Sarah’s Testimonial: 

The Authentic Love Marriage course was not what I expected.  I went into this thinking we’d learn new techniques for how to fight/disagree, pointers of how to listen and talk to each other, how to get your spouse to show you love in ways you wanted to be loved.  I figured it’d be similar to most other things I’ve read but with a hopefully better take, a better spin … something that worked or lasted!

Going into the course with my husband, our marriage was good … we had no major problems but always little things that can be improved and so I wasn’t looking for anything to fix or save my marriage … I was looking for pointers to take a good/great marriage and make it even better.  Who knows, maybe I was even looking for things so that when my husband “misbehaved” I could point back to the classes and tell him he’s wrong because in the class we learned …

Instead, what I got was much better.  I got to realize how much the state of your own heart affects your marriage.  Instead, I got to learn about the God socket in our heart … and I finally got to learn that for a lot of things, I had my husband in that spot of my heart reserved for God.  I learned I was expecting my husband to love me in ways only God can … that I would never be 100% satisfied because it was literally impossible for my husband to live up to the expectations, I had for him.  I got to work on my own heart issues and see how they negatively affected things in my life and my marriage.  I got relief from finally realizing how much God wants to be involved in our lives … from the everyday simple things to the major things.  How much we can unload onto God and Trust Him.  How the closer I can transform my heart to be like Christ’s (through God, can’t transform on my own) the better I’ll be able to love my husband. 

After completely this course is my heart fully transformed, no … but it’s transforming. Do I still have bad days where I say things I regret or expect too much from my husband, yes … but not as many and I realize that I am doing it now.

I’m very happy we chose to do this course and use the journals that offered additional prayers and questions to reflect on.

Jeremy’s Testimonial:

The Authentic Love Marriage Course helped me to understand in a way other books and courses have not, that I was trying to fill a need in my heart by looking to someone or something other than God.  Setting expectations on others that only God can fulfill, then being upset with them or myself when they could not be met.  John and Beth laid out quite plainly what ways we can reshape our views on life to better follow the heart of the Lord and not one that is tainted by sin.  Through the talks and readings, I came to find that concepts such as humility were not nearly as attained as I thought they might have been and that true forgiveness can be immensely freeing for both body and the soul.  It gave me a strong desire both try to be a better person to others but also to myself and especially my spouse.  I went in with a higher expectation seeing how well the forgiveness course had helped my spouse and can honestly say that not only did I find it met what I expected but caused me to rethink how I viewed the concept as well.