Mark Benson's Testimony

If there is one thing that I have learned, and still am learning, it is that it was the Lord Who chose me and not I Him. All is accomplished by His righteousness and not ours. This is a realization a long time in coming for someone who thought he lived by his own effort and achievement.

I cannot say when I started to believe in God. As long as I can remember, I have always had a certainty and reassurance that God existed, was accessible, and was protecting me. Having said that, I have had much to learn about Who He is, what He requires of me, the deliverance I have needed from Him, and what it means to submit to Him and truly believe in Him. This is that story.

My mother became involved with Christian churches in her search for Truth shortly after I was born. This undoubtedly had a large impact on me but I constantly experienced what seemed to be a contradiction within myself. While I could not deny the existence of the Lord and felt a compulsion from within to become closer to Him and to do what was right before God, I always found the church and church activities to be very uncomfortable and repulsive. Upon arriving at church, there were times when I hung on to the frame of the open car door, resisting going inside, while my mother pulled against me. Maybe part of that was what any child experiences in general dislike for having to wear nice clothes and sit still in a boring church service, but I think it went deeper than that. Somehow I did not feel settled. I also have memories of when I was five years old, listening to an evening radio gospel show with my mother and afterwards praying with her, but with mixed feelings. I was hungry for something there, yet unsettled. Through the progressive process of many such experiences, I can finally now identify that, even as a child, I was experiencing the difference between reality and religion. Such reality is evidenced by a settling peace that only the Lord can give when something is of Him.

I lived a fairly comfortable life until about the age of 11. Our family life was fairly stable; while not rich, we were financially secure, living on a nice acreage in the country. Apart from school, I was very involved in playing hockey, traveling most weekends for tournaments and trips, fishing with my father, or doing chores on the small market garden and apiary that my parents ran as a side business. I had times when I felt empty or wanted something more but was soon distracted by my many activities, not knowing any differently. Then the earthquake struck. Mom and Dad’s marriage started to fall apart, and Dad eventually moved out in the middle of the night, leaving only a note to greet me in the morning, informing me of his decision. God was shaking up my world.

During the turmoil of the divorce, Mom was in despair and, at the suggestion of her primary confidant, my aunt, ended up contacting a family outcast who preached a strange form of gospel that nobody seemed to want to hear. This person was her nephew, Victor, and his wife, Marilyn. Though relatives, the only time I had ever met them was when I was too young to remember. After a certain period of contact and correspondence, my mother, my brother Trevor and I went one Christmas to my aunt’s place to meet Victor and Marilyn, who were visiting.

Initially, I did not know what to make of Victor and Marilyn. Having an aversion to religion, I was cautious at first and was occupied with one of my normal diversions, playing pond hockey with my cousin Gary. At one point in the visit, however, Mom told Trevor and me that we should come upstairs and participate in the conversation; Victor was speaking about the Lord. Gary was openly not interested, and while his influence was strong and I was more interested in going out for yet another game of hockey on the pond, I felt a compulsion to give priority to spiritual matters.

This typifies my whole walk with God. I have always been ready to get caught up in the things of the world or to do my own thing, but the Lord has put an irresistible conviction inside of me to seek Him and to know what is right before Him, very much against my will. I ended up participating in the conversation, which I found edifying beyond my expectations.

We then started a long period of contact and meetings with Victor and Marilyn, and they were not always easy. My mother had always been strict and enforced correction, but Victor, with the support of my mother, started to confront me on conduct and matters from a spiritual perspective, bringing correction of a different kind. There were many times then and since when I have felt as if I wanted no more of this correction. However, each time I have reached this crux point, I have always come down to the same basic realization: No matter how distasteful the correction is, or how many excuses or counter-blaming denials I can come up with, I have known deep inside me that I am actually being confronted by the Lord Himself and Truth, and I cannot honestly deny it. It cuts like a knife. I know, by the grace of God, that to walk away from that correction, justifying myself, is nothing more than choosing to live in the unreality of a lie. God has not allowed me to be content with that, though very contrary to my independent and rebellious personality, placing zeal in me to want to know what reality is, and what the Truth is.

After prolonged court battles over custody of us children (my older brother, Trevor, my younger brother, Jason, and me), we were each given the choice of who we wanted to live with, our mother or father. In many ways I got along better with my father than my mother, sharing common interests in the outdoors, hockey and many other things, and enjoyed my father’s attention and perhaps even favoritism. I also preferred my father because he was not the disciplinarian my mother was. However, he had come to take a stand of opposition against the path of searching my mother was on, Victor and his role guiding us on that path and, consequently, the Lord.

Though Victor had sharply corrected my judgmental attitude against my father (inherited from my mother) and pointed out the need to respect my father, my father wrongfully blamed Victor for driving a wedge between him and us children. He thus made a condition that if I chose to live with him, he wanted me to have no contact with Victor. In the end, though living with my mother promised discipline and financial hardship due to the divorce, I knew I needed what the Lord had granted Victor to understand and teach of His Truth, and so I chose to live with her, as did Trevor. My younger brother, Jason, with distaste for discipline and attracted to the promises of fun, chose to live with my father.

Several years passed and Trevor moved out to attend the University of Lethbridge. Mom was working, so I had to learn something about responsibility and work in taking over upkeep of our 37 acres, as well as some of the house cleaning and cooking. A few years later, Mom and I moved to Lethbridge from Stettler in order to be closer to where Victor and Marilyn lived. Life was not easy financially and I needed to work with Mom after school in the evenings, weekends and holidays painting houses to make ends meet, rather than participate in the sports and activities of my peers in high school. The Lord was using hard times to teach us many valuable lessons for which I am now very thankful.

During the next several years, amongst some very hard times, there were momentary glimpses and promises of what the Lord was preparing for me and everyone else. On October 17, 1989, while out visiting and helping Victor at his place, he told several of us about a vision he had of the Lord's treasury, which is filled with every good thing, existing parallel to us on the other side of a wall with many doorways. This struck me deeply and I knew I wanted to access that treasury. I later phoned Victor and asked if he could ask the Lord, on my behalf, to grant me the willingness and diligence to seek Him and that I would have access to the treasury he spoke of. Victor had an answer from the Lord that what I had asked for was granted. He later phoned me back and asked me if I realized the significance of that answer. I thought I did, but really didn’t. In fact, I am still finding out today.

On another occasion while visiting, I was moved to ask Victor if he would tell me of a prophecy he had had for me and Trevor years back, which he had mentioned at one point, but had not felt free to share at the time. He complied, relating the prophecy of, “May Mark be as a burning light, and Trevor endowed with wisdom.” He also told me of another prophecy he had: “I will destroy that man from off the face of the earth; you will see him no more, and I will give you his possessions.” He did not, at that time, know who the prophecy was about, but we found out the truth of it in later years.

Because we stood with Mom and Victor and Marilyn, believing it was God's will for us to do so, Dad eliminated Trevor and me from his will, leaving everything to Jason. By a very curious set of circumstances, Trevor later met up with Dad, and Dad reinstated us in his will...right before Jason shot and killed him. This tragedy was nine years to the day, and maybe even to the minute of the day, Dad served Mom the divorce papers. We inherited his estate, of which he swore Mom would see none, and Victor's prophecy was realized to be of him, and fulfilled. It was one of many dramatic examples, too numerous to recount here, of the Lord clearly demonstrating His sovereignty, showing in timing beyond random probability that He controls all and does with everyone as He wills.

For as long as I can remember, I had always had a desire to not just visit, but live in a foreign country, the more different the better. While in high school, I started to search for an opportunity to do that. For most of grade eleven and twelve, I checked out dozens of different exchange programs. All of the programs, however, required money that neither my mother nor I had. I took a particular interest in Japan and studied elementary Japanese through a newly introduced high school program. I tried to make a plan to go to Japan and teach English freelance upon graduation from high school. However much I planned, though, nothing seemed to come together.

One day in grade twelve, while I was doing yard work for a customer of a small lawn and yard care business I had formed on the side, I finally realized that everything I was doing was just about my will and desires, having no regard for what was the Lord’s will for me. I also realized that by pushing my agenda, if contrary to the Lord’s will, things could not possibly go smoothly, as I was swimming against the current. Indeed I was already experiencing that as a reality in small ways. So as I worked, I sought the Lord, saying, “Please show me what You want me to do and I will do it, whatever it is.” It was then that I heard the Lord clearly answer me, “Now wait and see what I will do for you.” I was a little taken aback not knowing what this meant, but at the same time started to experience a peace and easing of the burden of trying to make my own will and plans happen. I also had a new and powerful assurance and faith that if I was doing the Lord’s will, no force in the world could stop me.

With that, I gave up pushing to find a way to Japan and simply committed myself to the Lord’s will. I finished grade twelve and did not know what I wanted to do from there. I did not want to go into debt to go to university but had no way of paying university tuition outright. I had qualified for a few smaller scholarships but not nearly enough to pay for all of my tuition, and I did not qualify for whatever other scholarships I researched or applied for. I decided to work further on developing my lawn and yard care business and to go back to high school and take some vocational education courses that I did not have time to take while pushing to meet university entrance requirements.

During that time the Lord began dealing with me on many different issues. The largest one was my need to separate myself from an unhealthy relationship of unbelief and dependence that had developed between my mother and me; I needed to move out on my own. My mother was depending on me for her provision through what I earned working after school and the support payments I still received from my father. I, in turn, could not see making it on my own without her support and that of my father, especially if I had any ambitions of going to university without going into debt. The Lord was telling my mother and me that we need to look to Him for provision.

Though the Lord had clearly instructed me to take this step, I faltered twice before making it. Each time upon announcing that I was moving out, I was met by the tears and requests of my mother to stay. Each time I recanted, the Lord removed His blessing from me and everything around me seemed to go wrong. Each time I recommitted myself to this step of faith, however, the Lord’s blessing returned.

I finally committed myself to taking this step for real. It was hard for me to do this, as not only did I have no idea of how to make ends meet with only the income of my small part-time business, never mind ever having any hope of going to university debt-free, but it also seemed to put my mother in an impossible situation financially. She had barely covered rent and expenses with my income and support payments; how could she make it without? On top of that, I had no idea of where to find an apartment or even how to do that. It seemed like stepping off the edge of a cliff where I had security and reassurance into a black abyss.

I prayed to the Lord for guidance. He told me to ask an elderly lady, a customer in my lawn business, if she would rent her unused downstairs. I asked her and she declined, saying she was not interested. I went home and prayed again, asking the Lord if that was really His answer and what I should do next. He told me to ask her again. I protested within myself, feeling that it would be rude or useless, but I knew I needed to do it. So I approached her again telling her she was free to refuse but I just had to ask her again. This time, however, after some questions, she agreed. Though not knowing how it would work out, the relationship was blessed by the Lord for both our benefits. I became as a grandchild to her and took care of all of her household maintenance worries and provided company to her; she, in turn, gave me half rate on already reasonable room and board and was very generous to me. Nothing is impossible for the Lord!!!

The first night after moving out, though, I still did not know how things would work. I remember sitting in my room containing all my possessions, which was only a bed and a few boxes, and praying to the Lord, saying, “Here I am Lord, I commit myself into Your Hands. If this is Your will, I trust You will provide for me.”

The next day, I went to high school and was called to the principal’s office part way through a class. With uncertainty, I entered his office and asked what was happening. He told me I better sit down. He said he recalled how a few years earlier I had been seeking an opportunity to go to Japan. I replied that I had let that go and was no longer looking. Ignoring my interjection, he told me that he had just received a phone call from Japan, and they were asking him if there was someone our high school wanted to nominate for a full tuition and full living expenses scholarship for the university affiliated with their high school. This was made even more special because it normally would not be available until the current recipient of the scholarship from China graduated, but he was still only in his third of the four years required. The principal, Mich Forester, then informed me that if I was interested, he wanted to recommend me!

I was dumbfounded. I asked if I could have some time to consider it. He said I could, but also warned that we did not want to let such an unheard of opportunity pass by. I went and phoned Victor and the two of us prayed. The Lord answered us that this was His doing and His will that I take it. I applied and they accepted me.

However, as thorough the coverage was of all my needs once I got to Japan, I still had one huge obstacle: I had no money for airfare to Japan. With just enough to pay rent and expenses every month, I did not see how this was possible. I once again prayed to the Lord saying, “If this is Your will, Lord, then I trust You will make a way.” I then started applying to different community organizations to see if they would sponsor me. I got no response. My necessary departure date grew nearer and I still did not have the money. Winter, where I had even less income than in summer, was drawing near.

Then I went to one of my regular customer’s house and, after cutting their lawn, gave them their monthly bill. This customer had been a long-time customer but had also threatened to drop my service when I once tried increasing my rates by $2/lawn cutting. On this day, though, he called me into his house. He told me that he and his wife had been talking and they both felt like they wanted to give me a bonus that day. I told him it was not necessary but he insisted. I asked why. He replied that he didn’t know; he just wanted to. I gratefully accepted an envelope with a cheque inside and went to my truck. When I opened it, I found that it contained several hundred dollars!

It did not stop there. Over the next week or two, customer after customer, none of which knew each other, repeated the same words to me when I gave them their monthly bill. They all said they did not know why but they felt like they wanted to give me a bonus! Around that time I heard back from one of the community organizations, and they said that they had decided that they wanted to give me $500 to help me go to Japan.

The icing on the cake was when, at the suggestion of Victor, I put my business up for sale. Though, in inquiring around the city, everyone unanimously told me that the kind of business I had was worth nothing more than the value of the few simple assets I had, I had two fellows take interest in the business and bid each other up to close to three times the estimated value of the business. In a matter of a few weeks, the Lord had provided more than enough money to not only get to Japan but to buy new clothes for the trip and to set myself up comfortably when I got there. Praise the Lord!!!

I saw this pattern repeated many times in the next six years I spent in Japan. A lady on a train handed me a 10,000-yen note (equivalent to a $100 dollar bill) as she cried after a short conversation, resisting my attempts to return the money to her, saying she just wanted me to have it. People, jobs, opportunities and connections appeared at just the right time that led to fulfillment of my needs and even desires beyond what I could have ever imagined. The Lord gave me the wherewithal to learn Japanese while taking university courses and maintain the necessary honors average to sustain my scholarship eligibility. When I finished my undergraduate degree, I was encouraged by several professors to take the entrance exam for graduate school. The Lord blessed me with the necessary tutelage from those several professors to be able to pass the entrance exam and then provided for a couple of generous scholarships to cover my tuition and living expenses.

I had two different rooms in two different cities where I was working and studying provided free of charge by people whom the Lord moved to just want to help out. When I needed a car for graduate school, the Lord arranged for me to be at the registration office at the right time, through an extensive series of events, to run into a young couple that ended up, in tears, giving me a super fuel-efficient car in great condition that they no longer needed. The Lord showed Himself over all, in all, blessing me with access to His treasury.

This access, though, was not limited to physical provision or limited to the positive. There were many times when the Lord took away or corrected me as dramatically as He gave to me, but for my spiritual correction and betterment. At different times and in varying degrees throughout my stay in Japan, I went astray from seeking His will, and got caught up in worldly pleasures and pitfalls.

At the climax of slowly getting into a regular habit of drinking alcohol excessively with different families (they having invited me), I had a serious mountain bike accident when returning home late one night. The security guard at the university had put a chain across the bike path when he closed the gates, which he had never done before. I came home on my bike after having had too much to drink and hit the chain, flew several meters in the air and landed on the asphalt face first, taking the skin off my face and neck, fracturing a tooth, and incurring a concussion as well as a lasting neck injury. The Lord was merciful even in this correction, preventing much worse, causing my face to heal miraculously well, and providing a dentist and coverage for the dental work; I also received a solution for my neck when I returned to Canada.

In another example, I was given a laptop computer as generous payment for a translation job, to later forget it on top of my car and have it fall off and be damaged beyond repair as I strayed on issues, including masturbation and looking at pornography. When I repented, the Lord soon replaced and blessed. A similar situation happened when I ended up losing the above mentioned car in an accident, but, after repentance, the Lord arranged for another person to give me a different car.

From the beginning of all this, though, the Lord has also given me to believe in the importance of honoring Him with financial offerings. For every person the Lord requires or desires different things, but I had felt, from nearly the beginning, that I wanted to give half of all I earned to the Lord. There were many times as a high school, university and graduate student with very limited income, that it seemed disastrous to do this, but I always just did it with no thought for how things would work out, committing that to the Lord’s hands. As I have testified above, however, things always did work out, beyond imagination.

As can be said in conclusion for my whole life, the Lord kept me throughout my entire time in Japan, in spite of me and my weaknesses. After the bike accident in my third year, and correction and conviction of the Lord in many areas, I finally decided to come back to Canada for the first time in three years. It was then that I first saw Harvest Haven, the organic farm that Victor and Marilyn had just purchased. I was deeply moved inside and knew that I was connected with it. While I never expected to be living here and managing the farm as I do now, I felt a need to be connected to organic agriculture and pursue it in my studies. Upon returning to Japan, I changed my major from a focus on commercial law and finances to one that accommodated doing my graduation thesis on the organic consumer market in Japan, which was a stepping stone to going on to research organic farm management in graduate school.

In a visit back to Canada the following year, the Lord graciously, and in spite of me, granted me to receive His Holy Spirit. I remember speaking to Paul on the phone from Victor and Marilyn’s place where I was staying and telling him the good news. He rejoiced, but also said to me, “Now the fires will begin.” I thought I had already been through fires, but those that were to come were of a different kind.

When I finished my Master’s degree, I was faced with a choice. I could accept an offer from the university for another cushy scholarship for my PhD and the promise of a position when I graduated, or I could take Victor up on coming back to Canada and working with them at Harvest Haven. Life was easy where I was, in fact, physically all that I had ever dreamed of. I was making very good money as a translator and English teacher; I enjoyed my research and spent my spare time mountain climbing. However, after earnestly praying, I knew that it was time to come back to Canada and that, while all that I had was provided by the Lord, to stay in Japan was a dead end for me spiritually. In fact, I finally saw that it had all been given to me in order to forsake.

Throughout my stay in Japan, though, no matter how I strayed at times, I always knew why I was there. The Lord had brought me there for myself but also so that, in whatever way and to whatever degree He granted in spite of my weaknesses, I could speak to people about Him. Before I had left for Japan, as I asked the Lord why I was going, Victor gave me Romans 10:13-17:

Romans 10:13-17
(13) For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
(14) How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
(15) And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
(16) But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias said, Lord, who hath believed our report?
(17) So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

During my time in Japan, I was given many, many opportunities to tell friends and people I met of the Lord, His Truth and what He was doing in me and for me. One of those to whom I was sent to speak about the Lord is now a believer; my wife, Mariko.

Here is some background about my history with the opposite sex: When I was in high school, I had become involved with a Japanese girl, and we became very close. I committed myself into the relationship without knowing if it was the Lord’s will or not. When it finally became apparent to me that this was not the Lord’s will (we were not only involved, but considering marriage), it caused both of us great hurt in having to steer our relationship away from that direction. I can see now that both of us were kept from the even greater hurt we would have gone through had we pursued that relationship, with such fundamental differences in belief and without the Lord’s blessing. In the aftermath of that experience, I was resolved to never let myself get involved with a girl again unless I knew it was the Lord’s leading. That resolve served me well in avoiding such mutually hurtful relationships after that.

Getting back to Mariko, I first met her while working as a translator in an international conference that she organized. It was a job that seemed impossible for me to get as I was employed in a better paying job for the summer and I originally refused the request to work on the conference. After numerous requests from the conference organizer, I consulted with the supervisor at my other job; he not only granted me leave to work at the conference but told me I needed to do it. Mariko’s presence at the conference was also highly improbable. She had just quit another job and had been rounded into “volunteering” short-term at the organization setting up the conference. Shortly thereafter, they ended up asking her to be the head organizer for the conference. She protested that she did not have the experience or skills for it; they insisted and sent her anyway.

We commuted together, and, for a couple of hours each day, I ended up talking to her about the Lord. By the time the conference ended, we had become close friends and both felt attracted to each other but went our separate ways, I being cautious to not get involved and Mariko not pursuing anything for other reasons.

We ended up working together again on the translation of the post-conference report. Through this we had more contact by phone. The following summer, because of a suggestion from Paul (my elder and friend from Montana – see Paul Cohen’s Testimony) and in spite of my initial hesitations and misgivings, I was driven by the Lord to follow through on a lead for a job as a translator at a health food ingredients trade show in Tokyo. I was then stuck without a place to stay in Tokyo and no budget for accommodations, while at the same time being offered accommodation, though I had not asked for it, at Mariko’s parents’ home.

At first, I absolutely rejected the idea of staying at Mariko’s home, due to my resolve to avoid a relationship, as well as the apparent inappropriateness of the situation. However, in praying, the Lord showed me I needed to stay there, to trust Him in the situation and to speak His Word to Mariko and her family. I finally relented and consented to the idea while praying as I drove home one day. In a repetition of what the Lord spoke to me when I was originally given the opportunity to go to Japan, I heard, “Now wait and see what I will do for you.”

During my stay, Mariko and I ended up commuting together on a crowded train everyday, and the Lord just opened a tap inside of me and gave me things I needed to say to her. Communication and development of a relationship continued from there for several years, and, after I returned, Mariko came to Canada for several stays, including one for a whole year. During that time, I learned that nobody can cause another to believe, and nobody can believe in God just because they want to. Faith is a gift of God. Mariko recognized at one point that she did not have that gift and stopped pretending that she did.

With that, Mariko returned to Japan for another three years. Through orchestration of events that can only be attributed to the Lord, Mariko returned to Canada in July of 2006 with a changed heart, now having that precious gift of belief, not even certain of how or when things changed for her. It was a black and white difference. The Lord several months later granted her His Spirit. Eight months after coming, God opened the door and, with His blessing, we were married. In the three years she was back in Japan, though, I had to come to the same place I did as a high school student 14 years earlier where I completely gave up on my will and abandoned absolutely everything to the Lord’s hands, saying not my will but Yours be done. When I did, once again, I saw what the Lord “would do for me.” Mariko has been a blessing to me and everyone else here at Harvest Haven, as is every new believer brought into the Body of Christ (see her testimony - Mariko Benson).

Upon coming back to Canada, I faced many hard times and the hottest fires of my life due to the way I was and because of how the circumstances at Harvest Haven were at that time, which the Lord was using to burn away the impurities in us all. Through all of this, the Lord demonstrated that He is faithful and longsuffering and that He is entirely sovereign, in control of “good” and “bad,” using both to work His great work of deliverance for all of mankind, in His time and way.

The Lord has blessed me and all of us here greatly. For the father I lost, he gave me a father and much more in Victor, for friends and family forsaken, true friends and family with a unity thicker than blood, as well as replenishing one hundred fold anything else I have ever forsaken to serve Him as promised in His Scriptures:

“Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My Name's sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29 HNV).

My desire now is to be granted the honor and wherewithal to share with others His Truth and Word as He wills in order to be “a fisher of men.”

Mark Robert Benson

Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

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