Gary L. Thomas's Blog, page 24

How Your Thoughts Might Be Sabotaging Your Relationships

My friend Debra Fileta has written a new book on how our thoughts might sabotage our relationships. With her love of Scripture and her practical application honed as a licensed counselor, she helps us to discard the thoughts that hold us back from building intimacy with each other, and learn how to be set free to chart a new path. This is an excerpt from that book.

Have you ever heard a new phrase, or song, or saying for the first time ever, and then somehow over the course of the next few days or weeks you start hearing it everywhere? Or maybe you notice a sleek red car drive by that you’ve never seen before, and then you start seeing it in every parking lot. Or maybe you learn about a style of house while you’re watching HGTV, and next thing you know you spot it all over your city or town. Could there really be an increase of people buying that sleek red car you noticed, or that new style of house – or are you just more aware of it now? 

This is a concept that we refer to in psychology as frequency bias or frequency illusion, and it can happen with pretty much anything. The fancy name for this is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. And if you’ve never heard of it before, there’s a good chance you will after today (see what I did there?). The main idea of this phenomenon is that the frequency of those things is not actually increasing, but simply your awareness of them. And that awareness changes everything. 

There’s so much going on around you in one particular 24-hour period that it’s impossible for your brain to absorb it all. But when you bring your attention to something, which is generally called selective attention, you then begin to make note of that specific thing more and more often. Your brain now tunes into it!

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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Unlearn Apathy Toward the Church

Learn to Be a Suffering Servant for the Church

In May of 1942, Czechoslovak resistance soldiers parachuted into Prague to assassinate German SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the main architect behind the “Final Solution”[1] and the Reich’s third in command after Hitler and Himmler. I’m somewhat hesitant to use an assassination as an example in a Christian book, but the evil that Heydrich was unleashing on a daily basis rivals any murderer in world history. Czech resistance fighters wanted the world to know that though their country was occupied, many of its citizens were not silent, passive, or accommodating. They received training and assistance from British forces for what would be the only assassination attempt of a world leader during all of World War II. As the Czech fighters prepared to depart for their mission, each man was given a cyanide tablet with the explanation, “Our assignment is to kill him; it isn’t to get away safely.”

I don’t know that any scene in a movie[2] moved me quite like watching that statement being made. It was so matter of fact. Our assignment isn’t to get away safely. Getting the job done is more important than surviving…

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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Dr. Joy Skarka Addresses the Church, Women and Sexual Shame

Originally, I hesitated to post a video on dealing with sexual shame during Easter week, until I realized that Easter represents Christ’s victory over our shame. We’re going to let everyone see this video interview with Dr. Joy Skarka, on helping women heal from sexual shame. I’d appreciate your prayers this week, as I’m preaching four times on Good Friday at Cherry Hills Community Church (if you’re near Denver, feel free to join us). I pray you will have a blessed and spiritually rich Easter week celebration.

Watch this interview on Substack HERE.

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Fighting to Keep Your Marriage Close When Babies or Children Threaten to Tear You Apart, Part 3

In spite of putting in place strong boundaries and being married with renewed understanding, Debra and John still struggled somewhat after bringing home baby number two. Even if you know what to do, if you don’t do it fully, your marriage is going to suffer. You can recognize what went wrong, but then you have to adapt if the old solution isn’t working.

Thus began Debra and John’s Sunday night “check ins.”

“We were struggling in our marriage; at the worst point we needed to check in every Sunday night. It was intentional and deliberate: how are we doing, what are we struggling with,  what does the other person need, what complaints do we need to air? We have literally been doing this every Sunday night since.”

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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Unlearn the Demand for a Sin Free Life, Part 2

What if Everything You Thought You Knew About Sin Is Wrong?

Reading the Christian classics reminds me that the sins I care about and focus on the most may be the sins God cares about the least. If we get too hung up on how our own day and age view sins, we can miss out on a deeper understanding of the root of sin. I can “manage” the sins that would get me fired from the ministry, so that’s what I’ll tend to focus on. Money, sex and power are the big three that seem to bring Christian workers down.

But Puritan Richard Baxter calls me to go deeper: “Bestow your first and chiefest labor to kill sin at the root.” To do this we must “know the master-roots; and bend your greatest care and industry to mortify those: and they are especially these that follow; 1. Ignorance. 2. Unbelief. 3. Inconsiderateness. 4. Selfishness and pride. 5. Fleshliness, in pleasing a brutish appetite, lust, or fantasy. 6. Senseless hardheartedness and sleepiness in sin.”[i]

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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Created to Create

When I left Houston, a church member told me that of the hundreds of sermons she had heard me preach there, the one that impacted her most was “Created to Create.” Made in the image of God, who begins and completes Scripture actively creating, we are created to create. And so we will have the fullest and most God-honoring lives when we actively, intentionally, and relying on the Holy Spirit, create. I was so pleased to be able to rework this sermon and preach it again in Colorado at Cherry Hills Community Church earlier this year, so we’re sharing it here for this week’s post.

Watch this sermon HERE.

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Unlearn the Demand for a Sin Free Life

“Sticky sin” describes moral issues that tend to stick around. We fall, and then we fall again. Or we finally get victory, and then collapse into pride because of our victory. Or we use one sin (vanity) to fight against another sin (gluttony) and realize we’re just trading sins, not overcoming sin.

Of all the things I had to unlearn, one of the biggest was my faulty understanding of temptation. I especially want younger Christians to know this: to be human is to be tempted. There is no humanity without temptation. Thomas Brooks writes, “The eagle complains not of her wings, nor the peacock of her train of feathers, nor the nightingale of her voice—because these are natural to them. No more should saints complain of their temptations, because they are natural to them. Our whole life, says Augustine, is nothing but a temptation; the best men have been the worst tempted; therefore, remain silent before the Lord.”[i]

Even Jesus was tempted. If you think you can become so holy, disciplined and consecrated that you leave temptation behind, you are in for a bitter disillusionment. Your temptations will die when you die, but not one second before.

Continue reading this blog on Substack HERE.

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Fighting to Keep Your Marriage Close When Babies or Children Threaten to Tear You Apart, Part 2

Baby number two didn’t present quite the same challenge to Debra and John’s marriage as did baby number one.  John had awakened to the reality that raising kids is a lot of work. He already knew that, but now he was prepared to face it head on. You can’t just add a new baby into your life as if there was this gaping hole of time and energy waiting to be filled; something has to give and John was already living and working at near maximum capacity. So what do you do? You realize where you fell short the first time and then prepare in advance for what’s to come. John couldn’t feel bad about being caught off guard by the addition of the first baby, but he could certainly anticipate the same thing (and more) happening for the second baby.

Continue reading this blog on Substack HERE.

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God’s Covenant Love, Sex, and Marriage with Dr. Juli Slattery

Dr. Juli Slattery presents a compelling case that sexuality was intentionally created by God to be a metaphor teaching us about His covenant love. I interviewed Juli for a seminary class, but the content was such that I’m eager to share this interview with all of you on Substack. Juli explains what’s behind the metaphor, talks about why a biblical narrative of sex is critical, describes what that biblical narrative consists of, why she prefers the term “sexual integrity” over “sexual purity,” and the markers of a healthy sexual discipleship in the local church. I’ve read more books on Christianity and sex than I can count–Juli’s books stand out, offering fresh content and paradigm shifting perspectives.

For the record, this interview was recorded long before the Josh Butler controversy erupted online. This conversation is in response to Juli’s books and seminars, nothing else. 

Watch this interview on Substack HERE.

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Satan’s Strategies to Corrupt Society and Win the Day with Evil

I was blown away reading a book (A Christian Directory) that Richard Baxter wrote 350 years ago, because as he describes Satan’s strategies to corrupt and ruin a society, Baxter sounds like he’s describing what has happened in the United States (and much of Europe) in the last fifty years. It’s fascinating, and a relevant warning for us to  heed today. Satan’s strategies aren’t new, but God’s word and wisdom are eternal. The Kingdom of God will ultimately prevail.

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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