Gary L. Thomas's Blog, page 44

Send Us into the Pigs

Imagine
you had once looked upon the unvarnished glory of God—not with human eyes, but
with angelic ones. You were one of the angels who could dwell in the direct
presence of God without being burnt up by His light, power, and glory.

For
whatever reason, you followed Satan and joined in a rebellion against God. You
lost and were cast out of God’s presence, no longer able to sit in His glory.
After the initial shock of your defeat wore off, imagine how bitter you’d be
about what you had forfeited. “I used to be able to wait on Him, to worship
Him, to see Him, and now I live in darkness, forbidden to look on His face?”

How
much would you hate Satan, the ringleader who led you into such misery?

But
still, you have a job to do, so you torment a first century man and turn him
against his family and community. You make him violent, unpredictable, and
scary. You are bitter and angry, and so you derive a pathetic pleasure from
turning this man from love. He is marked by hatred and fear, the same hatred
and fear that has driven you for thousands of years. You used to join in
joyous, rich, encouraging, and intimate fellowship with like-minded angels in
heavenly worship as you bathed in God’s light, but now you’re joined in a
merciless war against people, with a group of like-minded devils inhabiting a
grubby, loathsome man who terrorizes everyone around him.

How
far you have fallen, indeed.

But
you’re not done falling yet.

In
the distance, you see Jesus, and you know He’s the Son of God. Foolish mortals
may mistake Him as simply being a prophet while ambitious and jealous men might
label him as a false teacher to serve their own ends, but you who once stood in
the presence of God know truth, power, love, and glory when you see it. And you
know you’re defeated. Even if your company name is “legion” (many), there
aren’t enough of you in existence to withstand the power of this one solitary
life. You found that out the hard way long ago.

You
and your cohorts know you can’t keep terrorizing and using this man any longer
because Jesus won’t let you. So what do you ask for? What is your wish? You
who used to dwell in the heavenlies, who then were cast into the darkness and
finally are living in the pathetic swamp of a toxic man, what’s your next best
hope? What do you plead with Jesus to allow you to do?

“Send
us to the pigs” (Mark 5:12).

If
you look it up in the Bible, these demons “begged” Jesus to send them into the
pigs! Please, please, pretty please! We used to live in the heavenlies and messed
that up. We lived in a man and messed him up. So now just send us into
pigs—pigs!—and we’ll kill them as well.

Can
you imagine begging to inhabit a pig with the intent to kill it? What a sad ambition!
What a pathetic fall from grace.  Do
these demons ever think of what they were and compare that to what they have
become, and shudder? 

But
this story isn’t just about pigs and demons as much as it’s about us.

Have
you beheld the glory of God, bathed in the love, compassion, and grace of God,
and yet slowly slid away to become a person who brings judgment instead of
encouragement; division instead of unity; casts shame instead of blessing;
steals, murders, and destroys instead of bringing life?

Do
you take glee from making someone feel small? Do you have a perverse pleasure
in making others—maybe even your family members, maybe even your children—feel
afraid of you?

Wake
up!
Look at how far you’ve fallen and know you may not be done falling yet!
If angels can go from rejecting the presence of God to desiring the filth of a
pig, don’t think you, who have seen much less, can stop your fall at any given
point.

When
we leave love, when we stop cleaving to the truth, when we reject peace, we
become, more and more, people of hatred, lies, and discord. It is the
ugly degradation of sin whose slope isn’t just slippery, it’s more like a
cascading waterfall, and the story of its inexorable advance predates human
existence.

“Send us into the pigs.”

Do
you crave what you once despised? Have you become the kind of person you
used to think was pathetic? Is your highest hope now something that is
disgusting and beneath a person who was created in the image of God?

Do
you who once reveled in God’s presence during sweet times of worship, now
thirst after the darkest places of the internet for escape? Do you, who have
heard God’s comforting, affirming words of love and forgiveness, use your
tongue to demean and destroy? Do you take your hands, similar to the hands of
Jesus that He let be pierced for our salvation, and ball them into a fist to
make someone hurt or be afraid?

“Send
us into the pigs.”

Have
you gone from reveling in the joys of heaven and the work of God to lusting
after terrorizing a pig and serving the cause of Satan?

Go
Home

If
so, there is hope, and it’s found in a parable told by Jesus that also involves
pigs. In this case, it’s about a prodigal son who envied the pigs for
their food. The inexorable slide of sin is seen in stark relief when Jesus
describes the son of a rich father, once clothed in luxury, who grew up eating
delicacies, but then leaves his father and becomes so poor, abandoned and
hungry that he ends up envying pigs.

What
did this son say and do? When he recognized his condition he said, “I will go home to my father and say, ‘Father,
I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being
called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant’” (Luke 15:18-19).

Jesus’ point in this part of the parable is
clear: the Father will always take you back.

Go home. Turn back to the light. Turn back to God. Plead not to go
into a pig but into the service of your Heavenly Father. He’ll take you
back. He’ll lift you up from wherever you have fallen.

You don’t have to keep falling further and further from God and those you once loved.
Look up and behold the glory of God.

Demons don’t appear to get a second chance, but
because of Christ, we do. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

There’s
a woman who lived the same journey as the prodigal son. Mary of Magdala once
had seven demons come out of her. After Jesus healed her, she became one of the
leading lights and one of the most powerful and influential leaders in the
early church. While Jesus walked on this earth Mary of Magdala went from being
possessed by Satan’s servants to supporting Jesus out of her own purse (Luke
8:1-3). In her prior days she brought darkness and hate everywhere she went;
now she was spreading the Light of life for all humans.

We
can go from darkness to light, but the journey is fluid. In today’s
Christian world we so focus on that one-time decision, but I’ve been alive too
long and have witnessed too many stories to believe our life’s aim is decided
in one single choice. Far more often, it’s subtle shifts in our thinking and
direction that eventually and oftentimes slowly lead us to places we never
could have imagined—both good (Mary of Magdala, the prodigal son) and bad
(angels begging to enter pigs), depending on the direction of those shifts.

To
drift from love, by definition, is to drift toward hate. Wherever
you are not for God, you are against Him (Matt. 12:30).

Which
direction are you drifting toward today?

The post Send Us into the Pigs appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Married for a Mission: The Surprising Path to a Renewed Marriage

When
Kevin Miller asked his future wife Karen to marry him, her response was a quick
and enthusiastic yes. Karen would later admit that perhaps she could have given
a little more thought to such a monumental life decision: “When Kevin popped
the question no one asked us a bigger question: ‘Why do you want to get
married?’  At the time, the question
would have bordered on blasphemy.  After
all, Kevin and I were in love—anyone could see that.  We shared a commitment to Christ.  Who needed better reasons than those?”

Just
a few years into marriage, the Millers experienced the common listlessness that
seeps into many marriages: “Isn’t there more to life than this? We still
love each other, but now that we’ve found each other, is this really all there
is?”

Some
couples face these questions by thinking that perhaps they married the wrong
person. If they had
married someone else, the thinking goes, the marriage would still be exciting
and fulfilling. But the Millers found that what they lacked most as a couple
wasn’t compatibility, it was purpose.

When
a pastor asked them to take over the church youth group, the Millers agreed,
not realizing how difficult these adolescents were. Writes Karen, “The group
literally drove us to our knees.  Before
each event, we began to pray for the youth and for ourselves.  The group also forced Kevin and me to talk
more than we had since we dated.  We
needed to plan together and present a united front to the kids.  As we did, we found out a lot about each
other.”

Here’s
what I love about joint ministry: you think you know all about a person. You’ve
been together for years and it’s easy to assume you’ve got everything figured
out; there’s nothing more to share, nothing more to discover, nothing more to
talk about. Ministry of any significant kind raises a whole host of other
issues; you see a side of yourself and each other that you never knew existed. Sometimes,
this can be inspiring, but other times, it can be outright scary. The Millers
attest that some of the challenges they faced and disagreements they suffered
over how best to proceed at times felt like it would tear them apart as a
couple. But it made them talk, it gave them a new reason to pray together,
and in doing both, a new intimacy was born.

Because
our ministry invites the presence of the Holy Spirit, it can also foster new
respect. Two good friends
of ours asked Lisa and me to do the premarital counseling for their daughter
and her future husband. At my home church, I typically do most of these
sessions alone, but Lisa wanted to a part of the conversations with our
friends’ daughter. The first time we met we hit on some foundational issues right
at the start and spent a good bit of time talking over them. Afterwards, Lisa
took my hand and looked at me in a new way.

“What?”
I asked.

“You’re pretty good at this,” she said and hugged my arm.

The
Holy Spirit is pretty good at this; all I did was offer myself for His
use. But if that offering created a new respect from my wife, I wasn’t going to
complain…

Notice
that this respect came from doing the ministry together. I have done hours upon
hours of premarital counseling without Lisa there; it’s when we joined in
the effort that our own marriage benefited. The Millers experienced the
same thing.

 “The biggest surprise was that through the
process something good was happening to our marriage.  We were working together at something.  When we failed, at least it was our failure;
and when we succeeded, it was our success.  During most of each workday, we were miles
apart.  But when we led the youth group,
we were arm-in-arm and heart-to-heart.”

Kevin
and Karen gained a new respect for each other as they saw each other’s gifts put
to use, and they stumbled on a great discovery: “What a puzzle!  That youth group ministry, which by all
rights should have pulled our marriage apart, actually bonded it in a new level
of intimacy.  Without trying to work on
our marriage at all, it had become richer and deeper.”

The Third Hunger

The
Millers discovered what they call “a third hunger.” Genesis reveals three
aspects of marriage:

Companionship
(Genesis 2:18: “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper
suitable for him.”)Children
(Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply…”)Contribution
(Genesis 1:28: “Fill the earth and subdue it, and rule…)

In one sense, we could call this
third aspect of Genesis, “joint fulfilling service,” the Old Testament
equivalent of Matthew 6:33: “Seek first the Kingdom of God…”

If our mission from Christ is
to “seek first the Kingdom of God” how can a successful God-honoring marriage
not be marked by mission? We’re not
told to seek first an intimate marriage, a happy life, obedient children,
or anything else. Jesus tells us to seek first one thing, and one thing only:
His Kingdom and His righteousness (the two words define and build on each
other, creating one common pursuit).

The Millers understand, as I have
come to understand, that life without this aim, and marriage without this
purpose, is going to lose a lot of luster. “We hunger for this today:
cooperating together, meshing, working like a mountain climbing team, ascending
the peak of our dream, and then holding each other at the end of the day.  God has planted this hunger deep within
every married couple.  It’s more than
a hunger for companionship.  It’s more
than a hunger to create new life.  It’s
a third hunger, a hunger to do something significant together.  According to God’s Word, we were joined to
make a difference.  We were married for a
mission.”

Being
“married for a mission” can revitalize a lot of marriages in which the partners
think they suffer from a lack of compatibility; my suspicion is that many of
these couples actually suffer from a lack of purpose. Jesus’ words given to individuals is perhaps even truer in
marriage. When we give away our life, we find it. When we focus outside our
marriage, we end up strengthening our marriage.

The
before-you-have-kids years and the empty-nest years provide particularly
wonderful opportunities to “recalibrate” and rebuild your marriage on the back
of shared mission. Whether you seek to become the sports/coaching couple, the
Bible study leading couple, the local school mentors couple, or the hiking club
couple, using extra time for a divine purpose refuels marriage, passion,
appreciation, and fulfillment. It can revolutionize your relationship. You know
you can’t “re-create” the initial infatuation you felt years ago, but you can create the even more powerful bond
of purpose and spiritual mission.

A
woman once told me, “Over ten years of marriage, I have found that when my
husband and I focus on our own needs, and whether they’re being met, our
marriage begins to self-destruct.  But
when we are ministering together, we experience, to the greatest extent we’ve
known, that ‘the two shall become one.’”

Look outside your marriage and build
your relationship with renewed joint purpose.

Date Night Questions to Make This
Post Come Alive in Your Own Marriage:

Do we have any
shared passions that God could use to reach others?Do either one of
us already have a leading ministry that the other one can join? How would we
make that happen?How can
ministering for God together help us be more effective at what we’re already
doing alone? On our sixtieth
wedding anniversary, what do we want to be able to look back at and know we
accomplished something for God together? What steps can we begin taking
today to make that happen?

This article was adapted from Gary’s book: A Lifelong Love: How to Have Lasting Intimacy, Purpose and Friendship in Your Marriage.

The post Married for a Mission: The Surprising Path to a Renewed Marriage appeared first on Gary Thomas.

What We Need Most From Marriage

What if one of the things we need is
something we don’t want?

One of the things I love about marriage
is that it can lead us to places where we will be all but forced to rely on God
like we never have before.

My friend Rett gulped deeply when the
doctor told him that his wife Kristy had to have a particular operation
that could keep her in bed for several days and require special care for a few
weeks after that.

Rett
is a cognitive man, a brilliant lawyer, but he tends to live in his head with
concepts and arguments and a quick wit. He makes a good living and can hire
people to do what he doesn’t want to do. He’s not used to playing the role of a
nurse, which is what he knew he would have to be doing for his wife.

On
the way home from the doctor’s office, Rett blurted out, “I don’t know if I can
do this!”

“What
do you mean?” Kristy asked. “I’m
the one getting the operation!”

“I
mean, I don’t know if I can be that low maintenance. I’m high maintenance. Tank
(their dog) is high maintenance. The only reason our marriage works is because
you’re low maintenance and you hold everything together.”

Marriage
is a long journey—long enough so that eventually even the lower maintenance
spouse is going to be at least temporarily high maintenance. While many might
see this as a curse to bear, this actually can be seen as a gift if the
normally higher maintenance spouse views such seasons as opportunities to step
up and switch seats, becoming the primary caregiver, perhaps even becoming a
different kind of person.

Ruts
are comfortable, but limiting. They stifle personal and spiritual growth.
Marriage sometimes forces us out of those ruts so that we are invited to grow
in areas in which we may not want to grow, but in which God is eager for us to
grow.

In
case you’re wondering, Kristy gave Rett a glowing report about stepping up,
though she admitted he was rather relieved when one of her relatives finally
flew into town and took over.

Here’s
the key: marriage presented Rett with a situation he would never have chosen on
his own. Rett didn’t choose marriage to learn how to become a nurse—part of his
attraction to Kristy was the fact that she was so low maintenance—but that’s
what he had to do now that he was a husband. Marriage called him to step up
outside of himself, depend on Christ, and in the process become more like
Christ.

Rett
followed and appreciated Christ the teacher, but Jesus wasn’t just a teacher.
Christ touched the lepers, healed a woman who had been bleeding for years, and
regularly made time out of His schedule to attend to the physical needs of
those He loved. To put it in language Rett can now understand: Christ on earth
wasn’t just cognitive;
He was also caring.
For Rett to become more like Christ, he had to grow in the same area. He’s got
the cognitive down—you’re not going to trick him with false doctrine—but can he
learn to care?

Ask yourself, what if marriage is
supposed to be difficult on occasion so that we are forced to learn to rely on
God’s Holy Spirit and become a different kind of person?

What if God is more concerned about our
“practical atheism”—saying we believe in Him but rarely relying on Him—than He
is about how easy our marriage might be at any given moment?

What if half of our frustration in
marriage results from the fact that we want it to be easier but God wants us to
become more mature?

Consider what your
marriage may be calling you to today that you don’t feel capable of doing on
your own. Instead of saying, “This is just too hard,” or “This just isn’t my
gifting or calling,” or “That’s not why I got married,” invite God to transform
you into a different kind of person.

Be bold; hold God
to His word: “Lord, You promise to give the weary strength. I am bone weary.
You promise to give power to one who lacks it. I feel powerless. You promise to
give the ignorant wisdom. I am clueless about what to do.”

Instead of
running from the difficulties of marriage, let’s allow them to teach us the
glory of spiritual dependence on God.
Let’s accept the invitation to become a different kind of person. It may not be
what we want of our marriage, but it may, in given seasons, be what we
most need from our marriage.

The post What We Need Most From Marriage appeared first on Gary Thomas.

What God Asks of Husbands

My love for Scripture is matched only by
my love for Jesus, and the love of one is the expression of my love for the
other. Everything I aspire to be as a husband is because of what the Bible
calls me to be. And since Jesus was never married, I have to take the bulk of
my instruction as a husband from the other words of Scripture, which I take to
be as authoritative as the “red letters” of Jesus.

My fellow husbands, what I’ve found is that when I rightfully understand and seek to submit to all that God’s Word calls me to be and do as a husband, I don’t have any time left over to wonder if my wife is holding up “her” verses. So,  let’s look at what the Bible actually calls husbands to be. A “biblical” husband:

1.Never makes his wife’s life bitter

Colossians 3:19 says, “Husbands, love
your wives and never treat them harshly.” The word “love” is in present tense, meaning
unceasing and ongoing action, while the language for “treating your wife harshly”
is in the aorist tense, meaning a one-time occurrence. In this context that
means when it comes to a husband being harsh with his wife, Paul’s policy is Not.
Even. Once. You don’t get to treat your wife harshly when you’re tired,
frustrated, or it’s at the end of a long day and you’re not getting what you
want out of life or marriage. A paraphrase for Paul’s advice to husbands would
be, “always love, never be harsh.”

Another translation for harsh, by the
way, is anything that “makes her life bitter.” If I believe the Bible, I should
never do anything that makes my wife’s life bitter. If leaving my socks on the
floor bothers her, I should pick them up. If a tone of voice makes her feel
talked down to, I must stop using that tone of voice. And of course, this verse
absolutely rejects any notion of physical harm, verbal abuse, or even threats.

A biblical husband always loves and is never harsh.

2. Provides for his family  

1 Timothy 5:8 says, “But if anyone does
not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he
has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Those husbands who play
videogames at home while their wives work two jobs? They’re not “biblical
husbands.”

I understand the desire men have to
pursue their dreams vocationally. I don’t think this verse objects to a wife
working full-time while her husband is in school—that’s preparing to
provide and it’s work (even though you may not be getting paid for it).  This admonition also doesn’t negate the wife
also working, especially since Proverbs 31 refers to an income earning wife. It
does negate the thought of a husband who is able to work not working out of
selfishness or laziness.

This verse challenged me when I was a
young husband desperate to become a writer and married a woman who was
desperate to be a full-time stay-at-home mom. I had to work a full-time job
(and for a spell another part-time job added on) for fifteen years and write on
the side before I could write full-time, which is partly what turned me into an
early morning person (it was the only time I could pursue my dream). So men, I get
wanting to pursue a dream. It’s the story of my life. I don’t get making
your wife and children suffer so you can pursue your dream. Wanting to be a
“biblical” husband, I didn’t see that as an option.

A biblical husband works hard to provide for his family.

3. Treats his wife with respect

1 Peter 3:7 tells me that if I don’t
respect my wife, God won’t hear my prayers: “Husbands, in the same way be
considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect…so that
nothing will hinder your prayers.” It’s therefore impossible for me to imagine
that I could be a Christian in good standing if I fail to respect my wife. Respect
begins with my language—I’m never to be condescending, nor hurtful, nor
threatening. Respect includes making life choices with my wife’s welfare at the
top of my concern. Respect means I also listen to her, value her opinion, and
don’t talk her down to others. Respect doesn’t mean I always agree with her
or always do what she wants me to do but it also means I don’t expect her to
always agree with me or always do what I want her to do.

A biblical husband respects his wife.

4. Takes initiative

Male chauvinism and domineering control have
been a problem for all of human history, but in society’s attempt to dismantle
this sin the opposite sin—male passivity—often gets overlooked. That’s the
devil’s trap: if he knows he’s losing his grip on tempting the church with one
sin, he’ll try to get the church to fall head-first into the opposite sin.
Truth isn’t found by reacting to evil; it’s found by responding to Christ and
His Word.

If you take the Bible seriously, a
husband’s love is an initiating love. When the Bible tells men to love their wives
like Christ loves the church (Eph. 5:22ff), it’s calling us to an initiating,
reaching-out love. Christ adopted the breathtaking plan of becoming flesh to
get His message across to us—a bold, audacious and one-sided move. He willingly
laid down His life to deal with our sin when we didn’t deserve it. He is the
most active figure in history, and He continues to be so when He says, “I will
build my church” (Matt. 16:18). He hasn’t built but is building His
church. A biblical husband is an active husband, expending much energy and
thought over how to build up his wife. He’s not primarily thinking about how or
whether she is serving Him; he’s focused on what He can do for her.

A biblical husband is an initiating husband.

5. Speaks life to his wife

Proverbs
18:21 warns us, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” We husbands are
therefore called to choose every word—every single one—carefully: “I
tell you, on the Day of Judgment people will give account for every careless
word they speak,for
by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
(Matt. 12:36-37)

This includes words when we’re tried,
angry, frustrated, hurt or disappointed. The Bible moves us to make every word
breathe life into our wives and marriages.

A biblical husband uses his tongue to nurture, never to hurt.  

6. Values her sexual pleasure and needs

Our bodies aren’t just our own; on the
day we get married, they also belong to our wives (1 Cor. 7:3ff.). Which means we
need to preserve a brain that values her beauty, which enjoins us to resist
comparing our wives to pornographic images or other women walking down the
street. It means when we make love, we put her pleasure at the center of every
experience, and that we preserve enough energy to be able to engage in sexual
relations. It means we spend time and thought thinking up how to please her. It
also means we try to take care of our own bodies since they’re the only ones our
wives are biblically allowed to make love to. Offering a body and brain that’s
broken down due to neglect or indulgence (I’m not talking about age or disease
here) is like feasting at a restaurant and giving our wives the option of
licking the plate. That’s not generous; it’s gross.

A biblical husband disciplines himself and works to please his wife sexually.

7. Loves her out of reverence for God

1 John 3:1 and Ephesians 5:1 are key
Bible verses declaring that we are God’s children, which means my wife is
God’s daughter. She will never not be God’s daughter, so I will have
a lifelong motivation to love her and be faithful to her, simply because I owe
her Heavenly Father more than I could ever even begin to repay.

This biblical truth has been a mainstay
of my marital devotion from the time God first hit me over the head with it
when he convicted me, probably 25 years ago now, about how lousy of a husband I
was being: “Lisa isn’t just your wife, she’s my daughter, and I expect you to
treat her accordingly.” Having my own children, and knowing how desperately I
want them to be well-loved even though I know they aren’t perfect, gives me
just a glimpse of God’s desire for me to love His daughter, my wife, and how much
I can please Him by loving her well.

A biblical husband loves his wife because she is, first and foremost, God’s daughter.

8. Honors her more than she honors him

When I got married, I foolishly kept a scorecard, wondering
if Lisa would treat me as well as I was trying to treat her. That is one
hundred and eighty degrees different from the attitude the Bible calls me to
have when Paul writes, “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10).
According to Paul, at the end of the day my goal should be that I honor my wife
more than she honors me. This means I focus more on what I’m called to do than
on what she is called to do.

A biblical husband focuses more on loving his wife well than on evaluating whether he is being treated well.

9. Is committed to his wife for life in a covenantal relationship

When Jesus does talk about a marriage, He makes it clear that I get one choice, and I am to be covenantally (not just contractually) committed to that choice for the rest of my life—until either one of us dies. “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:9) If I want to honor Jesus, I can’t end my marriage because I’m not satisfied or happy or think I made my choice too hastily. Only my wife can give me grounds for divorce. If she’s not unfaithful to me, my call is to work it out. If she abandons me or is unfaithful to me, that’s not something I’m doing, that’s something she’s doing. She’s breaking the covenant, not me. But for my part, I am to accept that this is my one and likely only marriage, so I should nurture it, grow it, build it, and enjoy it. There won’t be a second chance (not that I would want one).

10. Loves

Biblical love isn’t sentimental or emotional. It’s gritty
and specific. Just look at 1 Corinthians 13:4ff. Love is patient; men, are we
patient with our wives? Love is kind; men, when’s the last time you’ve done
something for your wife out of sheer kindness and not to get something back?
Love isn’t proud; men, do we exalt ourselves over our wives or act like
servants? Love doesn’t dishonor others; men, how do we talk about our wives
when we’re not with them? Love isn’t self-seeking; men, are we more focused on
what we’re getting out of marriage than what we’re giving? Love isn’t easily
angered; men, do our wives feel safe and cherished in our gentle love? Love keeps
no record of wrongs; men, do we shove our wives’ past mistakes and sins back at
them during an argument? Love does not delight in evil; men, do we entice our
wives to join us in sin? Love always protects; men, do we endanger our wives’
health, energy, joy and peace for our own selfish pursuits and pleasures? Love always
perseveres; men, are we committed to hanging in there, refusing to even utter
the word “divorce”?  

A biblical husband loves his wife the
way the Bible defines love.

These verses sidestep the
complementarian/egalitarian divide. Whatever those verses mean, all of the
above apply to every husband in every marriage. If I ever master these ten
passages, maybe I’ll have time to wax eloquently on the ones so many others
seem so obsessed about arguing over. Until then, I’ve got my hands full with
what God clearly asks of me as a husband. And I hope every spiritually alive
husband reading this will feel the same.

P.S. For the men who say it’s not fair
that I’m focusing on just the husbands here, let me remind you that I wrote an
entire book for women: Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing
Your Husband. Publishers aren’t too excited about publishing books with men
as the primary audience, so I’m slipping a bit of what I’d say in a book to men
into this blog. Plus, I like the biblical reminders about how I’m supposed
to behave toward Lisa. I need them to stay the course.

The post What God Asks of Husbands appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Free for the First Time

Have you ever kept a
toxic person in your life because you didn’t want to hurt their feelings?

It’s almost comical
when you think about it—they’re terrorizing you, but you still don’t want to
offend them.

I received the
following message from a reader of When to Walk Away, and it’s just the
kind of story authors love to hear, a woman who was finally set free on
multiple levels after decades of letting a toxic person shrink her life.

Hopefully, it will be
an inspiration for many of you as well:

Hi Gary, I’ve been meaning to write and express my gratitude for the gift of your latest book When to Walk Away. It appeared on my “recommended for you” list on my Kindle back in October. God is so good to me in that way. He knows I love to read and book titles show up in this suggested list that always apply to what I’m currently experiencing and struggling through.

Oddly enough, I had just had a doozy of a conflict with my sister who fits the definition you give of “toxic.” This has been a common occurrence for the past 25 years (really since I married my husband). She starts every conflict and each one leaves me reeling for days. It’s always an accusation of an offense I didn’t know I committed or an expectation I am not meeting.

I have established a pattern of keeping the peace no matter the cost so my mom won’t be caught in the middle. I realized this time–thanks to your book–that I have taken the abuse and inadvertently protected my entire family from bearing the consequences of my parents’ divorce.

I feel free for the first time in my adult life because I did not apologize (because I didn’t do anything wrong) and I quit trying to rescue her from her own behavior. It was hard at first but the fruit of it has been so much peace and freedom like I’ve never experienced before. And my mom (who always responds to the historical conflicts with “I just want my kids to get along!!”) sensed something was going on and asked me about it. I was able to share the changes, what I learned from your book, and that I am not going to respond in the way that’s been expected of me. She released and affirmed me in a way that she never has before. The fruit of this book is spanning beyond just my life but I’ve recommended it to so many others and they are devouring it. Thank you so much for writing it, making sure it is biblically sound and also calls us to our own repentance for the ways we have exhibited toxic behavior ourselves. I am eternally grateful!!

What I’ve found is
that when you’re concerned about how a toxic person will feel or be harmed if
you stop allowing them to bully you, the reality is that there are multiple
family members who are hurting as they watch you being bullied. Even if you’re
a people pleaser (not that that’s a healthy motivation!), you’ll end up
pleasing far more people walking away from a toxic person than letting them
terrorize you. You may well anger one, but it’s likely you’re bringing
relief to a dozen.

The best motivation,
of course, is following in the footsteps of Jesus to walk away from a toxic
person and toward a reliable one. But sometimes, we just need to “get away” to
have any idea about where to go next.

I’m so grateful for
similar stories and testimonies pouring in about God setting people free. What
makes me so happy about it is that this is a book I wish I could have read
myself thirty years ago. I can’t go back and preach to my younger self, but I
can offer a word of comfort and counsel to people who are in their twenties now.

If you know of someone
who needs to be set free but who is letting false guilt and a misunderstanding
of “grace” or “forgiveness” keep them in a toxic situation, please consider
sharing this message with them. (If finances are an issue, we do our best to
make the books available for whatever people can afford when they contact us
directly.)

The post Free for the First Time appeared first on Gary Thomas.

The Most Beautiful Thing to Wear on Valentine’s Day

On Valentine’s Day, perhaps millions of men will get to see their wives wearing something they’ve never worn before and the husbands will be thrilled. Not too many men can pull off the same effect. I’ve never seen anything marketed to men in this regard that doesn’t seem cheesy and that doesn’t make me want to laugh out loud.

But there’s something very spiritual that both men and women can wear that is other-worldly beautiful and ultimately will create the most satisfying Valentine’s Day night you could imagine.

But let me set it up first.

A couple months ago, my dentist said I needed to see an oral surgeon and get a tooth removed. An infection under a previous root canal had returned. “I think the tooth is cracked underneath and the infection just won’t go away. It could erupt at any time when you’re on one of your speaking trips.”

Having a tooth pulled when you’re an adult feels like someone is trying to wrench your jaw from your body. If someone had woken me up out of bed, strapped me to a chair, and yanked that tooth out of me, I would have screamed, fought back, called the police, and insisted that that monster be put in jail.

Instead, I paid an oral surgeon about a thousand dollars to do that to me.

Why?

I knew I had an infection. I could see the dark spot on the x-rays. When I saw the infection I was willing to endure the discomfort necessary to remove it.

The same is true of sin. When we don’t realize we have an infection and someone tries to “treat” us, we can become angry and resentful. If I think I’m perfect and my wife even gently suggests I wasn’t at my best with a group of friends (or with her, alone) I’m going to challenge her correction. I’ll act as if she’s doing something out of malice instead of loving me as a faithful sister in Christ.  

It’s only when I realize I have a spiritual infection that I’m willing to be treated.

The spiritual word for this piece of clothing is humility and it’s a twice-repeated biblical command: “Clothe yourselves with humility…” (Col. 3:12 and 1 Peter 5:5)

You want to immediately lose twenty pounds and a lot of stink? When you’re in conflict with your spouse, let your first thought be, “Am I responding with humility?”

As a pastor, I’ve heard many couples work through past hurt. Men, you know what never works, what never helps, what never heals? When our wives mention something we’ve done that was just atrocious and we respond with a dismissive, “So I’m not perfect.”

What that statement does in a cleverly cruel and evil way is to make our wives’ objections to our sin (and their corresponding hurt) the problem. Instead of a humble, “I’m so sorry. I know that hurt you so deeply. Of course you’re angry” we offer an arrogant turnaround accusation: “What’s the matter with you? Are you expecting me to be perfect?”

I’m telling you flat-out: defending yourself with a “So I’m not perfect” line hasn’t solved a single marital conflict in the history of the world. It hasn’t made a single spouse look more beautiful or attractive to the offended party. It hasn’t convinced anyone that your sin doesn’t matter, and it compounds the problem rather than heals it.

Humility will travel around the world a dozen times before that one sentence moves you half an inch closer to your spouse.  

On the other hand, I often read books and articles that tell wives something very true: their confidence to be physically naked in front of their husbands and unashamed of their bodies is about the most attractive thing a woman can give to her husband. But there’s a spiritual attractiveness to humility that goes like this. If your husband mentions one thing that is a legitimate spiritual failing, responding with “So I’m just a terrible, horrible, awful wife. The worst wife in the world. I suck at being a wife” is an arrogant deflection. You can admit and address one legitimate concern. If you are the worst wife in the world there’s nothing you can do, so you can dismiss what your husband said. The problem isn’t that you have something to repent of and work on; the problem is that your husband doesn’t think you’re perfect.

Be willing to be spiritually naked as well as physically naked on Valentine’s Day. If your husband turns the light on (again, spiritually speaking), don’t jump under the covers and say, “If you can’t love everything about me you don’t get to see me at all.”

Now, having said all this, I don’t recommend any man reading this turn the “spiritual light” on his wife on Valentine’s Day, at least, not if he wants to see what his wife may have purchased for this special evening.

If you bring everything but humility to a marriage you will eventually have a miserable marriage that won’t ever improve. If you don’t believe there’s an infection, you’ll never allow a cure so things can’t get better.

You can have six pack abs, ten million dollars in the bank, the culinary skills of a master chef, and the faces of Adonis and Aphrodite, but if you don’t clothe yourself with humility, you’re not only ugly to your spouse, you’re a bit ugly to your God. Three times the Bible tells us that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34; James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). Can you think of any other verse repeated verbatim three times, encompassing both the Old and New Testaments?

If you’re thinking someone else (i.e., your spouse) needs to read this blog post, you’ve just missed the point of this blog post. Every one of us has an infection. Every one of us has sin seeping into our attitudes and actions. If we close our eyes to these infections we can’t be cured because we don’t think we need to be cured.

The thing is, we don’t have to close our eyes to our stink because in Jesus we have provision for our stink: “For there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” When I know a cure is certain, it’s foolish to refuse the treatment. If Jesus will forgive me and my wife is willing to forgive me, why can’t I just face up to it and move on? Why do I resent the cure for my sin more than I resent the way my sin is hurting my wife? Do I want her to be silent while she suffers in peace? Really?

I think back to that old time chorus, “holiness, holiness, is what I long for; holiness is what I need…” and I sometimes replace it with “humility, humility is what I long for; humility is what I need…”

Don’t get me wrong. I want appreciation, praise, and attention, all of which (ironically enough) can work against humility. I need humility though I often hate the confrontation and censure that leads to it. My natural man thus fights against what I need most every day. I lust for the opposite of what God says I should value. Most of us do.

If we want to be more beautiful to our spouse on Valentine’s Day and beyond, we will clothe ourselves with humility.

If we want to be more beautiful to our spouse on Valentine’s Day and beyond, we will clothe ourselves with humility.

If you want to read more about humility, my book Thirsting for God has six chapters on humility (it looks at how the Christian classics extol this attitude) and The Glorious Pursuit has two (from the perspective of practicing the virtues). 

The post The Most Beautiful Thing to Wear on Valentine’s Day appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Pain and Satisfaction: A Package Deal

Our
friends started speaking even before we sat down at the restaurant. We hadn’t
seen them for a number of months, and the wife had obviously been saving this
up: “We know exactly what your next book needs to be!”

I
hear this statement all the time, but their exuberance made me curious, so I
asked, “Okay, what?”

“You
need to write a book on how absolutely awful and horrible it is to raise adult
children. Nobody warned us it would be this painful.”

We
all laughed but they were only half joking. Unfortunately for them, they caught
us in a very sentimental time (the birth of our first grandchild) that made it
difficult to relate. One of the most meaningful moments of my life was watching
my son sing “Amazing Grace” over my eight-week-old granddaughter as he put her
to sleep. The layers of love—your son and your granddaughter and your God in
one glorious, intimate moment—blew my emotional radar all the way out of my
heart.

But
later an older woman at my church pulled me aside to bring me out of my
sentimental reverie. “Just enjoy those grandchildren when they’re babies,” she
said, almost as a warning.

“Why
do you put it that way?” I asked.

“They
become teenagers.”

I
get the pain most parents of adult children feel. I’ve seen young adult
children raised by godly parents resent the faith-filled example they
were given. I’ve seen parents who sacrificed on many levels watch those
children as adults sabotage every privilege, seemingly determined to create
misery for themselves, perhaps not even realizing the grief this brought their
parents.

I
also know a very dear couple who lost their only child in college, and now must
endure the graduation, marriages, and child-bearing of all his friends, no
doubt forever wondering what would have happened if their son had not died,
reminded on a daily basis of the deepest loss they have ever known. They’re
facing this challenge so bravely it makes me want to cry. They haven’t
withdrawn from young people—they’ve moved forward, and their faith challenges
me daily.

There
are few couples who haven’t experienced a mix of the above—some of the richest
feelings and intimacy they’ve ever known (when you lay your cheek against your
grandchild’s head and know there is nowhere else on earth you’d rather be)
accompanied by heartbreak they couldn’t even imagine (“Given the way we raised
them, how could they do this to us?” “Why would God allow them to die at
such a young age?”).

Maybe we’re too polite to talk about how much we are hurting to each other. Some time ago, I blatantly lied to someone’s face, a person I hadn’t seen in years. They were in a rush and asked how things were in a particular area as they were moving out the door and of course I said “great,” but it was one of the worst mornings I had had in that regard in a long time. I could have said, “It’s polite of you to ask and I know you’re in a rush, so let’s just pretend everything is fine and we’ll catch up another time” but other people were there and I reacted on instinct.

Maybe we’re not honest with each other because we want to protect our children’s reputations. I get that, though I hope every parent and every adult child has a few safe, redemptive places where they can process their grief.

Whatever is behind our reluctance to admit that those end-of-year Christmas letters listing all the wonderful things we’ve experienced in the past twelve months have more omissions than a Ponzi scheme account book, Christian parenting reminds us that the best things in life come in packages of joy and grief. It’s a two-part deal. In this good but fallen world, we can’t have one without the other. Accomplishments, by definition, require sacrifice to achieve. Eternal salvation requires earthly death. Adorable puppies become old, arthritic dogs before they break our hearts by dying all too soon. And the kids who exploded our hearts with such joy and tenderness find new and creative ways to usher us into dark valleys of fear and anguish we wish we had never known.

That’s
life in a good and fallen world. God created this world and called it “good.”
Capitalizing on the weakness of women and men, Satan perverted this good world
and is going to make us pay for living in it and enjoying it.

Sometimes
it’s pain that leads to our greatest joy rather than the reverse. I spoke at a
church recently where two different moms told me astonishingly similar stories:
they had both been praying for their young adult sons for years only to have
their worst fears realized when both sons were arrested and sent to prison. Yet
in both cases, one son radically renewed his faith while he was in prison and the
other son found faith in prison. Both moms said the same thing: “What I
thought was the worst thing that could happen became the best thing that could
happen.”

Where
does this leave us as parents? Hold on to every good moment. Worship God
for each one. Savor every second. But don’t be greedy. Because the world
is broken, we can’t have a little “good” without a little “fallen.”

What
makes a delicious meal taste especially good? Being hungry. This
is a curious world where the highest satisfaction sometimes requires a little
pain. Pain and satisfaction are a package deal. Don’t let the pain pull you from
God; let it help you find satisfaction in God. Faithful believers are
those who embrace and endure the pain and thank God for the satisfaction rather
than resent the pain and take the satisfaction for granted.

In
other words, let’s not be toward God like adult children can sometimes be
toward us! 

The post Pain and Satisfaction: A Package Deal appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Ruthlessly Pursuing Reconciliation

Caveat:
This blog post is for those in relatively healthy, perhaps difficult, but not
abusive relationships.

I
was five thousand miles away, in a foreign country, without a phone in my hand,
and I was arguing with Lisa. No, she couldn’t hear me. In fact, she was
probably sleeping. Just because you’re not with your spouse doesn’t mean you’re
not arguing with your spouse. For the passive amongst us (I’m a card-carrying
member of this pathetic tribe), some of our biggest marital arguments happen
when our spouse isn’t even there—and these fantasy arguments almost always do
more harm than good (unless you’re humbly bringing God into the mix, inviting
his correction and discernment).

Ann and Dave Wilson talk about the need to ardently pursue reconciliation in their fine book, Vertical Marriage: The One Secret that Will Change Your Marriage. The chapter “Tear Down that Wall” particularly spoke to me, as it points out an area I can be weak in—how to actively and even ruthlessly (in a good way), pursue reconciliation instead of just burying the disagreement with silence like a “good martyr.”

Ann (the chapter is in her voice) stresses that for a healthy marriage, both parties need to pursue reconciliation in a “proactive” way “at all costs.” “When resolution is no longer pursued by both parties, relationships are left to die.” A “stalemate” between “soulmates” is the death knell of marriage: “No matter who is most to blame here, I will take the initiative and move us toward resolution.”

This
isn’t just about our marriage; it’s about our discipleship before God. Ruthlessly
pursuing reconciliation is a command from Jesus: “Therefore, if you are
offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister
has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First
go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24).

If we fail to forgive our spouse or pursue reconciliation (we’re not talking about physical abuse or a situation where reconciliation keeps you in a dangerous place) we actually can respond to a one-time sin (on the part of our spouse) with an ongoing sin (on the part of us!): “The offense is an act, but to stay offended is a choice. We must choose to move toward a resolution to this offense.”

Ann warns that “ignoring conflict is akin to turning up your car radio so you won’t hear that annoying grinding noise coming from your engine. Give it a few miles, and the noise will be the least of your problems.” She exposes me here; I’m a master at just turning up the radio.

I love the way Ann brings conviction to people like me: “When it comes to conflict [in marriage], nothing is worse than doing nothing.”

When I got married at 22, I hated and feared conflict. I thought the “holy response” was to “grin and bear it.” The lie behind that was that I could keep grinning and bearing without doing the hard work of honesty, confession, and forgiveness, all of which take courage I lacked. My silence set my marriage back rather than help move it forward. I was responsible for keeping our marriage somewhat immature.

Being married is being committed to pursue reconciliation at all costs. I love how practical Ann gets in this chapter, pointing out that the verse about “not letting the sun go down” shouldn’t be taken too literally. The principle is to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, but it’s often wise to get a good night’s sleep and reflect on it prayerfully rather than continue an argument past 3:00 a.m. when you’re both tired and on the verge of saying things that shouldn’t be said and can’t be unsaid. Dave is a pastor (who once shared my avoidance tendencies) and has a good take on this. When he and Ann started arguing one evening, he pointed out, “This ‘resolve it before the sun goes down’ deal can’t be literal—the sun went down hours ago, and we just started fighting. We’re good! We have until tomorrow night to resolve this thing!”

Ann also acknowledges the need to let your spouse pursue reconciliation in a way that honors who they are—including their own relational limitations. She confesses, “It would drive me crazy when [Dave] would respond with something like, ‘I honestly don’t know.’ I thought he was just trying to avoid conflict yet again. But the next morning, he would come to me and say, ‘Hey, I’ve had some time to think, and now I know what I’m feeling about our conflict last night.’ I’ve learned over the years that Dave just needs some time to process.”

World marathon record holder Eliud Kipchoge
doesn’t fault his spouse for not being able to run a marathon in under two
hours, even though he can;  it’s just as
unfair to ask a spouse whose brain doesn’t work like yours to immediately work
through their feelings if that’s not their neurological makeup.

Soft
Words

Another practical tip offered by Ann is the biblical admonition to use “soft words” (Proverbs 15:1). Ann recalls a time when she had to leave on a speaking trip in a month’s time. She asked Dave to change a headlight that was out because she’d be driving in the dark. She reminded him at three weeks, two weeks, one week, and even the day before. You can guess what happened: Dave still “forgot.” Ann wasn’t just angry, she was hurt. She had left Dave and the boys a refrigerator full of meals and even put Scripture notes around the house to encourage them, and she had asked Dave a month ago to do just one thing: change the stupid headlight.

I can understand Ann’s hurt, anger, and frustration. As Dave sprinted into a Kmart to get the headlight (now making Ann potentially late for her five-hour trip), Ann had to surrender what she was really feeling to God: “Help me to be the wife I need to be because right now, I just want to hurt him.” 

After Dave got the headlight and put it in, he was repentant, and the time he spent in that parking lot under the hood gave Ann time to respond in a way she could be proud of. Dave came up to her window and said, “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” They’ve been married for decades; Ann could read Dave’s face and knew “he was waiting to get blasted, and rightfully so.” To Dave and Ann’s surprise, Ann, by surrendering to God, just replied, “Honey, I’m okay.” Ann writes, “With those three soft words, a conflict that could have risen to epic proportions was instead defused.”

As I read this story, I thought of another “soft” way Ann possibly could have responded to this situation.  The day before, she could have gone into an auto shop and had them replace it for her. When Dave found out, she could say, “I know you’re busy.” As a husband, this would have hurt me (in a good way) even more. It’s not manipulative—it’s actually honoring. And it would make me double down on not wanting to let that happen again. But maybe that’s because anything more than filling up Lisa’s gas tank (which I try to do religiously) is beyond my skill level as a mechanic (but I excel at getting that gas in there!).

Using soft words also means the removal of ever uttering the harshest word: divorce. You’re pursuing reconciliation, not war, and certainly not separation. You don’t want a one-time event to seriously set-back a lifelong, ongoing relationship. Ann writes, “Remind yourself now to tell yourself then that the beautiful, two-eyed person you married is still in there somewhere, even though the good traits may be eclipsed by the anger and conflict you are experiencing at the moment. If you stop believing in who they are, you will stop treating them like who they are.”

A
Right Heart

Near the end of the chapter, Ann brings us to the right place: being the people of God before we’re husband and wife (which is the point of their book, and why I love it so much). This calls us to surrender to God in every situation and to pursue the attitudes and actions that every child of God is called to. She quotes one of my favorite passages, the glorious Ephesians 4:31-32: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” If we would just be this kind of people, our marriages would flourish and we could pursue reconciliation with joy.

Vertical Marriage would be a wonderful investment of time and money. (This isn’t a “sponsored” post—I’m not getting any money or benefits for making this recommendation)

The post Ruthlessly Pursuing Reconciliation appeared first on Gary Thomas.

A Bad Result Doesn’t Mean You Made a Bad Decision

Having
a net worth of nearly two billion dollars, American investor Howard Marks is a
fan of poker and other games that combine skill and chance. He writes an
occasional investment letter and in a recent one talks about what he’s learned
from reading Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When
You Don’t Have All the Facts. Annie Duke has won over four million dollars
in professional poker, so she knows a little bit about making quick decisions
without always having all the desired information.

Marks
uses Duke’s insights to come up with a few conclusions for investing that are
also true for dealing with toxic people.

First
and most importantly, “You can’t tell the quality of a decision from the
outcome.” You can make a wise and reasoned decision with someone and even respond
in the perfect way, but the relationship, office situation, family dynamics, or
marital issues may still “blow up.” That doesn’t mean you made a bad decision,
however. Toxic or evil people don’t always respond to life-giving truth in a
healthy way. In fact, they rarely do.

In When to Walk Away, I mention how God’s decision to have the incarnate
Jesus born into this world eventually led to the “slaughter of the innocents”
as Herod tried to prevent the Messiah from growing up. Herod ordered all boys
around Bethlehem two years old and younger to be murdered. Was this God’s
fault? Should he have anticipated it and decided to forgo the incarnation? Of
course not. God made a wise and good decision; an evil man responded to that
good and wise decision in an evil way and acted wickedly.

I
could have also cited how after God delivers Peter from prison in Acts 12 (A.D.
41) by having an angel wake Peter up and walk him past two guard posts, Herod
commanded that all the guards (sixteen in all) be tortured and then put
to death (Acts 12:19). The supernatural deliverance of one disciple led
to the torture and murder of sixteen Roman soldiers. Does that mean God
should have allowed an early leader of the church to be murdered before his
time of ministry was up, just to prevent the deaths of sixteen others?

Looking
through the long-term lens of church history and God’s work on this earth, having
Jesus be born and delivering Peter from prison were both good, wise and
life-giving decisions for God to make—even though both of those acts resulted
in the deaths of dozens of “innocent” people. An evil response to a loving
decision doesn’t make the loving decision wrong. It just demonstrates that we
live in a fallen world.

There’s
another aspect to dealing with toxic people, however. Annie Duke points out
that when you make a good decision between two unappealing choices, the
situation isn’t likely to turn out well regardless. Toxic people can act in
such a toxic manner that there isn’t a solution available in which nobody gets
hurt or angry. And sometimes the situation/relationship can be so toxic that the
best even a skillful surgeon can do is try to limit the damage. That doesn’t
mean you made a bad decision; it just means you were forced to confront an awful
situation as wisely as possible.  

Here’s
today’s message in a nutshell: when dealing with toxic people you might make a
good and wise decision that honors God and yet you may still be fired,
slandered, or even divorced. In a fallen world, a wise process doesn’t
always lead to a pleasant or even “victorious” outcome. Toxic people have a
tendency to take their “pound of flesh” even as they are stymied and
confronted.

What
I want to do with this short post is remove the guilt some of you may have
because you employed the Scriptures and advice from When to Walk Away:
Finding Freedom From Toxic People and the relationship/office
environment/church setting wasn’t “fixed.” That doesn’t mean you messed up. It
doesn’t mean that if you had made a different decision or said something
different things would have turned out better. In fact, things may well have
turned out much worse. Plus, you can’t know if your healthy response will
eventually be used to bring conviction to the person in question somewhere down
the road (maybe even after you’re gone).

There
are no guarantees when we’re forced to relate to toxic people. We can and should
be wise and loving with every decision, but we can’t always “fix” the immediate
worlds we live in. Learn how to own and live with the process, not the
outcome.

The post A Bad Result Doesn’t Mean You Made a Bad Decision appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Why Your “Type” Isn’t Always Good for You

There is very little reasoned, biblical perspective when it comes to evaluating physical attraction in dating and marriage. Debra Fileta does a wonderful job of pointing out our culture’s weaknesses in this regard and helping us find the “more excellent way” of Scripture. If you’re single, you need this perspective to help you make a wise marital choice. If you’re married, this perspective will help you maintain your loving affection for the spouse you’ve given your life to. Thanks, Debra, for this insightful contribution to our blog.

When I was single, I would often imagine what my future relationship was going to be like. I wondered about the kind of guy I’d end up dating and marrying. I’d try to picture who he would be and how he would look. I wondered if when I eventually had a picture of him, would I be proud to show it to my friends, or would I find myself with someone with an amazing heart whom I struggled to find attractive? I know I’m not alone in that worry because I hear from many people who express the same fears and concerns.

Finding someone
to whom you are physically attracted is an important part of the equation of a
healthy relationship. But it’s not the only part of the equation of attraction.
It’s important for us to understand that attraction is multi-faceted. While
attraction may start as physical, it’s fueled by other aspects of connection:
emotional, mental, and spiritual.

 I am thankful that I am married to a man that
I find attractive. But I was surprised by my growing attraction to him because
he was not my so-called “type.” Physical attraction is a legitimate need in a
relationship, but it must be kept in proper
perspective, because just because
you’re physically attracted to someone, doesn’t mean they’re good for you. Sometimes we’re physically attracted to
people because something unhealthy in us, connects with something unhealthy in
them. That’s why that initial physical attraction has to be kept in proper
perspective. Sometimes it’s skewed by our own internal struggles, and other
times, it’s skewed by what the world has led us to believe is “attractive”.  

HEALTHY EXPECTATIONS

As you are
looking at your relationship, it is important to make sure that physical attraction
is part of the equation, but more importantly, that you are coming to the table
with appropriate expectations. It’s important to remember that expectations of
physical perfection or the fulfillment of selfish fantasy are not realistic.
Real people have real bodies, and our expectations must be real as well. This
is not about finding a supermodel wife or waiting to marry Mr. Universe.

That might sound
like a no-brainer to you, but we live
in a culture in which the concepts of sexual chemistry and physical attraction
have become totally, completely, and irreversibly skewed. The
entertainment industry and the pornography culture have completely ravaged our
understanding of beauty, and namely, the beauty of a real woman. And this
distorted mentality is starting to seep into the church in a truly concerning
way. I know, because I hear from Millenials all the time who are battling
unrealistic expectations of physical attraction. A young man afraid to marry an
incredible woman because her arms were too big. A young woman hesitating to
commit to a godly man because he’s shorter than she had hoped. Before we start
judging, let’s consider the ways we all come to the table with an unrealistic
perspective.

Our concept of beauty and sex appeal has been completely
hijacked over the years to the point where our expectations are unrealistic. We won’t even consider seeing
someone as attractive if they don’t measure up to the standard that Hollywood
has laid out for us, or to the filters that Instagram has convinced us are real
life. But we’ve got to open our eyes to the fact that the standard we’ve been
fed is so far from reality.

Beauty
is fluid. And our desires, as well as the people we will find attractive, are
morphed and changed based on the things we allow ourselves to be exposed to. In
that regard, we actually have some sort of control over the things we define as
attractive and beautiful.

In a culture that
is infiltrated with pornography, airbrushed billboards and magazines, plastic
surgery, and Instagram filters, our standard of “beauty” has moved so far from
the truth that it is causing some major damage to our relational expectations—for
both men and women. The more unrealistic
images we take in, the more skewed our concept of beauty will be. Single or married, you can expose yourself to
so much “fantasy” that real women and real men begin to lose their luster.

WE NEED A RESET

The only way to
get our expectations moving back to reality is to realize that we need a reset.
The reason we say “no” to distorted expectations of attraction is that
skin-deep beauty can only last so long. Fast-forward 50, 30, or even 10 years,
and your body as well as that of your spouse will have changed, sagged, and
likely stretched out beyond recognition. After a few babies, a surgery or two
along the way, and the unrelenting process of aging, I can guarantee you one
thing: Neither of you will look the same. That is why it is so important to
make sure your expectations of physical attraction are kept in check because it is only one part of the equation
of lasting attraction.

In marriage, you will see your spouse at their absolute worst. You’ll see them in their most natural state—before
the hair, before the makeup, before the accessories. You’ll see them through
the lens of real life, which does not hide morning breath, cellulite, or other
imperfections. You will be with your spouse through the days of sickness and
exhaustion. What will ultimately define your marriage—and ultimately, your very
life—is not the “supermodel status” of your husband or wife, but rather, their
character.

Your spouse is the person who will have the greatest influence on your happiness, your confidence, and your security. Your spouse is the person who will walk with you through the highs and lows of life, help raise your children, and influence your family in every single way. According to Proverbs, a wife [or husband] of character is a treasure (Proverbs 31:10). And he who finds that finds a great thing, something worth holding onto no matter what. I know so many marriages that started with “amazing physical chemistry” and fizzled into nothing within a few short years. I also know of so many marriages that started on the foundation of good character and godliness—and continued to grow in intimacy, in respect, and in love.

It is time for us to rise above the noise of this culture and set our
relationship expectations and standards on things that really matter. It is time to reset our standard of beauty by
shutting off the influence of the unrealistic junk and filling our minds and
hearts with the truth.

Beauty
is fleeting (Proverbs 31:30).Charm
is deceptive (Proverbs 31:30).Real
beauty runs deep (1 Peter 3:3).Real
attraction is multifaceted. Inner
beauty cannot be fabricated or replicated.Character
is what actually defines a person. Spiritual
health trumps everything (1 Timothy 4:8).

It is time for us to say “no” to the unrealistic
standards this world is throwing our way. That
starts with taking inventory of what we allow our minds to think about and our
hearts to lust upon. Maybe that means making the commitment to stay away from
porn. Maybe that means turning off Netflix for a while. Maybe it means stepping
away from Facebook or TV or magazines. Maybe that means putting limits on how
much we mindlessly scroll Instagram. Maybe it means guarding our conversations
and how we allow ourselves to talk about the opposite sex.

Ultimately, it means saying no to lies that skew our
perception of physical attraction—in exchange for truth. It’s time to reset our
understanding of the role of physical attraction in our romantic relationships
and remember that attraction has just as much to do with character as it does
with chemistry.

This
article is an excerpt from Debra’s new book, Love In Every
Season: Understanding the Four Stages of Every Healthy Relationship ,
and is used with permission. To find out how each season (spring, summer, fall,
and winter) can make or break your relationship ORDER LOVE IN EVERY SEASON TODAY .

DEBRA
FILETA is a Licensed Professional Counselor, national speaker, relationship
expert, and author of  Choosing
Marriage  and  True Love Dates , and Love In Every Season . She’s
also the host of the hotline style  Love
+ Relationships Podcast . Her popular relationship advice
blog,  TrueLoveDates.com ,
reaches millions of people with the message of healthy relationships. Connect
with her on  Facebook ,  Instagram , or  Twitter
or book
a session with her today!

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