but also for the faith and grace to live right, because there is a big blessing in accepting God's power to help us live right and avoid the deathly tragedies she's seen when adultery and sin continues, with some people thinking they've gotten away with it just because God is being patient and giving people the time to turn their lives around. Great, great stuff in this book.
Not hiding for him or making excuses and covering his sin...
I also love that Dr. Betty really knew her worth and said she wasn't going to put up with things she knew were wrong, like when her husband refused to stop talking to that woman that she felt weird about, not jealous of.
When she missed church that one time that caused Dr. Fred to turn his mind around because it hurt him so much, Dr. Betty said her husband asked her what she was going to tell people about why she was absent.
She said she was going to tell people the truth: that her husband was in an inappropriate relationship and that he refused to stop, so she wasn't going to sit next to him in church like everything was a-okay.
In the recorded interview below, Dr. Betty says that she meets women whose husbands have had babies with other women in the church -- and they refuse to confront him, saying, "That's between him and God."
Or sadly, in the book she writes about pastors' wives who go after the other women and fight them (sometimes even physically) in the church. She said she never goes after another woman, she just sets clear boundaries and expected her husband to live up to them, or else she was out. That is some powerful resolve.
Sinning unto death and destruction...
There are so many true stories in her book about guys in ministry who leave their wives and children for another woman, and then the other woman ends up dumping the man after he loses his prestige and powerful position and half his money after the divorce.
There are some amazingly bold stories and sad, too, that she relates in the book -- and in this video interview with her talking about the book and more experiences, like one wife whose husband forced her to sit in church in between two women he was sleeping with.
Yikes. Craziness.
It's sad to hear about the women involved with men who have such a hard time breaking free, or the ones who didn't want to because of the "benefits" that messing around with a married man afforded them -- or the ones who were stalked when they tried to break it off and leave the man.
The only thing I wish is that Dr. Betty would've talked about any temptations she experienced with men in the church -- maybe it wasn't as common, since churches are usually crawling with a lot more women than men, but I'm sure there had to have been some men who tried to trip her up, seeing as though she's a pastor's wife and all.
It's a great start, and I'm glad she wrote the book to help so many people break free and better yet, avoid situations like this altogether.
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