I’m Barbie Poling wife to Tim Poling, mom of 5, 3 of them with spouses, and gramma to 2. I was raised in charismatic Baptist church where my parents were leaders/elders/teachers/counsellors. I went on to be very involved in various Foursquare and Assembly of God churches as an adult, serving as worship minister, children’s and youth minister, and served as board members and assistant pastors with my husband Tim.

I was introduced by a friend to Marilyn Howshall’s books about home education in 2004. Her writings spoke deeply to my heart about the Lord’s plans for my children and our education and we radically changed the way we home educated for the better at that time. In 2005, to my shock and delight, I discovered Marilyn lived quite close to me, and I began attending meetings in her home. I could see that she had teachings and ability to help people in the Spirit that I had never seen anywhere else. At that time I was trying to help some homeschooling people with their troubled relationships, and I could see that I wasn’t able to help them, and neither were any pastors or leaders I knew of or could find.

In 2006, Marilyn began to minister to me and my family more personally. Over that time, many miracles happened in my family. (My testimony surrounding this time is lengthy, and so to be succinct, I’ve included links to more of my story.) 

Through Marilyn’s ministry I began to see my deep need for heart-level repentance and change. I was soon able to repent to my children and win back the hearts of my two oldest who were around the ages of 13 and 14. They had been on a path of resistance and closed heartedness - my son especially. I began to see my wrong relating with my husband, and to repent and change, eventually helping him to see his wrong relating with me and the kids, and helping him to win back their hearts too.

I’ve been blessed to walk alongside Marilyn as she has ministered to families ever since. Marilyn has a very effective ability to help people see what is keeping them stuck in sin and stuck in brokenness in their closest relationships. She helps people see what they need to be free from along with extremely practical steps to get there and then to restore their relationships to heart-level love and closeness.

Since knowing Marilyn, I’ve been set free of rejection, neglect, victim mentality, co-dependency with my once angry husband, a religious spirit, and pride. Because of Marliyn’s teaching and ministry, my children have grown with their hearts fully turned to us as their parents, receiving our influence, serving the Lord, and have never walked in doubt or rebellion. They love to be together and with us, and are building business together.

Marilyn has many strengths I’ve witnessed in the 15 years I’ve walked closely with her. She has a deep relationship with the Lord and is Holy Spirit led. She has unconditional love and is a Christlike example. Her messages, blogs, articles, programs, videos and books are extremely practical. She has a deep knowledge of God’s way of working in people to bring them to surrender to Him, and the ability to see what specifically is keeping individuals stuck in their relationships with their family and

with the Lord. 

Marilyn can see the particular steps forward for individuals, and point them there in a practical way. She has strong vision and leadership for her business and for our community of believers.

Her ministry is effective to see people get set free from life-long strongholds. She is a generous giver of time, resources, finances and wise counsel. She’s completely self-motivated and always moving forward. She’s also a loving wife, parent, and grandparent.

More about the miracles in my life 

Marilyn’s more personal ministry to my family began with her taking on my deep concern for my situation with my mom, who at the time was living with us and had advanced alzheimer’s disease. Her presence in our home was sour. She was angry, demanding, and often frightened my children with her aggressiveness. She was unable to care for herself in any way, and her memory was about 10 seconds long or less. Marilyn’s ministry to my mom and to our family was characterized by many miracles of my mom becoming lucid for short periods of time in which she repented and became completely and permanently changed in spirit for the next 4 years of her life until she passed away. You can read our story in this short ebook “Remembering Ellen” here:

www.MarilynHowshall.com/ProYBJ89ducts/rememberingEllen.pdf

Here are some blog posts about winning back my son’s heart. http://lolache.com/LOLblog/some-simple-tasks/

Here are some blog posts about reconciling my relationship with my husband Tim. http://lolache.com/LOLblog/wrong- thinking/ 

I’m married to Barbie Poling and we have 5 children.  Three of our kids are married and we have 2 grandchildren.  

I grew up in an Assemblies of God church and accepted Christ as a child.  I was baptized in water and filled with the Holy Spirit as a teen. As an adult, I attended a Foursquare church where we served on the church council, children's ministry, and assistant pastors.  

I did all the things I thought a good Christian ought to do: personal devotions, church attendance, involved in church activities, and tithed.  However, these things didn’t produce a real and vital personal relationship with the Lord. It produced self-righteousness and arrogance, all-the-while areas of sin and strongholds still controlled my life. I was often angry with my wife and kids, blaming them and tearing them down. I wanted a real relationship with God and thought my Christian service and Bible study should produce it, but it didn’t.  

After Marilyn helped my wife, Barbie, understand how to make changes and restore relationship with our kids, Barbie began helping me to see my sin.  I began the process of repentance and change, repairing and restoring my relationship with my wife, kids, and the Lord.   

I am so grateful that the Lord rescued me from my unloving and self-centered ways. He sent Marilyn into our lives to help show us the way.  I’m privileged to assist the ministry in whatever way I can so that other families can experience reconciliation.

When I discovered Marilyn Howshall’s resources for homeschooling parents, I was in a desperate place. I had sweet children and I felt we had good family relationships, but I knew I was still missing something. I could see that while my kids outwardly cooperated with me, I was not reaching their hearts.

I had grown up in a strong Christian environment with parents who loved and cared for me and my siblings, but I saw how, over time, there was a breakdown in their ability to influence us or transfer their faith to us at the heart level. 

I could see how I didn't want to listen or receive from them at times and wondered why. They were kind parents and I loved them, but something within me also resisted them. I feared repeating this pattern and losing influence or the ability to transfer my faith to my children too. I was afraid they might walk away from desiring God’s influence as well.

As my kids approached their teen years, I felt them pulling back from me, disregarding some things I wanted them to grasp, and I could see how I was beginning to lose their hearts. I felt desperate for help and cried out to the Lord for direction. The Lord led me to Marilyn Howshall's ministry. Through her messages, I came to learn about the what it really means to have your child's hearts, relational Holy Spirit led education and building true character in myself and in them.

Reading her book “Empowered—Healing the Heartbeat of Your Family,” I began to understand that relational discipleship begins in our first community—our immediate family. My husband Peter Marshall and I had been in vocational ministry, we had both gone to seminary and we had a lot of bible knowledge, but we had never heard what Marilyn was teaching about relational discipleship and it was changing our lives and bringing restoration to our family relationships!

We had not fully understood how our particular relational habits revealed our character, how to relationally disciple our children. Marilyn’s ministry helped me see that the relational patterns I had with my family affected the influence I would have in their hearts. It stressed to me how much I needed the Holy Spirit's help to correct and instruct me. 

I needed to know what to do to love like Him, die to my selfish desires and self-made importance, and to really come to experience His love. When I relate in love, I come into my true identity in the Lord. I came to see how my loving or unloving relating impacted the influence I had with my family members and also affected whether or not they truly felt known and understood by me.

Through obeying the Lord as we learned from Marilyn’s ministry, my husband and I have become more honest, loving and intimate. Now our adult children ask for our input, long to be with us, and love spending lots of time together. They have taken on our faith and seek to know the Lord to a greater depth even as we are coming to know Him. 

If I had not had the help of Marilyn and her ministry, I believe I would have lost influence with my kids, losing them to rebellion. They would have continued having increasingly unteachable hearts that would have affected their relationship with God. 

I am beyond grateful for how the Lord gave us help through Marilyn, who had walked this path before us and was willing to invest in us through her resources and then through face-to-face real loving relationship. She has helped us come to know the true gospel of the Lord and how it played out in our relationships.

~ Cynthia Marshall

The impact of Marilyn Howshall's ministry in the life of our family has been immeasurable. I became aware of her Empowered Hearts Ministry through the involvement of my wife, Cynthia, in Marilyn’s ministry, Lifestyle of Learning, which is a ministry to homeschooling families.

Cynthia’s heart level changes brought about through the concepts she learned from Marilyn’s publications and teleconferences, and coaching calls really caused me to take notice. She began making significant changes to the wrong patterns of relating in our family.

Cynthia was empowered to face and to speak out the hard truths we needed through the biblical principles she learned from Marilyn. Our family’s interpersonal relationships were being damaged through our lack of understanding. We had accepted what society deems as "normal" for our relationships whether Christian or not.

Through this process we became aware of our lack of skill in developing heart-level relationships with each other and with our children. We began repenting to each other for the hurt we caused by our selfish motivations, and we declared that we never wanted to treat each other that way again. We committed ourselves to dependency on the Holy Spirit to guide our relationships with Him and with each other.

Even though we had participated in vocational ministries as senior leadership with multiple local churches in years past, and we never encountered the truths that Marilyn was able to convey to us that exposed our fleshly behaviors in our relationships with both God and others. Through the years our lives remained self-focused, and we never would have owned our sin in this way with others.

The impact of Marilyn’s ministry in our family was so great that we asked the Lord for the opportunity to move nearer to the Howshalls. We hoped that we might be able to experience life in a community dedicated to developing heart-level relationships and being led by the Holy Spirit. We are so thankful for the process of change that we’ve encountered and continue to walk out in the local community with Marilyn's Empowered Hearts Ministry.

As a licensed and ordained, seminary educated Doctor of Ministry, and vocational Minister of the Gospel for 15 years, I never experienced the truths of Scripture that impacted my family and my relationships with others in this way. In my opinion and experience, the glaring need of both local churches and the Body of Christ at large, is the development of heart-level relational behaviors. 

Marilyn’s ministry is beyond anything that typical Bible studies or fill in blank discipleship studies have been able to provide to believers. Marilyn Howshall's alignment with the Holy Spirit through the process she presents in her messages is the most impactful way for the Church and its leaders to address this desperate need in the Body of Christ to be all God intended it to be as fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. Peter Marshall

My husband and I were youth ministers many years ago in both denominational and non-denominational churches. We have four children at home ages 18-23. 

I was first introduced to Marilyn Howshall in 2000, just after having my fourth child. It was then that I realized I truly did not know how to parent at a heart level to influence my children in positive ways that would result in the fruit of Christ-like loving relationships. 

I was doing my best to live Christian principles and values and even to be led by the Holy Spirit in my life. I was aware, however, that my upbringing and the lack of valuable, practical teaching on right relating (true righteousness) was missing. There was such a huge disconnect in my life. 

I read all the practical help books that taught how to be a better wife or parent, by giving you things to do, but none of them ever told me how to overcome my fleshly self-centeredness and the sin in my life that always seemed beyond my control. Of course, I had overcome the “majors,” but I am talking about relating with love and a clear conscience.

It would be years before I started to “get it” and that was because by then I was desperate for help and knew that Marilyn's ministry was the only place I knew of to get the kind of help I needed for me and my family. I didn't understand it all at first because she was talking about things I had never heard anyone talk about so specifically. 

My marriage and my family were on the brink of total disaster. Truthfully, we did fall apart, but because I was already receiving ministry and instruction through Marilyn's ministry, the Lord was able to bring reconciliation and restoration to our family. If it had not been for Marilyn's ministry, I am certain my husband and I would be divorced, my children struggling with the wounds and baggage they received from us (and we received from our parents). I am not sure I would even be following the Lord. What would be the point if my own family was a wreck? How could I be effective in the church or world, if not in my own life and family relationships? Even if I could it wouldn't mean anything to me.

Instead, my family is thriving with intimate, heart-level relationships. We are all growing, changing, and overcoming in every area of life! Now we are way more effective in our extended family relationships, community, workplace, etc. 

It has not been easy, but the transformation of our family has been quite amazing! Thank you, Lord! I am so grateful for Marilyn's willingness minister to us in our marriage and help us in specific and personal ways that actually made a lasting difference. 

I have overcome co­dependency and many wrong relating and wrong thinking patterns. I was able to become a true help to my husband and children. Obviously, my relationship with the Lord has just blossomed as opposed to being in that unfruitful, powerless place.

I am so grateful for the “parenting” I have received through Marilyn’s personal ministry, seminars, books, videos and events. I’ve been helped to grow up in my understanding and to align myself more with the Lord and allow Him to parent me, so that I could, in turn, parent my children. I have their hearts and they are seeking the Lord, wanting to know Him more. 

My kids want to be in my company and have my influence. Each of them are full of character and life! They are strikingly different than even many churched kids. Their co-workers take note and even seek to know more from them.

Marilyn's ministry is real and practical in every area of life. We have even begun to transform our financial life after learning more from her about relating rightly with God in our finances.

I came from a dysfunctional family as did most people I know. The church needs to be effective in helping the family and unfortunately they have not been. It is missing the relational aspect. I am so grateful for the privilege of sitting under Marilyn's teachings and ministry. There are no words to fully express the depth of my gratitude for the privilege of having the Lord touch my life through her ministry and experience the fruit of a life lived by His standards!

As a long-time believer, husband, father, and  former youth pastor who has been greatly impacted toward positive change in the lives of myself and my family, it is my privilege to highly recommend the ministry of Marilyn Howshall as a source of Godly teaching, personal deliverance, and relational instruction and counseling.

My wife and I were exposed to Marilyn's “Lifestyle of Learning” approach to home education through her published booklets and occasional seminars while serving as youth pastors in the year 2000. We were progressively benefiting from her message as we homeschooled our 4 children over the next few years. 

However, the need for healing in our marriage eventually became the greater need. It was Marilyn's instruction and counsel that guided us through a time of separation almost 5 years ago when we would have otherwise ended up most likely divorced. 

Although we were back together after a few months, we continued to struggle as we had a lot of relational dysfunction and strongholds to work through. We eventually moved across the country from Georgia to be near the Howshalls in 2015, hoping to get her help to recover our marriage. Over the last few years, Marilyn's teaching, Marriage Intensive Seminars (MINTs), and her personal ministry to us has saved our marriage and saved our children from the emotionally and spiritually ill-prepared condition that most children carry into their own relationships and families. 

The Howshalls have a long history of helping many families turn similar struggles into successful outcomes through a ministry that focuses on truth-telling and teaching principles of right relating motivated by Love and reliance on the Holy Spirit. 

Marilyn's teaching is simply the best biblical instruction I have ever encountered. The “Church” in general has been failing families for years as shown by plenty of statistics and the lack of true biblical instruction on healthy relating. 

Marilyn is one of few ministers willing to do one of the most unpopular things in modern ministry—tell the truth. She is able to confront common familial and relational sin, and strongholds, while graciously instructing  toward repentance, healing, and lasting change. This is a work of Love that few have the patience and discernment for, and it was certainly my experience as I personally would have never overcome my sin and wrong perspectives without her ministry.

My whole family has been so blessed to support Marilyn's Empowered Hearts Ministry as leaders in training of the Empowered Hearts Community Church. Marilyn's ministry has certainly been a tremendous blessing to my family and to all who have the opportunity to receive from it.