We work often with couples that have experienced sexual trauma in their marriage. One of the partners has had an affair. The other partner has found out, in whatever way, and the pain is . . . well . . . steal, kill and destroy are good words that come to mind (John 10:10).
One of the side effects of dealing with adultery is what happens in disclosure when the betrayed spouse is given details. When the offender begins to answer questions as to when, where, what all and how often, something terrible happens in the mind of this betrayed spouse. With every descriptive answer given, this spouse, as she listens to the story, does something automatic. She makes up images, pictures and imaginations of the scenes. She creates a video of her spouse and the affair partner. She makes up horrible pictures in her mind, complete with facial expressions, of what her spouse “looked like” at the “scene of the crime.”
These horrible pictures do not go away. These horrid imaginations are created, then played back over and over, and pulled up for viewing at the slightest trigger. These images haunt. They harass. They torture. They kill, steal and destroy.
The betrayed spouse has plenty of emotional pain and physical anguish, enough to feel like a wasting disease is eating away her insides. She is feeling a pain that is so deep and wrenching that she feels like vomiting. On occasion that phrase comes to her mind: “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” and she realizes she has never ever hated a person in life so much that she would wish this kind of pain on them. This pain is excruciating.
What can be done about these images?
I have a prayer exercise that I do with this wounded spouse. I lead her in a prayer of breaking her soul-tie she has made with this affair partner. You maybe have heard of sexual soul-ties, but soul-ties can also be made with anyone that we attach ourselves too with an unholy union of the mind, body or emotions. When this betrayed spouse continually brings up the internally created movie scenes, continually brings to her mind the vain imaginations of the other woman’s participation with her husband, when she continually associates this adultery partner with heartbreak, misery, physical ache, hatred, unforgiveness, anger, rage and yes, death, then this spouse is creating a soul-tie, attaching herself to her husband’s affair partner.
I then lead the woman in a prayer to break the soul-tie, and we ask the Lord Jesus to manifest His presence, and for Him to remove the soul-tie out of her heart. As Jesus removes the symbol of this union, we ask the Holy Spirit to bring up all of these images, pictures and imaginations that were created in the mind. With every image that comes to her mind, I instruct her to say out loud, “I renounce that image in Jesus name.” With every individual image that arises in her mind, as soon as she “sees” it, she is to say, “I renounce that image in Jesus name.”
Image by image, picture by picture, the Holy Spirit goes into her heart and cleans out these images and pictures. As she renounces each one, her soul is cleansed and restored.
For one woman recently this was very taxing. It was painful and difficult. She wasn’t sure how she felt at the end. I could see an uncertainty in her eyes as she finished and left my office. The next week she returned to my office with a smile on her face. She told me that her husband had asked her how her counseling session went, and that her response was, “It was heavy.” But she added this, “My mind has been clear all week. It is amazing, that those images are distant and cloudy. I found that they did not rise up and control me this week. Not once.”
Do you have images, imaginations and video pictures that run through your mind that steal, kill and destroy your well-being? Do you have images that haunt you, harass you, and torture you? They could be pornography images. They could be horrifying images of a death you witnessed. You could have the actual images in your mind of your childhood abuser. Whatever the image, I would suggest this exercise as a holy, symbolic and powerful way to cleanse and restore the righteous reign of Christ in your heart and mind.
This is the renewing of the mind (Rom 12:2). It is taking every thought captive to Christ (I Cor 10:5).
-Carter