Faith that Goes the Distance: Mark and Dee Jobe

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Faith that Goes the Distance

Guests:Mark and Dee Jobe

From the series:Bold Steps (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:July 23, 2026

Mark (00:04):

It’s impossible, I think, to have a healthy, solid, love-filled marriage without the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that’s breaking us, causing us to surrender our rights and loving sacrificially. So I think the key starts with our surrendering ourselves to God instead of you focusing on, “Lord, change my spouse.”

Ann (00:31):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave (00:38):

And I’m Dave Wilson and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

As parents, you pray your kid’s whole life and then when you send them off to college, you’re hoping that their years at college will prepare them for life.

Ann (01:01):

Yeah. That it will make a difference in their lives, that what they are gaining will be useful. We hope that they will follow Jesus and really discover his plan for their lives.

Dave (01:10):

Yeah. I remember driving out of Chicago and looking in the rear-view mirror back at this city.

Ann:

This gigantic—

Dave:

I just dropped my middle son off in the heart of Chicago. Are we crazy? It was scary. And his little girlfriend’s in the backseat—they were married before he graduated from college—but I remember—

Ann:

And she’s sobbing.

Dave:

She’s sobbing, her just sobbing, and we are too.

Ann:

It’s five-hour drive from the house.

Dave:

I remember thinking, “Did we do the right thing?”

Ann (01:41):

Me too.

Dave (01:42):

We should have put him in a cornfield in a little community college, but he’s in Chicago. But I’ll never forget when we visited the campus, and I don’t know if it’s still there. We’ll find out today because we’ve got not only a former Moody Bible Institute student, but now the President of Moody Bible Institute, Mark Jobe and his wife Dee in the studio. And when Austin and I visited, I can’t remember where it was, but on sort of like a cement post or thing, it had 2 Timothy 2:15.

Mark (02:11):

Absolutely. It’s still there.

Dee:

Yes, in the arch.

Mark:

—in the arch.

Dave (02:15):

That’s where it was?

Mark (02:15):

—in cement.

Dave (02:17):

I just remember—

Mark (02:17):

The verse is right there.

Dave (02:18):

—looking up there, “Be a workman of the Word, handle the Word.” And I remember looking up there like, “Is this a sign from God? This is what I hope.” We all hope as parents, your sons and daughters will be as adults. And I remember thinking, “This is part of their mission here.”

Ann (02:33):

And he loved his experience at Moody Bible. And so it’s really fun that this is part of what you do. It is. You also founded a church in Chicago how many years ago?

Mark (02:45):

1986. You know why I know that? Because it’s the same year that we got married.

Dave (02:51):

You got married and started a church the same year.

Dee:

Yes.

Dave (02:54):

All right. Tell us this story.

Ann:

Yes, even how did you meet?

Dave:

You’re not just a president, you’re still past—I mean, it’s just this amazing life.

Mark (03:00):

Let me say this first of all; you were sobbing dropping off your son. The last time we had welcoming of new students, several mothers were sobbing, dropping off their children. So I went up to one mother and I said, I know this is hard. I know you’re probably holding back the tears. She looked at me and said, “Oh no.” She said, “We’re super excited. Now he’s your problem.” So I said, “You could at least wait until you walked around the corner before you’re giving high fives and cheering. You at least act like you’re sorry.”

Dave (03:38):

So how did that go if you’re getting married, the same year you’re starting a church? We started a church and it’s not easy.

Dee:

No.

Dave (03:46):

And marriage isn’t easy. So how’d that go?

Mark (03:48):

How did it go, Dee?

Dave (03:49):

Mark, you did the right thing. You just asked your wife to answer. That’s a good move.

Dee (03:55):

Well, actually Moody at that time only had a three-year degree. You had to go somewhere else for your bachelor’s.

Ann (04:02):

Dee, did you go to school there too?

Dee (04:03):

Yeah. I didn’t finish because someone had to support this man that was making $8,000 a year at the first church, at the church we started. And so I never finished unfortunately. And so actually when we came, Mark was at Columbia International University, finishing up his degree. I went there for a semester to get some more classes, came back and six months later we got married, correct? I actually grew up in that church.

Ann (04:29):

Did you?

Dee (04:29):

Yeah. So it was a long story, but I grew up there as a little girl. So to see a church I was raised in this neighborhood called Back of the Yards, this church that never grew to, up more than 40 people. And Mark said, “I’ll give you a commitment for three years. I’ll stay.” They said, “Would you stay?” He said, “I’ll give you a commitment for three years.”

Mark (04:45):

It was like a church plant because there was 18 people and they hadn’t had a pastor, but it had been around for a while.

Dave (04:52):

Now, is this a church that I read in your book, which by the way we didn’t mention, but it’s called What Now?: How to Move into Your Next Season. Is this the church you talk about at the beginning?

Mark (05:00):

Yes.

Dave (05:01):

So you heard that another guy was going to candidate for that church. He pulled up, saw the building, and just drove away.

Dee:

Several.

Mark (05:07):

Yes. There were quite a few. Well, they could only—this was an inner-city church on the southwest side of Chicago, literally drug dealers on the corner, drive-by shootings and their salary package was $8,000 a year. No insurance, no parsonage.

Dave:

No insurance!

Dee (05:26):

No. I was the insurance carrier.

Ann (05:28):

And this is the neighborhood you grew up in. Did you want to get out of here?

Dee (05:32):

Well, I had a real heart for the people. Some of the same people were there that I did grow up with and they were hurting. It was not a good situation. The pastor left. I’m very wounded. And I called a friend of ours at Dallas Theological and said, “Mark’s looking for a place to minister for the summer. Do you have any?” He said, “Go back”—it was called the Mission—”go back to the Mission. They need help right now.” We went to just help the mission for the summer.

Ann (05:56):

And for $8,000.

Mark (05:58):

Well, I was 20 years old helping out. I still had a semester left in Bible college and after the summer they said, “Would you come and be the pastor here?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m going to Spain. I plan on going to Spain.” And I said, “You know what? Let’s pray about it.” I said, “I will come and help you out for three years until you can get a real pastor.” Think about it. I’m 20 years old at this time, so no experience. They said, “Okay.” So that’s how we started, but it started exploding with people coming to Christ. So we just started seeing tons of people come to Jesus that were from all kinds of really difficult, challenging backgrounds.

Ann (06:44):

Let me ask you this. It starts exploding. What was your prayer at the very beginning? You have just nobody there. It’s so little.

Dee (06:52):

I remember Mark saying he went to the church one day and he said, “I’m just praying over the pews. ‘Lord, you had 12 men. Give me 12 men.’” And he started praying and walking down the aisles praying for God to fill those pews with some solid men that love the Lord.

Mark (07:06):

You know what’s funny though, years later a reporter came in, and she was doing a segment on mega churches. She was not a believer, but she walked in our service and the first comment she made was, “Wow, there’s a lot of men in this church.” And I thought, “Glad you noticed,” because I thought to myself, there was a time that I prayed, Lord—there were four men. I prayed, “Lord, give us men.” And so I have a real passion. I speak at a lot of men’s conferences as well because I think not only in urban America but across the country, we have a lot of men that are absentee fathers that are not speaking into raising their children. I think in urban America, sometimes you see it even more. And so we’re happy now that we’re known for having a lot of men.

Dave (07:57):

That’s super powerful.

Mark (08:00):

Yeah.

Dave (08:00):

It really is. And I know a little bit of your backstory with your dad or your family in Spain. Is that what you saw growing up? I mean, you told me yesterday about your dad riding a horse or riding a donkey.

Ann (08:11):

—donkey. It was a donkey.

Dave:

I thought it was a horse.

Mark (08:14):

It was a horse.

Ann:

It was a horse.

Mark:

It was a horse named Thrumpel. Dad was kind of, he was a guy’s guy, liked cars, liked to fix. He always had grease on his hands. He was saved at 18, was going to be an electrical mechanic in the steel mills in Northern Indiana, but God radically got ahold of his life and he thought, “Okay, I want to go to the Amazon jungle,” the most extreme thing that he could think of. Married my mother who was studying to be a nurse, and they took off for South America. There wasn’t any opening or team in the Amazon jungles, but Chile. And so he would ride a horse up to the mountains of Chile to do Bible studies there. We lived in these real remote sort of villages, very rustic villages.

(08:59):

And then he got on his BMW, and he toured Mexico preaching and then he had a Bultaco that he rode through Spain looking for a city that had no gospel witness. And we landed in a city of 140,000 people that had no evangelical Protestant church and that’s where I grew up in this city, but he was sort of this maverick pioneer, let’s go all out for Jesus. And my mother was just as hearty. She’s 85 years old, still lives in Spain.

Dave:

Really?

Mark:

Still lives in Spain. He’s buried outside of the city that he threw his life into reaching for Christ. And there’s a building built by the Spaniards, the first evangelical building in the city of Burgos. And there’s a little plaque, a very small inconspicuous plaque at the entrance of the building that says, “To Robert Jobe,”—it’s in Spanish—”who loved us and taught us the ways of Jesus.”

Dave (10:09):

Wow.

Mark:

Makes me emotional because I learned from my father what it was to, first of all, be a follower of Jesus, be a man, and love a woman.

Dave (10:24):

Yeah, as you were saying that I was thinking, yeah, I don’t know you that well, but I’m like, “You are your father’s son.” And then when you described your mom, I thought I’m looking at—

Ann (10:34):

Yeah, Dee, you are that person.

Dave (10:35):

I mean, you guys are living a life very similar. I mean, your horse was a car, but you’re driving into the streets of Chicago where a lot of people are running away from “I don’t want to be there. I’m doing everything I can to get out.” And you’re saying, “We’re going to go in and ask God for 12 men.” You got me teary.

Mark (10:53):

And so we had really a missionary heart. I thought I was going to go to the mission field and to stay in the US felt a little bit like, I’m compromising. To be honest with you, to buy a house felt like, “Man, I’m caving in.” Because my parents moved 14 times, several different countries.

Dee:

Never owned a home.

Mark:

They didn’t buy a house because they felt God could take us and move us, and we want to pioneer so we were bred on that sort of spirit of you—you’re all in for Jesus. You live, you move, you throw yourself into the cause of the gospel.

Dee (11:28):

They came to the States to help us for two years early on and they came literally after 30 years in Spain at that time, 25 years, with an army backpack, a duffel bag each.

Ann:

That’s it?

Dee:

That’s all they had, for two years.

Dave:

This is not my home.

Dee:

This is not my home. And they came and ministered and they lived in a tiny two room in our apartment building in a little basement place and loved people. And that’s what people say about him. He loved God and loved people so, so much. Very simple.

Ann (11:58):

What you said was “He threw his life into Jesus Christ.”

Mark:

Yeah.

Dee:

Yes.

Ann:

And as you said that I thought—I’m teary too—”How many other things are we throwing our lives into?” Things that don’t matter. At the time, it feels so important. I’m thinking of sports for our kids. I’m thinking of our houses and our retirement; there’s so many things that we think will bring us fulfillment and security. I thought about that’d be a good question to ask our kids, “What do you think I’m throwing my life into?” I asked that one time when our kids were younger and they said—

Dave (12:33):

Don’t go there.

Ann (12:34):

—sports. We’re throwing our lives into sports, but it made me think like, “That’s not what I want them to say. I want them to say, ‘It’s Jesus.’” And so that story is super inspiring. Your dad’s still impacting all of us as you shared that story.

Dave (12:48):

You talk about legacy. I mean, here’s my thought. So often Christian parents think that our answer to them to raise a godly Christ follower as an adult is get them in a Christian school, get them in a good church, which obviously great stuff. But I think you just showed it. It’s you live on fire for Jesus. It’ll just permeate. And again, that doesn’t guarantee anything. There’s no magic formula. But man, watching you watch your parents and now you’re—

Mark (13:18):

Yeah.

Dave (13:19):

Is that it? Is that the most important thing?

Mark:

I think it does.

Dee (13:22):

And my son Josiah just wrote him a really nice letter again. He’s a great writer. He wrote Mark a letter this past year and again said, “Dad, you are who you are all the time. You’re not one person at home and one person in the pulpit or the church. You are who you are, because of the Lord, of course.” But yeah, I think our kids have seen that. I come from a different family background.

Ann (13:47):

Tell us about yours, Dee.

Dee (13:48):

My parents were Christians and actually we were raised in this little storefront church. My dad was from that neighborhood. There was a guy who came in from the suburbs and started this little storefront thing for neighborhood kids. And so long story short, he came to Christ. He raised us to go to church and to love God, but he—how do I say it.

Mark (14:10):

He was a great, he was a hard worker, extremely hard worker and a great father in the sense of loving his kids. He wasn’t a great husband.

Dee (14:21):

So I saw a lot of turmoil and a lot of that at home, which was just unhealthy for all of us. But he made to go to church every Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesday prayer meeting, but I didn’t really see it as lived out as Mark had seen it. Actually, when we came back from our honeymoon, I remember sitting at the table at Connie’s Pizza and just saying, “I really understand now what it means to truly be loved and accepted.” And that was only a month later and after we got married. But anyway.

Ann (14:54):

When did you jump all in with Jesus?

Dee (14:57):

It wasn’t until my early 20s.

Dave (14:59):

You’re already married, or no?

Dee (15:01):

No, no, no, no, no.

Mark (15:02):

No, no, no, no. She was a strong woman, so when she—

Dee (15:05):

Yeah, I worked. I moved out, lived on my own.

Mark (15:07):

What age did you move out of your house?

Dee (15:09):

18, and lived on my own and had great jobs and yeah, wasn’t going to let anyone hurt me. Anyways, the Lord just got ahold of my life after a breakup, just reached out to the Lord and said, “Lord, I need you and there’s no relationship that’s going to meet all my needs.” And so I came to Christ and that, shortly after we met at a church.

Dave (15:32):

Yeah. Sounds like you didn’t date too long.

Mark (15:36):

Well, we ended up dating three years.

Dee:

No, we did.

Dave (15:37):

Oh you did, three years?

Mark (15:38):

Yeah, because I was in college and I met her when I was 18 so we weren’t quite ready to get married yet. But the week that I graduated from college, I proposed to her, I don’t know where I got this, but I had heard somewhere people use the term love too flippantly. So while we were dating, I told her, “The day that I say I love you is the day I’m going to ask you to marry me.” So I never said, “I love you.” Three years of dating, “I like you a lot,” da, da, da, da.

Dee:

We’re best friends.

Mark:

A lot of work around.

Ann (16:11):

Did you know he loved you?

Dee:

Oh yeah.

Ann:

You did.

Mark (16:14):

Oh yeah.

Ann (16:14):

But he didn’t say it.

Dee (16:15):

No, he didn’t say it.

Mark (16:17):

So I said, “Hey, let’s go to”—there was a state capital in Columbia, South Carolina and I said, “Hey, let’s go take some pictures there.” So I actually had done mime.

Dee (16:29):

He performed a mime.

Ann:

What?!

Mark (16:30):

I performed a mime.

Dave (16:32):

I wish I could tell you to do it right now.

Mark (16:36):

And I had blown up three balloons within each other

Dee (16:42):

And there was a note in each one.

Mark (16:43):

So she would pop a balloon, and a note would pop out, and she’d read it and I would act out, and it was our story, how we met.

Ann:

You mimed your—

Mark:

I mimed our story and then stopped until she popped the next balloon. And then I’d mime the rest. Then the final balloon, which is the small balloon, she popped it and it said—

Dee:

I love you.

Mark:

“I love you.” And she knew that I had told her the day I say I love you, I’m going to ask you to marry me. And then I got on my knees right there as a mime and I asked her to marry me.

Dave (17:17):

That is super cool.

Ann:

All right, that’s super unique and cool.

Dave (17:20):

I thought mine was pretty good, but I’m like, “Wow!”

Ann (17:22):

Yeah, that was good.

Dave:

That’s amazing.

Dee:

What was yours?

Ann:

He cut a hole in the Bible, and he was praying, “Lord, when she opens this Bible—”

Dave (17:30):

No, I made her open it. We were driving to a conference, and I literally turned to her and I said, “Hey, you know when Jesus said the two shall become one and leave mother and father, what do you think it means to become one?” She goes, “That’s a good question.” I go, “My Bible’s right here. It’s in Mark 10. Open it up, let’s read it.” She opened up, there’s the ring.

Dee:

Oh, that’s good.

Dave:

I still have that Bible. I should bring it in.

Mark (17:51):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a little bit more spiritual than mine.

Dave (18:01):

Hey, let me just pause and say this. Our financial partners are the heartbeat of this ministry and when you join this monthly giving community, you’re not just donating, you’re building something eternal.

Ann (18:13):

And we’d be so honored to have you on the journey with us. We really would. So here’s the question, will you join us today?

Dave (18:22):

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Ann (18:35):

We talk about marriage a lot and we’re going to get into your book tomorrow, but if you have a listener and they’re like, “Our marriage is struggling,” maybe the way you were Dee, in your family with your parents. We love our kids, we’re together because we love our kids, but our marriage is in turmoil. You guys have three kids that are walking with Jesus, you’re grandparents, you’re doing a lot, but if you talk to people that are struggling in their marriage, what would you say to them? I know that you can’t give all the answers, but what are the things you would say, “These are the foundational things that have made us strong.”

Mark (19:08):

I would start by saying it starts with your walk with God. You can look at your spouse and make a list of everything that’s wrong with them and you can say, “If they would respect me more, love me more, show me more, then I would in turn be—” And so many times we wait because we say they have issues.

I think it starts with saying, “Okay, God, I’m going to be the person that You’ve called me to be. I have my imperfections. I’m going to surrender to You and God give me the capacity and power to love my spouse with their imperfections just like you’ve loved me with my imperfections.” And I think it starts there. It’s impossible I think to have a healthy, solid, love-filled marriage without the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, that’s breaking us, causing us to surrender our rights and loving sacrificially.

(20:06):

So I think the key starts with our surrendering ourselves to God instead of you focusing on, “Lord, change my spouse.”

Ann (20:14):

I don’t think we can get rid of that habit of seeing the negatives in our spouse unless we do surrender to Christ. He’s the One that meets our needs, not our spouse. I’ve tried to get Dave to meet my needs. I tried. And he does. He’s an amazing husband, but he’s not enough to meet all of my needs the way Jesus is.

Dee (20:32):

When we were at Columbia, down at Columbia, it was just the Lord. I went to Moody and then I went to Columbia for a semester. There was a missionary there, Cash Godbold—just went to be with the Lord.

(20:44):

He had been in Africa for 25 years. He was only on campus that one semester in the grad school on a Saturday teaching for 10 weeks, Scripture Solutions for Sensitive People. That’s why the Lord brought me there. And for 10 weeks, I sat and wept as he taught about how we need to be filled with the love of God and if we are not filled with love of the God—he had different—he had a teacup, a glass, a bucket and a barrel on stage. Well, Mark’s a teacup; person who wakes up in the morning, sun’s shining, got a job, that’s all he needs. And then we went all the way on the other side and I’m a barrel. I have this insatiable need, “God,” you know the emotion of love, “fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me.” And I felt like I was, I was like, “What is going on?

(21:31):

Why am I feeling so insecure? We’ve been dating three years, and what’s going on here?” And it was the Lord. So when I talked to Mr. Godbold, he said, “Dee, this is what you need to do.” And he sat down, both of us and he said, “Mark, and this is what you need to do.” I had to find verses that spoke God’s love to me to keep me filled. Mark had to work on verses more of gentleness and kindness and meekness and just because he doesn’t have as great a need, he has to ask the Lord to help him be sensitive to meet those needs that I have.

Dave (22:01):

Is he that guy?

Dee (22:03):

Oh yeah, most of the time. And I’m not filled always either.

Mark (22:07):

So she had to learn my identity is in You. I need to be filled, and Mark can’t fill all those needs. I had to learn she’s not wired like me. There’s a greater sensitivity that she has and so I have to be more aware of her needs. So we both had a learning curve and again, we’re 30 some years into our marriage and we’re still learning, but it works very well. And to be honest, he said, “She will make or break your ministry.” I think just her understanding sensitivity of people as we minister to people has made us much more dynamic in ministry than I would have ever been trying to do ministry on my own.

Dave (22:55):

When we wrote our book Vertical Marriage, of all the passages that I feel God led us to, to help people understand this concept, which is really what you just said, is Jeremiah 2. And I know you’re familiar with that where he says, “My people have committed two sins. They’ve forsaken me the spring of living water.” That’s sin number one, and they’ve done their own cisterns, broken cisterns, and that’s what we do. And it’s interesting in that passage, he’s talking to people that had tasted the life of God, and they turn their back and they go looking and I’m like, “That’s what we do in romantic relationships. Oh, this woman, this amount of money, this car.” And he’s like, “You don’t understand. They’re going to leak. It’s never going to fill it.” It’s just what you said. It’s the bucket has to be filled.

Dee (23:38):

And he says there’s inevitable hurts. There’s going to be natural bumps. People are going to knock your containers over, just refuel on who you are in Christ, refuel on His love for you. And so—

Ann (23:49):

Every day you do this.

Dee:

Every day.

Ann:

I do too. Every day. I’m re-surrendering, “Lord, I can’t do apart from you.”

Dave (24:00):

It’s great to have Mark and Dee Jobe on today and Mark’s book is called What Now?: How to Move Into Your Next Season.

Ann (24:06):

And you can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Dave (24:12):

A lot of people don’t know this, but we’re on YouTube.

Ann (24:14):

I love watching YouTube clips. You get a lot more out of it, I think, when you’re watching people.

Dave (24:19):

And the next generation’s probably going to watch it rather than just listen to it. So you can do either or, but if you want to watch and enjoy it, youtube.com/FamilyLife, just go to youtube.com/FamilyLife. Or if you’re a big YouTube person, just go to YouTube and type in FamilyLife, one word.

Ann (24:35):

I put three words on there and it still worked, FamilyLife Today.

Dave (24:43):

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