Chris and Steph were high school, mission trip sweethearts who met and began falling in love on a 13-hour road trip from Nashville to Pennsylvania.
While dating through high school and marrying in college, they were volunteer worship leaders and served together in a variety of ways.
However, things started to change when Chris entered a season of doubt that many people walk through on their faith journey.
Eventually, Chris was spending all night out on Saturdays with friends drinking and “partaking” in a variety of substances, then waking up Sunday mornings and leading worship to a God he no longer believed in… but no one could know, not even Stephanie.
This selfish love and sin ended their marriage, but God still had more in store for the pair.
Something truly unbelievable happened. Chris ignored it at first, but a prompting from God continued to grow so loud in his heart that it was inescapable. God was asking Chris to pursue Stephanie again.
"Thankfully, I never completely closed the door off to God because in that brokenness, in that at the bottom, at the very bottom is where God kind of scooped me up and cared for me and didn't ask me to do anything but be honest and form a relationship with him," said Chris. "A real relationship that I hadn't had for as long as I could remember."
It took some time for Stephanie to come around and to trust again, but with plenty of prayer and some counselling, Stephanie was able to give Chris a second chance.
"After that season, we came together with a counsellor, and everybody was in agreement that if we wanted to pursue this again, we should go for it," Steph explained.
"We believe in a God who redeems and restores. So we went on our second first date, and then within a few months, we were remarried in a little ceremony with just our family."
Today, Chris and Stephanie are part of a band that they formed called Out of the Dust. They are using this as an opportunity to tell the story of God’s grace in their lives and how that saved and transformed their marriage and each of them individually.
Today on Connections, Chris and Stephanie share their love story and how they are using their experience to help others in similar situations.