Gary L. Thomas's Blog, page 59

Spiritual Preparation for Valentine’s Day

If you want to make this Valentine’s Day special, in addition to shopping for the lingerie and chocolate, spend some extra time worshipping God.

It’s not that I have anything against chocolate or lingerie (especially lingerie), but three decades of marriage have taught me that personal worship is an absolute must to sustain a strong marriage. It comes down to this: if I stop receiving from God, I start demanding from others—especially my wife. Instead of appreciating and serving others, I become disappointed in them.

But when my heart is filled with God’s love and acceptance, I’m set free to love instead of worrying about being loved. I’m motivated to serve instead of becoming obsessed about whether I’m being served. I’m moved to cherish instead of feeling unappreciated.

Daily receiving from God gives me a special kind of joy in being used by Him. I look at life so differently. Being filled up, I want to be poured out. If I’m not filled up in the morning, I want others to affirm me throughout the day, and I resent being poured out.

There’s something about Valentine’s Day that, if the relationship is strong, makes romance feel wonderfully intense. But if the marriage is going through a tough patch, Valentine’s Day, with all the expectations, can make the relationship feel even worse. That’s why we need to be spiritually prepared. Whenever we place our happiness in the hands of another human being, we virtually guarantee some degree of disappointment.

That’s why worship sets us free; it meets our most basic needs—to rest in the fact that we are known, loved, and have a purpose—so that lesser needs serve the role of an occasional dessert rather than our main meal.

My wife can still practically make my heart stop with romance—and I’m grateful for when she does—but she can never move me the way God does day after day, because I’m wired to need God, love God and depend on God more than anyone or anything else. That never makes my wife feel less important to me—it just makes me more thankful for whatever I get. “God is so good to me, and I have a kind wife too? This is amazing!”

Marital romance becomes the whipped cream—always a nice addition. But worship is the ice cream—the ultimate source of our delight. Long-term, no marriage can make up for a lack of spiritual intimacy and connectedness with God.  

Some of you, particularly those in difficult or disappointing marriages, may need to spend some extra time with God to prepare yourself for Valentine’s Day. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve found a constant formula at work in my life: the less I receive from God, the more I demand from my spouse. The more I receive from God, the more I am set free to give to my wife. And since so many people have so many high expectations for this romantic holiday, it’s wise to get spiritually prepared.

Revel in God’s love for you, and then watch your earthly relationship take on a new delight. Intense romance is an especially wondrous thing when it’s received by a soul that already feels loved and affirmed by God.

[If you have difficulty connecting with God in your quiet times, check out Sacred Pathways. http://www.garythomas.com/books/sacred-pathways/  It discusses nine different ‘spiritual temperaments’ that can help you identify how you best connect with God and how you can plan your devotional times accordingly.]

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Forsaking All Others

Being closer to anyone other than your spouse is a betrayal of your wedding vows.

When we think of betraying our wedding vows, we usually think of something sexual or romantic. But there’s a far more common betrayal that isn’t about romance or sex; it’s about emotional connection or relational dependence. The reality is that if you are closer to anyone other than your spouse, you are maintaining an immature marriage and are at least in danger of betraying your vows. The object of your affection might be a child, a parent, or a best friend for whom there is no romantic connection at all—but if there is more intentional and invested intimacy in that relationship above your relationship with your spouse, that crosses the line into betrayal.

One of the big challenges with driverless cars is determining what the car will decide if, for instance, it has the option of driving into a wall, perhaps killing the passenger, or driving into a group of people. That’s a value decision that’s horrendous to contemplate, much less program. When it comes to an intimate and cherishing marriage the “auto default” always has to be in favor of our spouse over everyone else. On the day we got married, we already decided and declared to everyone, including our God, that our spouse comes first.

Remember, we promised to “forsake all others and keep myself only unto you.”  If we fail at “forsaking” we’ll necessarily fail at “keeping.”

There is one exception: if you are in an abusive relationship you need to realize that abuse thrives in secrecy. Isolation becomes a weapon. You, above all people, need wise counsel and support, and should feel no guilt in pursuing both. What we’re talking about here is dealing with apathy, not an enemy.

Having said that, every marriage that wants to mature must move toward holding each other dearer than all others. That means occasionally risking and even enduring a short season of loneliness until the relationship is restored. If I experience a painful distance from my spouse and immediately jump ship to find intimacy with a friend, child, or hobby, that substitute takes away my need to do the work to become closer to my spouse—cementing me in a sub-par marriage. After a while, the “temporary crutch” becomes my permanent reality and the marriage never gets fixed.

If you’re still in the marriage, you’re still under your vows, so your call is to fight to be closer to your spouse than anyone else in the world.

Being married to a relationally immature husband or wife isn’t biblical grounds for a divorce, so you’ll have to endure being a little “relationally hungry” for a while so that you will stay motivated to help your spouse grow. Don’t just say, “Fine; he has his hobbies and I have my mine. He can go out drinking and golfing with his friends, I’ll go exercise with my friends, and we’ll make sure the bills get paid.” Accepting such a low status quo is a betrayal of your vows.

This may sound stark, but I believe it’s the pathway to marital healing: “I will be a little lonely or in an intimate marriage. For the foreseeable future, I’m going to accept only one or the other.”

As a pastor who works with premarital couples, part of my job is to protect both the future husband and wife. If I see something that could be disastrous to intimacy in a marriage, I’m going to point it out. I may (and have) even suggest that they postpone the wedding or call it off entirely, because entering marriage is to enter extreme vulnerability. Younger couples don’t always get how vulnerable they become to each other. There’s no getting around this vulnerability, any more than you can jump into a pool without getting wet. So you make sure it’s a clean pool before you jump.

Which is why, singles, you need to ask yourselves: Will this person keep working on the marriage? Will they pull back into an addiction or hobby or other friendship when things get difficult (things always get difficult)? Do they have the spiritual, relational, and emotional maturity to the extent that making myself vulnerable to them above all others is a wise decision?

If you want your marriage to work, you necessarily have to forsake all others in order to “keep” yourself only unto your spouse. This is not a quick fix, but the Bible speaks highly of perseverance: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

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Super Bowls and Super Marriages

There’s a popular joke in New England that expresses just how much affection Patriots fans have for their beloved quarterback.

A wife wakes up furious with her husband. “I had a dream last night that you had an affair with Giselle Bundchen!” she shouts and hits him with a pillow.

“That’s ridiculous!” the husband protests. “I’d never do that to Tom Brady.”

That joke expresses just how grateful Patriots fans are for the seven Super Bowl appearances in the Brady/Belichick era.

Believe it or not, there’s a powerful marital truth buried in the Patriots’ success.

You may have heard me say or write, “A good marriage isn’t something you find, it’s something you make,” and the Patriots prove that’s equally true with the game of football.

In their AFC championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Patriots had just one first-round pick starting on offense. Even more surprising, three undrafted free agents started. And yet New England all but wiped the field against the Steelers’ vaunted defense. The once famous steel curtain looked like a paper wafer against sixth-round draft pick Tom Brady and his cadre of receivers.

When marriage is tough, we naturally think the problem is with the personnel—usually, our spouse (though I talk to some of you who freely admit the problem is primarily with you). And the thinking goes, with such weak personnel, the only solution is to get a new team.

But what if, like the Patriots, you can develop a Super Bowl winning team with undrafted free-agent talent? What if, with some helpful coaching and practice, you can rip apart other teams—surpass other marriages—even though they may have “superior” natural talent?

You can.

What I love about pursuing a cherishing marriage is that it can be pursued. There are habits, attitudes and actions that slowly build a Super Bowl experience in marriage.

A woman stopped my wife last week after a Bible study and told her that after reading her foreword to Cherish, she wanted to tell her, “I want your life for a day because I have never felt that.” Husbands, that’s so sad. And Lisa reflected back to me, “If her husband would do just a little bit of cherishing she’d be so happy because he’s set the bar so low.”

Let’s take what we have—maybe a bunch of sixth round draft picks and even undrafted free-agents—and resolve to do something very special with it.

It begins with being true to your promise—we promised to cherish our spouse and we need to take that seriously. The reason some of us didn’t cherish our spouse before was because we thought love was enough. We need to be convicted that we promised more than mere love on the day we got married. We have to want to cherish each other and be committed to cherishing each other before it begins to happen.

Second, we need to change our mindset. We need to pursue viewing our spouse as Adam or Eve, the only man or woman in the world, accepting the “commitment of contentment” that we entered into on our wedding day.

Third, we need to begin showcasing our spouse, following the analogy of “the ballet is woman” and seeking to out-honor the person we married.

Fourth, we can then add on, as appropriate, the actions that reinforce a cherishing marriage—there isn’t enough space to mention all of them here, but this includes things like catching bids, sacrifice and saving, winning the mind games, embracing the uniqueness of your spouse, and unleashing the power of the Gospel so that you can continue to cherish an imperfect spouse.

What I’m saying is that (absent overt abuse that necessitates separation), you can begin to apply a cherishing mindset and actions to a dull or apathetic marriage and watch it take off. The testimonies are already pouring in about how merely being challenged to pursue a cherishing marriage is changing so many homes and relationships.

Guys, what do you think your wife would say, and what would be the expression on her face, if you just showed her a copy of Cherish and said, “Help me learn how to start cherishing you like you’ve never been cherished before”? Can you even imagine how your wife might respond? She’s given her life to you; she has stood beside you. Why not reward that commitment and affection by learning how to cherish her?

Wives, if you can relate to the woman who stopped Lisa after the Bible study, prayerfully print this blog out, hand it to your husband and say, “Can we talk about this? Can we really try, in 2017, to build a marriage in which we cherish each other? I want to learn how to cherish you better, too. Let’s not just play the game of marriage. Let’s learn to win at it.”

Remember, even if you’ve had a slow start, when it comes to marriage or football it’s not always about what you already have. Sometimes, it’s about what you do with it.

Are you willing to give cherishing a shot to take you to the “Super Bowl?”

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One of Your Best Friends in Marriage

“Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love.” Ecclesiastes 9:9

In my book Pure Pleasure I tell the story of an excruciatingly hot run on an August afternoon in Houston, Texas, well before I moved here. Nobody who lives in Houston actually plans to run at 3:00 p.m. in the middle of August but I was traveling from Seattle where heat and humidity never get in the way.

About two miles into the run I thought I was going to collapse into a thirst-induced coma. I ran by a half-empty bottle of Coke lying in a ditch and actually paused. It was beyond gross to contemplate, but at least it was wet.

“You can’t fall that far, Gary,” I told myself and kept going, leaving the Coke behind.

Then I came across a family with young children playing in the front yard. I saw they had a hose and asked the mom if I could turn it on for a quick drink. She was very gracious but I was embarrassed, so I drank it right away without letting the water run all the way through and it was, as you might guess, disgusting. Who knows how long that water had sat inside that hot plastic tube?

Even so, it was wet, and I drank it down because my thirst was monumental.

Writing now, in an air-conditioned room, with a bottle of Fiji water nearby, I’m appalled at the thought of a half-empty bottle of Coke lying in a ditch, or even drinking from a hose in front of a house. But rather than fault myself for not having the willpower to say no on a hot run, I think the wiser question would be, “Gary, why did you allow yourself to get into a situation where you were so thirsty that something that should have been repugnant to you actually became a temptation?”

That’s the attitude you should build in your marriage. Instead of focusing on the moment of temptation, focus on what makes you vulnerable to temptation. If I had been fully hydrated and was carrying a cold bottle of electrolyte-laced water, I wouldn’t have even noticed the Coke in the ditch and I would have run right by the house with the hot hose in front.

When you stop having fun in your marriage, you become relationally thirsty. Things that wouldn’t even be a temptation to you when you’re connecting with your spouse suddenly seem tantalizing. Desperation is by far one of the widest, smoothest off-ramps taking us off the highway of marital faithfulness.

I hate even the thought of legalism, but if you’re going to be legalistic about one thing, be legalistic about this: keep a weekly date night, especially after you have kids. Never stop enjoying each other.

Don’t let sexual intimacy grow cold. Once it becomes routine and once your life becomes so full of keeping up a house, earning a living, and spending time with children, it’s so easy to give sexual intimacy leftover time. It’s so easy to never plan for it, to fail to put the energy into it to occasionally make it special, but that’s a very unwise thing to do. Wives, never stop seducing your husband. Every now and then, plan an encounter that will make his heart stop. You can’t do this every week and maybe not even every month, but many times a year, let your thoughts roam, smile at how much you are going to make your husband squirm, and let many memories of pleasure seal his heart from any outside temptation.

Men, make sure the marital bed is a place where your wife’s pleasure comes first. Don’t act like it’s just her job to “take care” of you. Be thoughtful, creative, generous, and kind. Aim for the day when your wife will think, “I married such a kind husband, but he has been nowhere as kind as he is in the bedroom.” Tie her to your heart with many memories of pure pleasure. If your wife has never been “worn out” with satisfaction, she might be married to a selfish lover who foolishly ignores the power of pure pleasure.

If the moment ever comes when you can’t remember the last time the two of you laughed, take this as a “spiritual doctor’s” prescription: go do something fun in the next three days. If you notice you’re running out of date night ideas, invite another couple along—it’s okay to laugh with another couple. Forget about work and pressure and bills and resolve that you are going to enjoy this marriage.

Here’s a startling fact: over 80% of husbands who cheat on their wives want to return after the affair is over. You know what that tells me? The problem was never the person they were married to, or else they’d never want to come back. The problem was the state of the relationship. They let it become utilitarian. They stopped having fun. The affair was about getting away, re-discovering sexual intimacy, laughing with someone, and doing something other than work or child-rearing.

You can do that with each other! You don’t have to have an affair with someone else because you’re bored. Have an affair with your spouse.

In any given marriage, there is typically one partner who is more focused on having fun (in my marriage, I’m sure you’ve guessed that person’s name begins with an “L”). If you’re not that spouse, thank God that He has given you someone to help keep you from being overly serious. But don’t be lazy. Realize that you also need to plan fun things to do as a couple.

Within the safe confines of marriage, pleasure will be one of the truest friends and protectors of your relationship. Use this God-given tool to build a temptation-proof marriage. Your commitment to a lasting union is actually a commitment to enjoy each other for the rest of your lives. Here’s to a life of laughter, fun, and delight!

Heavenly Father, your goodness and kindness is seen in this: amidst work, service and sacrifice, you call us to enjoy each other and to laugh together as husband and wife. You created us as the only creatures truly capable of laughter, because we are the only creatures made in your image. You command us to take a day off, and your Word celebrates us enjoying each other. Help each couple reading this blog to embrace this good, abundant life, and remind them if they have become overly serious that it is dangerous to remain “relationally thirsty.” Unleash the creativity of your Holy Spirit to guide them to new times of laughter and fun and sexual delight. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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The Worst Betrayal of Marriage

My wife loves to play Boggle and she’s really good at it, which is why few people want to play her. But on her birthday and Mother’s Day, and usually at least one evening during a holiday, her family joins her. Our love for her calls us to join her in her great love.

Lisa also loves to bike, which is why I bike a lot more than I probably would otherwise. I prefer to run. But Lisa’s love for biking makes me much more of a biker.

That principle—we do what our spouse loves and likes to do—is fine when it comes to hobbies. It is spiritually deadly and poisonous when the same principle is unleashed by our sins.

If you hold on to a sinful attitude, there will come a time when you will want your spouse to join you in that sin.

Marriage contains within itself the power of glorious good—encouragement, support, enthusiasm, love, service, loyalty. It gives us the tools to bless one particular person like we can bless no one else. But this potential comes with a sinister side—it also offers a platform from which we invite our spouse to enter into our own temptations. From this vantage point we can do great and serious evil.

In an old, old sermon Clarence Macartney warned that while Satan is “the ultimate source and author of temptation, yet it is sadly and fearfully true that men deliberately tempt other men…One fallen person has a diabolical delight in bringing another down to the same level.”

Once we give in to sin, we can’t contain its spread any more than we can immediately confine an oil tanker spill. Sin spreads widely and chaotically by its very nature; it multiplies beyond our control (the more we give in, the stronger its hold on us) and therefore makes those closest to us most vulnerable.

The challenge is that no one—not a single soul—is exempt from sometimes fierce temptation. To live is to be tempted. To breathe is to be lured toward a fall. Sometimes we will fall, and we will be grateful for God’s grace and Jesus’ remedy. But one aspect of temptation, particularly as it relates to marriage, that we need to be especially careful about is not dragging our spouse into the temptation.

Macartney writes, “However much we have been marred and scarred by the tempter’s shafts, let us at least see to it that ours shall not be the guilt of tempting another soul. If in hell there are gradations of punishments, as the words of Jesus about few and many stripes would seem to indicate, then hell’s severest retributions must surely fall upon the souls of those who have deliberately and malignantly tempted other people.”

How do we tempt our spouse?

If you are a liar, you will eventually ask your spouse to also lie in order to cover up your initial deceit. You may even ask them to lie to one of their dearest friends or nearest relatives. Perhaps you’ll ask them to lie to a government official. When you do that, you have entered a new level of evil and are abusing the intimacy of marriage.

If you cherish a sexual sin, the time will likely come when you will ask your spouse to join you in that weakness. It will no longer be sufficient to merely get lost in a fantasy of thought—you may want to live it out. And your spouse, predisposed to please you and enjoy you, will feel more intense temptation even though the weakness may be something they never would have thought of on their own. This is a serious betrayal of the marital bed and the marital bond.

If you are negative or a gossip, you will try to draw your spouse into speaking critically of others, or make them feel less than thankful for the good things God has given them. Instead of leaving church satisfied by the worship, you will remind them that the pastor said one sentence that could possibly be taken the wrong way. Instead of making them grateful for how God has provided, you will be a constant drip of negativity for how everything in your house or car or life isn’t quite “perfect” and you can’t be content until everything is, in fact, perfect.

These are just three examples—you can supply many others on your own. But the possibility of tempting our spouse and maybe even unthinkingly inviting them to join us in our sin should be enough to make us pursue holiness for the sake of our spouse. I hate my sin and I hate how I am tempted—I’m sure you do as well. The last thing I want to do is to take something I hate and make it a part of my precious wife’s life as well.

You cannot accommodate sin without endangering your spouse. Your apathy toward growing a heart that is a bulwark against sin is tantamount to a man who, out of laziness, refuses to even close the door of his house while he is away, inviting all to enter as they wish.

One of the reasons we bought our particular house in the Heights is that it has a locked wall around it. The outside gate is a stout door surrounded by brick; the other side is protected by a tall barred fence (the Heights is in the urban part of Houston, so crime isn’t all that uncommon, unfortunately). We have video cameras on both entrances. Every time I leave the house in the morning while Lisa is still inside, I lock the inside doors, and I lock the outside door and gate. I have no peace of mind until I know my wife is safe behind at least two formidable barriers.

But how foolish would it be to lock physical doors while leaving spiritual ones open? How stupid would it be to protect our house from physical theft while leaving Satan a highway into my wife’s heart and soul through my own uncontested weakness?

Don’t accept in your own soul that which could poison your spouse’s. It’s not just about you. It’s about your spouse, your kids, and others.

If you ask, how can I grow out of my particular sin and confront my particular temptation, let me suggest N.T. Wright’s After You Believe. It’s a bit academic, but the teaching is gold. It’s my favorite “go-to” book on sanctification. If you want a less academic approach, you might consider one of my old books The Glorious Pursuit, about practicing the virtues (I talk about how the best defense is often a good offense—grow a virtue that is opposite the vice and thereby suffocate the vice).

Perhaps you could list some other books (or sermons, with links) that have helped you pursue a life of holiness in the comments section below, so that we can encourage each other.

It’s a sober thought, but one we need to take seriously: if we consistently fall to temptation, our beloved spouse (and kids) will likely be the first casualty.

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A Tale of Two Wives

“All right,” the event organizer told me, “here’s your ride. His name is Terry.”

You’ll have to forgive me for catching my breath, as Terry rolled up in a wheelchair.

It was winter in Winnipeg, below freezing, and dark. And my driver, as I already said, was shaking my hand while sitting in a wheelchair.

It turned out to be a wonderful ride, a providential meeting from God that continues to inspire me to this day. Terry’s testimony helped me understand the powerful biblical truth unleashed when we treat our spouse like royalty.

The challenge of cherishing a real spouse is that spouses don’t always act in a way that deserves to be cherished. But one way to maintain a cherishing attitude for our spouse is to honor them for their position.

Prince George gets a lot of press though we all know he hasn’t actually accomplished anything. Yet as the son of William and Kate, he is filled with royal blood and therefore gets lots of attention.

Spiritually speaking, you married a royal spouse. Traditional Eastern Orthodox weddings celebrate a practice called “crowning.” The bride and groom literally wear connecting crowns (they are joined by a ribbon) as part of the festivities. In days long past, an Eastern Orthodox bride and groom wore those crowns for eight days following the ceremony. Far more typical today, the crowns are removed at the end of the ceremony.

A Christian marriage places us in succession of a long order of “royal couples,” descending from Adam and Eve (the first ones told to “rule over…every living creature that moves on the ground” Gen. 1:28), Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, David and Bathsheba, Zechariah and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary. It’s a recognition that Christian marriage is about more than happiness and children—it’s about testifying to God’s long-term plan to bring humanity back from the Fall to reclaim God’s world through the Messiah. We are royal representatives through whom God spreads his reign and builds his kingdom.

Rev. 22:5 tells us that God’s followers “will reign for ever and ever.”

After talking about God’s long-term plan of redemption, 1 Peter proclaims, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, so that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light” (2:9). This is the context that precedes what Peter says to wives (3:1ff) and husbands (3:7ff). It’s a clear statement that we are to treat each other in light of our spiritual royalty. Our marriages are about more than each other; they are about testifying to God’s Kingdom, and that is served in part by recognizing the royal place each partner has in that Kingdom.

When a princess misbehaves, she is still a princess and entitled to a certain respect. When a prince has a bad day, he doesn’t lose his royal blood.

That’s the secret learned by Terry, my driver from Winnipeg. He has had two loves and two heartbreaks: both of his wives died of illness. His first wife died after 21 years of marriage; his second wife Sharon died after 17 years of marriage.

His life of two marriages offers a “test case” for what it means to cherish a spouse. The main difference in Terry’s second marriage from his first, in his own words, is that Terry called Sharon “princess” and then treated her like one.

Terry’s first wife died from Ovarian cancer. The disease unleashed a terrible five-year battle, and the last eight months required around-the-clock care. Terry got used to doing everything and getting almost nothing in return.  This was new for him, but what else can you do when your wife is slowly dying of a horrible disease?

Terry remarried four years after his first wife died. Because the last years of his marriage had required him to do most daily chores, and then his four years of singleness required him to do everything on his own, he kept up the same attitude with his second marriage. Sharon was single for 44 years before she married Terry, and having a man serve her like Terry did when she was used to being on her own made her feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

Terry says his second marriage was much closer and in many ways much richer than his first marriage not because one woman was more excellent than the other but because his attitude about marriage was so dramatically different. He treated his second wife like she was royalty. How would you treat a queen? That’s how Terry treated Sharon.

Cherishing Sharon this way gave Terry a heart that made him cherish Sharon all the more. The more he served her and the more he protected her, the more he cherished her. That’s why he called her princess up until she died.

I pressed Terry on this just to make sure I understood him correctly. He had two marriages, one much closer than the other. But the difference wasn’t the excellence of one wife over another (which is what we usually think generates marital happiness). The difference was his attitude toward one wife over another. He was committed to and loved his first wife, but he cherished his second wife.

Terry’s story of two different marriages shows how much of an impact a commitment to cherishing can make. It’s not about the excellence of our spouse but the excellence of our attitude that often determines whether we have an intimate, successful and happy marriage.

That’s the power unleashed in marriage when we make a commitment to cherish.

TODAY is the official release date of Cherish: The One Word That Changes Everything for Your Marriage. It’s available in stores and online through these outlets:

www.amazon.com

 

 

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The Marriage You Want

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve heard me talking a lot lately about cherishing our spouse.

What does cherish mean?

How is cherish different from love?

I recently came across a brilliant description of cherishing your spouse that was written hundreds of years ago by a surprising source. I say “surprising” because John Wesley taught about marriage better than he lived it. This quote shows he surely understood how husbands (and wives) are supposed to act, even if he found it difficult to live it out:

“The wife is to have the highest place in the husband’s heart, and he in her’s. No neighbor, no friend, no parent, no child, should be so near and dear to either as the other…They must do more, and suffer more for each other, than any other in all the world…the husband must do or leave undone, anything he can, that he may please his wife…in diet, attire, choice of company, and all things else, each must fulfill the other’s desire as absolutely as can be done, without transgressing the law of God…Helpful fidelity consists in their mutual care to abstain from and prevent whatever might grieve or hurt either.”

Does anyone not want a marriage like this? Two people so closely aligned, so dedicated to the other’s welfare, that nothing else will come in between them save the presence and will of God. I think all of us would, in an ideal world, desire a marriage like this; we just don’t think it’s possible. At least, not in the marriage we’re in.

But it is. We can learn to cherish each other.

The call to cherish lifts our marriage to a new level because it sets the bar higher. We’re not just sacrificing for each other or persevering through difficult times (important as these may be), but we’re intent on shaping our hearts and minds and habits to look at, think about, and even adore our spouses in a special way.

Love and cherish are like two interchangeable gears, pushing each other forward. Love pushes cherish forward by providing the strength, the will, and the endurance, to continue. Absent love, cherish will quickly fade, like a momentary infatuation. But love without cherish quickly slips into duty instead of delight. If we focus only on doing the right things without thinking the right things and shaping our hearts, marriage can feel like a burden instead of a blessing.

When we learn how to cherish, it’s easier to love, just as when we love, it’s easier to cherish. The two are interlocking gears that push our marriage forward in the right direction.

My new book’s official release date is Monday, January 9, but somebody has already stopped me and asked me to sign one, so stores must be getting them in already.

There’s still a few days left for you to take advantage of the pre-release special that gives you two books for the price of one as well as an audio download.  You can find that at www.garythomas.com/cherish.

 

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Keeping Your Promise

 

Wayne Williams grew up a Chicago Cubs fan because that was his father’s favorite team. As a young boy he and his dad would watch games on television, or listen to radio broadcasts in the car.

The Cubs, of course, were famous for their futility; they hadn’t made it back to a World Series since 1908, but every year father and son followed the team and made a pact: When (not if, but when) the Cubs made it back to the World Series, wherever father and son were, they would get back together listen to the games with each other.

So when the Cubbies played their way into the World Series in 2016, it was a bit of a bittersweet moment for Wayne. Sweet, because his beloved team was back in the Series. Bitter, because his dad had died very young—Wayne’s dad was just 53 years old when he passed away in 1980.

Even so, Wayne believed that a promise made is a promise that must be kept so he got in his car (Wayne lives in North Carolina) and drove all the way out to Indiana, where his father was buried. He set up a chair, and listened to the World Series games “with” his dad.

Stories like this inspire us—there is something noble in keeping a promise, especially if the promise requires sacrifice. It’s the kind of person we all want to be, isn’t it?

Just about every married person reading this blog made a promise as well—not just to love our spouse, but to cherish our spouse: “I promise to love and to cherish until death do us part.” We often talk about the love part—sacrifice, service, perseverance—but pay far too little attention to the cherish part, even though, again, it’s what we promised to do.

Cherish means delighting in each other. It involves praising each other. It’s fed by thinking about each other in the right ways. It paints love with the perfect finish so that the strength of love’s promise is finished by the beauty of cherish’s charm.

A man I know asked seven of his married buddies, “How many of your wives love you?” All seven hands went up.

“How many of your wives like you?”  All seven hands went down.

These husbands all felt loved, but none of them felt cherished—and that fact alone influences the way a wife treats her husband and impacts the climate of the marriage.   Merely “hanging in there” and letting your spouse know you’re in it for the long haul, isn’t enough. Perseverance and fidelity matter, but we promised more than that. We promised to cherish each other.

Men, our wives made themselves so vulnerable to us when they married us. One of the most popular quotes from Sacred Marriage isn’t even mine. It’s from Helen Rowland: “When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one.” We chase, we chase, and we chase, and then, when we catch, we ignore. Every day we do that represents a broken promise.

Since I’ve become so aware of the call to cherish, few things give me as much delight as seeing spouses actively cherish each other. Perhaps because I receive so many emails and phone calls and visits from marriages in crisis I’m especially eager to be encouraged by marriages that are flourishing. Even more than this, however, is that I’ve found practicing cherishing acts, thinking cherishing thoughts, and developing a cherishing heart makes marriage a whole lot more fun. In the abstract, who doesn’t want to cherish the person you’re married to? It makes life so much more enjoyable. And what I have found and want to help you understand, is that cherishing is something you can learn to do.

So:

Because you already promised to cherish each other…

Because cherishing your spouse brings others (including God, family, and friends) so much joy…

Because cherishing your spouse will increase your own happiness…

Why not spend some time in 2017 making it your goal to learn how to cherish your spouse and helping your spouse learn how to keep cherishing you?

You have until January 9 to pre-order Cherish: The One Word That Changes Everything for Your Marriage and get a whole bunch of stuff thrown in. The book will ship January 10th. You can find out more info here:

An early reader posted this on Facebook: “I just finished reading “Cherish” that releases January 10th. It is SOOOO good. I’ll be blogging about it closer to the release date, but you don’t want to miss this one.”

Scott Kedersha, a pastor from Dallas, recently tweeted, “Reading an advance copy of @garyLthomas upcoming book #Cherish – if married you’re going to want to read it – WOW!”

If you’ve enjoyed this blog, we would be so very grateful if you would consider pre-ordering a copy of Cherish today.

 

 

The post Keeping Your Promise appeared first on Gary Thomas.

It’s Not Enough to Not Abuse: We Have to Cherish

My last post “Enough is Enough” crashed our website several times. We’ve had to upgrade our website platform and pay for the frantic efforts to keep the blog up in the midst of the overload. We’re so sorry for the frustration you’ve had and the ensuing issues that followed (like earlier blog posts not being immediately available).

It’s at least a hopeful sign that many Christians are apparently resonating with the thought, “It’s time to stop the abuse.”

But stopping the abuse is just the first step. Now it’s time to address the second. Christians shouldn’t be known for merely avoiding evil. We’ve got to celebrate the excellent, the good, and pursue the high call of a truly biblical love.

In other words, it’s not enough that a wife not feel threatened. A Christian wife (and a Christian husband) should be cherished. (I trust it’s obvious that this is not a word for those wives who need to escape an abusing husband.)

 Reading the testimonies of so many women from the blog made me want to redouble my efforts to treat Lisa in a special manner. I don’t want her to just feel “safe.” That should be a given. I want her to feel really and truly cherished.

“Cherish” is, after all, what the vast majority of us promised on our wedding day. We promised to “love and to cherish until death do us part.” It’s what we said we would do in front of a lot of human witnesses and, even more importantly, in front of God.

To say, “I didn’t really mean it” or “Hey, that’s just what the pastor told me to say,” isn’t good enough. If we’ve let this promise slip, we need now more than ever to pick it back up and pursue a cherishing marriage. Besides, we’d be eager to practice cherishing each other if we truly understood the benefits of doing so.

If your heart was broken over the stories of pain so many spouses face, one of the things you can do in response is to raise the bar for what is considered acceptable behavior. Your marriage—how you treat your spouse, talk about your spouse, cherish your spouse—can actually change the climate of many other homes. You can bless other husbands and wives. You can make life so much more pleasant and feel so much more secure for so many children (other than your own).

How?

Personal witness and transformation is the Christian model for societal change. Paul says “Follow me as I follow Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). He told Timothy to watch his life and doctrine closely and to persevere in them so that everyone could see his progress—and so that others could be saved (1 Tim. 4:15-16).

High ideals need fleshly models. Gregory the Great wrote “Almighty God [gives us] examples, so that we may more easily hope for everything we believe to be impossible, the more that we hear that others have already accomplished it.”

Is a cherishing marriage possible? You can show others that it is. And when you do, others will take notice and perhaps be convicted. When a husband cherishes his wife he raises the bar for other men who are entrenched in their selfishness and apathy. Christian husbands who treat their wives like Eve, the only woman in the world, challenge men to see that simply not lusting at other women isn’t enough; on the contrary, in a cherishing marriage we look at our wives in a cherishing way, truly seeing them (they are never invisible to us) and searching them out, celebrating their beauty. Such a wife feels pursued, adored, valued, and affirmed.

When wives cherish their husbands other wives will see that laughter gained at a husband’s expense costs too much. Such a wife can challenge other women with the rare satisfaction that she enjoys in her marriage (because cherishing leads to increased satisfaction). She can raise the bar for how a woman looks at, touches, treats and talks about her husband.

I’ve had so many goals in life: wanting to publish a book, finish a marathon, and many others. One that I am now determined to chase is that my wife will know, in the bottom of her heart, that I cherish her. Perhaps our marriage could kick-start other marriages that have grown a little cold or tired or selfish.

Will you and your spouse make a commitment to pursue a cherishing marriage? Some of you may have to start unilaterally—your spouse may not “awaken” toward you until you start cherishing them on your own. It may take some time. But you can part of those who seek to raise the bar of what is possible in marriage. Not only will you be blessed by doing so (because a cherishing marriage is much more pleasant to be part of), but you can inspire other couples around you. You can set a higher bar for your own children.

You see, I believe a cherishing marriage can be learned and chosen. A person might “fall in love” but they have to choose to cherish. There are attitudes we can adopt and habits we can practice that groom our minds and hearts to cherish our spouse. It’s something God wants for us and if we will just look to Him and His wisdom, He’ll empower us and guide us and help us to get there.

Let’s not stop at “I don’t abuse my spouse.” Let’s pursue, “I want to cherish my spouse.”

My book on cherishing your spouse will be released in just a few weeks now. You can pre-order it here, and get a lot of free stuff thrown in as well (including the first three chapters, immediately):

http://www.garythomas.com/cherish/

Imagine if men ordered this book for themselves and their wives and said, “I want to build a cherishing marriage in 2017. I want you to feel even more cherished by the time 2018 rolls around.” Husbands, how do you think that would make your wives feel?

What if women decided to study together how to cherish husbands who stumble in so many ways? What if they said, “Being negative and complaining hasn’t gotten us anywhere. Let’s see what happens when we choose to follow through on our promise to cherish our husbands”?

Early reviewers have told me that they believe this book delivers on its promise. I hope you will give it a chance.

And just to cut off potential criticism before it gets to the comments: I have a chapter in this book that says spectacular advice for some can be spectacularly bad advice for others. I am not calling wives who are married to husbands they should separate from to cherish their abusers. If, however, you are convinced God wants you to stay in a difficult marriage—as should be true for the vast majority of us—cherishing is a tool and an effective strategy to make whatever marriage we have even better.

The post It’s Not Enough to Not Abuse: We Have to Cherish appeared first on Gary Thomas.

Enough is Enough

 

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26

What does it mean to “hate” someone we are elsewhere called to sacrificially love? We are told to love even our enemies, yet Jesus here tells us to hate some of our closest family members. What could that mean?

Hatred here is Semitic hyperbole. In essence, it means “love less than.” There are times when our love and allegiance to God may be at odds with human loyalties; in those cases, love for God, His light and the way of truth, must always prevail.

It’s okay (actually, commendable) for me to love the Seattle Seahawks. But if my wife needs me to take her to the hospital in the middle of a game or needs me to pay her some attention, I have to act like I hate the Seahawks and not even consider my love for them in service to my wife.

Let’s apply this principle in regards to how the church views marriage and divorce.

I recently spoke at a long-standing North American woman’s conference and was overwhelmed by the quantity and horrific nature of things wives are having to put up with in their marriages. Between sessions, I was bombarded by heartfelt inquiries: “What does a wife do when her husband does this? Or that? Or keeps doing this?” It broke my heart. I felt like I needed to take a dozen showers that weekend.

This may sound like a rant, but please hang with me, as I think this conference was a divine appointment. I can’t get this out of my mind.

One wife began our conversation with, “God hates divorce, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I believe He does.”

“So I’ve just got to accept what’s happening in my marriage, right?”

When she told me what was happening, I quickly corrected her. “If the cost of saving a marriage is destroying a woman, the cost is too high. God loves people more than he loves institutions.”

Her husband is a persistent porn addict. He has neglected her sexually except to fulfill his own increasingly bent desires. He keeps dangling divorce over her head, which makes her feel like a failure as a Christian. He presented her with a list of five things he wanted to do that he saw done in porn, and if she wasn’t willing, he was through with the marriage. She agreed to four of them, but just couldn’t do the fifth. And she feels guilty.

God hates divorce, right?

This is monstrous and vile. This woman needs to be protected from such grotesque abuse, and if divorce is the only weapon to protect her, then the church should thank God such a weapon exists.

A young wife, barely in her twenties, held a baby in a blanket and looked at me with tears. Her husband has a huge temper problem. He’s made her get out of the car on a highway with her baby, twice. “But both times he came back for us,” she said in his defense when I looked absolutely appalled. They were separated and she was living with her parents. She wanted to know if she should take him back because his psychiatrist supposedly said there wasn’t anything really wrong with him. Her husband doesn’t think he has a problem that, in fact, the problem is with her “lack of forgiveness.”

They had been married only three years and she had already lived through more torment (I’m not telling the full story) than a woman should face in a lifetime. My thoughts weren’t at all about how to “save” the marriage, but to ease her conscience and help her prepare for a new life—without him.

Church, God hates it when a woman is sexually degraded and forced to do things that disgust her. It should also make us want to vomit.

When a young man is so immature he puts his wife’s and baby’s life in danger on a highway (amongst other things), the thought that we’re worried about the “appropriateness” of divorce shows that our loyalties are with human institutions, not the divine will.

As Kevin DeYoung so ably puts it, “Every divorce is the result of sin, but not every divorce is sinful.”

Another woman told me about putting up with her husband’s appalling behavior for over forty years. I was invited to look in her face, see the struggle, see the heroic perseverance, but also be reminded that counsel has consequences. So when I talk to a young woman in her third year of marriage and it’s clear she’s married to a monster, and someone wants to “save” the marriage, I want them to realize they are likely sentencing her to four decades of abuse, perhaps because of a choice she made as a teenager. When these men aren’t confronted, and aren’t repentant, they don’t change.

Jesus said what he said about divorce to protect women, not to imprison them. Divorce was a weapon foisted against women in the first century, not one they could use, and it almost always left them destitute if their family of origin couldn’t or wouldn’t step up.

How does it honor the concept of “Christian marriage” to enforce the continuance of an abusive, destructive relationship that is slowly squeezing all life and joy out of a woman’s soul? Our focus has to be on urging men to love their wives like Christ loves the church, not on telling women to put up with husbands mistreating their wives like Satan mistreats us. We should confront and stop the work of Satan, not enable it.

Look, I hate divorce as much as anyone. I have been married for 31 years and cannot fathom leaving my wife. I have prayed with couples, counselled with couples, written blog posts and articles and books, and have travelled to 49 of the 50 states and nine different countries to strengthen marriages in the church. By all accounts, I believe I’ve been an ambassador for improving and growing marriages.

The danger of what I’m saying is clear and even a little scary to me, because no marriage is easy. Every marriage must overcome hurt, pain, and sin. No husband is a saint, in the sense that every husband will need to be forgiven and will be troublesome and even hurtful at times to live with. I’m not talking about the common struggles of living with a common sinner, or every man and woman could pursue divorce. (There are many men who live with abuse and could “biblically” pursue a divorce as well.) Charging someone with “abuse” when it doesn’t truly apply is almost as evil as committing abuse, so we need to be careful we don’t bear “false witness” against a spouse to convince ourselves and others that we can legitimately pursue divorce to get out of a difficult marriage.

That’s why I love how some churches will meet with a couple and hear them out to give them some objective feedback, helping them to distinguish between normal marital friction and abusive behavior. Some women need to hear, “No, this isn’t normal. It’s abuse. You don’t have to put up with that.” Others need to hear, “We think what you’re facing are the normal difficulties of marriage and with counseling they can be overcome.” There’s no way a blog post (or even a book) can adequately anticipate all such questions.

I love marriage—even the struggles of marriage, which God can truly use to grow us and shape us—but I hate it when God’s daughters are abused. And I will never defend a marriage over a woman’s emotional, spiritual, and physical health.

I went back to my hotel room after that woman’s conference and almost felt like I had to vomit. I don’t know how God stands it, having to witness such horrific behavior leveled at his daughters.

Enough is enough!

Jesus says there are “levels” of love, and times when one loyalty must rise over another. Our loyalty to marriage is good and noble and true. But when loyalty to a relational structure allows evil to continue it is a false loyalty, even an evil loyalty.

Christian leaders and friends, we have to see that some evil men are using their wives’ Christian guilt and our teaching about the sanctity of marriage as a weapon to keep harming them. I can’t help feeling that if more women started saying, “This is over” and were backed up by a church that enabled them to escape instead of enabling the abuse to continue, other men in the church, tempted toward the same behavior, might finally wake up and change their ways.

Christians are more likely to have one-income families, making some Christian wives feel even more vulnerable. We have got to clean up our own house. We have got to say “Enough is enough.” We have got to put the fear of God in some terrible husbands’ hearts, because they sure don’t fear their wives and their lack of respect is leading to ongoing deplorable behavior.

I want a man who was abusive to have to explain to a potential second wife why his saintly first wife left him. Let men realize that behavior has consequences, and that wives are supposed to be cherished, not used, not abused, and never treated as sexual playthings. If a man wants the benefit and companionship of a good woman, let him earn it, and re-earn it, and let him know it can be lost.

Enough is enough.

I know I’m ranting. But I don’t think it was an accident that I was constantly stopped at that woman’s conference and forced to hear despicable story after despicable story (“forced” isn’t the right word. I could, of course, have walked away). I think God wanted me to see the breadth and depth of what is going on, and in this case, perhaps to be His voice.

Message received! We are called to love marriage, but when marriage enables evil, we should hate it (love it less) in comparison to a woman’s welfare.

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