Hermann and Louie Eben: Gr8 Relationships

welcome back to another episode of Christian Natural Health today I am excited to have Herman and Louis even

with us Herman has served in various executive management roles for 40 plus years in the business Arena his world

was devastated in 1991 when he received a phone call the caller told him that his wife Louie was having an affair and

that a package would be coming to prove the allegations after seeing the evidence he called his Pastor who

decided it would be best for Herman and Louis to meet with Dr Marlon Howe to work through their relationship the

church had been using Dr House hope for the family video series for about five years God did a fantastic thing and

restored their marriage after a couple of years of God's blessing and healing Herman and Louis decided with the approval of the church Elders to use

their experience to help others and that is what they have been doing for 30 years with the foundation of Dr Howe's

work and blessing Herman developed the great relationships in 2000 in the year 2000. he and Louis have held countless

weekend seminars met with couples one-on-one and facilitated weekly study groups together they are on a mission to

restore marriages and relationships welcome Herman and Louie thanks so much for joining us thank you Laura thanks

for having us oh for sure so you guys have been really open and vulnerable

with what happened with your marriage why did you make the decision to do all of that well that was that is probably one of

the best things that God orchestrated for Louie and I and here's what

typically happens in these type of situations it tries to be swept under the rug

and I was an elder in the church and Louis was teaching a Bible study of 300

women and the Dr Marlon Howe who was our counselor and the Elders of the church

specifically requested and made it a requirement that we are open about all

of this not to hide it to be very open and that obviously you can just imagine

you can just imagine having to stand I had to stand in front of the church and say I wasn't in control of my family I

had to step down as an elder because of that Louis had to stand in front of those 300 ladies and tell tell them

about what she had done so that is that is not fun at all but at the same time

it was one of the best things for us Louie and I have talked about this so many times that it was great for us

because we didn't have to act like everything was okay when it wasn't you didn't have to hide

it was all out there I mean anything that comes out into the open God can actually heal right and

things Fester oh amen so yeah in fact in fact another person that uh we were

talking to Here recently said uh it's always great to put things uh into the light the greatest disinfectant yeah

exactly so that that proved to be extremely

valuable because we knew that everybody knew about how

messed up we were so the energy didn't need to go into that Arena at all the

energy was on Louie and I uh to start figuring out by God's grace how to

relate to each other better than in this screwed up way that we had been relating to each other for

more than 21 years at that point in time yeah to let it all be public yeah even though

it was agonizing sure um but God knew what he was doing and we

didn't have anything to hide nothing to cover up and

even though it was miserable um it was God's

ordained plan you know to do this and ended up being it was good yeah no doubt

what was the lead up like like in retrospect before you discovered what

happened and how things kind of evolved to that place what did you see that

actually got you to that point that you could look back and say though there were some warning signs and these are

the things that we could have done differently well a lot of that can be covered with the video testimony that we

have on greatrelationships.com or greater lake.com that's gr the number eight

relate.com the here's here's a synopsis from my side to show how I look like the

innocent party and I'm not uh and that's what this always is any couple is

normally going to have what appears to be the visible party and the invisible

party and I'm the invisible party people didn't see how controlling I was

and this is one of those things that is so important to think about for any

couple if they're looking at their relationship they better start looking at both of you both of you are

contributing to this situation so what we teach in great relationships is the

concept of freedom uh when you're trying to control somebody

you are actually trying to remove something that is ingrained in us God

created us with freedom and you're trying to step on that and guess what

that does to the relationship makes that person not want to be with you so you can just imagine my control over

the years of Lloyd and that would have a tremendous impact on me participating in

her sin and that is exactly what I always want to say because it is so easy

for people to look at Louis and the lovely person that she is and think that

somehow how could she do that to that guy well you know I deserved it if you

really want to look at it I deserved it and of course God allowed this to happen so that we could

take something that God allowed in our life and let it blossom into something

that can potentially help so many other relationships so that's that's kind of

the answer to that and Louis obviously I'd love to have have you say it oh well

I think it's what we were kind of talking about this morning what um several biblical you know people

that you know particularly Joseph that

um when he said man made this for sin but God meant it for good and

um we don't think about that when we're either in sin or

um or hurting other people we can't look forward to that

um Avenue of what's God doing here and especially when it's

crushing your relationship or refreshing you um

how do you maintain that yeah what so so much happens and this is this

is what Louie and I experienced and this reason why we we talk about actually relationships are extremely

simple do not believe that relationships are complex every Hallmark movie every

other movie It's Complicated

isn't complicated at all I so often uh if Lily and I are counting somebody or

somebody sitting in my office at the conference table uh we talked for a while and then I will say something like

this um we have 500 videos online 250 page study manual 200 blogs 70 plus TV

shows more than a hundred podcasts and I can tell you everything you need to know

in 10 seconds are you ready so I let that kind of stuff

and obviously they sit there and they're like yeah yeah I don't want to go through 50 hours

exactly if you can avoid it um okay really I'm serious 10 seconds

that's all you need here it is there's a problem in every relationship you make

everything about yourself the salute is to pursue their best patiently kindly

sacrificially and unconditionally and then I just kind of go silent

and then I wait to see the expression of their face and then I say so so go and

be healed and obviously they laugh like we just

laughed and and then I wait a little bit there's a minor discussion and I say so

why don't you leave is all you need I promise you that is

all you need and then I say uh they they say a few

things and typically I say here's the real reason you're not leading you don't believe it

that's the reason why we have 500 videos and our 250 page study manual and 70 TV

shows and and you know more than 100 podcasts and all this other stuff

because I'm trying to reinforce that's the problem you're making everything about yourself start pursuing their best

quit thinking about yourself all the time sure yeah so and once you've got

that I assume that came from Dr House program initially or how did you know

um that came from that came from just uh our own experience of uh thinking about

this and one of the things that I you know by God's grace I like to try to do

I like to try to make things as concrete as possible to get away from abstract Notions

and that started down the road of one of my mentors who taught me about freedom

and everything else which is a huge principle and great relationships he he

specifically asked you know me to start asking myself a question you know am I

fearing you know something that's real or imaginary that turned into a different question as I started

recognizing any time I was angry irritable upset

I would learn to ask myself am I making this about me right now [Music]

where I learned that that actually turned out to be the problem

I'm making this about me right now and I after a period of years

I stopped back to asking that question because one day I went how many times have I been able to say no

it's pretty much always the problem Oh literally I changed the question to

how am I making this about me right now anytime I'm irritable anytime I'm mad

anytime I'm depressed anytime any of those negative emotions if I just learned to ask how am I making this

about me right now so that became one of the huge catalysts to reinforce that

that's the problem right yeah so my husband and I right now are studying Romans and we just finished you know

Romans 7 and Romans 8 and the idea of Europe here in the spirit and that sounds like essentially what you're

saying but at when you're in the flesh you're making it about you yeah absolutely and you back up into Romans

chapter six for the most important decision of life which is am I going to

present myself to righteousness as a Believer as a child of God or am I going to present myself to unrighteousness

because who you present yourself to you become a slave of and that and that's where Romans 6 23 is

seldom considered as spoken to Believers for the wages of sin is death but the

gift of God is eternal life that Jesus Christ Our Lord what Jesus is excuse me

what God is saying through the Apostle Paul there is if you present yourself to unrighteousness enjoy the death lie yeah

seriously yeah there's so much more to sin than just like the death and there's all the manifestations of death all of

the elements of sin absolutely absolutely and it's and that's the reason why we we talk about it in such

simple terms you're either making a life about yourself or you're pursuing their best and

anytime you say you love somebody and yet you're not pursuing their best you don't love them because that's our

definition of love pursuing their best patiently kindly sacrificially in the conditioner that's

our definition of love and when you make it that concrete you can talk to

somebody and they're saying but we do love each other and I simply go no you don't not based on what I'm hearing from

you you don't love each other you're not pursuing their best that is so

eye-opening for so many people to make it that concrete and that simple people

end up at least becoming into the arena of possible reality oh

I'm not am I oh my goodness I just I'm just not getting my way that's exactly

what's going on so that it is so cool to be able to talk to people with these concrete terms it's

really cool okay so do you want to say something and Peter go on and on

if you could just interrupt yeah so my question is what was the

process like for both of you in terms of like from the point of recognizing we

have a problem to the point of restoration what did the timeline look like what was that process like for you

for each of you take it away oh I think actually

I mean God just intervened because it was not much

time at all but we were public figures

unfortunately you know in the church and bible study and stuff and so

we had to recognize what was going on and [Music]

um come to our people and say we haven't done live correctly

and I mean that was miserable [Music] um but you know I will have to say I

really do think that God just intervened and oh

um you know we took a vacation together right afterwards and we had good counsel

um and so I really do think it was a God thing

because if we were still wrapped up in ourselves and

hanging on to uh the sin Factor it would have it would

have been hard to um move through it but we had such good

counsel and I just think it was a God thing sure he

knew what was ahead of us and because I really seriously believed

that if this junk stuff hadn't happened you know in our life

that all this other stuff wouldn't have come

about that's right um I mean he as we say he redeemed this

um and you know through that we've been able to minister to other

people um

excuse me and it's hard you know it there were several years

that I was just like huh I wish I wish this this would just go away yeah that

was tough on her um I didn't because it was so public and so there are many years that I felt

like I was walking around with the Scarlet Letter [Music] um but she you have you move through it

and it's a matter of I can't see even trusting God I think

God was putting his trust in us and

um just going I have a plan here so y'all just

buckle your seat belts and let's go with it [Music]

yeah there is uh you know what she's bringing up here is the reason why we

believe there's really only two tools that you need we teach four tools but the two most

important tools that you need for any relationship to work is forgiveness

and confession and what Louie did is go through confession and anytime she was

seeing people that might think of her as somehow less than

um she could know that she was clean because God clean you know at the cross and all she

needed to do is agree with God first John 1 9. so which is hard because you

always think about what other people are going to think about you yeah and you've

got to bury that it doesn't doesn't work doesn't well it doesn't matter

um and there is that element of just going you know

the Lord forgave me and I'm still out here walking the

streets um but I I can't depend on the fact that

what are other people thinking about me oh yeah that comes up but if you live

your life that way that's why we have so many people today that are just drowning

yeah they're victims they're absolute victims of their own bad behavior or

victims of other people's bad behavior and that's the reason why forgiveness is needed confession is needed so that you

can experience and know that God has claimed you you know if they don't if

they don't forgive you that's their problem that forgiveness is needed from the

Viewpoint of you don't want to be chained to the Past on somebody else's Behavior so forgiveness and confession

both help maintain freedom that's the key freedom because Christ

died for us to set us free Galatians 5 1. so that's so important that those two

tools are are used correctly and that's the reason why we spent so much time understanding forgiveness how

forgiveness works and that became the seed for all the rest of this material how we develop the rest of this material

is out of those two things forgiveness and compassion yeah because I I think especially is

um the party that is a little bit more visible in what they've done

that we have the tendency to really be concerned about what other

people are going to think and God that can control you sure it can

bring you down and that's where you know your

relationship with the Lord in cleaning to his you know forgiveness even though

you may not feel it um it's believing it and going you know

it doesn't matter what somebody else thinks that's not that's not the issue that's

not the point where am I in God's standing and am I

um making myself available to him or

um because I promise you you can that can suck you down

and Satan that's exactly what Satan wants he wants us living in the past or

living in the future he has no desire for us to pay attention to current reality what's going on right now

yeah he knows that if he can get us to live in the past we're hopeless because

you can't do anything about it if he gets us to live in the future we're always anxious we're always trying to

control what's going on instead of living in the present and doing the

Romans 6 13 to present yourself to righteousness not on righteousness if I

stay in the present then I will be able to do something I'm not going to be able

to do anything if I'm constantly in the past of the future yeah absolutely and so you guys decided

after coming up with all of that material to make it free so what made you guys decide to make that choice

well it's so interesting uh it's a god deal yeah absolutely yeah you know a lot

of this has to do with my um uh my basic

personality in many regards I like to document a lot of things that I'm learning and I've always had the

conviction of the Holy Spirit to document all this I hadn't had a great conviction to make it you know widely

known although we have done lots of work with you know weekend seminars and

things that nature we've not ever tried to just take it and you know make it

broadly known just this year just this year I was

getting convicted by the Holy Spirit to not only think about the long term

meaning where's this great relationship material going to go after Louis and I go away

uh I've been thinking Louie and I've been thinking about that for a number of years and nobody's stepped up to you

know take it on so I called uh Tina Jacobson who is a

former client of mine I've been a client of hers and so we got together and she came up with this strategy let's just do

a Pay It Forward model and make everything free and see what happens and let's take a year and see if God decides

to make it uh Blossom or basically said nope just don't want it

and so that's what uh the the biggest the biggest problem is is me uh not

trusting the Lord with all of this so they decided uh Tina Jacobson and uh the

editor that we have uh decided let's break all this material up and into

bite-sized chunks which became the eight or nine books that were going to be publishing and we have two at the

publisher right now and the remarks that we're getting back from the people that are reading them it's doing what we're

hoping for uh take you back just a second to some of the initial emails

that Tina would uh has set out she said Herman has written this book and it's

500 pages and nobody's written it and read it go figure

we all know harming too well and so what's happening is we've getting

some great uh initial response from the group the age group that we're wanting

to impress which is about the 24 to 35 age groups what we're trying to uh speak

to and some of the initial books are doing what we're wanting which is it

presents the basic idea simply and it's short enough yeah and some of them are going well I'd

like to go look at some of those videos to get some more details that's what we're hoping will happen

so great so God is going to amplify what you've done and put out there I am absolutely sure that's wonderful so

where can people find them well they can find them one it's eventually going to be on the website

but there's going to be a massive uh publicity campaign and interviews that

you're so gracious to do or part of that that once the books start getting published there's going to be even more

pushing it out it'll be found you can find it on any of the uh you know Amazon

any of those type of places eventually there'll be a a Kindle version there's

all sorts of things that will go on eventually but they haven't been released from the publisher they'll

probably be published the first two books which is actually books one and four not one and two

they decided they decided not to do it in sequence because we're we're also

trying to test that each one of these books are standalones as much as possible also so the the first book is

going to be talking about the desire of men and women uh how that is based on the image of God

it's also going to talk about the two tools of forgiveness and confession it's going to talk about freedom and feelings

and brief you know brief ways so the first book is going to give you a lot of the basics

and hopefully drive people to look for more fantastic so what have I not asked you

guys that you want to make sure you leave with our audience I'll have to say something yeah

we have three grown children and seven grandchildren

and this has been I may start to cry this has been a huge part of their life

and what's really been cool is we've been

able to be honest with everybody you know they all know our stuff

and um so we've been very open with them

and I think it is actually helping them

um there's a thing that we have to hide you know from them

and um I think it's really benefited

our total family relationship yeah which this could be something that could tear

it apart [Music] um but the fact that

I mean again the Lord just saw the means to

um let us be very open with everything and we have

I mean there are times that um we've asked their permission can we

share and they don't care um they're all you know good with it

because I I think it's benefited them yeah and

um which you wouldn't think and you can see that yeah and in a lot of families

it would be rare yeah we gotta hide this don't don't

want anybody I don't want to talk about it that's right um it's been really cool yeah because we

don't have anything to hide from each other yeah and so we can talk about it we can joke

about it um yeah in fact one of the things that uh

Louis and I asked Dr Howe after the first day of marathon or Counseling of

that uh Friday in 1991. what are we

supposed to do about the kids what do we tell the kids and at that point in time our oldest was 16 and 16

13 and 8 if I remember correctly and he gave us some great counsel that I

use with people all the time he said they aren't the issue

you guys are the issue if you get your act together that's what's going to protect them and age

appropriate you can share the details with them but you aren't to worry about them you need to spend all your time and

energy in making your relationship healthy because that's what research even shows healthy marriages protect

kids to give them an example of what uh what a safe family life looks like and

that is so powerful what Louis is saying here so powerful to uh to keep that in

your mind well yeah uh I mean I remember I can see it you know the the morning

day or evening whatever it was that we put all the kids on the couch and

Saturday morning we you know told them what was going on and you know the deal

was they didn't care the only thing they cared about was just

don't get a divorce course that was so interesting out of a eight-year-old out

of our eight-year-old the others too didn't say that first our eight-year-old simply said I thank you at least you're

not getting a divorce thank you for that isn't that interesting that shows you

how much the marriage the husband and wife the father and the mother actually

impact the kids in ways that you just don't think about absolutely absolutely so where can

people go to learn more about you guys to uh gr the number eight

relationships.com or if they want to do it shorthand gr the number eight

relate.com same place yeah both go to the same place that's right and all of the

material that's there is completely free you'll see uh in Orange in the menu free

videos free video courses and uh there's 32 32 courses there it's uh very easy

you've got uh words you've got information under each video you have

resources in many cases that you can download now if they contact me personally I may have to charge them

makes sense sounds good well I will link in the show

notes to both of those websites like I probably only need one let's just just use one okay to clarify so I'll do that

in the show notes and thank you guys so much for your time and for your wisdom and for your willingness to share your

story really appreciate what you're doing thank you we appreciate you giving us your time amen amen

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