About the Author
Erin Thiele is a wife and mother of four boys, Dallas, Axel,
Easton, and Cooper, and three girls, Tyler, Tara, and Macy. Her stand for
marriage was founded on the Rock of God’s Word during her struggle to restore
her own marriage; Erin’s husband left her for another woman and eventually
divorced her. Two years later her husband returned and their marriage was
miraculously restored!
Restore Ministries began when Erin searched every
denomination in her area but was unable to find the help that she needed. How God Can
and Will Restore Your Marriage
was written to help those women the Lord sent to her. A Wise Women was written as the Lord led her to prepare her home
for her husband’s return. Five years later How
God Will Restore Your Marriage: There’s Healing after Broken Vows and A Wise Man were written for men. This
couple’s experience is a powerful testimony to God’s promises and His
faithfulness.
If you have access to the
Internet, be sure to visit Restore Ministries Encouaging Women website at:
RMIEW.com. On our website you’ll be able to read powerful testimonies of
restored marriages, join our Restoration Fellowship, and find out more about
our other resources such as a Wise Woman Bible Studies and other Online Courses
and in our bookstore EncouragingBookstore.com
If you would like to be trained how to minister, please
visit our website to find out more about RMIOU “Restore Ministries International
Online University” RMIOU.com
The Testimony of How God
Restored Our Marriage
by
Dan Thiele
Dan would like to share the testimony of the
restoration of our marriage since the Bible says in Revelation 12:10-11, “Now
the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of
His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who
accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the
blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not
love their life even to death.”
Our marriage was dead
but by His shed blood it was made alive. It is our hope and prayer that our
testimony will help you or someone you know to overcome the evil one. We give
God all the glory for what He has done in our lives.
In January of 1989, I left Erin for another woman. However, the Lord
gave Erin the heart and endurance to believe God could restore our marriage. It
was during this fiery trial that Erin became a new woman. She studied the Bible
concerning marriage and began to apply the principles in her life. She never
told me, I could just see it.
Like the three youths who were thrown into the fiery furnace, Erin too
became “loosed” of things in her life that had her “bound.” She also found
herself walking with another, her precious Lord. (See Daniel 3:25.)
Everyone, even the most respected pastors in our city, told Erin that
it was hopeless to fight against my desire to leave her and be with another
woman. But Erin found in God’s Word that “nothing is impossible with God”!
(Luke 1:37) It was during this time that she founded Restore Ministries to help
other women who also wanted their
marriages restored.
That’s when Erin began her ministry by simply sharing with each of them
the Scriptures the Lord had shown her. Soon there were too many women to help
individually, so she began to type out the Bible references on an old
typewriter her mom gave her. Some of the women who came to her meetings had
never held a Bible in their hands, so Erin began to type out entire verses and
then make copies to minister to these hurting and abandoned women.
However, the more Erin helped other women, the worse her situation
became. Her fiery furnace was turned up when I actually divorced her in October
of 1990 mainly because the other woman paid for it. However, even after this I
saw she had such a peace, the peace she needed to not fight or contest the
divorce, but to trust in her Lord. Undaunted, Erin continued to minister to
other women by sharing more of the Word of God. She later told me that she
promised the Lord that if He would restore her marriage to the man she loved,
me, she would devote her entire life to helping women in marriage crises. He
did and she did.
Our marriage was miraculously restored a large part due to Erin’s
obedience to not obtain an attorney. God delivered me from my mistake (that I
actually immediately regretted once it was final) when it was discovered that
even though the judge had granted the divorce on October 30, the papers that
had been filed by my attorney had to be overturned due to an error in the
paperwork! This, to me, was the first sign from God that He would “somehow”
deliver me from the cords that had me bound to the adulteress. Had Erin had an
attorney, or if she had fought me, the divorce would not have been overturned
and I would never have come back.
Erin “hoped against all hope” (one of her favorite scriptures Rom.
4:18) and received her miracle on January 29, 1991 at 11:10 p.m. when I finally
returned home to Erin and our four children. This was after my adultery, and
after I divorced her, just a little over two years after I left her and more
than a year after she began to minister to other women.
The
Beginning of Restore Ministries International
Over the next five years, the
Lord gave us both the desires of our hearts and blessed us with three more
“restoration” babies as Erin continued to minister to other women. In 1996 the
first version of How God Can and Will
Restore Your Marriage was published locally and sent around the world. This
book was made up key of chapters taken out of A Wise Woman Builds Her House: By A FOOL Who Tore Hers Down with Her Own
Hands that Erin put together. These were simply the lessons she wrote for
her Restoration Fellowship that began when I was gone and continued every week
for years after I came back home.
That’s when thousands of requests for her book started coming in to our
ministry Restore Ministries International and our publishers from all over the
U.S. and from abroad.
Many books were sent to prisons all over the U.S. Men wrote saying they
were so blessed and began experiencing restored marriages after reading the
restoration book for women! That’s when Erin was led to write a version for
men. Later she wrote a manual for men, A
Wise Man Builds upon a Rock: By A FOOL Who Built on Sinking Sand to
accompany the men’s restoration book.
Today, through RMI "Restore Ministries International" we now
minister to men and women primarily over the Internet and through books, and
videos. In 2005 RMI was divided into two ministries: Encouraging Women and
Encouraging Men.
I have seen in my life, and in so many people we have helped, that God
is more than able to heal and save any marriage! I encourage you to read,
reread and read over again the books to learn the truth that will save your
marriage and also all the testimonies to build your faith so you too will
BELIEVE the Lord’s promises about restoring your marriage!
When you read the testimonies mark all the “seemingly” impossible
situations that are similar to yours; but please, don’t focus on how your
situation is different. Of course it is because God is looking, actually
“roaming to and fro throughout the WHOLE earth, looking for those whose hearts
are completely His. To STRONGLY support you” (2 Chronicles 16:9) to give you a
testimony that is different, unique and “seemingly” impossible if it weren’t
for GOD to help someone else.
Our first FAITH BUILDING By the
Word of Their Testimony book has both first person and third person
testimonies. Before we had a place to send in Praise Reports to our website, we
received restored marriage testimonies through many different sources. All of
us love to hear it right from the person’s own lips, so now we have first
person testimonies in most of our other testimonies books. Whether in first or
third person, all these testimonies give “glory to God”!
Erin told me that what got her through the divorce I filed against her
(because of the fool I was) that her friend Sue (whom I once met), Sue’s
husband told Erin, “If you are loving your husband like Sue loved me, and you
are following all same things that Sue did with me—your marriage will be
restored too. And one more thing, even if he says he doesn’t love you, he
does.”
Let me say the same thing to each of you. If you follow what Erin
teaches in her books and take to heart what she says in her videos, like
letting your husband go (because that got my attention). And if you obtain the
same quiet and submissiveness that I saw Erin had (and that I have seen in so
many women who came to our ministry that now have a restored marriage). Then
there is no doubt that your husband will come home too. And if he told you he
doesn’t love you no matter what he says, he does. Just follow the Lord and fall
in love with Him too and don’t get in the way of what God is doing. It took a
lot for me to see the mistakes I made and the same is true for your husband.
One last thing before I end. Erin never heard of one marriage that was
restored before she helped Sue and saw hers restored. Yet we get so many women
who have all the hundreds of restored marriage testimonies from our books and
posted on our site. And they have all the things Erin (and Sue) had to search
for in their bibles (that are now in her books, videos and in our online
lessons) and they still complain that their situations are too difficult. I
don’t know how Erin did it, but I know that if you want what God wants to give
you (and save your husband from where he’s headed) then do it God’s way by faith.
I never
gave Erin a hint I would ever come back, but she looked to the Lord and became
radiant.
~ Dan
“They looked to
Him and were radiant, and their faces will never be ashamed”—Psalm 34:5
Erin
has written other books with her distinctive style of using the Scriptures to
minister to the brokenhearted and the spiritual captives. “He sent His Word and healed them, and delivered
them from their destructions” (Ps. 107:20). You will find all of her books on
one of the RMI websites: