‘As long as you’re still alive there is hope, even if you’re barely alive…”
Book Intro:
Hello, please note this book is based on a previous book we wrote under the title The Last Breakup.
If you are in a dark place or seeking to help others in a dark place, we hope this book can help you find the light. It is about learning how to find healing, peace, and complete revival of soul—even if your life is in complete shambles—by humbly seeking and surrendering to the Truth, (the truth about yourself and the truth about God in Christ), surrendering to it, and overcoming heartbreak and trials with faith the size of a mustard seed.
The title of this book could be Healing Starts with Humility, because that’s what surrender really is: humility to be a student and seek the Truth, listen to it, follow it, and ultimately put your faith in it. Pride is the way of all sorts of death. Humility is the way to healing, new Life, and hope. That’s the main theme of this book and what we hope everyone gets out of it.
Though this story is told in the context of a broken marriage and miraculous restoration, it is not primarily about how our human marriage was healed; it’s primarily about how our broken relationship with God was healed and how our reconciliation with Him through Jesus led to our reconciliation with each other.
Hence, we don’t share our marriage drama and conversations to teach people what not to do in marriage and how to have a great marriage (though the book certainly does that for those seeking to have a great marriage); we share them to show how our learnings about what we did wrong in marriage helped us discover what we had done wrong in LIFE, namely: NOT PUTTING GOD FIRST.
Therefore, we pray that our brutal (and embarrassing) confessions about how our pride and dislike of correction blocked us from finding the truth will help others see that surrender to Biblical truth and wise counsel is the path out of darkness to the healing Light in Jesus Christ.
This book is us testifying firsthand the unfathomable resurrection POWER of Jesus Christ to heal and revive even the most broken people, wash them clean of their sins, clear their consciences, lift the heavy burdens of self-sufficiency off their backs, give them sight to see and know God’s love, and be made free by it.
We want to be clear: we are not suggesting marriage is the path to healing and wholeness. We found healing and wholeness by hearing the Truth about God’s love in Jesus Christ and surrendering to it—when we were apart. God’s love is what saved us and our marriage. This book is not a glorification of human marriage; it is a glorification of the power of God’s love in Christ to heal and revive surrendered hearts and give them completely new life and unbreakable hope.
So, while there is a lot of discussion about Christian marriage and the roles of husband and wife in a Christian marriage, there is much more testimony about the many ways both Mark and Rebecca were deceived in general and how their pride not only prevented them from having a loving and harmonious marriage, but prevented them from being healed from the wounds of their childhood and other wounds that had resulted in the building of pride walls that blocked them from seeing the light and being healed.
This testimony is unique in the respect that not only does it show how two people were blessed with faith and healed, it also shows how God brought new people into their lives to tell them the truth in love, encourage them, and give them hope and direction when they were all alone, lost, and confused.
We share all the Biblical wisdom we received from the wise and loving people we met, first with the hope that their wisdom also helps you, and second to show that God meets where you are with whomever He chooses, so it’s important to keep your heart open to any possibility.
The every-day people who told us the truth in love and led us to the Light for healing proves that God uses the simple and lowly, even non-believers, to lead us to Him. You can witness the same phenomena in the book A Christ for Christ.
The moral of the story is that humility (from the Latin root word humilis, which means low hanging cloud) is absolutely critical in healing. The world teaches that when we are weak and broken we should be strong and turn to worldly remedies, but that is exactly what we had been doing to save ourselves and our marriage and failing at every turn. In fact, as you will see, trying to be strong was what nearly crushed us to death.
Only after we are humbled and humble ourselves do we learn the only way we can gain true strength to endure through our trials and find healing is by actually confessing our weakness, gaining our strength in Christ, and being good and faithful students and servants. Rebecca learns this from wise counselors at her church, Mark learns it through the metaphor of music by a wise piano teacher and Christian minister.
Hence this is also a story of how God knocked two prideful warriors off their high horses and lovingly—through the love and wisdom of friends he sent—showed Mark that he wasn’t the warrior he thought he was (no man is) and showed Rebecca that she wasn’t the angel she thought she was (no woman is).
All in all, true to God’s instruction in Psalms 107:2, this book is our way of giving thanks to the Lord, proving that his love endures forever, and sharing with you how he rescued both of us out of the hand of darkness and gave us new and unbreakable life, love, and hope that endures forever though Jesus.
Our sincere hope is that you will hear our message about Christ and it will cause you to seek Him and find the healing and redemption your weary soul longs for. We hope many people will read our story and witness what kind of miracles are possible with faith in God the size of a mustard seed, so they too can move mountains of pain, heartbreak, pride, and confusion and be healed and made whole like we have been healed and made whole.
In this new version of our book, we have also simplified key learnings at the end of every chapter and left space for you to add your own. We consider this book a learning journey and hope many people can learn from both our mistakes and the wisdom we have gained.
We pray through this testimony many people see that it is not marriage or anything of this world that fills the void, but only the love of God. We pray our testimony is clear: God’s love is all powerful to heal and make you whole, and when God’s love is the glue that holds love together it is a cord of three strands that can never be broken. See Leviticus 1:17; Mark 10:9; John 10:27; Romans 8:38; Revelation 1:17
“They overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimonies.” Revelation 12:11
May our testimony help you overcome.
Mark and Rebecca, in the Lord
Our prayer for you:
We pray the Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. Ephesians 1:17