Gary L. Thomas's Blog, page 57

Supernatural Marriage

How much more could Jesus have done on this earth if He had given Himself another thirty years of active ministry rather than three short years?

Think about it.

Jesus could have performed many more healings and miracles so that the church would number in the hundreds of thousands rather than the few hundred who believed at His death.

He could have written dozens of books rather than work through Matthew, Paul, John, and Peter.

He could have established churches all over the world, putting the leaders in place under His authority so that no one would question them

Why did Jesus leave the church so seemingly unprepared?

The answer is He didn’t, not really. Jesus had great confidence in the Holy Spirit. He told His disciples that this comforter and counselor would lead them to do even greater things than He had done so He could leave with full confidence that even in His physical absence, all that would need to be done would be done.

Do we live with this confidence in the Holy Spirit for our lives, our marriages, and our families?

So much of Christian teaching today is about us developing “our” gifts, improving “our” talents, reaching “our” potential, yet so much of Jesus’s teaching and modeling is about surrendering to the work of the Holy Spirit. Let’s allow marriage to teach us to trust this Holy Spirit.

It is impossible to be married in a sacred manner without the Holy Spirit being active in our lives, helping us to understand what it means to love, giving us the power to love, convicting us when we fail to love, renewing our hearts when we grow weary in love, and pouring out hope when we grow discouraged in love. Many of you are frustrated in your marriages because you try to live as if the Trinity isn’t part of the equation. You keep asking something of your spouse and rarely get it: “Listen to me more.”

“Help out more.”

“Have sex with me more often.”

When was the last time you asked something of God’s Holy Spirit? “Help me to love more. Help me to listen more. Renew my heart. Give me strength. Help me forgive …”

You’ll have far more success and satisfaction in your marriage if you start asking more of God and less of your spouse.

Jesus teaches us to pray for the Holy Spirit to fill us, enlighten us, empower us, direct us, and renew us (Luke 11:13). According to Paul in Ephesians 5:18, we are to be continually “filled” with the Spirit. In the Greek this is an unusual construction called a present passive imperative: we are commanded to let something be done to us on an ongoing basis (“let yourself be continually filled with the Spirit”).

I don’t fill up my gas tank on Monday and then curse the automaker when I need to fill it back up on Friday. There isn’t a car in existence that can keep going without refueling, and there isn’t a marriage alive that can keep pressing into sacred intimacy without daily drawing on God’s presence and power. This is one of the things I love about marriage, one area in which God shows His utter brilliance in designing it: our primary human relationship makes us dependent on our primary divine relationship every day.

Besides, God loves it when we ask for more of Him in the form of His Spirit. He promised to answer such prayers in dramatic fashion: “I will pour out my Spirit” (Acts 2:18). Notice He didn’t say, “I will sprinkle my Spirit, drop by drop.” God said He will pour out His Spirit.

It is the way of God with His people that He will often let us continue to fail and be frustrated until we learn to depend on Him. And that’s the miracle of marriage—it forces us to depend on God, and all of life is transformed when we live in dependence on Him. It sets us up for success in literally every endeavor. No longer shackled to our natural gifts and resources (though these, too, come from our Creator), we are emboldened and empowered by a supernatural Presence.

We can keep trying to draw from an empty well, trying to transform our marriages by asking stubborn or unfeeling spouses to meet our needs, or we can ask the God who promised to “pour out” His Spirit on all who seek Him for what they need.

In tough marital circumstances, do we seek resolution or do we seek Christ’s power? Do we seek the pathway to an easier life or to a supernatural life? Will we accept that God may allow a thorn to remain in our lives to teach us the need for spiritual dependence?

It is in our weaknesses—as individuals and perhaps as couples—that Christ’s power comes to rest on us; often it is only when we are at our end that we make way for God to begin. If God resolved every issue, every child’s problem, and every spouse’s annoyance with our first uttered prayer, we’d be weaker couples. We wouldn’t display the power of Christ. Or we’d display it to a much lesser degree.

Can you thank God for that child who keeps you on your knees? Can you recognize why God may choose to allow the possibility of another addictive lapse to keep both of you living in dependence? Can you understand that God may not remove some difficulties that you hate because He wants you to rely on the supernatural power of Christ that He loves?

I believe it will change our marriages and our walks with God if we stop expecting every problem to be fixed and instead expect every difficulty to help us learn to depend upon God more and more.

This blog post was adapted from A Lifelong Love: How to Have Lasting Intimacy, Friendship, and Purpose in Your Marriage

 

The post Supernatural Marriage appeared first on Gary Thomas.

A Higher Kind of Love

 

About five centuries ago, Copernicus changed the way we think about our universe when he postulated what we all now know to be true: the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of our universe. Archimedes, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, and Aquinas all lived without understanding a basic truth that any educated person today takes for granted.

One hundred years later, just four centuries ago, Sir Isaac Newton discovered what we call gravity, something that even a contemporary fifth grader could describe.

The relative youth of basic knowledge is rather stunning. For all his wisdom and brilliant insight, Aristotle knew less of hard science—astronomy, anatomy, and even physics—than the vast majority of advanced placement high school students do today. It’s remarkable to consider relatively recent advancements in intelligence and understanding.

Regardless of one’s view of evolution, early humans (whatever date you would assign to them) would seem like brutes to us today. In fact, a TV series like Mad Men, initially set just fifty or sixty years ago, seems like a ridiculous relic of an atrocious past—men treated women like that? People were that insensitive to race issues?

Just as intellect and social understanding has grown, so our love should grow, as well as our view of what marriage can and should be. What was accepted as the highest and truest love in the ancient world of Paris and Helen of Troy, or the medieval world of Shakespeare, or the romantic era of Jane Austen, might perhaps look rudimentary to spiritually perceptive persons today, if we were to apply the same scientific methods to love and marriage as we do to science. Yes, of course, Jesus defined the very highest love for us about two thousand years ago, but how this love applies to the way a man loves his wife and the practical way a wife loves her husband can still evolve, as so much of other human understanding has.

Why shouldn’t the love of a husband and wife of a Christian couple in 2017 look vastly different than the love of a husband and wife in 1617 or 1817? Why, indeed, should we glamorize marriage from the 1950s instead of asking even more of marriage today? Why would we let marital love lag behind physical or social science? And shouldn’t Christians lead the call for the spiritual evolution of marriage?

A New Model of Marriage

There’s a key to “marital evolution” in the vows most of us uttered to “to love and to cherish until death do us part.”

Cherish is an attempt to define that higher love between a man and a woman. Just as we have sought to better understand the intricacies of the human brain, the vagaries of our climate, the shamefulness of racial prejudice, so we should seek to understand true honor, selflessness, service, kindness and even happiness as it relates to marriage. We’ve killed forests’ worth of trees writing books about “love.” Perhaps it’s time we pay attention to “cherish,” a higher kind of love. We should expect more of Christian husbands and wives, just as we expect more of today’s screenwriters, academics, and social commentary. People said things thirty years ago they would never say today—or pay a heavy price if they did. There will always be those who “lag behind,” who fail to keep up with the advancement of society, but we don’t want to be among them. Not because we are proud, but because we want to breathe the purer air of a higher, more refined existence.

The interplay of love and cherish is best demonstrated by ballet. Ballet requires enormous strength, significant endurance, balance, and athleticism—the same things required of an NFL wide receiver or even linebacker. What makes the dancer different is that she also has grace, fluidity, beauty, poetry in motion. Love—sacrifice, service, commitment—is and always will be the backbone, the strength, and the muscle of marriage. Cherish brings the beauty and poetry—it’s supported by love, but it complements love, showcases love, and delights in love. It’s not just about sticking it out together; it’s about turning marriage into a beautiful dance.

As love is known by First Corinthians 13, so cherish is captured in the Song of Songs.

Love is about being gracious and altruistic. “Love is patient, love is kind.” (1 Cor. 13:4)

Cherish is about being enthusiastic and enthralled. “How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice.” (Song of Songs 4:10)

Love tends to be quiet and understated. “[Love] does not envy, it does not boast.” (1 Cor. 13:4)

Cherish boasts boldly and loudly: “My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand.” (Song of Songs 5:10)

Love thinks about others with selflessness. “Love is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking.” (1 Cor. 13:4-5)

Cherish thinks about its beloved with praise. “Your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.” (Song of Songs 2:14)

Love doesn’t want the worst for someone: “Love does not delight in evil.” (1 Cor. 13:6)

Cherish celebrates the best in someone: “How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!” (Song of Songs 1:15)

Love puts up with a lot: “[Love] always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Cor. 13:7)

Cherish enjoys a lot. “His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely.” (Song of Songs 5:16)

Love is about commitment. “Love endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:7-8; ESV)

Cherish is about delight and passion. “Your name is like perfume poured out.” (Song of Songs 1:3)

Love and cherish never compete—they complement each other and even complete each other. At times, they certainly overlap. By pursuing “cherish” we’ll become better lovers as well.

Men, your wives don’t want you to just “love” them in the sense of being committed to them. They want you to cherish them. They don’t want us to stop at, “I will be committed to you and never leave you.” They want to hear:

“You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride, you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes.” (4:9)

And women, you’ll discover that a cherished husband is the happiest of husbands. A friend of mine asked seven male friends, “Do your wives love you?” and every one of them answered “yes.” He then asked, “Do your wives like you?” and every one answered “No.”

All seven husbands feel loved, but none feel cherished.

Husbands want to hear their wives say, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, is my beloved among the young men.” (2:3)

Cherishing your husband will motivate you to pursue him, and thus raise the temperature of your marriage: “I will search for the one my heart loves.” (3:2)

Choosing to Cherish

The good news is that cherishing your spouse is something you can learn to do. People talk about “falling in love” (which is a misunderstanding of biblical love), but cherish is clearly a choice. It’s not just a feeling that comes and goes; there are spiritual and relational practices that generate feelings of cherishing your spouse as you act on them so that you do hold your spouse dear in your heart. Learning to cherish actually creates joy, fulfillment, happiness and satisfaction. It’s one of those spiritual realities that may not make logical sense, but when you take it by faith and put it in practice, it works.

It just does.

Learning to take our marriage from polite co-existing or even just basic friendship to the much higher spiritual call of learning to truly cherish each other is a spiritual journey before it’s a marital journey. God’s word will instruct us; we’ll need his Spirit to empower us and his truth to enlighten us to shape our hearts in such a way that we are able to cherish someone who “stumbles in many ways” (James 3:2), even as God cherishes us as we stumble in many ways. If you believe your marriage has all but died or even just gotten a little stale, the hope behind learning to cherish each other in marriage is found in this: God is more than capable of teaching us and empowering us to treat and cherish our spouses the way he treats and cherishes us.

Envy, Not Pity

May God raise up in this new era a renewed church that demonstrates a different kind of marriage. Not just a marriage that sticks it out—people have been doing that for millennia. But marriages that grow in grace, sweetness, kindness, service, joy, and understanding; where we even value cherishing each other more than we value being infatuated with each other.

Isn’t it a little pathetic that two young infatuated people think they have something deeper, richer, and more profound than what most married couples share after twenty or thirty years of life together? Yet hasn’t that been the popular, almost unquestioned cultural message for the past three or four generations? By pursuing cherish instead of just love, we can build the kind of marriages that inspire younger couples rather than make them feel pity for us. A thoughtful, cherishing marriage can make infatuation look like a Neanderthal kind of love.

If God has been gracious enough to allow us to grow in our understanding of the physical world; if God has allowed us to advance from the abacus to the slide rule to the calculator to the computer, why would He not allow His church to move marital love from mere commitment to active cherishing?

It’s not that cherish is opposed to love or in competition with love, but rather a higher, deeper understanding of love applied.  Jesus taught us that others should know we are his by our love. Our marriages should be factories of such a love. Cherishing marriages can be evangelistic as others will ask, how can a husband and wife cherish each other like that after thirty years of marriage?

The battle against redefining marriage is significant and necessary, but like in World War II, we have to fight on multiple fronts. We can’t let the battle over the definition of marriage lead us to ignore the battle over personally experiencing and demonstrating a higher, purer love, a marriage in which two people truly cherish each other, in our own families.

The analogy I make in Cherish is that just as God the Father cherished Jerusalem (Ezekiel 16), and just as Jesus cherishes the church, so we are to cherish each other in marriage. God laid the cornerstone of a cherishing marriage when he first began his relationship with Jerusalem roughly five thousand years ago. An ignored city has risen to become one of the most, if not the most famous city in the history of the world, because God chose to cherish her. His act of cherishing lifted Jerusalem to a new place of being.

A cherishing marriage can produce the same kind of people and point us to a higher kind of love.

A New Day

A young couple I’m preparing for marriage recently asked me an honest question: “Gary, we’ve had so many older couples tell us that there’s one and only one secret to a happy marriage, and that’s for the husband to learn two words: ‘Yes, dear.’ Is that true?”

Though this is an old, bad joke, it was refreshing to see a young couple be all but mystified by it. The subtext of their question was sincere astonishment: “People used to look at and define marriage like that? Do we have to do that?”

No, they don’t.

People my age (I’m 55) have to understand that the way our children relate to each other in terms of gender roles is very different from what we grew up with. This shift is going to have a huge impact on the quality and nature of marriage. There will be some new challenges—as there is much to appreciate about old truths—but also potentially many key gains.

I’m not talking about the complementarian/egalitarian debate. Thoughtful complementarians take pains to distinguish what they believe from 1960s’ chauvinism. Yet young people in their twenties can’t even imagine women being “kept” or condescended to; they are valued, listened to, considered as true partners, with equal intelligence and worth. How can this evolving understanding fail to positively impact the depth of intimacy a couple might have in marriage, if, that is, we are willing to expand our view of marriage from merely loving each other to cherishing each other?

I think it’s rather promising. Old jokes and old prejudice must die, or preachers will start sounding like ad executives from Mad Men when we talk about marriage.

It’s all in the Bible. We just have to move past thinking of the Song of Songs as something that exclusively discusses what’s happening between the sheets and expand it to also include what’s happening within our hearts and minds.

I’ve been infatuated, and I’ve been in a cherishing marriage.

Cherish is better.

Perhaps it’s time to spread the good news that the world is setting its sights much too low when it comes to the standards of true, intimate marriage. We’ve spent so much time talking about love. Let’s raise the bar and start talking about cherish.

 

 

The post A Higher Kind of Love appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Breaking Out of the Death Spiral of Contempt

Before being appointed commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1989, Bart Giamatti already had an impressive resume as a professor of English Renaissance Literature and president of Yale University.

Unfortunately, his tenure as commissioner of Major League Baseball was cut painfully short when he died of a heart attack just five months into his service.

The night before Giamatti died, he was at a baseball game, sitting in front of a cardiologist. The cardiologist noticed Giamatti’s fingernails and became alarmed. He warned him that he needed to see a heart doctor right away.

I’m not a doctor so I don’t know what the cardiologist saw, but to a trained eye, the symptom of heart disease was all too obvious.

Within hours, Giamatti was dead.

The “heart disease” of marriage is contempt, and there are tell-tale symptoms that we ignore in our own marriage (or others) at our peril. Remember that cliché, “familiarity breeds contempt?” Nothing is more familiar than marriage. Marriage to a less than perfect person, absent an understanding of grace and a commitment to cherish each other, can lead to disappointment, which leads to frustration, which leads to bitterness, which leads to contempt.

Here’s how it works spiritually:

Disappointment à Frustration à Bitterness à Contempt

This is a spiritual journey before it is a marital one and it’s a terrible one at that. Contempt unleashes the “death spiral” of disappointment leading to frustration, frustration leading to bitterness and bitterness exhibiting itself in contempt. This cycle is like a living snowball that feeds itself and gets hungrier as it grows.

I’ve seen couples look so lovingly at each other on their wedding day. It always inspires me. But I also see plenty of couples who come into my pastor’s office with eyes blocked by cataritic contempt. Instead of gazing at each other as the couples on their wedding day do, couples with contempt stare like a dagger at the ground, or off to the side, when their spouse is talking—they can’t bear to look at each other except when they’re ready to pounce back with a verbal assault. Just think about how sad this is: getting absolutely no pleasure looking at your spouse; instead, you look to attack, not to adore.

Contempt-laden eyes are locked and loaded, ready to fire. You’ve never seen impatience like you’ve seen it in the eyes of a spouse who is just waiting for her spouse to stop talking, to take one-tenth of a breath, so that she can jump in and explain how he couldn’t be more wrong, and she has proof.

It even leads to bizarre behavior. An angry wife literally screamed at her husband in my office with the accusation, “See, you don’t listen to me, you won’t even answer my question!” after he had just gently and calmly answered her question. Her contempt was so thick she couldn’t hear what he was saying, even though that was her critique of him. She was, at least at that moment, blinded and deafened by her contempt. That’s why I call it “cataritic” (cataracts) contempt. It’s blinding. It affects our vision of each other. It has to be cured if the marriage is going to survive.

Dr. John Gottman, a marriage expert from the University of Washington, believes that contempt is the “single best predictor of relationship breakdowns.” He defines contempt as an attitude of superiority, evidenced by speaking down to your partner through name calling or direct insults. This is, of course, the exact opposite of how we have defined cherish, which opens our eyes to our spouse’s excellence, which is why cherishing is the best antidote to contempt.

Ironically, an attitude of superiority and “speaking down” to a partner is one of the most common failings of people who consider themselves mature Christians and who are married to “less mature” believers. Because they see themselves as “better” (they’d never use that word, but the concept drives their thinking) in the Lord, they start to define their spouse by their sins and failings, and leads them to an attitude of superiority and hyper-negativity. They don’t realize that their own attitude is the single biggest assault on their marriage, even more than what they’re criticizing in their spouse. They think they are the mature one for noticing the fault, not realizing they are the most destructive partner for obsessing over the fault.

Couples committed to cherishing each other do go to war, but never with each other. They go to war against contempt, especially their own.

I wrote Cherish in part to offer a plan to overcome the destructive impact of contempt. Rather than focus on avoiding the negative (contempt), however, I’d rather focus on the positive (the delight of cherishing the person you’re married to). But sometimes, as in this post, we have to describe eradicating the disease before people can even imagine what a healthy marriage might look like.

If you find yourself (or if you know a couple) in the death spiral of contempt, just know that it doesn’t have to be fatal. There is a spiritual cure, and it begins with an ancient goal of marriage, rooted in our vows: “I promise to love and to cherish until death do us part.”

 

 

The post Breaking Out of the Death Spiral of Contempt appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Should You Marry Someone Who Embarrasses You?

I received the following email (edited for length and taking out any identifying information) from a reader:

 

I am so grateful a friend recommended your book, Sacred Search.  I’m currently on my fourth reading!  I’ve found it so helpful in evaluating my dating relationships….as well as realigning my beliefs & hopes about marriage with Scripture (& confirmation of the Holy Spirit).  I can’t thank you enough.

Still, I have a lingering question.  Is it wise to marry someone if deep down you’re not as proud of them as they deserve?  Or worded another way…What do you do if your only hang-ups about a potential spouse are superficial traits (like physical appearance or position/profession) you wish didn’t matter to you at all, but in reality, still bother you?

I believe marriage is a choice, and I want to make a wise choice based off qualities God values.  With that in mind, if I don’t want to be a superficial person, do I just ignore the fact that I’m bothered or embarrassed by my boyfriend’s appearance, profession/position, etc?  Or should I trust that if a man’s character isn’t enough to make traits I don’t want to value in the first place seem unimportant, then he just might not be the wisest match, after all?

 

Here’s how I’d respond:

The marital choice is a lot about preference. We should definitely marry a believer (1 Cor. 7:39). We should marry a person of high character (Prov. 31:10ff.). But on issues of preference—appearance, personality, vocation, there isn’t any absolute “this is the right or wrong thing to decide.” It’s more “What are you willing to live with?”

I think the greatest weakness of The Sacred Search is that it may set the bar a little too high. Some have written to me that the kind of person I’m describing in that book doesn’t really exist–everyone must make compromises. I agree to a certain extent; it’s just that I’ve seen what happens when people compromise too much, and I want to help people avoid that, so maybe I went too far in the other direction.

Having said that, to answer this person’s question: I, personally, wouldn’t marry someone who embarrasses me. “Embarrassment” is a strong word and respect is the backbone of a solid marriage. Both husbands (1 Peter 3:7) and wives (1 Peter 3:1) are biblically commanded to respect their spouse, which is difficult to do if you’re embarrassed by them.

It’s impossible to “fake respect” someone for very long; eventually, he or she will catch on, and that will launch a number of negative things into your marriage.

When a guy doesn’t feel respected, he’ll feel like a “project,” as it will be difficult for you not to keep needling him about the issue(s) you hope will change. He may get discouraged that you don’t respect him and, as a defense mechanism, stop trying to earn your respect and worse, seek to be respected somewhere else. There are plenty of other ways a disrespected guy might respond and none of them, frankly, are good.

If you’re embarrassed by your wife, how is she ever going to feel cherished? How can a man tell his wife, “My dove, my perfect one, is the only one” (Song of Songs 6:9) when he wishes she looked more like someone else, acted more like someone else, or had another woman’s personality or job? And if you don’t cherish your wife, no one else is biblically allowed to, at least not in that way, so you are choosing to keep your wife from ever experiencing a marriage as God designed it.

We all have to compromise somewhat as no one gets to marry the fourth member of the Trinity. But in general, I want to see premarital couples feeling proud of each other, eager to show each other off, and each feeling like they got the best end of the deal.

When a couple is meeting with me and the woman can’t wait to tell me, “He’s not the kind of guy I’m usually attracted to,” that’s a bad sign, in my view. She’s apologizing for him before he’s even opened his mouth. Why does she want me to know that, anyway? Why should it matter to me how he looks? That’s a statement of pure embarrassment, and since I’m not much of a judge when it comes to masculine appearance, it’s a wasted observation anyway.

Making a reasonable compromise or two is a necessity in a fallen world when you’re marrying an imperfect man or woman. Accepting something that embarrasses you is, in my opinion, too big of a compromise. 

The writer’s last sentence sums it up well: “Should I trust that if a man’s character isn’t enough to make traits I don’t want to value in the first place seem unimportant, then he just might not be the wisest match, after all?” To that I’d say, “Probably so.”

What do you think? Let’s get a conversation going.

The post Should You Marry Someone Who Embarrasses You? appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Young Husband: It Might Not be Her; It Might be Her Situation

Preachers and teachers on marriage (and I have been among them) often warn young moms about being moms first and wives second. It’s certainly a dangerous and ever-present temptation that deserves attention. But this post is for the young husbands who have their own temptation—expecting their wives to be more than any one woman could possibly be while raising their kids.

One August morning in Houston I waited just a little too long to go out for a run. The sun was unmerciful, and all the shade was gone. My pace slowed, and I even had to walk. I thought I could power through the run as planned but it was stupid not to shorten it before turning around, and I paid the price for my stubbornness.

About a mile and a half from home, I noticed the distinctive bounce of my wife as she pedaled her bike my way. She had a towel and a bottle of electrolyte-laced water.  “They said on the news that it was dangerously hot and humid today and I thought you should have been home by now so I figured I better go find you.”

I fell in love with my wife all over again. She is the best.

But she’s also an empty nester.

When she was a homeschooling mom of three, I don’t think, number one, she would have had time to watch the news in the morning. Number two, I don’t think it’s likely she would have noticed I had left, as she would be trying to keep child number one from ripping up her assignment, child number two from throwing a ball through the window, and child number three from having a diaper accident. Not to mention keeping our dog Amber from eating somebody’s shoe.

I suspect, fifteen years ago, had we lived in Houston and I had gone out for a run, I’d limp home, my wife would see me dripping sweat on the floor, and she might say, “You went for a run? In this? Are you crazy?”

As an empty nester, I now get all her care. There’s a lot of it, but it’s just…different when it’s not divided among four people. There’s just me now. We don’t even have a dog anymore.

Young husbands, please give your wives a break. Try to understand. She wants to be a world class wife—most women do. But when she’s got a job, kids, a pet, and a house, never forget that there’s only one of her and about ten of them (if you add everything together).

Yes, she should be a wife first. But you’ve got to do your part with understanding. I wish I had been more empathetic as a younger husband. Back then, I could occasionally be resentful. Lisa would freely admit there were seasons when she was definitely a mom first.  I thought the problem was her, but now I’d tell my younger self that the problem was really her situation. “Give it time, Gary,” I’d say. “Let her work this out. By the way, some amazing years are coming.”

If your wife really cares for your kids, she’s a caring person. When the kids are gone, all that care will be poured out on you. If you leave her now, she’s likely to end up with someone else and then her care will be poured out on that person. You’ll have endured the years in which she was stretched the most, only to miss the years when she could focus on you and love you the most.

It’s not a coincidence that I wrote Sacred Marriage about embracing the difficulties and challenges of marriage when I was in my late thirties, and now, in my fifties, I’m writing about building a marriage based on cherishing each other.

Same wife, but a different life.

So, young husband, be gentle with your wife while she figures all this out. Don’t let a very exhausting decade or two define your marriage or her.

I’ve been in a number of running groups. We meet Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings in our running gear, and leave looking sweaty and hot and tired. Every now and then there will be a “social.” And the most common comment you hear runners say to each other is “Wow, that’s what you look like all showered and clean!”

Defining your wife’s love and care by how she acts when she’s raising small children is like defining a woman’s beauty by how she looks in the middle of a marathon.

It’s not fair.

Give your wife a thankful hug. Even more, give her truckloads of understanding. And remind yourself whenever you feel neglected: it might not be her. It might just be her situation.

The post Young Husband: It Might Not be Her; It Might be Her Situation appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Only 3 Days Left!

A Lifelong Love is just $1.99!  

If you’d like to check out what this book is all about, click here:

To order, click HERE!

 

Cherish is just $2.99!

Here’s where you can read up on that, click here.

To order, click HERE!

The post Only 3 Days Left! appeared first on Gary Thomas.

In Sickness and in Health

I’m rather late with this post. One of the reasons for that is that I’ve been writing a devotional book for engaged couples that will walk them through every line of the traditional “statement of intent” and vows of a wedding ceremony. The idea is that on their wedding day, when they agree to this statement of intent and repeat the marriage vows, they will have deeply considered, prayed through, and discussed every aspect of what each word means, making their special day all the more special.

Here’s a sample. It’s a first draft and will likely evolve somewhat by the time it reaches book form, but it addresses the aspect of vows where we agree to keep each other “in sickness and in health.”

 

Susannah Thompson was initially less than impressed by the young Baptist preacher named Charles Spurgeon, but she was soon won over by his charm and demeanor. When Charles eventually declared his love for Susannah, she rapturously praised God “For His great mercy in giving me the love of so good a man. If I had known, then, how good he was, and how great he would become, I would have been overwhelmed, not so much with the happiness of being his, as with responsibility which such a situation would entail.”

Responsibility, indeed.

Though a legendary preacher, Spurgeon had a fragile body and, in one sense, an ailing mind. When he was just 30 years old (8 years after they married), Charles began suffering from horrendous bouts of gout, an excruciatingly painful condition that in his case came with another crushing ailment: depression.

Susannah knew she was marrying a man who had a special gift from God but she didn’t know she would need to stand by a man with a painful physical ailment and a potentially debilitating mental ailment in a day and age when medicine was of little help to either.

Charles was likewise smitten by Susannah on their wedding day (January 8, 1856). He and his new bride must have conceived a child on or near their honeymoon, because Susannah gave birth to a set of twin boys on September 20th of that same year.

Susannah never fully recovered from the birth. She eventually improved a little, but the difficult birth was followed by other physical ailments that, during one particularly awful stretch, kept her bedridden or housebound for a 15-year-stretch. Charles preached to an overflowing church building that, for over a decade, his wife never once set foot in.

Since pregnancy affects a woman’s health in the very first trimester, Charles pledged to marry a woman who was in robust health but who, just weeks later, would never be that healthy again.

Yet Charles and Susannah had a loving and intimate union.

Here are two letters Charles wrote to Susannah, both from the year 1871. Notice the affection Charles obviously has for Susannah in spite of the physical challenges that assaulted both of them:

My Own Dear one–None know how grateful I am to God for you. In all I have ever done for Him, you have a large share. For in making me so happy you have fitted me for service. Not an ounce of power has ever been lost to the good cause through you. I have served the Lord far more, and never less, for your sweet companionship. The Lord God Almighty bless you now and forever!

And later that same year:

“I have been thinking over my strange history, and musing on eternal love’s great river-head from which such streams of mercy have flowed to me. . . . Think of the love which gave me that dear lady for a wife, and made her such a wife; to me, the ideal wife, and, as I believe, without exaggeration or love-flourishing, the precise form in which God would make a woman for such a man as I am, if He designed her to be the greatest of all earthly blessings to him; and in some sense a spiritual blessing, too, for in that also am I richly profited by you, though you would not believe it. I will leave this ‘good matter’ ere the paper is covered; but not till I have sent you as many kisses as there are waves on the sea.”

Sickness needn’t destroy a marriage, but it will severely challenge a marriage unless both husband and wife enter their union with the full commitment that they will stick together regardless of what physical ailments assault their joy. You are committing to marry a real person, with a real and fragile body, and to stand by them, in sickness and in health.

Heavenly Father, we don’t need to know the future because we know you’ve already gone there before us and will provide us the grace to meet whatever challenge we may face. Help us to take full advantage of our days of health—to enjoy each other, to serve you and others, and to relish in the blessing of vitality and strength. But as we enjoy these times, prepare our hearts to stay true if our bodies or minds should begin to break down. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

Share some things you’d like to do while you have the good health to enjoy them. How can the two of you be good stewards of whatever health situation you are in now?
Knowing that your spouse is committing to be there “in sickness and in health,” what changes do you need to make in your lifestyle (eating, exercising, sleeping) in order to be a good steward of your health and not unnecessarily burden your future spouse?
Discuss ways that the two of you can encourage each other toward healthy living.

 

P.S.

There are two major specials this month, through June 30.

 

A Lifelong Love is on sale at Kindle for just $1.99

 

 

Cherish is on sale on Kindle for just $2.99, also through June 30.

The post In Sickness and in Health appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Men We are Third

 

One of the most frequent requests I get is to write a book specifically for husbands. The reason I haven’t done that is largely because publishers know men don’t buy many books. I’ve brought up the possibility of doing a book for men in three different rounds of contract negotiations and the publishers always direct me somewhere else. I understand that Christian publishing is a business and they are trying to be responsible.

But if I were to write a book for men, the thought that a man should think of himself as “third” in his wife’s list of allegiances would form a chapter. And men, if you feel singled out by this post, just remember I’ve written an entire book for wives (Sacred Influence), so you can’t legitimately say I’m picking on guys.

In order to have a God-honoring marriage, I have to realize that I come in third in my wife’s allegiance. Lisa is God’s daughter first, God’s servant second, and my wife third. The best marriages will be built on husbands keeping these priorities in mind.

Before Lisa is anything else, she is God’s daughter (1 John 3:1). Since there is no marriage in heaven (Matthew 22:30), her relationship as God’s daughter is her primary, eternal relationship. Because of this, I want her to receive affirmation, encouragement, and spiritual nourishment from her heavenly Father on a daily basis, which means my role as her husband is to make sure she gets the time and space she needs to connect with God.

Husbands, if your wife has young children, one of your primary concerns should be making sure she has windows every day to live her life as God’s daughter. You may not be able to give her an hour quiet-time, but there should be moments every day when she can at least get away to read a devotional and pray or worship, however she best connects with God. And make sure she has regular times of corporate connection with other believers—attending church, and preferably a small group, or Bible Study. Before she is your wife, she is God’s daughter. She needs the joy, strength, resolve, and purpose that comes from regularly connecting with God. If you keep that relationship primary, you’ll actually benefit as a husband. Whatever you need to do with helping to keep up the house and watch the kids so that she can do this, you should do.

Your wife’s second call is to be God’s servant. Jesus tells all of us to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33); not seek first an intimate marriage or a happy husband, but the kingdom of God. When a woman called out to Jesus praising Mary, “Blessed Is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you,” Jesus replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11:27-28) Back then, a woman was valued primarily for family—including what her children accomplished. Jesus directly refutes this as a woman’s only value, saying He also exalts women who embrace His truth and go to work on behalf of His kingdom.

Paul even urges some widows in 1 Corinthians 7 to seriously consider staying unmarried so that they can more fully devote themselves to Kingdom work. The unequivocal call of the New Testament is that a woman’s highest call isn’t to find a husband to help but rather a Savior to serve. (Though, of course, once a woman decides to marry, helping her husband becomes a necessary act of obedience.)

Thus your wife’s identity as God’s servant comes before her role as your wife, because as God’s servant she may have to challenge you, correct you, or if you are abusive or persistently unfaithful, separate from you and perhaps even divorce you. If I am engaging in destructive behavior, as God’s servant my wife’s role is to call me out. If I don’t listen, as God’s servant her call is to expose me in a redemptive way to Christian leadership that can call me to repentance. If she sees herself as my wife first, she may opt to please me instead of speaking the hard word, so I have to affirm her that she is God’s servant before she is my wife.

Men, this shouldn’t threaten us; it should make us feel protected. God’s will is always best. Sinning is always destructive, especially in the long-run. We are all capable of deceiving ourselves. When we marry women who see themselves as God’s servants above being our wives there’s a certain security that they won’t sit idly by while we destroy ourselves. This is a good thing, if, indeed, we believe that God’s way is best.

The other implication of her being God’s servant before she is our wife is that we need to honor and support her spiritual gifts and calling. We shouldn’t view our calling as more important. Maybe we need to be the ones who watch the kids in the evening so that our wife can be at the church, or doing something in the city, or attending a meeting, etc.

In a recent sermon I challenged the popular statement, “Happy wife, happy life.” In a way, that statement can be sexist (not that every person who uses it intends it in a sexist way). It’s close to saying, “Just give her chocolate and coffee, and an occasional piece of jewelry, and she won’t cause you too much trouble.” A much better expression—though not half as witty, poetic, or pithy—is “Fulfilled wife, happy life.” If your wife is living out her calling in the Lord and feels fulfilled because of it, you will be truly blessed and inspired as a husband. If she believes her calling is to focus on building your marriage and raising your kids during this particular season, then her role as God’s servant will preclude her from being resentful of the demands of being a wife and mother. She is doing this in obedience to God not because she feels trapped by you. But she must understand that you support and affirm her duty to obey God’s call to be His servant even above being your wife.

And third, she is your wife. Because we are so high on her list of priorities, we should do all that we can to make this relationship gratifying, connected, and joyful. We should seek to be engaged with her, interested in her, and absolutely faithful to her in all aspects. If we stray mentally or physically, we have undercut her third most important call in life. We shouldn’t tempt her to become a mom first by neglecting her so that she desperately seeks comfort and solace in putting her children above us in her affections. If the third most important call in someone’s life is in ruins, there is going to be great sadness and even misery. It’s cruel to let this happen, as much as we can stop it. When we neglect putting the same effort into our marriage as our wives do, we frustrate them. They want to be faithful to their third highest call in life but we make it painful. Instead, we should make it joyful and fulfilling.

Guys, this truly is the path to the deepest, most fulfilling marriages: your wife is God’s daughter first, God’s servant second, and your wife third. Release her to the first two calls, and you’ll be doubly blessed by her fulfillment of the third call. Put the third call first, and she’ll lack the spiritual motivation and strength to fulfill it. It would be like asking her to run a marathon after she’s fasted for a week. God’s way is always best, wisest, and most fulfilling. When we obey, we benefit, and this is as true in marriage as it is anywhere else.

In other words, men, when we come in third, our family wins the race.

The post Men We are Third appeared first on Gary Thomas.

The Many Quiet but Splendid Benefits of Marriage

When Lisa and I were at the Love Song Couples’ Getaway in the Bahamas, we had a room large enough that, 45 minutes after checking in (I was still traveling in from Houston after preaching at Second that morning) Lisa texted me to say, “Ha! I just found a second full bathroom.” Troy and Marisha (the organizers of Love Song) always spoil us.

Mid-week, however, the large room meant Lisa couldn’t find her phone. She searched everywhere. We looked it up on “Find Your iPhone” and it seemed to point to our room. Lisa was tired and said, “Promise me you’ll help me find it in the morning.”

When she was out of the room the next day I tore everything apart and found it. She came back to the room, saw it plugged in and charging and said, “You’re going to get some special romance for that!” and then kissed me. I later found out the “special romance” was that kiss. It was certainly a nice kiss, but my mind had jumped a few paces ahead of that…

Anyway, it hit me that so often we hope marriage keeps serving up those endless and inexhaustible moments of “special romance,” whirlwind feelings, “carry me away” moments. But in reality, sometimes marriage is built on small things, quiet but splendid benefits, like having someone find your cell phone when you’re tired of looking for it yourself.

Can you think of other “small benefits” that make marriage so nice?

I think of having someone who cares about your kids as much as you do, and is enthusiastic to talk about them and pray for them.

 

Moments of ministry together. I didn’t arrive at the resort for the conference until very late Sunday and was scheduled to speak early Monday. My sinuses kept me awake, I had a huge headache, and there were multiple problems with the PowerPoint and video clips. It was a terrible morning on sub-par sleep and I thought, “Great, my first session is so going to bomb.” Lisa knelt in front of me, took my face in her hands and said, “This isn’t about how you feel right now. It’s about a lifetime of study, prayer, and your life. You’ve lived this. It’s going to go great.” Sometimes, marriage is just about encouraging each other in ministry.

 

Feeling discouraged and having someone care enough to ask, “Are you okay?”

 

Being known well enough that if you have sinus issues your spouse can tell without asking.

Coffee in your room in the morning. I had brought Lisa’s to her at the Atlantis, then we sat on our balcony and watched a dad with two daughters bringing his wife’s coffee to her (the walk took ten times as long since the little girls were “helping”). It dawned on us that it is almost always the husband who brings the coffee in the morning.

 

Someone to make the “first call” to when something good or bad happens.

 

Someone who defends you when others attack.

 

Someone to share a favorite quote, blog, movie, or television show with.

 

Facing frustrating times together. Lisa and I had stopped off in Jacksonville on the way home for a visit with some friends and family, and on the way back our flight into Houston was cancelled due to bad weather. We were so ready to get back home and another night in an airport hotel seemed less than appetizing, but we went to a local restaurant, got takeout salad bar, and watched two “The Amazing Race” episodes on my iPad. After so many years of traveling alone, it felt like a special treat to spend a frustrating evening with your best friend, to the point that the frustrating evening became a good memory.

 

Someone to take the kids or change the diaper when you’re just too tired to do it one more time.

 

Someone to test out opinions or thoughts—on the sermon, books, political speeches, kids’ choices.

 

That first hug in the morning.

These aren’t “big moments.” None of them on their own are exciting enough to sustain a movie, form a song, or carry the plot of a novel, but taken together, they’re really nice “side benefits” of marriage.

If you’re not carried away by infatuated romance at this point in your relationship, don’t discount the fulfillment and joy of simply living life together. Infatuated moments are nice, but sometimes what you really need is someone who can find your iPhone.

In the comments section, please share your own “quiet but splendid benefits of marriage.” Let’s see how long we can make the list.

The post The Many Quiet but Splendid Benefits of Marriage appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Does God Care How Many Children We Have?

Here’s a shocking thought:

Most of us approach child-rearing from the perspective of, “How many kids do we want to have?”

Will any of us approach parenting from the perspective of “How many children does God want us to have?”

Is such a perspective even in the church’s mindset?

News reports keep predicting when Muslims will finally outnumber Christians (Christians currently outnumber Muslims by a little over half a billion). A report in the London Telegraph suggested it would be as soon as 2035. Another report, covered by the New York Times, predicted it wouldn’t be reached until 2100.  Both agreed it was inevitable.

Of course, these reports don’t take into account any movement of God; it’s all based on demographics, especially birth rates. Since Muslims tend to have more children than Christians, it’s inevitable, these reports say, that followers of Muhammad will eventually outnumber followers of Jesus.

Lisa recently spent time working in some Syrian refugee camps. One of the most striking things she noticed was how many babies and pregnant women there were, even in impoverished circumstances.

The very first command God gave to humans was to be fruitful and multiply, but this isn’t a command that most modern Christians take seriously. “The world has enough people,” some say. “If anything, it’s overcrowded. That command was given a long time ago, to a much different world. It no longer applies.”

If we think the job of populating the earth is “done,” or that there are a sufficient number of children born to Christian believers, we don’t understand the world, how economies work, how much God loves children, or the miracle of creating life that will live on into eternity. I’m not faulting you—I don’t think my wife and I had a clue about any of this when we were young parents. In the interest of full disclosure, Lisa and I have three children. We would have liked to have more, but there were medical considerations that, to this day, I still think make sense.

But the fact remains, when other faiths take the command to be “fruitful and multiply” seriously while Christians don’t, there are enormous implications. There is no guarantee that a child born of any faith will embrace that faith, but it is far more likely that they will. And if we train our children well, using biblical priorities, it is even more likely that our children will embrace what we believe to be the true faith: God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Remember when Jesus sat down, called the twelve disciples to him, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and the servant of all?” But do you remember what He did next? He took a child into his arms and added, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:35-37)

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the bit about being a “servant” comes right before Jesus mentions how welcoming a child is tantamount to welcoming Him. Kids take a ton of work. They are expensive. They can be exhausting. But Jesus loves them. And He says that to welcome a child into our home is to welcome Him.

Jesus doesn’t deny the sacrifices parenting demands of us, but He also taught that there are more important priorities than a few extra years of being less tired, having more money in the bank, nicer cars or homes, or taking satisfaction in bigger retirement savings. God prioritizes people. People have eternal destinies. Nothing else a couple does can compare with bringing a child into the world and training that child to follow the true God. Nothing.

Some might say one of my biggest human accomplishments was writing Sacred Marriage, but ten thousand years from now, no one will be reading that book. Jesus says there is no marriage in heaven, and on the new earth we’ll be perfectly holy, so I can’t imagine anyone wanting to read a book about a relationship that no longer exists in order to become something (more holy) that we already are. But Lisa and I will be able to walk hand in hand through heaven, enjoying a family reunion with perhaps thousands of descendants we never met on earth, look at each other, and say with awe, “These people are here on the new earth because of the love we shared on the old.”

If you’re a younger family trying to decide whether you’re content with the 2.1 children so favored by Christian couples today, will you at least consider the theological implications? Does it hurt to even ask the question, “Is it possible God might desire for us to have more?”

Nobody should have more children simply because they are motivated by guilt. That’s an awful thing to do. But if you consider God’s command, if you meditate on the spirit of Christ’s affection for children, if you will reflect on the implications of Christians thinking that populating the world with more Christian families is passé, if you consider carefully the eternal impact of creating and raising image bearers of God, and if during this exercise God’s Holy Spirit convicts you—well then, at least you will have made a biblically informed decision, giving God the opportunity to take off your cultural blinders and perhaps consider a new perspective with which to decide, “Just how many children should we have?”

The post Does God Care How Many Children We Have? appeared first on Gary Thomas.