HEALING
FOR A BROKEN MARRIAGE

Topics: Accepting Christ; Adultery; Awakenings; Beginnings; Change; Conversion; Desperation; Invitation; Reconciliation; Repentance; Restoration; Salvation; Worry

References: Isaiah 57:18; Joel 2:32; Romans 6:20–23; 2 Corinthians 7:9–10; Ephesians 5:8–10; Titus 3:3; 1 Peter 3:1–2

Shawna Pilat’s husband still wasn’t home from his Saturday night partying. “It was very common for Rick to be out all night. I always knew there was unfaithfulness,” said Shawna, who was home with her three-year-old son. “That bothered me, naturally, but I was also worried that Rick was going to turn up some place dead. And that morning I was at the end of my rope.”

As Shawna angrily washed dishes in the kitchen, she noticed a man speaking on television. He was funny and warm, and seemed to be speaking to her. “I felt something come over me that I can’t explain,” she remembers. “I couldn’t quit crying. At the end of the program, it said, ‘Join us,’ and it gave the name of a church in Winnipeg. I couldn’t get my son dressed fast enough.”

On the way to the church, Shawna had one purpose in mind: getting emotionally strong enough to kick Rick out. But God had a surprise for her.

At the end of the message, the pastor invited people to give their lives to Christ. Shawna raised her hand. Three weeks later, Rick asked if he could join her at church.

After four or five weeks of attending church with his wife, Rick recognized his need for Christ. Still, the following months weren’t easy. “I was going to church and wanting to do right, but I kept doing wrong,” he said. It wasn’t until a Promise Keepers seminar that he finally came to understand the importance of repentance and accepting the forgiveness God offers through Jesus Christ. That day Rick went home and told his wife, “I can be the husband you need me to be now.”

Rick and Shawna’s lives changed that day. They became active in their church and now serve as Promise Keepers volunteers who share the hope of God’s restoration and forgiveness with struggling couples. “When I think of how Jesus can change people—no matter how deep in sin they are—that overwhelms me,” Rick says. “If he did it for us, he can do it for anybody.”

—Kristen Burke, “Winnipeg Couple Set Free,” Decision (December 2006)