You’ve burnt the ships.

Eyes forward. No looking back. There’s only the future. The actual future. Not dreams or fantasies about what could have been. No alternate timelines where things turned out different.

You’ve taken the way of difficulty.

You’ve counted the cost. You walked around, surveyed the land, read the maps, did the research, made an inventory, stocked the supplies. No way to go but forward. The mountain must be climbed. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to hurt, actually. You know you’re going to want to give up and mentally prepared for when that time comes.

You’ve prayed. You’re ready to plow. It’s time to put in the work. It’s time to move, to start the journey, to begin building, to put the pieces back together. Your compass is set for magnetic north.

Now what?

Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, you can start building on the Rock instead of on a foundation of sand (Matthew 7).

That’s going to take some new moves. It’s time to make the mutual descent.

Mutual descent is not becoming a doormat. It’s choosing humility, choosing to think of the other person higher than yourself, and dying to self to love them. Do you remember the triangle diagram in Burn the Ships? The closer a husband and wife get to Christ, the closer they are to each other. If there’s distance between a husband and wife, you can guarantee at least one of them is distant to Christ, if not both.

I say this with all love and affection for you, reader, this may be a heart check issue.

In any complex relationship, which includes but is not exclusive to marriage, there is the opportunity for many clashes. Methods, desires, temptations, strengths, weaknesses, faith, failures, saintliness and sinfulness. We really are a mixed bag.

And while Christ died while we were still sinners (Romans 7:5-9) - who would do such a thing? - Scripture also tells us that we are new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), and it’s time for us to start living like rivers of living water are flowing through our veins.

One of the reasons I’ve been sharing sections of Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices in the Below Deck: Deep Dives is because it’s important to name what’s unnamed, make visible the invisible, drag the worm of night out into the burning light of dawn. We must know what we’re fighting.

We must fight the temptation to grow cold. To go numb. To go silent. To go quiet. To go distant. To go inward. To turn our backs. To utter under our breath. To not speak up until just after we’ve passed the crossroads. It’s easy to withhold interest. It’s easy to turn your back. It’s easy to frame silence as needing your space. It doesn’t cost much to give the white washed tomb of compliance and withhold the warm beating heart of commitment. The temptation is to fight the other person, and by gum we’re going to let them have it so they know just how much they let us down. These are the temptations we must fight.

How do we fight this?

If you’ve decided to burn the ships, (no looking back, remember?), creating distance isn’t an option for you. The only way forward is toward.

How do you handle bids for connection, care, provision and service?

Do you withdraw and pull away, or do you draw close and pull in?

Do you look for the good and then express praise and gratitude, or do you only see the bad and express contempt and resentment?

Are you closing the gap or creating a gap? Don’t be too quick to let yourself off the hook here. Ok, maybe the other person didn’t get it right. Maybe they overstepped. Maybe they didn’t communicate well or were too impatient or whatever. They have responsibility, too, but did your response close the gap or add to it?

Faithfulness looks like continual movement towards each other. It’s taking ownership that you have a part to play in the relationship, and regardless of how the other person deserves it or does/doesn’t respond to you, love looks like closing the distance instead of widening the wound.

Relational distance doesn’t usually occur with bombastic explosions and firefights. It begins with the quiet cold shoulder, the silent mutiny, the refusal deep down in your heart to align in vision and mission. That distance may feel safe in the moment, but the end of the journey is erosion of trust and relational breakdown.

When the breakdown begins and the Devil is crouching at our door seeking to devour us (1 Peter 5:8) with whispers of temptation to pull away. What flows out of our hearts is the moment of truth. Rivers of life. Peace making mercy. Humble grace. Black-hearted resentment. White hot contempt. Dividing anger, which is the root of murder (Matthew 5:21-24). I have to ask, do new creations in Christ murder one another?

You can even be in disagreement with each other and still maintain a posture toward the other. Nobody likes a “yes man” or “yes ma’am.” It’s fully fine to say, “I love you more than anything but I totally disagree with you. I’m committed to you, but we have to work through this and find a way forward where we go together and not apart.” Drawing together doesn’t mean there’s an absence of conflict. Conflict isn’t even necessarily bad. It gets things out in the open to be dealt with. What’s destructive is when we allow conflict to break us apart like ice floes drifting separate ways into open water. Even worse, those fractures may be happening beneath our feet, but for fear of conflict and wanting to avoid it, we say nothing even as the cracks in the ice open up beneath us to swallow us whole. Think about directional unity, not always being in agreement.

When the other person is interested, say “So am I.” Not fake interest where you only say it’s interesting but aren’t actually interested. When the other person pursues, accept the pursuit. When the other person draws near, pull in the embrace. When one says “Let’s go!” lean in and say “When are we leaving?!”

Your relationship is a dance, and even if it’s clumsy, it’s better to dance a jig with two left feet in merriment than to stand to the side with pride and prejudice. Turn down the early on Darcy and start Fezziwig-maxing.

I saw this come up on Facebook and I think it’s a practical way of what I’m talking about. This is what embracing the dance looks like.

We will never draw near to one another if we are on the high horse of pride. “How dare they offend me?!” I don’t know how they dared, to be honest. Maybe it was intentional, maybe there’s something black in their hearts, maybe they just have a complete lack of awareness. I don’t know.

I can assume the other’s motive and use that assumption to rationalize pulling away, or I can draw near to a sinner and love them with love and affection and kindness they didn’t deserve. Maybe your kindness, like Christ’s, will lead them to repentance (Romans 2:3-5).

Remember, this is not even exclusive to marriage, though it definitely includes it.

Today is the day to draw near. First to Christ, then to the other person.

It takes humility to accept the journey of mutual descent. You have to count another person as more important than yourself.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition  or conceit,  but in humility  consider others as more important  than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests,  but rather to the interests of others. ” ‭‭Philippians‬ ‭2‬:‭3‬-‭4‬ ‭CSB‬

Can you imagine what kind of world we’d live in if every human being embodied the virtue of mutual descent? If we laid down our pride, our mutiny against our Creator because we don’t like being told what to do, even if His wisdom is for our good and His glory?

God moved towards us before we ever moved toward Him.

We can imitate that. We can be the answers to our own prayers and embody the love of God to another person right next to us. You can literally be the hands and feet of Jesus, and go to your nearest neighbor.

Today, make some commitments.

When you could quietly retreat, take a step closer.

When you could be distant, touch instead.

When you could make an assumption, take curious interest.

These small acts of drawing near can compound into relational wealth you could not begin to dream of, but it takes action. It takes commitment. It takes repentance and asking forgiveness where you’ve pulled away instead of drawn near. It takes burning the ships. It takes mutual descent.

Whatever moment comes to you today, each day, where you want to pull away, do the opposite. Step closer.

Who knows what blessing the Lord may bring?

As they say, if you want to walk on water, you’ve gotta get out of the boat. Today is the day to take a step of faith.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

PS: If you haven’t already ordered it, please check out my first book, Pray Then Plow: Practical Steps For Men Who Won’t Give Up.

Ryan and Selena Fredrick have been creating content at Fierce Marriage for well over a decade, and I feel like over the last year or so they have really dialed it in.

So much of online influencer and content creator culture is filled with emotionally charged rhetoric tuned for knee jerk response. I haven’t seen that from Ryan and Selena.

For this week’s deep dive, I want to share a couple video episodes of their Fierce Marriage podcast.

Plus, they even have a few occasions of nautical jargon any readers of this newsletter should now be familiar with. I feel totally justified in my metaphor use.

These two episodes do have a few items that require a high level of trust between the husband and wife. Trust in the Lord leading to trust in each other is a level I recognize not every couple, not even every Christian couple, has. If you find anything you especially balk at, please remember that 1) your righteousness and identity are in Christ, not your works, 2) while the ways and behaviors are not all law, use them as a lighthouse to show you where darkness has invaded your trust with the Lord and your spouse.

When a Husband Forsakes His Wife - A Biblical Response

When a Wife Struggles to Honor Her Husband - a Biblical Response