July 3, 2017 Show with Martha Peace on “The Excellent Wife: A Biblical Perspective” PLUS Josh Buice on “Real Church vs. Facebook Church”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnson.

Martha Peace’s Testimony and Conversion to Christ

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this third day of July, Fourth of July Eve, as you may refer to it, and it is my honor and privilege to have on the program today a woman who I've never interviewed before and for those of you who are expecting to hear Adams Road today, the four members of the musical ministry Adams Road, four young men and women, or young men and a woman, I believe it is, who are former Mormons who came to the true gospel of Jesus Christ and to discover who Jesus Christ of the scriptures truly is and were saved by his blood and transformed and converted to biblical Christianity.

Well, that musical group Adams Road, due to unforeseen complications regarding phone access, had to postpone their interview today. God willing, there's a possibility we'll have Adams Road, all four members of the group, on the program tomorrow, but there have been some complications as I just mentioned.

They were originally supposed to be in studio with me and then they got a gig up in Vermont which made that impossible, so they were on their way to Vermont and then these unforeseen occurrences developed.

So, pray for the northeast tour of this wonderful musical group Adams Road, made entirely up of former Mormons, or at least three of the four members were former Mormons. All of the four members are now Christians, biblical evangelical Christians.

But I'm so delighted that God enabled me to providentially, at the very last minute, arrange an interview with my first guest, Martha Peace. And Martha is an author, a gifted teacher, an exhorter, a biblical counselor trained under NANC NANC, which was made famous by Jay Adams, their founder, a workshop leader on various biblical counseling issues for women at the National Conference for NANC, instructor for six years at Carver Bible Institute and College in Atlanta, where she taught women's classes, including The Excellent Wife, Raising Kids Without Raising Cain, I love that title, introducing, I'm sorry, Introduction to Biblical Counseling, Advanced Biblical Counseling, Personal Purity, and The Book of Esther.

And she's a speaker at this year's G3 conference, January 18th through the 20th in Atlanta, Georgia, and we'll be talking more about that as well. But today we are discussing probably her most well-known and beloved book, The Excellent Wife, a biblical perspective, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time, Martha Peace.

Yes, I'm glad to be here. Yes, I am so glad that you are here as well, and thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview with very little notice, and I really praise God for you for doing that. Well, first of all, what I usually do, Martha, is that I usually give a first-time guest the opportunity to share with our listeners, briefly, in summary form, a testimony involving what religion, if any, you were raised in, and how the Lord, in His sovereignty, providentially drew you to Himself, and what circumstances were involved in God's providence that drew you to His saving embrace.

Well, Chris, what happened was, I grew up in the South, you can probably tell, and I was in church, Sunday school in church with my parents, in a church that was very legalistic. It believed that you had to be baptized to be saved, and if you did not take communion every Sunday, you would lose your salvation.

So when I was eight years old, I walked down the aisle, and the pastor led me in a profession of faith. They baptized me and told me I was a Christian. Well, I wanted to be a Christian, I wanted to go to heaven in case I died, but I knew that my mother would tell me, you're not patient, you're just not very patient.

And then my Sunday school teacher talked about, love is patient, and we are to show love to God and to others. So it always made me feel guilty as a little girl, and so I was determined I was going to be patient.

I was a Christian now, and I was going to be patient. Well, it didn't last very long, and I realized I can't do this, and then I just decided, well, I'm not even going to trust. So I was obviously not a Christian, and through the years, we quit going to church when I was a teenager because there was an issue with the pastor, and then the next time I went to church was after I was married.

I had been married a few years. We had two children, and we went to a very liberal church that really was more of a social gospel than the real gospel, and then we moved in 1978 to a town called Peachtree City, Georgia, and my husband was working nearby here.

He was an air traffic controller, and eventually, I started teaching nursing at a little college near here, and my office mate, her name is Katrina, she was a very strong Christian, and she started witnessing to me, and she talked to me about the Lord, and sometimes it would get on my nerves, and I was so mean to her.

One time, I told her to be quiet and stop talking because I didn't say it that nicely, and she was very sensitive, and she started crying, and I was glad. So she went home, and she got all prayed up, and she came back the next day talking about the Lord.

So it was like being chained to the Apostle Paul, and I could not get away from her, and she was driving me nuts. Well, I was married with two children, but I was a party girl, and I was drinking every day.

I was an alcoholic. I didn't drink at work, but that's the only time I didn't drink, and I was committing adultery. So my life secretly was a train wreck, and it was about to happen, and then the Lord sent providentially a couple, Jackie and Ed Sherwood, friends of ours, old friends of ours, back to Atlanta, and they contacted us, and we had heard that they had become religious, and my comment was, well, that's too bad because they won't be any fun anymore, but they started coming to visit us, and to make a long story short, Ed was teaching an adult Sunday school class, and every time they would come visit, he would say, oh, let me tell you about this week's Sunday school class.

It's so interesting, and he would just give it. Now, he memorized it. He didn't have his Bible. He didn't have any notes, but he just gave it. Well, that was very annoying to us, but for some reason, and it was just God drawing us, we just couldn't stop them from coming, so they came every Friday night, and this went on for weeks.

Well, everything kind of culminated in this house that we were having built, and the builder had stolen money, and that was a disaster, and that was a big mess. My whole secret life was a big mess, and we finally moved in that house in June.

Well, that was not good for me because I was not having to go to work every day. I had the summer off, and I could drink every day, all day, and I started having panic attacks. I'd never been an anxious person, but I was having panic attacks all the time.

I was crying all the time. I was drinking all the time, and my husband wanted me to go to a psychiatrist, and I wouldn't go, and finally, I had decided that I was going to, and I planned out how I was going to do it, but the only reason I didn't do it is because my friend at work that witnessed to me had convinced me that I was a sinner and I was going to hell.

Now, I didn't believe there was a hell, but she did, and I thought, if I kill myself, what if there is a hell, and that's where I end up, so that's why I didn't kill myself. The next day, I got up, and I was sober then, and I thought about what had almost happened, and I was terrified, and finally, I said, I have to face reality.

I'm an alcoholic. That's my problem, and that was true, but I needed the Lord. That was really my problem, but I decided to quit drinking, and I did, cold turkey, and I thought I was going to go into withdrawal, but God and His mercy just spared me from that.

Well, then, out of desperation, I started reading the Bible, and one night, reading the Gospel of John, I got up to chapter 14, and I had read John several times because our friend, Ed, had said, read the Gospel of John.

Just keep reading it, so I did, and I would read it over and over again, and one night, my husband was at work. He was working evening shift. The kids were asleep. My heart was pounding. My hands were shaking because I was having a panic attack, so I started reading the Gospel of John.

I got up to chapter 14, and that's when Jesus said to the disciples, because they panicked because He said He was going to be killed. They didn't understand, and that's when He comforted them, and He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes unto the Father but by Me. Well, when I read that, and I thought about that, and claiming to be the only way to God, and that night, I realized I think that's true, and then I kept reading, and then He said, show us the Father, and it's enough for us.

We want to see God. We'll be satisfied, and then Jesus said, if I've been so long with you, Philip, and you have not come to know Me, if you have seen Me, you've seen the Father. Well, I stopped, and I thought about that, and all of a sudden, I gasped, and I went, oh, He's claiming to be God.

I just was astounded, and then I thought about it, and I thought, well, I think that's true, and then I kept reading, and I got down to where He said, Jesus said, you can ask Me anything in My name, and I will do it, and I stopped reading, and I said, well, that's not true, because I had started praying, and I had asked Him to take my anxiety away, to give us our money back the builder had stolen, and to put our marriage back together.

Now, we were still technically together, but just barely, and God had not done any of those things, but I read the verse, and I read the whole thing, and Jesus said, you can ask Me anything in My name, and I will do it, if, and then He says, if you love Me, My commandments, and it was just during that moment where I didn't understand what was happening, but all of a sudden, grief.

Praise God. It was so hard that I just thought, I'm gonna die, and the biggest grief, I had never given God glory, not one time in my whole life, and so I started praying, and I started confessing sin, and I would name something, and I would ask God to forgive me, and it was a long vow, and when I couldn't think of anything else to confess, then I said to God, now I understand that You're real, and that You have the power to take my anxiety away, whether You do, or whether You don't, and I hesitated, because I knew if He didn't, very soon, I would be in a psychiatric hospital, but I just kept praying, whether You take it away, or whether You don't, You decide how my life can glorify You the most, and then I pointed to the verse where He says, You can ask in My name, and it's like I was saying, okay, now do you see what You wrote here, and I said, in Jesus' name, I'm praying, amen.

Well, it was late. I put the Bible down, turned out the light, went to sleep. I didn't understand enough at that moment to know I had been born again, but the next day when I woke up, the fear was gone.

I knew the Lord was with me, and I remember thinking, finally found what I have so desperately been looking for. My life will never be the same. Now, I realize now, after reading the rest of the Bible, I didn't find God.

He drew me, and He was drawing me for weeks, and then that night illumined the truth to me. Tell anybody, because they already thought I was crazy, and I was crazy. I mean, really, I was crazy as a loon, and tell anybody what happened, but I went to my husband, and I said, how about let's start going to church.

We'll go to Jackie Ned's church where he's teaching Sunday school, and we'll just go to his Sunday school class. It'll save him the effort of telling us, me, us, all of that. So, we started going. Finally, after about two weeks, I started reading the rest of the Bible, and oh my goodness, I never, I'd never read it.

I got to the New Testament. Every other verse was like, oh no, I'm doing that wrong, or I'm thinking wrongly about that, and I would stop, and I would pray, and ask God to help me understand. It was an amazing journey, and God's grace.

Sanford, my husband, got saved a few months later. We ended up, after going to the first church we went to for about a year and a half, realizing that we weren't really going to a different church, a Bible church, where the pastor taught, and he's the one teaching a lady's Bible study, and he helped me, and I did different.

After about five years of that, I met Lou Prince. He ended up training me, and I got certified by the NANC organization, which, by the way, we have changed our name. Our new name is the same group, but it's the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, and it's just when I joined in 1989, when I joined.

Website, if anybody's interested in that, is biblicalcounseling .com. If you're looking for a counselor, you can find one in your area, if there is one in your area, and there's all kinds of articles and different things on there.

The rest is kind of history, really,.

But that's how the Lord saved me. Wow, that is some fascinating story. In fact, I think it should become a Christian movie eventually. That was pretty fascinating. Can you please tell our listeners, because there is some controversy, as you know, involving the world of counseling within Christendom.

There are all different kinds of approaches to counseling. There's disagreement on the different approaches amongst brothers and sisters in Christ, to the point where it's actually considered by many to be very serious disagreements.

If you could tell our listeners what makes euthetic counseling unique and what sets it apart amongst other forms of Christian counseling, some that call themselves Christian counselors, some are more specific, calling themselves biblical counselors, and some even more specific, calling themselves euthetic counselors, if you could let our listeners.

Know about that. Well, euthetic is the word that Jay Adams, and the group that he started to train people and certify people was the National Association of Euthetic Counselors. And the reason that he called it euthetic instead of just biblical, because that's what it is using the Bible, was because Larry Crabb, who's a psychologist, a Christian psychologist, he was very popular then, probably still is, but he claimed to have a biblical...his is not.

It's got a smidgen of Bible and Scripture, but it's got secular theories mixed in with it. So that's why they called them an integral. Jay called it euthetic, because the Greek word neceteo means to exhort, or to admonish, or to counsel.

So that's such a strange word, and you always have to explain it. I mean, somebody asked Jay after he said in a speech he was a euthetic counselor, somebody came up and said, did you say you were a pathetic counselor?

So anyway, but we are not weird, we're not strange, but we do not use any of the psychology theories, which there's over 300 of them out there, so you got to pick one. But what we do is use the Bible in a very practical way.

In 2 Peter 1 and verse 3, it says, God's divine power is granted to us, now the us is believers, everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of him, the him refers to Jesus, who called us by his own glory and excellence.

For by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. So when I took the biblical counseling training, I learned how to give people hope, no matter what the problem was.

I learned how to ask questions and gather data so that I wouldn't be foolish in my answers and counsel to them. I learned how to not be a legalist and impose my own personal standards on somebody, just because it was my personal standard.

I learned about church discipline, I learned about the role of the wife and the different scriptures back to her husband, and love her husband, and to be biblically submissive to her husband, and I learned how to take someone who's depressed and sad and are grieving to the scriptures and give them examples in the bible of people who were depressed and then they turned to God, and then how to just very practically help them.

How when somebody's bitter, the emotion that you feel when you're bitter, oh that's a sin, but some of the things that people do to the person who's bitter are just, I've cried with people when integration is very heavily on the psychology theory, which is their pet theory, Thompson, your self-esteem.

Now that was very popular several years ago in the secular realm, but that's kind of passe now. These theories come and go, and what they're trying to do is help people to have a healthy personality, and they're really sincerely trying to help people, and that is a good thing, but when you leave God out of it, or you mix secular theories and try to mix it with scripture, in my book, Attitudes of a Transformed Heart, I have a chapter on psychologized man, and I talk about what's wrong with the integrationist view, and I made up a case study, and I just kind of track you through that person, the counsel they're getting, and what's wrong with it, and I use the illustration.

We have a granddaughter who's a pastry chef. Well, you should eat. It's unbelievable. It's all pure, clean, from scratch. Everything is just wonderful, and it would be, that's how the scripture is. You can't get any deeper inside a person than the thoughts and intents of the heart, and that's what the Bible does.

But if you took a handful of dirt and threw it in one of my granddaughter's cakes, you could mix it all up and make it look pretty, but you couldn't eat it. Well, it's the same thing with secular or integrated so-called Christian counseling.

I think these people are well-meaning, but I do think that if you really want to help somebody, it's the power of God and the scriptures that are alive and powerful. That's how you help them.

We have to go to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, for Martha Peace, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and you may remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter that you are asking about, especially if it involves your own marriage or something like that.

We understand your request to remain anonymous, but if it's not a personal and private and intimate matter, please give us at least your first name and your location of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these brief messages with Martha Peace and the excellent wife.

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This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in for the first hour, our guest is Martha Peace. We are discussing her book, The Excellent Wife. Well, at least we will be in any moment. We've been already addressing her conversion to Christianity and other things involved in her life, including her becoming a biblical counselor, or should I say a newthetic counselor.

And if you would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Coming up on the second hour, we have Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia, who is also the founder and director of the G3 Conference, where both of my guests will be speaking in January.

Both Martha Peace and Josh Bice and many other speakers will be on the roster at that event. Pastor Josh Bice, in our second hour, is going to be addressing real church versus Facebook church. Quite an interesting theme that I hope you stay tuned for as well.

Martha, we do have a listener. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks, I might have missed something, but I was wondering if Martha is still married to the against whom she sinned in regard to adultery.

Yes. In fact, last September, we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. So this is a miracle of God. But Sanford is more laid back than I am, and he did not know about the adultery at the time.

I'm glad you added at the time, because obviously he knows now.

He knows now. But what happened was, after I got saved and we started going to church, I talked to the pastor there, and I said, should I confess this to my husband? Now, it had been over, so it wasn't an ongoing issue right then.

And he said, no, it's under the blood, don't tell him. But I always felt funny about that. I mean, I was relieved because I didn't have to tell him. But then I thought, you know, I'm being deceptive. And you never know when something like that's going to come out.

And so a few years went by, and I took the counseling training. And Jay says, you need to tell the truth, not the sordid details, but, you know, to ask forgiveness. And so I finally did. And it was probably the hardest, one of the hardest things that Tamper and I have ever been through.

But he is a gracious man. And he forgave me. And he, I mean, it was rough there for a while, emotionally for both of us. But he stuck with me. And he has helped several men in a similar situation, whose wives were not being faithful, to help them to think rightly through it and to honor God.

Well, that is quite remarkable, because I'm no expert on this, Martha. But in your years of counseling, have you found, and I know that you counsel women primarily, if not exclusively, but have you found that it is much more difficult for men to forgive that sin than it is for women?

No, I don't think so. I think it is breaking your vow before. It is, and a lot of, some people, others, some are very hard-nosed. And how could he do that to me? I would never have done that to him, you know, kind of thing.

And really, 1 Corinthians 13, it says, love doesn't take into account a wrong suffered. And a lot of times what they do is they just play it over in their minds, and they just become more and more angry, more and more bitter.

If you go to Matthew 18, and Jesus tells that story at the end of Matthew 18 about the slave that was forgiven so much, and then he wouldn't forgive his fellow slave that just owed him a small amount.

And Jesus is so scary, because at the end of that, Jesus says, because the master of the original slave that was forgiven so much found out what the slave had done that was forgiven, and he wouldn't forgive the other person.

And he said, and he put him in prison until he could repay. Jesus says, let me just read it, because I don't want to mess this up.

Sure. While you're looking at the text, I'm just going to repeat our email address. It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, if anybody would like to join us. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

At the end of Matthew 18, the master said to the wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt, because you pleaded with me, should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave in the same way that I had mercy on you?

And as the Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. But here's the scary part. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.

So it is, we have, all that we have been forgiven, maybe we weren't an adulterer, but maybe we had a temper, maybe we're a worrier, maybe we don't trust God, maybe we're selfish, maybe, you know, just on and on and on.

And yet, if somebody will not forgive, and Luke, I think chapter 6, it says, God himself is kind to wicked and evil men. And I just remember the first time I ever read that, and I just stopped and thought about it, and I thought, I don't see who is wicked and sinning against me that way.

Now, it doesn't mean that the person who committed adultery doesn't, there are consequences to sin. Even, she may even have biblical grounds for divorce. She doesn't have any choice but to forgive him in her heart and not harbor that hatred and vengeful.

We overcome evil with.

God. Yeah, the reason why I asked the question is that I was assuming it might be more devastating and problematic for a man to hear that his wife or even fiance or girlfriend was cheating on him than it would be for a woman to hear the reverse, is because of the fragile egos involved with men and that perhaps that is more of a sensitive area where it almost seems, unfortunately and tragically, so much of a commonplace situation where men are committing adultery and having numerous relationships, whether they are married or not, and even though in our day and age women might be neck and neck on that, I don't know, but it just seems less shocking for a man to be found guilty of it.

Do you follow what I'm saying?

Well, yes. I think men usually, in Christian circles or Christianized circles, usually it is the man who is committing adultery, but I don't think it's any more devastating for the man or the woman. I think it's equally devastating.

Well, thank God for your husband. What an example of Christian manhood and Christian grace and mercy. It's just remarkable. And by the way, RJ, in White Plains, New York, you have won a free copy of The Excellent Wife, A Biblical Perspective.

This is the expanded edition, and this has been provided compliments of Focus Publishing in Minnesota, and it will be shipped to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com.

So keep your eye out in the mail for a package with a return address on the shipping label that says CVBBS .com. And we thank the wonderful folks at Focus Publishing for providing this book for you. And before I go on to an element in your book that I need to address before we run out of time, and I did tell you that two hours goes by fast, and already we're almost finished the one hour.

That's true.

But I definitely want to get to part three in your book, your four-part book, on a wife's submission, because it seems to be the most controversial and most difficult issue to accomplish agreement amongst brothers and sisters in Christ.

But before that, I do have a listener all the way in Slovenia, Joe, who has a question for you. Dear Brother Chris,. I'm very interested to know if Sister Martha is familiar with The Heart of the Problem by Henry Brandt and Kerry Skinner.

If she is, please ask her to give us her assessment of this biblical counseling mode. If she isn't familiar with this particular book and its authors, their focus in counseling is to help us to first and foremost confess and repent of our sin, whatever it may be, at the root of whatever issues that precipitate the need for counseling.

How important is it for a counselor to assist counselees in addressing sin scripturally? Thank you for taking my question and edifying us today.

Well, I'm not familiar with the book, so I cannot speak to that. I would say that it is super important to address sin issues and do it in love and do it in a kind way, but then give them the hope of how, by God's grace, they can repent and they can change.

That is what we're all about. Counseling...typical counselors, whether they're Christian or non-Christian, they tend to just kind of do reflective therapy. In other words, they just want to hear how you feel and just help you to just expand on that.

Well, how did that make you feel? What do you...and I had a young wife one time come for counseling. She had been to an integrationist kind of counselor for several times, and this counselee was in a very bad marriage.

Her husband was addicted to marijuana. He was not a believer. Her mother had mental...she had a bunch of little kids. She had a lot of problems, and to me...she heard about me, and so she tells me...before she even started telling me the problems, she said, I know how I feel.

It's horrible. I want to know what to do. Will you show me or tell me what to do? And I said, I think I can do that. But I did want to hear...I had to hear the story. I do care about her feelings, but the best way to help somebody is to see their...to get the beam out of their eye first and see their own sin taking 100 responsibility for their part in whatever the conflicts are and then to biblically know then how to...so yes, we do address people to repent.

We start with the gospel. I mean, people, they're not...the scriptures are not going to have the impact on them that they should if they're not saved, and in the deep south here, everybody, just about everybody thinks they are saved because they've walked down an aisle and cried and prayed a prayer, so they may be saved, but if there's not fruit in their life after that, then they really don't know the Lord.

So we just have to address all kinds of issues. I'm teaching doctrine to them. I'm teaching them about God. Because they go to church doesn't mean that they understand these things or have been really taught in a sound way.

Well, thank you, Jo, in Slovenia, and thank you for providing us with an American address where we are having Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship you a free copy of The Excellent Wife to the attention of your daughter in Atlanta, Georgia, or in the Atlanta, Georgia area, or in Georgia, and I also remind you of my request that you pay a visit to your daughter in Georgia when I am at the G3 Conference, so I get the chance to meet you for the first time face-to-face.

The G3 Conference is where, as I mentioned before, not only is Martha Peace speaking there, but our second guest today, Josh Bice, is speaking there, and a number of other folks, which I will be mentioning in a little bit, but if you go to the g3conference .com to register, that's g3conference .com, I hope you come out here to the United States, specifically to Georgia, so we can meet for the first time.

I will have an exhibitor's booth there, God willing, at the G3 Conference, so hope to see you. We only have about three minutes left, Martha, for our interview, so I'd like you to really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners, especially, as I said, in regard to the most controversial.

Aspect of your book, the submission of wives. Well, before I was saved, I was a devout feminist, and when I got saved, I started reading the Bible, and when I got, there's four different places in the New Testament that says the wife is to be submissive to her husband, and I was appalled, and God had given me such a heart for him that even though I knew that I was to be submissive to my husband, it didn't mean that I couldn't have an opinion or, you know, offer my opinion, but my desire to obey God and love him and please him overrode my, how I used to be, just, you know, everything had to be equal, but really, that had to mean I get my way, is what that meant.