Mark Darling – Story 139

I first started coming to the Rock in Sept. 2000 after I moved to the twin cities for my college internship.  I was exactly the kind of person that Mark had started The Rock for… a young single who didn’t have a real relationship with God and had quit going to church when I started college.  Not too long after that, Mark did a series titled “Healing the Father Wound”.  I knew that I had been hurt emotionally by my father, but I didn’t understand how exactly it had been affecting my life or what to do about it.  Mark’s message was powerful and the Lord used it to give me insight into my father’s actions, see how my “father wound” was affecting my own actions, and also to ultimately forgive my father!  Another very important area that Mark’s message brought to light was how my father wound had drastically changed my perspective of marriage.  All that I knew about marriage was what I had seen in my own parents.  As a child, I had thought that my parents were happily married and that that would never change.  As a teenager, I learned that people can lie and change and that marriages don’t last forever when the partners are making up their own rules to live by.  Without realizing it, I had become an adult who was terrified of committing to marriage!  Mark’s teachings showed me that God never changes and that He desires for us to have happy life-long marriages.  Dirk was there at The Rock learning these same truths.  And now we both know that each other is committed to doing things God’s ways and that God’s ways are perfect and never change!  We don’t have to figure out how to make marriage work, because God has already done that for us!  Because of that I have never once in my 12 years of marriage worried that I would want to leave my husband or that he would want to leave me!  The same thing applies to parenting.  I knew very little from my own experience about how to be a good parent and knew plenty about how not to be one!  Mark’s teachings once again showed me that God already has it figured out and that if we follow his plans, that we will succeed with our children!  Mark and Kathy have both helped me to understand what the Bible says about parenting and given me so much practical wisdom.  I know I can trust their guidance because they have successfully raised their own children to become godly adults and because they have never shied away from speaking the truth about what the Bible says.  Being responsible for the teaching, training, and discipling of four of God’s little creations is the biggest and most important responsibility I will ever have.  I am so thankful that Dirk and I don’t have to figure it out through trial and error on our own!  Thank you so much, Mark and Kathy!

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