Gary L. Thomas's Blog, page 25

What Our Crosses Do

Unlearning the Need for Comfort, Part 2

This is week two of the chapter on unlearning the need for comfort and learning the need for afflictions. You should read the first part before reading this one if you haven’t read it already HERE.

John Calvin has his own list of the benefits of affliction. He says our crosses:

1.     Lead us to perfect trust in God’s power[i]

Without suffering we cling to “stupid and empty confidence in the flesh” rather than live a life of humility and God dependence. When pride begins to reign, God “afflicts us either with disgrace or poverty, or bereavement, or disease, or other calamities.”

We resent afflictions in exact proportion to our ignorance of our pride and our blindness to pride’s spiritual devastation. We think we’re patient, until God gives us something that tries our patience. We think we can forgive, until we are asked to forgive something so heinous, we realize we just can’t on our own. We think we are strong until we are faced with a temptation that overwhelms us.

Need I go on? We think, but God knows, and he uses afflictions to reveal to us what he already knows and we don’t.

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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A Wife of Noble Character: Who Can Find?

May I please brag about my wife Lisa? She’s earned it.

Lisa has been so amazing this month. I had two events back-to-back in Missouri two weekends ago. Lisa was with me but had to leave midway between the two to help with two family emergencies.

I spoke at a marriage conference Friday through Sunday morning in Branson that went so well—God’s presence was so palpable, and the couples had a very special time—but very late Sunday night two concerning family events happened. We were already exhausted from a full weekend and weren’t sure what to do—I was still scheduled to spend three full days at Southwestern Baptist University in Bolivar.

Lisa woke up Monday morning, went to an independent coffee shop across the street, spent some time in the Word, and became convinced God wanted her to fly back to Washington. What a blessing to have a wife who seeks God’s will and knows how to receive it. Lisa came to my first chapel service and then flew out to Washington state, where she helped out my parents. My dad had fallen and broken his hip. Lisa earned the daughter-in-law of the year award and her husband’s undying loyalty (not that she didn’t already have it). She is so good with both my parents. Lisa helped my dad play solitaire on her Ipad to pass the time and set up a FaceTime call with me.

Those of you who know her organic ways won’t be surprised that I listened to her running commentary about how she just doesn’t get the way hospitals—of all institutions—feed patients (“How is anybody supposed to get better eating all that sugar and starch?”), but she was more than patient with my parents, and a big help to my sister, who is amazing in the way she cares for our parents.

Read this blog over on Substack HERE.

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Unlearn the Need for Comfort: Learn the Value of Adversity

This chapter from, The Art of Unlearning, is on something that has been both brutal and beautiful in my life: unlearning the demand to always be comfortable, and learning the absolute necessity of afflictions. Please leave your comments; I’d love to know your thoughts. You all can help shape this book’s final draft!

Last night, a seminary student of mine asked my advice for three different couples she’s working with, all of whom are facing a sexual addiction. This morning, I read a friend’s book about a long descent into opioid and alcohol addiction and an agonizingly slow climb out of it. I’m in the middle of a long stretch of work (over two weeks without a day off) that I try to avoid but sometimes fall into, and my addiction of choice is sugar. When I’m overly stressed and tired, when adrenaline has coursed through me during a long engagement and I’m off the stage, my brain begs for that sugar rush.

We’re all messed up in different ways, but if there’s one thing I’m more addicted to than sugar (which Lisa is working on), it’s comfort. I crave comfort. I seek comfort. I hate the lack of comfort. I organize my life to try to maintain comfort, but God makes that impossible, because he loves me. 

That last statement—that God makes unbroken comfort impossible because he loves me—is something I’ve had to learn. The thought that unbroken comfort is a sign of God’s blessing and favor is something I’ve had to unlearn.

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 1

I remember, as a first-time parent, my fervid determination to keep my child alive. I was astonished the hospital was letting me drive off with a living and breathing human being in the back of my economy model Honda.

I wish I had been as mindful about keeping my marriage alive during this new season of life. Making Your Marriage a Fortress explores many life assaults that can tear at the fabric of our marriage, but what if one of the assaults is actually a blessing—the miracle of children?

Read this blog over on Substack HERE.

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What if Marital Sex Is a Laboratory of Personal Growth?

The premise behind Sacred Marriage is that marriage can be a uniquely transformative experience–God can use the process of relating to each other and the challenges of marriage to grow our character and help us become healthier people. This is particularly true in the bedroom. Using the work of Dr. Corey Allan, I talk about 6 ways that marital sex is what Dr. Allan calls a “laboratory” for personal growth, and I end with two points that I think are essential for us to be mature individuals–both of which are essential to also enjoy a growing sexual relationship in marriage.

Watch this video over on Substack, HERE.

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How Spiritual Purpose Breathes Passion Into Your Marriage

Joint spiritual purpose can breathe passion, life and respect into your marriage, enriching it, renewing it and strengthening it. Kevin and Sherry Harney experience this as much as any couple I’ve ever meet, so I’m eager to introduce you to them, tell you about about their story, and let you hear how their passion for God’s work morphs into an increased passion for each other. I love this couple and am challenged and inspired by this couple, and I believe you will be as well.

Watch this conversation over on Substack, HERE.

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Marvelous Mutual Encouragement

Unlearning Isolation, Part 3

We live in a world that is hostile to the love and presence of God. Sin seeks to actively lure us away from him, but even when we don’t give way to sin, daily life distracts us from the abundance that God wants to give to us. Pause for a moment and you’ll see that this world, as it is now run by powers hostile to God, is a factory that produces loneliness on a global scale.

You can have a tough day that isn’t about sin but that still produces loneliness. A relationship with a child, parent, spouse, friend or co-worker drains you. Something you cleaned gets messed up, making you feel unappreciated or taken for granted. Something you created gets ignored or criticized. Urgent distractions keep you from doing what you want to do or were supposed to do. A nagging headache, a sore back, weather that plummets just when you wanted to go out for a walk or run; a needy individual sucking the last remaining vestiges of your joy; all produce low-grade frustration that makes you just want to escape.

Read this blog over on Substack HERE.

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Does Your Life and Ministry Point to Jesus or a Problem?

When I read a book or hear a sermon, nothing moves me as much as something that helps me remember why I am so in love with Jesus, why I worship Jesus, why Jesus is so gloriously perfect to meet my every need. If I learn something, that is good. If I am made angry, that can be good or bad. But if anything ultimately pulls my heart and mind away from Jesus, I recognize it as dangerous.

Read this blog on Substack HERE.

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Crucial Connections

Unlearning Isolation, Part 2

If you missed the first part of this chapter, you might want to read that first. Unlearning Isolation, Part 1.

Do you remember Brandon from chapter 7? He’s the musician who felt alienated at home and tried to ease the pain by going through girlfriend after girlfriend, until he got married and unfortunately repeated the cycle.

I would have responded to Brandon’s disclosure differently in my thirties than I would now. Now, I see Brandon’s sin clearly, but I also see the motivation and ache he sought to escape. That doesn’t, for a second, excuse the deplorable choices he made, but it does change the way you address how to go forward, away from the typical shame-casting, “get an accountability buddy, grit your teeth and try harder next time” approach.

Read this blog over on Substack, HERE.

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Don’t Get Married Until You Hear This Message

Making a wise marital choice will impact the rest of your life like no other choice you’ll make–save your decision to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I wrote The Sacred Search because I found that Christians were getting married for the same reasons as non-Christians, none of which accurately predicted marital happiness. In this sermon I talk about those three reasons, explain why they shouldn’t drive our choice to get married, and then call believers to apply their faith by getting married for entirely different reasons.

Watch this sermon HERE.

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