Gary L. Thomas's Blog, page 33

Humble Theology

I’m a dirty cup.

Whatever truth God pours into me to pour out to others, the sad reality is it gets somewhat tainted because it runs through me. I’m likely to pollute that truth with my own wayward desires, prejudices, and limited thinking. My hope and constant striving is that the purity of God’s truth will overwhelm the spots of pollution that constitutes me and that, when I’m acting officially, the Holy Spirit will overpower the worst of me to showcase the best of Him. If some of the “polluted me” still seeps through, I earnestly pray that the Holy Spirit, the one true Teacher, will point that out to those listening to me or reading my words.    

I just co-wrote a book about sex (Married Sex: A Christian Couple’s Guide to Reimagining Your Love Life), even while knowing that I can’t write about sex without my own past infiltrating, or at least coloring, what I write about (which is why it helps to have a co-author who can call you out on a few things before the book goes into print). Even so, I felt the book needed to be written, and I’m pleased with what I believe God pulled out of both of us.

I don’t want to forget that I’m a dirty cup though, because I believe the most dangerous friends, writers and teachers are those who think sin is something they used to struggle with. If we don’t constantly and actively guard against our own pollution, we won’t even realize we’re passing it on.

I’ve seen this happen. One writer breaks my heart, as this person has so much good to share, but pride has all but taken over their work and is turning as many people off as it is on to the truth. Much truth is being lost because the cup it’s being poured into has gotten so dirty, in a way I think this writer doesn’t even realize.

When we viciously attack others, we should at least be humble that maybe there’s something in us that fails to grasp what they grasp. I’m humbled by Jesus’ words to Paul in Acts 26:15: “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” Persecuting the church is persecuting Jesus! The church needs to be challenged, and thank God for those who do so courageously when it needs to be done. But God have mercy on those who wage war against the church in a way that brings it down instead of building it up.

This truth is also why I—and I hope all of us—are willing to rethink the way we phrase things. I’ve had the chance to update and revise my own books, for which I’m so grateful. I’ve had to become comfortable with saying, “I don’t like the way I spun that; I’d put it differently today” without invalidating the entire work. Or I can agree with critiques. When Sacred Marriage first came out, a number of reviewers said it blames husbands more than wives, revealing my own sense of failure as a husband. I was likely preaching to myself in that book. That’s a fair critique, but in this case, one I’m willing to live with.

I believe in the process of fallen people pursuing perfect truth. It’s a process. We can help lift each other up, or be like those pathetic lobsters who simply pull each other down back into the bucket as one tries to climb up.

This belief explains why I don’t have to agree with everything a book says to find it helpful or to endorse it. Today, social media will rip you apart for quoting from one book even if there’s something objectionable written by that author in a different book!  We will kill academia and creative thought if we can’t read, quote, and interact with people we disagree with. The underlying thinking of some on social media isn’t just that “this book is all good and that book is all bad,” which is problematic enough, but “this author is all good and that author is all bad.” That’s almost never true, but there are those who write with this attitude about themselves: “My book is the unvarnished truth and you shouldn’t read this book, that book, or this other book because there are a couple paragraphs that I think could be interpreted in a dangerous way.”

When I read my beloved Christian classics I’m reminded that pride is the greatest sin and humility is the queen of the virtues, so in all things, let’s be humble. Only the Bible gets everything completely right, but even the Bible is often interpreted in a polluted manner.

Let’s encourage each other toward the truth. Truth shouldn’t be a weapon to euthanize someone; it should be a cane that helps us walk in the midst of our illness. Sometimes we need someone to point out our limp—and that’s a good thing. But we don’t need to tackle each other just because they’re not walking with a perfect gait.

If you want a good example of this, pick up a copy of J.I. Packer’s Keep in Step with the Spirit.  Notice the humble spirit with which he writes: “Some, noting the mistakes charismatic experience is said to verify, have…written off the movement as delusive and dangerous. Nor can one altogether blame them when one thinks of the euphoric conceit with which the mistaken assertions are sometimes (not always) made…I confess myself to be one among the many whom these features of the movement bother. Nonetheless, I think I see God’s touch in charismatic experience, and therefore I venture upon the second course—that of retheologizing. The reader must judge how I get on.”

While clearly stating his concerns about the charismatic movement, Packer doesn’t lambast the entire movement, and he seeks to find the good even while critiquing what he disagrees with. And he invites the reader to judge him! I would consider myself much more of a charismatic than Packer ever would, but I can still read my mentor’s words with affection and warmth because he treats those who disagree with him with honor and respect.

Some have asked me, “How can you not be a five-point Calvinist when Packer was your mentor?” and my response is, “for the same reason Packer endorsed several of my books even though I’m not a five-point Calvinist, as he was.”

I miss my mentor, and I miss the way he and his colleagues sought God’s higher truth in a spirit of courage and humility. They loved God’s truth and they loved God’s church, and they loved each other, even as they disagreed.   

“Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth.” 2 Timothy 2:25

“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” Psalm 133:1

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Married Sex Should Not be an Oxymoron

“Jocelyn” and “Danny” come off as unusually integrated, connected, and intimate. They have the feel about them of knowing each other deeply, without facade, and delighting in who each other is.

“So, what’s your secret?” I asked them.

“We sleep naked,” Jocelyn told me. “And Danny gets a full body-to-body naked hug every morning before he jumps in the shower.”

Though they have a very large master bedroom, they sleep in a relatively small full-sized bed. “It looks like a postage stamp in that room,” Jocelyn explains. “But we want to be close all night long.”

 Jocelyn and Danny are living embodiments of the power of physical touch and sight to foster marital connection. This desire to connect and enjoy each other helps them avoid one of the most common marital arguments: the nighttime thermostat setting.

 “I’ve learned to not care what the temperature is,” Danny told me. “Guys usually think their wives want the temperature set too high and they complain about it being too hot to sleep and then fight to make it colder. But I’d rather Jocelyn feel warm enough to not want to wear any clothes, so I’ve trained myself to not care how hot it is.”

 Jocelyn and Danny aren’t newlyweds, by the way. They’ve been married for a decade and a half and in Jocelyn’s words “The sex keeps getting better and better and better.”

That’s not the message we’re getting fed, is it? We live in a culture today that wants to fool us into believing that marriage is where sex goes to die. An enthralling honeymoon and maybe an exciting first year, but then, less sex, less romance, and less fun. We’ve probably all heard the old saying that if a couple puts a penny in a jar for every time they make love the first year of marriage, and then take out a penny every time they make love from the second year on, the jar will never empty. It’s not normal, healthy, or God-honoring for marriage to be this way.

And yet that’s what too many people expect. When a man I had only recently met asked me the title of my next book, I gulped a bit but then answered, “Married Sex.” He responded, “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

I thought this was so sad, but secretly, I was also grateful he had just given me a great opening joke for when I started speaking on it…

The common lie that it’s “all downhill” after the honeymoon, sexually speaking, allows far too many Christian couples to settle for mediocre or even pathetic sex lives. My co-author, Debra Fileta (a licensed counselor) astonishes me when she tells me how common it is for her to work with couples who haven’t been sexually intimate in years. And she’s not talking about couples in their fifties, sixties or seventies—she’s talking about couples in their twenties and thirties.

Dr. David Schnarch, who was a clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist, pointed out that while our genitals reach peak performance before the age of thirty, “Genital prime and sexual prime are entirely different, each occurring at opposite ends of your life span. People don’t reach their sexual prime until their forties, fifties, or beyond.” A flourishing sexual relationship takes emotional maturity, relational maturity and spiritual health, all of which can take decades to achieve.  Schnarch captures the intent of our book perfectly: “If you depend on horniness to carry you through a century of marriage” you’re going to be sorely disappointed. However, if you’re willing to build the kind of life, relationship, and spiritual vitality that energizes sexual intimacy, your best, most satisfying years, sexually speaking, may very well lie ahead of you.

This evil, stupid lie that sex is most enjoyable and active only at the start of a relationship has stolen more marital pleasure than perhaps any other that Satan has concocted. The enemy’s plan is always to subvert God’s plan, which in this case means encouraging people to have as much sex as they can before marriage, and as little sex as possible after marriage. And if sex is one of God’s greatest gifts to us, you can be sure that it will also be one of Satan’s favorite targets to tear down a marriage.

Thankfully, there are couples who are fighting back against this false view of sex, people who believe that God’s plan for sex is better than anything we could have thought up on our own. These couples are marriage “explorers,” determined to traverse, map out, experience and sight-see this wondrous “land” called sexual intimacy in marriage.

Christians should lead the way in this endeavor. We worship God when we enjoy his creation, and sex is part of his creation. But marriage is the necessary context in which sex reaches its supreme beauty. A woman presenting her naked body to her husband in the privacy of their bedroom is a thing of beauty, intimacy and loveliness. A woman walking naked through an airport makes you shudder and assume something is wrong with her mentally. Context is everything. Take sex out of its intended context, and a beautiful movement can become an agent of destruction.

The biblical context for a flourishing sex life is marriage and love. Since God is a God of love, we know that every healthy act of sex must be rooted in love, governed by love, and an expression of love.

The fact that God created sex tells us quite a bit about him, not least of which is that he’s the kind of God who approves of pleasure that feels transcendent. When we clearly know and love God, we can accurately see and understand sex. When we accurately see and understand sex, we can freely enjoy it.

As we’re going to see from God’s word, God loves sex, and therefore, so should we. Scripture affirms time and time again that sex in marriage is not only God’s plan, but it is a splendid gift that it is ours for the taking, and one to be enjoyed through most of our adult days.

If this strikes a chord with you, there are two opportunities for you to further explore this aspect of marriage:

Debra Fileta and I recently finished writing Married Sex: A Christian Couples’ Guide to Reimagining Your Love Life, which will be available October 5 and is now available for pre-order.

On October 2, Debra and I are sponsoring a Married Sex online conference with a stellar line-up of speakers. Our speaker list is truly incredible, featuring speakers like Dave and Anne Wilson, Levi and Jennie Lusko, John and Lisa Bevere, Shaunti Feldhahn, Christine Caine, Drs. Les and Leslie Parrot, Dr. Juli Slattery, Dr. Cory Allen, Ryan and Selena Frederick, and many others. You can find more information (and pre-register) here:  https://www.marriedsexconference.com/. Early bird registration ends September 1st, so if you’re interested, you’ll want to sign up soon.

And as you might have guessed, you can expect that this topic will come up much more frequently in this blog in the coming months. It’s my prayer that Christian couples can be known for celebrating and enjoying the wonderful gift of married sex.

Is this quote from the same page in that book? If not, what page is it on? Please add the appropriate endnote.

Potential call out.

Maybe “through our married lives”. Many adults are single, so it might make sense to add “married” to this statement somehow.

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Loving Sin is Hating Life

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I don’t rail against things we should hate as much as I try to proclaim what we are called to love. But sometimes we must address—because Scripture and the Christian classics remind us—that loving the wrong thing can destroy us. Much of the Christian journey could be described as learning to love what is lovely and hate what is hateful.

None of us come to this naturally; it is a gift of God that we are enabled to see how so many of our desires, if not impeded by God and redirected by God, could ruin us. And the hatred people feel toward those who point this out—even if it is done from the motivation of love, with great gentleness and grace—is evidence of how fiercely deceived we can be by our wayward desires. Gollum may be the most theologically astute character in literature—threaten my precious (even though it holds me in bondage) and “I hates you.”

Sometimes we need a hard but clear word, and that hard but clear word today is that to love sin is to hate life. Encouraging anyone to continue in their sin is to leave them in a bed of putrefaction (decay, decomposition, rot). Belief in Christianity is essential, but it’s not sufficient; the spiritual person isn’t merely a dichotomy of belief and unbelief, but also one who is living and not dead.

In Acts 11:18 the apostles marvel that “Even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Repentance that leads to life. We could also stress the opposite: repentance that leads to life. No repentance, no life. No life, no repentance. They are like water and wet and cannot exist without each other.

In a Christian classic whose title makes it unlikely to be read by many (Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions Together with Death’s Duel) John Donne follows the progression of a devout believer who is grievously ill, even to the point of being on death’s threshold. Spoiler alert (for the two of you who might be tempted to dive in)—the believer survives (it caught me by surprise—I honestly didn’t expect this) and Donne makes the analogy between rising from the death bed physically to rising from the death bed spiritually: “Thou hast also made this bodily rising, by thy grace, an earnest of a second resurrection from sin, and of a third, to everlasting glory.”

Just as a sick person entreats a doctor to deliver them from bodily ills, so the believer entreats God to deliver us from our spiritual ills. We don’t just want to get out of bed—we want to get out of our sickness. In the same way, we don’t just want to get out of hell—we want to get out of our sin. You aren’t a healthy Christian if you don’t want to be rid of your sin more than you want to be rid of hell, because sin is hell manifesting itself in the present.

Donne again: “I have a bed of sin; delight in sin is a bed: I have a grave of sin; senselessness of sin is a grave: and where Lazarus had been four days, I have been fifty years in this putrefaction.”

He chastises himself—as should we all!—that he has put up with his sin nonsense for half a century. It took a serious illness to show him how spiritually sick he was—the foolishness of it, the stench of it, the disgusting nature of it. Through facing a near physical death, this believer recognizes he has been living in a spiritual grave. Think of that image—living in a grave! That’s so disgusting, and such an accurate picture of living in our sin.

No one is a friend who tells me to stay in the grave when Jesus offers me resurrection. That person is my enemy who tells me I should be satisfied by death and fever and body aches when Jesus invites me to live an abundant life.

Jesus asked several people: “What do you want me to do for you?” What do you want Jesus to do for you? So many would say, “Deliver me from hell when I die,” not realizing that this means delivering them from sin while they live because sin is hell made manifest.

One of the reasons I hesitate to write or preach stuff like this is that it seems self-righteous—like I am proclaiming my own holiness just because I can see the beauty of holiness. But Donne gives me the courage to see past that. Those who most see the horror of sin are usually those who are most aware of the reality of their own sin—and they don’t deny it. No man or woman is a hero against sin; only Jesus is the perfect overcomer of sin. Donne speaks of the state of humankind, “subject to infinite weaknesses,” and likely to “fall into infinite sin without any foreign temptations.” I don’t need any help or temptation to sin; I live on a slippery slide every day. I do need hourly help for holiness. Which means, if I don’t actively seek that help, I am passively falling.

We are weak and God is strong. We love death even as God calls us to life. We are drawn to the sin that destroys us while God sometimes gently and sometimes forcefully calls us to holiness. To love sin is to love death. To love sin is to love spiritual decay and spiritual rot.

Climbing out of your sin is like climbing out of a spiritual grave. Don’t dismiss it as merely “medicating yourself.” Understand the allure of sin to arm yourself, of course, but don’t lose the horror of sin along the way. Shame doesn’t help, but hatred for sin does. And thank God, we have a Savior, a deliverer, and a redeemer. He is our only hope. He removes our shame and our sin. Don’t settle for one without the other. 

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You Don’t Want What You Think You Want

Let me talk to the women first, and then the guys. However, I’d like both genders to read both sections so that you can consider the weight of all that I’m suggesting here. Part of finding the right person to marry is becoming the right person, so take a hint and learn from what I’m telling each gender to avoid. 

AN EXCITING MISTAKE 

Women, my goal is to get you to care about your boyfriend’s godliness as much as awife cares about her husband’s godliness. It’s his character that will help keep your life mission alive as feelings begin to fade. I’ve rarely had a wife complain to me about her husband’s looks. When wives send me emails, it’s almost always about character issues: “He shouldn’t do this thing. He should do that thing, but doesn’t. How do I fix this?” 

Yet most women are not seeking men of character first. They are seeking men with whom they feel “in love.” If they do feel in love, they will excuse every fault they see in their man, trying to make the relationship work. If they do not feel in love, they will not seriously consider the man as a potential mate. 

Ironically, girlfriends are quick to justify seemingly bad behavior in their boyfriends and try to explain it away, while many wives are eager for everyone around them to know how awful their husbands can be and how everyone should feel sorry for them for having to live with such a wreck of a human being. In fact, not long after they become wives, women will fault men for the very things they overlooked and defended as girlfriends. One woman told counselor Winston Smith, “You don’t understand how sick he is! Did I tell you what he did once in college?” Why didn’t this episode bother herbefore she got married? Having known this and accepted it, why bring it up now as a wife? 

Would that it were the reverse, with girlfriends seriously discussing with their friends their boyfriends’ weaknesses so that they could make a wise decision, and wives seriously defending their husbands’ honor so that they could make a lasting marriage. Unfortunately, ignoring your boyfriend’s weaknesses and gossiping about your husband’s failures are two sure paths to divorce. 

In front of a very large group, I asked all the married women to stand up. Then I said, “I want you to sit down if you disagree with me that a man’s godliness should be one of the top two things a single woman should consider when choosing a mate.” 

Not one wife—not one—sat down. Every married woman was telling every single woman: find a man with solid character who is growing in the Lord and pursuing godliness. That’s what those women value most as wives. Yet many single women merely pay lip service to character: “Well, yeah, character and godliness are important, but I think my boyfriend loves God … in his own way.” 

Too many single women overlook some serious character flaws or maybe even an absence of faith. Because their feelings are so strong, they just can’t believe this isn’t a match made in heaven. Rather than honestly explore whether this man is worthy of their trust and worthy to become their kids’ father, they spend their energy trying to explain away his apparent flaws and to make his spiritual maturity seem acceptable to friends and family members. 

Women, ask yourself, what will you most desire in your man ten years from now, when you have kids and a house and are sharing a life together and the infatuation has faded? Find that. Look for that. 

Most married women desire their men to be godly, to have a good sense of humor (life is tough—laughing helps), to be an involved dad, to have a strong work ethic. And yet those four qualities sometimes take a backseat with single women. Some are more attracted to the dreamer who has lots of plans than they are to the workhorse who puts in lots of effort. They value immediate sexual chemistry over a man who keeps his word and lives a respectable life. What so many single women want is a guy who makes their hearts race, their palms sweat, and their sexual chemistry boil, while so many wives want a man they can count on, who will be there for them and their kids every day, and who will faithfully deposit a check in the bank at least once a month. 

If you don’t deal honestly with this discrepancy—what you value now, and what you’ll value ten years from now—you’re setting yourself up to live with many regrets. Making a wise marital choice begins with giving proper weight to more significant issues—a shared mission and character traits that will bless you or plague you for the next five or six decades—rather than sexual chemistry or romantic intensity that will fade within months. 

It is also easy for women to be carried away by a man’s position. Maybe he’s wealthy. Maybe he’s a leader in the church. So you make assumptions that because he’s this or that, everything else must be okay. Here’s the thing: you don’t marry aposition. You marry a person. Some wealthy guys are stingy. Some ministry guys are jerks. Don’t let a guy’s position distract you from his person. You’re looking for character, not status; you want to find a man who is solid in his core, not just someone who has a solid title. 

Can I be blunt? Can I put on my “pastor’s hat” here for just a second and flat out tell you what I hope you want? Acts 6:3 sums it up perfectly: “Choose … men … who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.” This is what the early church looked for in leaders of their congregations, and it’s what you want to look for in leaders of your home. Men who are filled with the Spirit—they are alive to God, and God is active in them—and men who are full of wisdom. You won’t regret making a choice founded onthat basis. Can this honestly be said about your boyfriend? “He’s a man full of the Spirit and wisdom”? If not, are you sure you want to settle? 

A GORGEOUS MISTAKE 

And for you guys—since I’m one of you, I know what you’re looking for. We like to look, particularly at gorgeous women. Science has established this (a 2009 Dutch study demonstrated that attractive women can literally derail a man’s cognitive functioning), and the Bible concedes this, telling young men in Proverbs 31 not to be led astray by a woman’s beauty or charm, because both of these fade. God knows that we are enthralled with physical beauty. One of those Dutch researchers of the study I just referred to—a published, high-degreed professor—met a stunningly beautiful woman at an academic conference. As they talked, he was eager to make a good impression, but when she asked him where he lived, he literally could not remember his street address. 

Within marriage, this captivation can be a wondrous thing. It’s actually a blessing to be enthralled by your wife’s breasts (Prov. 5:18–19), but when choosing a wife, we also have to be careful about putting more weight on things that last. In case you’ve never thought about it, a woman’s body changes much more rapidly than her characterdoes. 

The same is true of sexual chemistry—what launches sexual chemistry won’t sustain sexual chemistry. Your girlfriend might very well be all over you (physically) now, but if you’re not married, that in itself is a sign of selfishness: when she wants you, when her libido is high, she’s enthusiastic and initiating. But if she loved you, if she genuinely cared for you, she would want what’s best for you in Christ. She would hold back from inappropriate physical intimacy as she wouldn’t want to taunt you or tempt you or pull you away from God. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this. It’s so sad to speak with guys who think their sexually active girlfriends will be sexually active wives just because in the early days of the relationship, when the sexual chemistry was so high, the only problem was reining in the affection, not expressing it. In fact, however, it’s almost always the reverse. If your dating relationship is sustained by sin, what will sustain your marriage? If your girlfriend acts selfishly as a girlfriend—wanting sex because she wants it, and wants it now, regardless of whether you’re married—why do you think she won’t act selfishly as a wife? 

The same sin that moves your girlfriend to get too physical before marriage is the sin that will kill or perhaps maim sexual intimacy after marriage. Sin, by definition, is overturning God’s created order. In God’s created order, there should be no sex outside of marriage, and lots of fulfilling, generous sex during marriage. Why do you think a person will disobey God in the first instance, but obey Him in the second? Doesn’t it make sense that if you shut out God to do what you want to do in one season, you’ll keep doing it in the next season? 

That’s why, when choosing a wife, you want to find a woman who is seeking first God’s kingdom now. You want to find a woman who is seeking righteousness now. If she isn’t a mission-based woman while you date, what will make her a mission-basedwoman after the wedding? 

And lest you think that “mission-based woman” sounds boring, puritanical, and even asexual, let me assure you that when it comes to sex, virtue is your friend. Find a godly wife who is motivated by God, not just her own desires. God will never stop loving you, God will never stop caring about you, so if a woman is motivated by God and listens to God, she’ll keep loving you, too (including sexually), because she’ll get that love and motivation from God. And, not to be mean or anything, but there are times when you won’t be all that lovable. If your future wife isn’t motivated by God, there’s not enough about you to keep her interested. 

This might shock you, but your best chance at sexual satisfaction in marriage is not to focus on appearance alone, but rather to find a woman of virtue. Proverbs 31 describes her as a woman who “fears the LORD.” When a woman is motivated by kindness, compassion, generosity, and understanding; when she is good at forgiving (because I guarantee you, you’re going to mess up); when she is desirous to serve as Jesus models service, she’s going to be a very satisfying sexual partner and an overall kind wife as well. 

I have seen men drool over women who were all but ignored as singles when they hear those women’s husbands describe their loving service as wives. These men missed out on some very fine life companions because they were looking for the wrong thing. And I have seen men marry gorgeous women who steadily became less so, and those men made themselves miserable by making such a superficial choice. Proverbs 12:4 warns young men, “A wife of noble character is her husband’s crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones.” If you’ve ever seen someone slowly waste away of cancer, that phrase—“a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones”—should strike fear in your heart. You will be eaten from the inside out when you attach yourself to a foolish woman, however beautiful (or rich, or charming) she may be. 

Many men I’ve met have confessed that the reason they are following the Lord so wholeheartedly is because they married a strong Christian woman who wouldn’t have married them if they hadn’t increased the trajectory of their own spiritual growth. These men frequently confess that they shudder when they think back to what they would have become if they hadn’t changed. There might even have been some mixed motives in becoming more serious about the Lord, but the repentance took, the change has been real, and they feel immeasurably blessed. That’s the fruit of hitching yourself to a godly wife who inspires you. 

I love being married to a beautiful woman; it’s a blessing I won’t even try to deny. But I treasure, even more, being married to a godly woman. 

Here’s the reality: many women are led into marriage primarily through romantic idealism, and many men are swept to the altar through sexual attraction. Before you can make a wise marital choice, you have to rid yourself of inferior motivations. The wrong why will lead you to the wrong who. 

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Choir Robes and Work Boots

On a weekly basis, most of us sing songs of amazing commitment, making seemingly heartfelt promises – but how many of them will we keep? Yes, music helps us rest in God’s presence, but too often we walk out of church and go our own selfish ways, forgetting all that we sang and promised just moments before.  

You will find no verse in the New Testament in which Jesus commands his disciples to sing for at least a half hour once a week. But you can hardly go two pages without encountering Jesus’ call to commitment, a call he applied and fulfilled in glorious fashion. Jesus prayed to his heavenly Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4, emphasis added). 

It’s not helpful to pit musical worship against service; the two should go hand in hand. But if we lack Jesus’ sense of giving God glory by completing the work he gave us to do, our worship will suffer accordingly. Consider how often Paul calls believers “fellow workers” (see 1 Corinthians 3:9, 2 Corinthians 6:1, emphasis added), not “fellow singers.”  

One of the great misunderstandings of our day is that worship and singing are considered synonyms. If only working received the same top billing!  

Music is a wonderful gift from God that can constitute a true act of worship, but once the worship service is over, if we do not exchange our choir robes for a good pair of work boots, our empty promises will count for nothing, no matter how beautifully they were sung. What work – that is to say, what worship – is God calling you to be involved in today? 

an excerpt from Holy Available 

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Making a Marriage

The following characteristics are essential to make a marriage. You can’t expect a twenty-two-year-old to possess all of them in their full mature form, but you should see the foundations of these elements. The degree to which they are not present is the degree to which you’ll have difficulty building intimacy with this person and the degree to which you’re going to struggle in the early years of marriage. If you’ll accept this premise, it’ll go a long way toward helping you make a wise marital choice: a good marriage isn’t something you find, it’s something you make. That being said, look for a spouse who:

IS HUMBLE

A quick definition: humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking less about yourself. It is someone who, like Jesus, believes he has come “not to be served, but to serve.” Jesus knew His talents, and He knew His deity, but He used His power to serve. Unlike Jesus (since we are not perfect, and He was), a humble person is someone who has experienced and is experiencing conviction of sin: they are aware that they fall short, every day, and that they have much to work on, and biblical grace is the only place they put their hope.

The only thing worse than marrying an imperfect person is marrying an imperfect person who thinks he or she is perfect. When you lovingly confront them, they’ll take offense. Or, horrified that they’ve been found out, they’ll minimize the issue with silly games: “I’m just a horrible, horrible wife.” No, you’re a good wife who has a sinful issue that needs attention. The reason I call this a “game” is that unparticular repentance is a clever way to avoid particular conviction. Saying “everything about me is rotten” helps us sidestep the fact that some parts of us are more rotten than others.

While theologically it is true that “all our righteous acts are filthy rags,” that doesn’t mean we don’t have some strengths and weaknesses. A wise person knows he might excel at giving but lack patience, or excel in patience while lacking courage. The key is to accept that there will always be weaknesses in our lives and, with a spirit of willingness and appreciation, to learn to value a spouse who wants to help us make every effort to add to our faith (2 Peter 1:5–7).

Humility matters more than money and appearance, as it is the character foundation of growth and godliness. You can always earn more money, lose a little weight, and gain a bit more muscle, but if someone’s character has no foundation, there’s nothing to build on. Humility is the cornerstone of character and the foundation of a growing, intimate relationship. I don’t believe it is possible for a highly arrogant person to be intimately connected with someone. Arrogant people use people; they don’t love them. Besides, the Bible says no less than three times: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Do you want to marry someone who is at war with God, or someone who is walking in His grace?

When she gets into an argument, a humble person considers the fact that she may be wrong and that there may be something she has missed or is overlooking. She is more concerned with walking in light and truth than with being right. Aware of his spiritual poverty, a humble person prays and studies and confesses and asks people to hold him accountable, as he knows he is a work in progress.

IS ABLE TO FORGIVE

If you believe the Bible, you are going to stumble many times throughout your marriage (James 3:2). You will break your spouse’s heart. You will disappoint her. You will embarrass him. Your sin will inconvenience her.

A couple I was pastorally counseling needed to work on building some relational intimacy. The guy confessed that he didn’t want to fully open up to his fiancée about the stress in his life because he didn’t want to be a burden to her. I told him that if his goal is to never be a burden to his future wife, he shouldn’t marry her; he might as well break up with her right now. There was, quite understandably, visible shock on his face until I explained, “What if you get laid off and can’t find another job and she has to double her hours? What if you get a stroke and she has to hand-feed you? What if you make a really stupid investment or a dumb mistake and get fired or have your portfolio tank? One or all of those things will happen over the course of your marriage. You are going to hurt and disappoint this woman very deeply, so you might as well learn how to do it productively.”

It’s hard to accept that we are going to hurt someone we love so much, but if we marry them, we will. That’s a biblical promise. Which means forgiveness is absolutely essential. I have seen married couples survive affairs, catastrophic illnesses, financial meltdowns, and tragedies that would make you pass out—but the one thing I have never seen a marriage survive is a persistent unwillingness to forgive.

How do you know the person you love is capable of forgiving? First, that person recognizes his or her own need for forgiveness, understands God’s love and acceptance, and not only believes the gospel but has it woven into every fiber of his or her being: we are all sinners saved by grace who depend on God’s mercy and initiating grace every hour of our lives.

Can I be honest with you? If your boyfriend or girlfriend is having a difficult time forgiving you for things you’ve done while dating, marriage is going to be even harder. When you live together and raise a family together, sins become more apparent, more common, and more consequential. If that person can’t forgive you now, he or she will never be able to forgive you then.

Forgiveness does not mean the removal of consequences, of course. Women, if your guy cheats on you, you need to forgive him—and most likely, break up with him. If he hits you, even once—you will have to work toward forgiveness, but I pray you will end the dating relationship right there (more on this in a moment) and perhaps even turn him in to the police.

In addressing forgiveness, I’m talking about the kinds of sins that don’t speak of a questionable character but rather of a person in progress who needs common grace. Dating is different from marriage—it is appropriate to evaluate your commitment and the person’s worthiness, as their character reveals itself. Once you are married, you have to look at these things differently, but until you are married, evaluation is essential.

COMMUNICATES

Intimacy is built through sharing, listening, understanding, and talking through issues. If someone doesn’t like to talk, refuses to talk, or resents your desire to talk, intimacy building is going to hit a stone wall. In most relationships, the woman will desire to talk more than the man, so women shouldn’t freak out if their boyfriends don’t seem as excited about this aspect of relational building as they are. But, women, if he isn’t growing in his desire to share his heart with you, if he is doing it only to please you, if it feels like a chore to him to get to know you, if he can’t or won’t ask you a question about yourself—he lacks the basic relational skills to build an intimate marriage.

The general rule is this: however much your boyfriend talks to you while dating, cut that down by at least 25 percent after marriage. If you’re not good with that, you’re looking at the wrong guy. I’m not saying it should be that way, only that it almost always is. Talk to married women; ask them if this isn’t true. Make your choice accordingly.

It all comes down to this: if relational intimacy matters to you, make sure you marry someone who has the basic skills to build such a relationship, as well as the motivation to keep on doing so. Once the infatuation ends, relational skills are essential to take your marriage to the next level. This sounds rather elementary, but it’s often ignored in the fog of infatuation.

For more on making a wise marital choice, check out my book, The Sacred Search.

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Kicking Against the Goads

What if God should will for me to be poor, or wealthy, or famous, or anonymous, or influential, or ignored? In that case, my call is to be faithful in the midst of God’s will, whatever that will may be. The question then becomes, “How can I be faithful in the midst of this situation?”

Henry Drummond writes:

“That is the object for your life and mine – to do God’s will. It is not to be happy or to be successful, or famous, or to do the best we can, and get on honestly in the world. It is something far higher than this – to do God’s will…A man may think he is doing God’s work when he is not even doing God’s will. And a man may be doing God’s work and God’s will quite as much by hewing stones or sweeping streets as by preaching or praying. So the question just means this – Are we working out our common everyday life on the great lines of God’s will?”

As believers in Christ, we will search in vain to find happiness outside of his will. I don’t pretend that God’s will is always easy to discern. I also doubt that God’s will is always the narrow road we sometimes make it out to be. If a man loves working with wood, who is to say that his working with wood doesn’t fulfill God’s will?

But one thing I do know. Almost without question, the happiest, most joy-filled people I meet are those who believe they are exactly where God wants them to be. And the most frustrated people on this planet tend to be those who are fighting God rather than surrendering to him. Remember what Jesus said to Saul (later the apostle Paul) on the road to Damascus? “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

If you’re “kicking against the goads,” stop! It will get you nowhere. Surrender to God’s will and experience his best for you – whatever that may be.

An excerpt from Holy Available

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What You Don’t Know Really Can Hurt You

Dating can be a dangerous dance, with each partner focusing on the wrong things and actually inhibiting the development of a mature relationship. Unless you’re thoughtful about how you date and what you do on your dates, they won’t give you much of a clue about each other. Going to the movies, biking through the park, eating out—of course that kind of activity is going to produce and maintain a certain level of affection. But it’s not real life; it’s often not even real relating. It’s just playing. It doesn’t tell you squat about how a man could face a medical or vocational crisis, what kind of courage a woman has, what values each person lives by, or what spiritual pursuit drives the other person. Instead, you find out that you both like vegetables on your pizza and movies that have a plot—that’s something, I guess, but it’s not much on which to base a lifetime decision. It’s okay to have fun. We need to have fun. But some dates also need to be purposeful, designed to ferret out your boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s character.

Let me approach this from another angle: women, any guy can fork over forty dollars to buy a dozen roses, but not any guy is truly generous and unselfish toward others. One romantic present, given with mixed motives, reveals nothing about a man’s true character. Men, you can find women who will take off their clothes, but can you find a woman who will bare her soul so that the two of you can become one? Or is she so hurt and troubled that she’ll lie and cover up anytime you get close to the truth of who she is, maybe even using sex as an escape valve to avoid truly relating to you or dealing with conflict?

Your mission is to truly get to know this other person—that takes intentional effort. Here’s what to do to get there.

Watch With Me

A young man lost a chance at employment when he went out to dinner with a prospective boss. As soon as the waiter put a plate in front of him, the young man salted his food and started eating. The boss was blunt, and perhaps unfair, but said, “I don’t hire people who salt something they haven’t tasted. I want you to know what’s going on before you try to fix it.”

That might seem trivial to you, and maybe it is. I’m just making a point from a real-life example: when you’re with your boyfriend or girlfriend, pay attention. How do they treat their family? What’s their relationship like with their parents? Their siblings? How do they act around kids? How do they treat “invisible” people—waiters, janitors, and the like? If a guy is too lazy to bus his own table at McDonald’s, what makes you think he won’t leave his stuff around the house, expecting someone else to pick it up?

Here’s the painful reality when you enter any dating relationship: your partner can’t be completely 100 percent altruistic. That person just can’t. She wants something from you. Maybe he wants to marry you. Maybe she wants to make out with you. Maybe he just wants to make you like him. You can assume that she’s on her best behavior with you. So whatever your boyfriend or girlfriend does for you—buy flowers, bake food, offer encouragement—comes from somewhat mixed motives.

The only way to know true character, then, is to watch your friend with someone else. Women, if you’re with a guy who wants to be in ministry, but he’s criticizing every pastor and every sermon he hears, I guarantee you that five years after he’s married to you he’ll have a whole lot of criticism about your role as a wife. Guys, if you’re around a woman who does kind things for you but no one else, the days of her doing kind things for you are severely numbered, probably within weeks of the wedding, if you want to know the truth.

Choose dates that will test your boyfriend or girlfriend. Sprinkle this season of your relationship with impromptu “interviews.” Get into ministry situations, family situations, maybe even stressful situations, to see how he or she reacts. If one little thing goes wrong and ruins the whole date, you can bet that on a future family vacation there is going to be a whole lot of drama and not much rest, because something always goes wrong on a family vacation.

Most modern dating focuses on how two people treat each other. That’s not particularly helpful, especially in the blush of infatuation. You’ve got to get outside the relationship to get inside the motivations and heart of the person you’re thinking about marrying.

Go Down Memory Lane

Keeping with this theme—how to test a serious dating relationship—now try to explore what your boyfriend or girlfriend was like before meeting you. Did he enjoy sports, did she attend church, did he do the things the two of you enjoy doing together now? Without letting on what you’re doing, purposefully try to crack the code of your beloved’s past, as that past is a fairly good indicator of the future.

Infatuated couples invariably try to change for each other. Remember, during infatuation you become obsessed with getting and keeping your heart’s desire. Because you so desperately want the relationship to work, you will find yourself astonishingly open to making little compromises and temporary changes in your lifestyle and even personality to accommodate the relationship. This motivation almost always fades with the infatuation. If your future spouse didn’t go to church before he or she met you, it’s unlikely church will be a priority after the wedding. If that person pretended to like sports, or museums, or cooking, it won’t take long until the playacting ends. Get to know your potential spouse’s past so that you can get a read on your future. Be very suspicious of any major change.

Talk to his or her siblings, parents, friends. Ask to see old photo albums. You’ve got to be a bit discreet here—don’t sound like an FBI agent interrogating a witness. But informally drop a few questions in the middle of casual conversations to get just a little bit deeper into your potential spouse’s psyche.

Pray

At the start of the Boston Marathon, everybody looks the same. Sure, there are different ethnicities and genders, but people tend to have a certain “look”—or they wouldn’t be able to race there. This makes it difficult for spectators trying to locate a loved one. At the prerace expo, which is wall-to-wall people, my daughter said she almost called about a dozen different men “Dad.” She saw a Boston coat (which you don’t see that often in Bellingham, Washington), a certain body type, and a man wearing a baseball hat and assumed it was me—until the guy turned around. In my hometown—in that getup, anyway—I look distinct. Here, I looked like everyone else.      

During the race, however, people begin to distinguish themselves. A woman asked me my time the next day, and when I said “3:31” she replied, “Oh, you’re much faster than my friend. He was 550.”

“Do you mean he placed 550th or that he finished in five hours

and fifty minutes?”

“He placed 550th.”

“Ma’am,” I said, “there was a wall of humanity between your friend and me at the finish line. He is way faster than I am.”

We might have looked alike, but we didn’t run alike.

In the same way, dates can “look” alike, but get them alone before the Lord of the universe, hear the concerns of their heart, and you can get a better read on who they really are in Christ. How do they talk to God? Is He their friend or some distant stranger they almost seem afraid of or embarrassed by? Do you pick up a heartfelt passion, a sense of someone who is familiar with this conversation, or do you feel like you’re listening in on someone who is talking to you and trying to impress you more than actually talking to God?

What does she pray for and about? Does he have a concern for others, do her prayers reveal a trivial life and petty concerns, or is he swept up by God’s compassion for others?

Are you praying with someone who is comfortable being silent before God, listening to God as you would in any other conversation? Or is he in a rush to just impress you and move on, afraid that silence or a lack of eloquence will make him look bad?

Most of all, does it sound like this person has been here before, or is all this just a show? Of course, people can still “act” when they pray, but if you pray with them more than a couple of times, you’ll begin to get a better feel for where they’re at with the Lord.

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Living for God’s Church

This may sound shocking, but biblically, living for God means living for his church. When God calls us to himself, he calls us to his church, to a purpose bigger than ourselves. There is a glory in the presence of Jesus Christ, seen when believers come together, that will necessarily go missing in a strictly individual pursuit of God. When the gospel gets turned from a community-centered faith to an individual-centered faith (“Jesus would have died for me if I had been the only one!”), we eclipse much of its power and meaning.

But because we live in a me-first culture, we often try to individualize corporate promises. We tend to have more concert about what the Bible says to us individually than about how it calls us to live in community. Too easily we forget that we are called to be part of Christ’s body, the church.

Peter tells us that, corporately, we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” Why? Not for any individual purpose, but for a corporate one that honors God: “that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10).

All of us need to lay a new groundwork if we want an authentic faith based on a God-centered life. Rather than the believer being the sun around whom God, the church, and the world revolve, God becomes the sun around which the believer revolves. This means the believer becomes willing to suffer – even to be persecuted – and to lay down his or her life to build God’s kingdom and to serve God’s church.

What are you doing in your life right now to serve God’s church, to build God’s church, to participate in God’s church? We should be passionately devoted to the bride of Christ.

An excerpt from Authentic Faith

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The Three Statements Every Loved One Wants to Hear

On the night before his father died, Jeff Kemp sat at his dad’s bedside and asked for a blessing. His dad, Jack Kemp, had stood strong in the pocket as an NFL quarterback. He had stood tall as a member of congress for the state of New York and as one of President Reagan’s cabinet members. He exuded confidence as a vice presidential candidate.

But now he was flat on his back, stricken by cancer, tired and weak. His son asked him to do one final, great act. Jeff wanted his father’s blessing.

Jeff himself had been cheered by tens of thousands as he played quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. He had heard the praises (and occasional boos) of people from all walks of life. But now, he desperately wanted the blessing of one elderly dying man.

Jack reached out, touched his son and prayed, “Dear God, please help Jeff realize his talent. Help him realize the force for good he can be in this world. And help us both to remember the only thing that matters is, ‘Thy will be done.’”

In his book, Facing the Blitz, Jeff writes,“He did it, even in the deepest pain, the toughest blitz, the final moments. Dad affirmed my identity by calling out my strengths and tying them to a vision for my life. It was in his DNA to encourage, to affirm, to lift.”

Looking back, Jeff could have remembered his father in his glory moments—playing professional football in front of tens of thousands, walking through the halls of Congress, seated among the cabinet members during the State of the Union address, or waving his hands to the cheering crowds who welcomed him on a presidential campaign stop.

Instead, Jeff’s mind goes back to when Jack was at his weakest physically, with just hours left to live. In the private quiet of that hospital room Jack gave his son Jeff his most cherished memory.

Like me, you probably have never played quarterback in the NFL. You may never have served in congress, been a cabinet member, or on a presidential ticket. But also like me, having done none of that, we can each give our children something even better than any of those impressive credentials: we can give them our personal blessing.

The challenge is we think blessings more than we speak them. And we usually presume on future time to get them out. Why wait? If these words are so meaningful, impactful, and memorable, why wait a decade or more to give a gift that can nourish our loved ones today?

About the tenth time someone lamented to me, with deep hurt, “My entire childhood, I never heard my parents say, ‘I love you,’ ‘I’m proud of you,’ or ‘I believe in you,’” I made a resolution: my children will hear those phrases, not just once, but many times.

If the lack of these three powerful statements scar so many for life, imagine the power these three statements have to release abundant life today:

“I love you.”

“I’m proud of you.”

“I believe in you.”

And when we talk about blessing, let’s not forget our spouses. We can be quick with “I love you,” but “I’m proud of you” and “I believe in you” touch a different region of their souls. Spouses usually need a bit more specificity:

“You work so hard for us.”

“I couldn’t get through this gathering without you.”

“You were a rock when I needed you most.”

Those of us who still have our parents can pass the blessing upwards, even if we’ve never received it ourselves. Just about every parent knows they have failed in many ways. When children say “I love you,” “I’m proud of you,” and “I believe in you,” they’ve given their parents the best present their troubled consciences can receive.

A life of blessing others is itself a blessed life. Whether you are blessing your children, your spouse or your parents, if ever you can say, “I love you,” “I’m proud of you,” or “I believe in you,” do so, soon and often! 

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