Forgiving Forward officially started in March 2009, yet in reality it started when Toni and I were in college. The church we attended together hosted Dr. Bruce Wilkinson at the Sunday morning service. We were engaged at the time and actively planning our future together. We were so moved by the message that we went to the altar together and poured our heart out to God, asking that He would use us together in such a way that everyone would know that He did it. A month later, we broke off our engagement, which we now know was the beginning of our training for Forgiving Forward.

Later that summer, after God did work on both of our hearts, Toni and I were reconciled! We were married five months after our original wedding day. Yet over the course of many years, we suffered deep wounds and very difficult circumstances. It took a crisis, a new friend, and a personal retreat in a borrowed lake house for me to choose to forgive deep wounds that had tormented me over the years.

When I returned home, I told Toni about what God had done in my heart. We gathered the entire family together and spent eleven hours in one day forgiving old wounds. It was the most transformative day in our family’s history.

From that day on, our life has never been the same as God began to answer our Jabez prayer.

We moved away from pastoring a local church and began crafting the Forgiving Forward message.