One of the most crucial questions a husband and wife ask after the discovery of pornography or an affair is, “How can trust be rebuilt?” Put simply, trust is built with consistent, selfless love over time.
However, this simple answer is not always easy to live out. For a spouse who has lived deceitfully for years, living in unwavering truth will be new territory. For a spouse who’s been betrayed and deceived, deciding if their spouse is being consistent in words and actions can be confusing.
The consistency + time formula is a helpful guide for couples who are committed to daily, proactive engagement to rebuild trust. Consistently checking-in, with both truth and tenderness, can help create and cultivate an intimate connection, which is necessary in the trust-building process. Check-ins are a purposeful, set-aside time for a couple to connect on a consistent basis about the things that are important to each person. They offer a husband and wife the opportunity to know and be known. When done well, check-ins can be used to help a couple truly walking in the light foster the spiritual and emotional connection that enables trust to be established once again.
Consistent Steps Taken over Time through Selfless Love
You might ask, “What can I do consistently? And for how long? What if I don’t feel loving?” One husband may decide to bring his wife coffee first thing every morning. Another may consistently answer the phone each time his wife calls. Still another may reliably go to bed at the same time as his wife. Each of these examples may help a wife begin to see her husband growing in dependability. But these consistent actions, while loving and significant, don’t accomplish everything needed to rebuild broken trust—God’s plan for marriage is far greater than a list of tasks for a husband and wife to do predictably.
In addition to a couple demonstrating reliability, God’s design for marriage includes a husband and wife faithfully loving one another with authenticity, intimacy, and integrity. The language God uses to describe the union of Adam and Eve’s marriage conveys unity. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).
However, sexual betrayal attacks that union. Every part of a marriage is deeply impacted by betrayal. The deceit that accompanies pornography use and affairs ravages a couple’s ability to be truly connected as God intended. One tool that can be fruitful for a couple working through the effects of betrayal is to engage in regular check-ins with each other to build both reliability and unity in marriage.
What Check-Ins Can Offer
The development or re-establishing of an intimate connection necessary for trust within a marriage. Trust-building will include heart change—allowing a husband who has been hiding to step out into the light. Honesty and transparency can lay the groundwork for a wife who has been devastated to begin to consider moving toward her husband emotionally.
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Let’s avoid the traps of making productivity an unhealthy obsession with results or a very well-intentioned goal we can never reach. Let’s understand productivity correctly—as making the best use you can of the resources God has placed in your hands—and use it as a means of serving our Lord and the people around us. This proper understanding will fill our daily work and rest with joy.

What Is Productivity?
Productivity can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Usually, when hearing the word productivity, most people think about getting as many things done in as little time as possible. Others dream about perfect, color-coordinated calendars and completely checked-off to-do lists. For some, productivity is really about completing ambitious projects, even if it means putting off sleep (and maybe showering) for a few days (or weeks).
To be sure, productivity involves focus, calendars, lists, and determination. But productivity, properly understood, is much more than that. From a Christian perspective, productivity is making the best use you can of the resources God has placed in your hands. Productivity is taking your time, energy, gifts, and focus and using them wisely for the glory of God and the good of your neighbor. Productivity is not mainly about speed, coordination, or influence. It is not about getting the results you want. Productivity is mainly about faithfulness. It is about trusting God’s results will prevail. Productivity is rejoicing in the Lord while walking diligently in the good works he has prepared for us, trusting that he makes our path straight.
We often miss this. We tend to make productivity an unhealthy obsession with results. We also tend to make productivity a godly goal we can never reach. Those are terrible traps that suck out the joy from our work and our rest. Here’s how they look.
Don’t make productivity an unhealthy obsession.
The first trap is the easiest to recognize. We are so preoccupied with efficiency that we forget the reason we’re called to be productive in the first place—love. We forget that, as Christians, our mission is the mission God gave to us—to make disciples of all nations, loving our Lord, and loving our neighbor. Our projects are not the project. But we get our apps and calendars and habit trackers and we make following our plan priority #1 in our lives. We forget that our goals are not always aligned with God’s goals, and we cling to our agenda even when the Spirit confronts our rigidness and puts before us an unexpected opportunity to serve in love that we should embrace.
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As you read the Scripture, pay attention to the imagery. Ask God to awaken your imagination. Instead of filling your mind with the endless images of television and YouTube, let the Word of God prompt your creativity. Begin to imagine what you can do to serve others and to share the message of Christ’s cross and resurrection, the only message that sanctifies the mind and brings peace and justice to the world.

A few months ago, I attended a conference where the speaker shared about his counsel to those battling sexual sin. Paraphrasing, he said, “Imagine every impure action as another thrust of the spear into the side of Jesus.” Woe! What a sobering and sickening image! Can you say that? Should you think that, really?
Never before had I heard someone speak so graphically about the need for the use of imagination in our fight against temptation. However, as I have reflected on his point, I am increasingly convinced he is exactly right.
Imagination, when rightly used, is one of the most powerful tools God gives us to put off the old nature and to walk in the new. After all, Jesus himself said to those battling lust, “gouge out your eye” and “cut off your hand” (Matt 5:29–30). But it is not just for lust. In every area of life, we need to train and retool our imagination for the purpose of sanctification and greater gospel service.
Imagination in the Bible
The Bible is filled with imagery. From the Spirit brooding over the waters (Genesis 1) to John’s vision of a glorious city, dressed like a virgin bride (Revelation 21), the Bible drips with word pictures like the Matrix rains green code. Jesus regularly employs parables to capture the imagination of his disciples. The prophets of old spoke of Israel as a harlot, while Paul speaks of the church as a radiant bride.
The question is, do you see it? In a way that most fast-paced Americans don’t appreciate, Scripture begs to be pondered s . . l . . o . . w . . l . . y.
When Psalm 32:8-9 says, “Be not like a horse or a mule, . . . which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you,” it moves us to stop and reflect: What is it about these animals that must be avoided? Is it the same thing for each beast? Or are these they expressing two opposite errors—e.g., the error of running ahead of God like a wild horse and the error of lagging behind God like a stubborn mule?  The imagery fires the imagination and impresses upon us the need to walk humbly with our God.
Moreover, Scripture calls us to discipline our imaginations. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5 that we are to “take captive every thought to Christ.” Because Satan wages war with words of deception, Jesus’ disciples “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” by means of ‘thought-control.’ Only this mental exercise is not some metaphysical séance. Rather, it is meditation on the propositions and poetry of God’s Word.
To wield the Sword well—another image, I might add—takes not only a right doctrine but a sanctified imagination. Such an imagination begins with learning the gospel and God’s view of the world (Rom 12:1–2), but soon this renewed mind must and will generate new thoughts that serve the needs of those around us. While some believers may be more creative than others, imagining acts of kindness for others is not limited to creative-types. It is a universal calling for everyone purchased by God to do good works. We all must employ our minds to imagine that which is excellent and praiseworthy (Phil 4:8).
Three Places Where Imagination is Key: Sincere Sympathy, Holy Outrage, and Practical Service
Let’s get more specific. Instead of talking in the abstract about imagining concrete ways of doing gospel-empowered good, let’s consider three ways imagination serves as the link between good intentions and good works.
First, a sanctified imagination creates sincere sympathy.
Think about the last time you heard sad news. How did you feel? Chances are if you have experienced a similar pain, you were quick to empathize.
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