Hey, why don't you tell everybody one of your favorite Bible verses?
Okay, I will because it's Psalm 119, 105. And that verse says, Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path. I mean, what an awesome. Bible verse that reminds us how scripture lights the way in marriage and parenting and basically everything else. And we're super grateful to the Christian Standard Bible for supporting this podcast.
Yes, and just for their work in helping people read God's Word clearly and faithfully. To learn more, go to csbible.com. Uh It's impossible, I think, to have a healthy, solid, love-filled marriage without the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that's breaking us, causing us to surrender our rights and loving sacrificially.
So I think the key starts with our surrendering ourselves to God instead of you focusing on, Lord, change my spouse. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is Family Life today.
As parents, you pray your kids' whole life, and then when you send them off to college, you're hoping that their years at college will prepare them for life. Yeah, that it'll make a difference in their lives, that what they are gaining will be useful. We hope that they will follow Jesus and really discover his plan for their lives. Yeah, I remember driving out of Chicago and looking in the rearview mirror back at this city. And I thought, I just dropped my middle son off in the heart of Chicago.
Are we crazy? It was scary. And his little girlfriend's in the backseat, they were married before he graduated from college. But I remember just sobbing, and we are too. Five-hour drive from the child.
I remember thinking, Did we do the right thing? Me too. You know, we should have put him in a cornfield in a little community college. But he's in Chicago. But I'll never forget when we visited the campus.
And I don't know if it's still there. We'll find out today because we've got not only a former Moody Bible Institute student, but now the president of Moody Bible Institute, Mark Job, and his wife Dee in the studio. And when Austin and I visited, I can't remember where it was, but on sort of like a cement poster thing, it had 2 Timothy 2:15. Absolutely. Yes.
Yes. Still there. In the arch. In the arch. That's where it was.
In cement. I just remember looking up there, be a workman of the word, handle the word. And I remember looking up there, like, is this a sign from God? This is what I hope. We all hope as parents, your sons and daughters will be as adults.
And I remember thinking, this is part of their mission here. And he loved his experience at Moody Bible. And so it's really fun that this is what you part of what you do. It is. You also founded a church in Chicago.
How many years ago? 1986. You know why I know that? Because it's the same year that we got married. You got married and started a church the same year.
Yes. All right, tell us the story. This is pretty well. You're not just a president, you're still a past. I mean, it's just this amazing thing.
Let me say this: first of all, you were sobbing dropping off your son. The last time we had welcoming of new students, I Several mothers were sobbing, dropping off their children.
So I went up to one mother and I said, I know this is hard. I know you're probably. Holding back the tears, she looked at me and said, oh no, she said, we're super excited.
Now he's your problem.
So I said you could at least wait until you walked around the corner before you're giving high fives and cheering. You at least act like you're sorry.
So how did that go if you're getting married the same year you're starting a church? We started a church and it's not easy. No. And marriage isn't easy.
So how'd that go? How'd it go? You know, Mark, you did the right thing. You just asked your wife to answer. That's a good move.
Well, actually, Moody at that time only had a three-year degree. You had to go somewhere else for your bachelor's. And so Mark. Did you go to school there too? Yeah.
I didn't finish because someone had to support this man that was making $8,000 a year at the first church, at the church we started. And so I never finished, unfortunately. And so actually when we came, Mark was at Columbia International University finishing up his degree. I went there for a semester to get some more classes, came back, and six months later we got married. Correct?
I actually grew up in that church. Did you? Yes. So it was a long story, but I grew up there as a little girl.
So to see a church that I was raised in this neighborhood called Back of the Yards. This church that never grew to more than 40 people. And Mark said, I'll give you a commitment for three years. I'll stay. They said, Would you stay?
He said, I'll give you a commitment for three years. It was like a church plant because there were 18 people and they hadn't had a pastor, but it had been around for a while.
Now, is this the church that I read in your book, which, by the way, we didn't mention, but it's called What Now? How to Move Into Your Next Season. Is this the church you talked about at the beginning? Yes. So you heard that another guy was going to candidate for that church.
He pulled up, saw the building, and just drove away. Several. Really? Quite a few.
Well, you know, they could only, this was an inner city church in the southwest side of Chicago, literally drug dealers on the corner, drive-by shootings, and their salary package was $8,000 a year. No insurance, no parsonage. No insurance? No. And so.
Was the insurance carrier, but this is a neighborhood you grew up in. Yeah, did you want to get out of here?
Well, I had a real heart for the people.
Some of the same people were there that I did grow up with, and they were hurting. It was not a good situation. The pastor left, I'm very wounded. And I called a friend of ours at Dallas Theological and said, Mark's looking for a place to minister for the summer. Do you have any?
He said, Go back. It was called a mission. Go back to the mission. They need help right now. And that's we went to just help the mission for the summer.
And for $8,000.
Well, I was. 20 years old helping out. I still had a semester left in Bible college and After the summer, they said, would you Come and be the pastor here. And I'm like, well, I'm going to Spain. I plan on going to Spain.
And I said, you know what? Let's pray about it. I said, I will come and help you out for three years until you can get a real pastor. Think about it. I'm 20 years old at this time, so no experience.
They said, okay.
So that's how we started. But it started exploding with people coming to Christ.
So we just started seeing tons of people come to Jesus that were from all kinds of really difficult, challenging backgrounds. Let me ask you this. Like it starts exploding. What was your prayer at the very beginning? You have just nobody there.
You know, it's so little. I remember Mark saying he went to the church one day and he said, I'm just praying over the pews. Lord, you had 12 men. Give me 12 men. And he started praying and walking down the aisles, praying for God to fill those pews with some solid men that love the Lord.
You know what's funny, though? Years later, a reporter came in. And she was doing a segment on mega churches, and she was not a believer, but she walked in our service, and the first comment she made was. Wow, there's a lot of men in this church. And I thought, I'm glad you noticed, because I thought to myself, there was a time that I prayed, Lord, there were four men.
I prayed, Lord, give us men. And so I have a real passion. I speak at a lot of men's conferences as well because I think not only in urban America, but across the country, we have a lot of men that are absentee fathers that are not speaking into raising their children. And I think in urban America, sometimes you see it even more. And so we're happy now that we're known for having a lot of men.
That's super. Powerful. Yeah, it really is. And, you know, I know a little bit of your backstory with your dad or your family in Spain. Is that what you saw growing up?
I mean, you told me yesterday about your dad riding a horse or riding a donkey. It was a donkey. I thought it was a horse. It was a horse. It was a horse named Trompo.
Dad was kind of, he was a guy's guy, liked cars, liked to fix. He always had grease in his hands. He was saved at 18, was going to be an electrical mechanic in the steel mills in northern Indiana. But God radically got a hold of his life and he thought, okay, I want to go to the Amazon jungle, the most extreme thing that he could think of. Married my mother who was studying to be a nurse, and they took off for South America.
And there wasn't any opening or team in the Amazon jungles, but Chile. And so he would ride a horse up to the mountains of Chile to do Bible studies there. We lived in these real remote sort of villages, very rustic villages. And then he got on his BMW and he toured Mexico preaching. And then he had a bultaco that he rode through Spain looking for a city that had no gospel witness.
And we landed in a city of 140,000 people that had no evangelical Protestant church. And that's where I grew up in this city. But he was sort of this maverick pioneer. Let's go all out for Jesus. And my mother was just as hardy.
She's 85 years old, still lives in Spain. Really? Still lives in Spain. He's buried. Outside of the city, that he threw his life into reaching for Christ.
And there's a building built by the Spaniards, the first evangelical building in the city of Burgos. And there's a little plaque, a very small, inconspicuous plaque at the beginning of the entrance of the building that says, to Robert Job, it's in Spanish. Who loved us and taught us the ways of Jesus? Wow. Makes me emotional because.
I learned from my father What it was to First of all, be a follower of Jesus. be a man And love a woman. Wow. And yeah, as you were saying it, I was thinking, yeah, I don't know you that well, but I'm like, you are your father's son. And then when you describe the mom, I thought, I'm looking at me.
You are that person. Yeah. I mean, you guys are living a life very similar. I mean, your horse was a car, but you're driving into the streets of Chicago. That's a city, where a lot of people are running away from.
I don't want to be there. I'm doing everything I can to get out. And you're saying, we're going to go in and ask God for 12 men. You got me, Tieri. And so we had really a missionary heart.
I thought I was going to go to the mission field, and to stay in the U.S. felt a little bit like I'm compromising. To be honest with you, to buy a house. felt like Man, I'm caving in because my parents moved 14 times, several different countries. They went to my house because they felt God could take us and move us, and we want to pioneer.
So we were bred on that sort of spirit: you, you know, you're all in for Jesus, you live, you move, you throw yourself into the cause of the gospel. And they came to the States to help us for two years early on, and they came literally after. 30 years in Spain at that time, or 25 years, with an army backpack, a duffel bag each. That's all they had. This is after two years.
This is not my home. And they came and ministered, and they lived in a tiny two-room in our apartment building in a little basement place and loved people. And that's what people say about him. He loved God and loved people so, so much. Very simple.
What you said was he threw his life into Jesus. Yes, Christ. Yes. And I, as you said that, I thought, I'm Tierry too. How many other things are we throwing our lives into?
Things that don't matter. At the time, it feels so important. I'm thinking of sports. Yeah. I'm thinking of our houses and our retirement.
There's so many things that we think will bring us fulfillment and security. I thought about that'd be a good question to ask our kids. What do you think I'm throwing my life into? I asked that one time when our kids were younger and they said, don't go there. Don't even go.
We're throwing our lives into sports. But it made me think like, that's not what I want them to say. I want them to say, it's Jesus. And so that story is super inspiring. Your dad's still impacting all of us.
You shared that story. You talk about legacy. I mean, here's my thought.
So often Christian parents think that our answer to them to raise a godly Christ follower as an adult is get them in a Christian school, get them in a good church, which obviously great stuff. But I think you just showed it. It's you. Yes. Live on fire.
For Jesus, it'll just permit. And again, that doesn't guarantee anything. There's no magic formula. But man, watching you. Watch your parents and now you're Is that it?
Is that the most important thing? And my son just I just wrote him a really nice letter again. He's a great writer. Wrote Mark a letter this past year. And again, said, Dad, you know, you are who you are.
All the time. You're not one person at home and one person in the pulpit or the church. You are who you are because of the Lord, of course, but. Yeah, I think our kids have seen that. I come from a Different family.
Tell us about yours, Dee. My parents were Christians, and actually, we were raised in this little storefront church. My dad was from that neighborhood. There was a guy who came in from the suburbs and started this little Storefront thing for neighborhood kids. And so, long story short, he came to Christ, he raised us to go to church.
and to love God but He was a great hard worker, extremely hard worker, and a great father in the sense of loving his kids. He wasn't. A great husband.
So I saw a lot of turmoil and a lot of that at home, which was, you know, was just unhealthy for all of us. But. He made to go to church every Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesday prayer meeting, but I didn't really see it as lived out as Mark had seen it. Actually, when we came back from our honeymoon, I remember sitting at the table at Connie's Pizza and just saying, I, you know, just I really understand now what it means to truly be loved and accepted. And that was only a month later and after we got married.
But anyway, when did you jump all in with Jesus? It wasn't until my early 20s. You're already married or no? No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.
She was a strong woman.
So yeah, I worked. I moved out, lived on my own. What age did you move out of your house? 18. And lived on my own and had great jobs.
And yeah, wasn't going to let anyone hurt me. And, anyways, the Lord just got a hold of my life after I would break up. Just reached out to the Lord and said, Lord, I need you. And there's no relationship that's going to meet all my needs. And so I came to Christ.
And that shortly after we met in a church. Yeah. Sounds like you didn't date too long.
Well, we pretty much did. Oh, you did? Three years? Yeah. Because I was in college and I met her when I was 18, so we weren't quite ready to get married yet.
But the week that I graduated from college, I proposed to her. I don't know where I got this, but I had heard somewhere: you know, people use the term love too flippantly.
So while we were dating, I told her, the day that I say I love you is the day I'm going to ask you to marry me.
So I never said I loved you. Three years of dating. I like you a lot. A lot of workaround. Did you know he loved you?
Oh, yeah, you did. Oh, yeah. But he didn't say it. No, didn't say it.
So I said, Hey, let's go to there was a state capitol in Columbia, South Carolina. And I said, Hey, let's go take some pictures there.
So I actually. Had done mime. You performed a mime. I performed a mime. I wish I could tell you to do it right now.
And I had blown up like three balloons within each other. And there was a note in each other. And there was a bone.
So she would pop a balloon and a note would pop out, and she'd read it. And I would act out. And it was our story: how we met. You minded that. I mimed our story and then stopped until she popped the next balloon and then on my mouth the rest.
And then the final balloon, which is the small balloon, she popped it and it said, I love you. I love you. And she knew that I had told her the day I say I love you, I'm going to ask you to marry me.
So she looked, she. And then I got on my knees right there as a mime, and I asked her to marry me. That is super cool. That's super unique and cool. I thought mine was pretty good, but I'm right.
Wow, that was good. That's easy. He cut a hole in the Bible, and he was praying, Lord, when she opens this Bible. No, I made her open it. We were driving to a conference, and I literally turned to her and I said, Hey, you know, you know, when Jesus said, The two shall become one, and you leave mother and father, what do you think it means to become one?
She goes, That's a good question. I go, you know, my Bible's right here. It's in Mark 10. Open it up. Let's read it.
She goes, there's the ring. Oh, that's good. I sell it. I should read it. That's a little bit more spiritual than mine can.
Hey, let me just pause and say this. Our financial partners are the heartbeat of this ministry. And when you join this monthly giving community, you're not just donating, you're building something eternal. And we'd be so honored to have you on the journey with us. We really would.
So here's the question: Will you join us today? I hope your answer is yes. And if it is, go to familylifetoday.com. You can click the donate button right there and become a part of the monthly partner program. We talk about marriage a lot and we're going to get into your book tomorrow.
But if you have a listener and they're like, our marriage is struggling, you know, maybe the way you were in your family with your parents, like, you know, we love our kids. We're together because we love our kids, but our marriage is in turmoil. You guys have three kids that are walking with Jesus, your grandparents. You're doing a lot. But as you talk to people that are struggling in your marriage, What would you say to them?
I know that you can't give all the answers, but what are the things you would say? These are the foundational things that have made us strong. I would start by saying it starts with. Your walk with God. You can Look at your spouse and make a list of everything that's wrong with them.
And you can say, if they would respect me more, love me more, show me more, then I would in turn be. And so, so many times we wait because we say they have issues. And I think it starts with. Saying, okay, God, I'm going to be the person that you've called me to be. I have my imperfections.
I'm going to surrender to you. And God, give me the capacity and power to love my spouse with their imperfections just like you've loved me with my imperfections. And I think it starts there. It's impossible, I think, to have a healthy, solid, love-filled marriage without the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that's breaking us, causing us to surrender our rights and loving sacrificially.
So I think the key starts with our surrendering ourselves to God instead of you focusing on, Lord, change my spouse. I don't think we can get rid of that habit of seeing the negatives in our spouse unless we do surrender to Christ. He's the one that meets our needs, not our spouse. I've tried to get Dave to meet my needs. I tried.
And it just, and he's an amazing husband, but he's not enough to meet all of my needs the way Jesus is. When we were at Columbia, down at Columbia, it was just the Lord. I only went, I went to Moody and then I went to Columbia for a semester. There was a missionary there. Cash gobble just went to be with the Lord.
He had been. In Africa, for 25 years, he was only on campus that one semester in the grad school on a Saturday teaching for 10 weeks scriptural solutions for sensitive people. That's why the Lord brought me there. And for 10 weeks, I sat and wept as he taught about how we need to be filled with the love of God. And if we are not filled with the love of God.
He had different he had a teacup of Glass, a bucket, and a barrel on stage.
Well, Mark's a teacup person who wakes up in the morning, sun's shining, got a job, that's all he needs. And then we went all the way on the other side, and I'm a barrel.
So I have this insatiable need, God, you know, of the emotion of love. Fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me. And I felt like I was, you know, like, what is going on? Why am I feeling so insecure? We've been dating three years.
And what am I going to, what's going on here? And it was the Lord.
So when I talked to Mr. Godbold, he said, Dee, this is what you need to do. He sat down, both of us, and he said, Mark, and this is what you need to do. I had to find verses that spoke God's love to me to keep me filled. And Mark had to work on verses more of gentleness and kindness and meekness.
And just because he doesn't have as great a need, he has to ask the Lord to help him be sensitive to meet those needs that I have. Yeah. Is he that guy? Oh yeah. Most of the time.
And I'm sure.
So she had to learn: my identity is in you. I need to be filled. And Mark can't fill all those needs. And I had to learn. She's not wired like me.
There's a greater sensitivity that she has. And so I have to be more aware of her needs. And so we both had a learning curve. And again, we're 30-some years into our marriage and we're still learning, but it works very well. And to be honest, he said, She will make or break your ministry.
And I think. Just her understanding sensitivity of people as we minister to people has made us much more dynamic in ministry than I would have ever been trying to do ministry on my own. When we wrote our book, Vertical Marriage, you know, of all the passages that I feel God led us to to help people understand this concept, which is really what you just said, is Jeremiah 2. I know you're familiar with that, where he says, my people have committed two sins. They've forsaken me, the spring of living water.
That's sin number one. And they've dung their own cisterns, broken cisterns. And that's what we do. It's like, and essentially in that passage, like he's talking to people that had tasted the life of God, and they turn their back and they go looking. And I'm like, that's what we do in romantic relationships.
Oh, this woman, this amount of money, this car. And he's like, you don't understand. They're going to leak. It's never going to fill. It's just what you said.
It's just. And he says there's inevitable hurts. There's going to be natural bombs. People are gonna knock your containers over. Just refuel on who you are in Christ, refuel on His love for you.
And so, every day you do this, I do too. Every day, I'm resurrending it. Lord, I can't do it apart from you. Uh It's great to have Mark and De Job on today, and Mark's book is called What Now? How to Move Into Your Next Season.
And you can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com. A lot of people don't know this, but we're on YouTube. I love watching YouTube clips. You get a lot more out of it, I think, when you're watching TV. And the next generation's probably gonna watch it rather than just listen to it.
So you can do either or, but if you wanna watch and enjoy it, youtube.com slash family life. Just go to youtube.com slash familylife. Or if you're a big YouTube person, just go to YouTube and type in Family Life. One word. I put three words on there and it still worked.
Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry. celebrating fifty years of God's faithfulness as marriages grow stronger and families flourish in Him. Yeah.
