About the Author
As I conclude this workbook, let me quote John 21:25,
“And there are also many other things…which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books which were written.”
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 Encouraging 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 of key 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:
Erin's Testimony was only the first of countless Restored Marriage Testimonies that we continue to publish in a series of By the Word of Their Testimony.
That continues to flow—as we continue to post Restored Marriage on our
English blog each Saturday and in several other languages who have their own.
"For nothing will be impossible with God." Luke 1:37