Gary L. Thomas's Blog, page 6

For Your Future Happiness

Want to know what one of the biggest contributors to your happiness will be when you’re my age? Please indulge me as I reflect on being an empty nester, and what I’ve seen most contributes to the happiness of my empty nester friends, so that those of you still in the thick of raising your children can make use of my friends’ hindsight.

Millions of couples make monthly contributions to their retirement accounts so that they don’t “run out of money” in their senior years. That’s a wise thing to do. But did you realize you can also invest in your future happiness?

You can.

And how you do that may surprise you.

Writing as an empty nester, with a lot of empty nester friends, I can say with confidence that a big part of your joy in life when you’re older will be influenced by how closely your children are walking with the Lord. If they are not following God, you will endure some sleepless nights and broken hearts. If they are following God but face employment issues, health issues, marital issues, etc., the pain will still be real, but it will be an entirely different kind of pain.

Though we don’t “disciple” our kids primarily for what it does for us, the fact remains that one of the greatest contributors to your own future happiness will be helping your children connect sincerely with and grow in their devotion to Jesus.

Continue reading this blog post over on Substack HERE.

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The Joy of the Cross

Certain things simply don’t go together, such as:

Houston and hills.

The Seattle Mariners and the World Series.

Snow and sandals.

And at Lent, joy, and torture.

And yet, there is a side of joy to the cross that should alter our view of Christ’s sacrifice. In our myopic self-interest, when we look at the cross, we usually see our sins. We see the consequences of our actions. That’s all well and good, but even better when we look upon the cross is to see the love, joy, and passion that motivated Jesus to get there. There has never been a more brutal moment than the cross, and yet there has never been a more extraordinary act of love. And joy follows love as surely as spring follows winter.

R. Somerset Ward (1881-1962), one of England’s finest spiritual directors, explains how we can understand and grasp the joy behind Christ’s sacrifice: “When someone of whom we are fond is suffering, we have no greater happiness than to alleviate his suffering. To many of us the thought has come, how great a pleasure it would be to us if by undergoing any pain we could save him from suffering. Imagine this thought and feeling of ours magnified a million, million times. By so doing we shall get a glimpse of the joy which illuminated the Passion or our Lord.”[i]

Because God loves us and hates our sin, because He wants to bring reconciliation even to a rebellious people, there was great joy in the cross, a joy which spread across the Trinity. “In all that Christ did in His Passion and death, the Blessed Trinity was involved. The love which our Lord was displaying was the love of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Love is joy, whatever suffering it entails. The joy of Christ was the joy of the Blessed Trinity in this sacred hour.”

But how could this be joy? The Son was being tortured—a murder was taking place! Where is the joy in that? Where is love to be found in the midst of such wickedness?

Continue reading this blog on Substack HERE.

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Conviction’s Expiration Date

“Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, ‘Who is it you want?’ ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ They replied. ‘I am he,’ Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) When Jesus said, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground. Again he asked them, ‘Who is it you want?’ And they said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ ‘I told you that I am he’ Jesus answered.” John 18:4-8a

This almost comical account of Jesus’ arrest (yes, I know that sounds absurd, but consider what is happening for a moment) reveals the tragedy of hardening hearts. The soldiers approach the unarmed Jesus with weapons and multiple backups, as if they were going to war. At the direction of Judas, they stand before Him who stands in front of some civilian followers. It’s not even a fight.

Jesus takes command of the moment by being the first to speak. He knows who they are after, but for the sake of His disciples, He asks, “Who do you seek?” He wants His disciples to see what happens next: the hardened soldiers fall back when he says, “I am He.” Those words, “I am He,” so reminiscent of God’s revelation to Moses, “I Am has sent you,” are too powerful. The soldiers involuntarily fall back.

They didn’t just fall back. They fell to the ground. Three little words buckled their knees and sapped their courage.

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Our Enemies, God’s Servants

“When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, ‘Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.’

They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, ‘Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?’

Jesus replied, ‘The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.’

Matthew 26:20-24

In a curious paradox of God’s sovereignty, Judas served God even as he opposed him. Judas was 100% wrong in betraying Jesus, yet Jesus needed to be betrayed. Jesus showed us how it is possible to view our enemies as God’s servants: “The Son of Man will go just as it has been written about him. But woe to the man who betrays the Son of Man!”

There is no sentimentality, no convoluted thinking: “Since he’s serving God, maybe he isn’t really responsible.” No; Judas is guilty. But in being guilty, he’s getting God’s work done.

Matthew Henry (1662-1714), an English nonconformist clergyman, urges us to find God’s providence in the many slights and even persecutions that come our way: “We must abide by this principle that whatever it is that crosses us, or is displeasing to us at any time, God has an overruling hand in it.”

Just as Jesus accepted Judas’ betrayal as part of God’s plan, and so many Old Testament prophets accepted the conquering war of foreign tyrants as God’s discipline, so Matthew Henry says we are to accept our enemies’ taunts and persecutions as God’s tools to refine us, shape us, and transform us, thereby accomplishing God’s will.

Continue reading this blog on Substack HERE.

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Fix Your Focus to Fix Your Marriage

You can dramatically impact how you feel about your imperfect marriage and your imperfect family by learning to fix your focus on our perfect God. J.I. Packer’s lessons from the life of Nehemiah offer a treasure trove of truth for anyone facing a challenge or discouragement today.

Do you want to cultivate and enjoy a great marriage?

Do you want to love your children, even as some of them may break your heart?

Do you want to see God use you in tremendous ways?

In one sense, it all begins in your head.

During my Cherish marriage seminars, I make the case that those who are able to sustain a cherishing marriage with an imperfect spouse (of course there are no perfect spouses) meditate often on the kindness and grace of God to them; those who give up cherishing their spouse meditate often on the faults and failures of their spouse. Since “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2), we will all be tempted to obsess over how our spouse stumbles instead of how our God triumphs. A high-functioning marriage depends largely on what direction our minds are pointed.

The same is true for loving our imperfect children, or for any lasting and great accomplishment for the Kingdom of God. Our thoughts encourage or discourage us on an hourly basis, growing hope or sowing the seeds of anger and fear.

Continue reading this blog on Substack HERE.

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The Complete Donation of Our Being

“I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.” (John 17:4)

One of the aspects of Jesus that is so remarkable is how fixed He was on accomplishing God’s will for His life. He seemed utterly indifferent to how others spoke of Him. He didn’t seem to care whether followers stayed with Him—at times, He seemed to deliberately test their loyalty. More than He cared about how individuals responded to His evangelistic entreaties (He often let people walk away—see my book, When to Walk Away); and more than He cared about whether He would suffer pain or not, Jesus cared about accomplishing His Father’s will. That was His passion, His singular focus: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (John 4:34)

Jean-Pierre de Caussade (18th century) says that our highest duty is the “complete donation of our being to God to be used according to his good pleasure.”

I love that phrase, the “complete donation of our being.” What part of this donation might we be holding back?

Here are two areas of our lives we can look at during the season of Lent.

First, our obedience. Jesus’ and John the Baptist’s first words were “repent” (c.f. Matthew 3:2 and 4:17). Their first message was, before you begin a new life, you must die to the old. Sin isn’t just corrupt; it is corrupting. When we accommodate sin, it grows. Lent is a good time to resist our sinful drift and renew our love for holiness.

Take some time and go through the list in Colossians 3:5-9:

“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other…”

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How People Love the Devil and Hate God

“The heart is deceitful above all things” means those who actually love the devil and hate God may think precisely the opposite—that they love God and hate the devil. But Puritan Richard Baxter invites us to think a little more deeply and examine our hearts to show how we may be deceiving ourselves. At the start of this Lenten season, let’s use his reflections to test our hearts to see if there isn’t a bit of hatred toward God and love of the Devil.

Baxter points out that nobody, or at least very few, actually love the devil’s cruelty in tormenting others or hating others (though you could find even those, probably not among those who think they are believers). Where we are deceived is that we think to “love the devil” means loving everything about the devil, and hating God means hating everything about God. That’s just not true. Hatred and love are demonstrated in the way we shade our appreciation and disdain. Baxter writes, “Nor is it every thing in God that is hated: none hateth his mercifulness and goodness as such.” So what do people typically hate about God?

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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God on a Donkey

Healthy marriages require healthy faith. As we draw nearer to God, we can draw ever nearer to each other, but we can’t have spiritually healthy marriages if there isn’t a spiritually healthy…us.

“Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:5

God sat on a donkey.

Those who would drive a wedge between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament forget that it was the God of the Old Testament who foretold coming in the flesh and entering Jerusalem on a donkey, in a state of astonishing gentleness.

This was not an accidental occurrence. Warriors rode horses, not donkeys. Donkeys were used to carry burdens, or perhaps—in the case of Mary—a very pregnant woman. But never a conquering king! Just try to imagine a large-scale movie where the attacking army descends a hill into the valley, bumping up and down on donkeys as they brandish their swords! The action movie would become a comedic farce.

Yet in the last week of his life on earth, Jesus specifically instructed his disciples to find a donkey for him to ride on. Jesus was eager to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies and to proclaim his gentleness to the world, just before passion week. He comes as a friend, a Savior, and not as a warlord.

Continue reading this blog over on Substack HERE.

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When Marriage Gives You Something You Don’t Want…but Need

We will appreciate our marriages more when we surrender to God and allow Him to guide our growth. The very thing bothering you most about your marriage at this moment may be God’s tool to refine you and shape you. Sometimes, God uses marriage to give us something we really need, even if it’s not something we really want.

Imagine two people were given control of the same piece of paper, but they each had two different agendas: one person was trying to create a paper airplane while the other person was trying to make a birthday card.

Every time the other person had a couple of minutes to work on the project, they undid what the first person had done and restarted their project.

What are you going to have?

One frayed piece of paper and two very frustrated individuals.

What if God has a different agenda for our marriage than we do? Isn’t it wisest to surrender to His agenda, rather than keep pushing back with our own? What if He’s trying to fold us and shape us into something very different than we think we should be?

Rett gulped when the doctor told him that his wife Kristy needed an operation that would keep her in bed for three weeks of complete bed rest and require special care for a few weeks after that.

Rett is a brilliant lawyer and he tends to live in his head with concepts, arguments and a quick wit. He’s a great Sunday School teacher, and will never fall prey to false teaching. Rett also makes a great living and can hire people to do what he doesn’t want to do. He’s not used to playing the role of a nurse. In fact, he had never played the role of a nurse.

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

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Catching Up: A Meaningful Trip Back to Virginia

From time to time, we like to go “behind the scenes” and give a more personal recording, and this is one of those times. It’s been a particularly busy season with the death of my father and all that led up to it and the aftermath, but last weekend God showed his typical kindness with a very special trip back to Manassas, where we lived for most of the nineties. Prior to speaking at Park Valley Church in Haymarket, Virginia, I and Lisa had a fun time reminiscing and thanking God for where He has brought us.

Watch this video over on Substack HERE.

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