Sacred Influence Quotes

“The church must not teach the submission of wives apart from the sacrificial love and servanthood required of husbands.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands

“What if your husband’s faults are God’s tools to shape you? What if the very thing that most bugs you about your man constitutes God’s plan to teach you something new? Are you willing to accept that your marriage makeover — the process of moving a man — might begin with you?”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands

“I cannot promise you that if you respond with a blessing when you’re hurt or wounded, your husband will change. I cannot promise you a life of happiness and personal fulfill-ment, but I can promise you that you are living according to your purpose and calling as a Christian; you are obeying the will of God and there is peace in obedience.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands

“We can assume that when the Bible teaches submission, God knew full well that wives would have to watch their husbands fail and make mistakes. Thankfully, this verse also presents some boundaries. If you submit “out of reverence for Christ,” you are never obligated — ever — to do anything that would offend Christ.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands

“No husband comes in a perfect package. No husband can do it all. Your job as a wife is to fight to stay sensitive to your husband’s strengths. Resist the temptation to compare his weaknesses to another husband’s strengths, while forgetting your husband’s strengths and that other husband’s weaknesses.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands

“With Christ in us and the Holy Spirit transforming us, we really have no excuse for continuing immaturity.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands

“His brain doesn’t work the same way a female brain does; it just doesn’t occur to him to connect his affection with verbal inquiry.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“In Paul’s mind, every Christian wife needs to receive training in and focus on how to love, support, and encourage her husband.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“How can you begin to appreciate an imperfect man? Ask God for fresh eyes.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“Why do you think your husband worked so hard before you got married? Because he loved the way you adored him.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“Perhaps you think the more your husband loves you, the better he’ll become at reading your mind. That’s a romantic but highly unrealistic and even destructive notion.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“Affirming your husband’s strengths, however, will likely reinforce and build up those areas you cherish and motivate him to pursue excellence of character in others.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“Even if your husband never changes—even if every bad habit, neglected responsibility, or annoying character trait stays exactly the same—then, for your own spiritual health, you need to learn how to love this man as he is.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“To live with any man is to live with someone who is certain to let you down—not just once or twice, but in many ways.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“At the risk of depressing you, I need to tell you that studies show that many frustrations and disagreements in marriage (in fact, more than half) will never change. At some point, you may have to learn how to live with these realities.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“Whatever your situation may be, whenever marriage empties you, let it be a reminder to go back to God to be filled.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“The challenge of marriage is that when you’re married to a defective man (and all men are defective in some way), it’s not limited to learning how to handle something once or twice; it’s about learning to live with that defect perhaps for the rest of your life. That calls for perseverance. God could, of”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“You’re not perfect, but people should see progress in your life. In five years you should be wiser, stronger, and more mature in character than you are now.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“what if God is giving you the opportunity to become a stronger believer and a better-rounded person by daily rubbing shoulders with a very imperfect man?”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“According to ancient Pharisaic law, a woman’s testimony was inadmissible in a tribunal as too untrustworthy. Only men could give witness. So when Jesus rose from the dead—the most important event that has ever occurred or ever will occur—who was present to give witness and testimony? Women! Jesus pointedly uses women, whose testimony could not then be heard in contemporary courts of law, to proclaim his glorious resurrection.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“I say this at the start to set you free from ever valuing yourself or your marriage by your husband’s reactions or obedience.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“God, not your marital status, defines your life.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“you’re winning his heart so that you can influence his soul.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“You are not being unfaithful to your husband when you seek help. It is not gossip (regardless of what your husband or others might say) to share your hurt or concern with a person capable of helping you, especially when you share it in a redemptive way (that is, to genuinely seek help or to work toward a healthy marriage). Ridiculing your husband in front of a bunch of friends just to vent or elicit laughter is gossip; going privately to a counselor or trusted friend who can provide godly feedback and help is called fellowship.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“You are responsible to get certain things you need for your own personal development and emotional and spiritual health outside the marriage. If you’ve blown off your support system—your female friends, your hobbies, your recreation, your spiritual friendships—hoping your husband could replace all of these while also meeting all your relational needs, then you’re setting up yourself (and your marriage) for disappointment and failure. No husband, by himself, is enough; you still need others, and it’s your responsibility to cultivate those other relationships. Could”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“You have twenty-four hours in every day and a limited amount of resources. God won’t judge you for not being able to spend what you don’t have. Otherwise, the marriage may fail or at least lack any healthy affection, and your child with a disability ends up experiencing the effects not only of a broken body or mind, but of a broken home. You may never be able to fix your child, but you can secure your child’s home so that he or she grows up in a loving, emotionally close, and spiritually healthy environment. Isn’t that as important as pursuing another expensive and time-consuming miracle cure? To all of you wives, I ask, “How often do you give thought to this role of being your husband’s helper? How often do you wake up and think, ‘How can I help my husband today?’ only after you’ve figured out how to first help every one of your children?” When you repeatedly ask this question about your husband, you’re living in marriage as God designed it.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“The best way for me to live this out is to keep asking myself, ‘What is my love for my wife costing me?’ If the answer is ‘nothing,’ then I’m not loving my wife as Christ loved the church.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“harmony, joy, and peace will never grace a home ruled by expectations instead of by the cross.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“If you’re trying to find your primary refuge in your husband, if you’ve centered your hope on him, if your security depends on his approval, and if you will do almost anything to gain his acceptance, then you’ve just given to a man what rightfully belongs to God alone. And that means you’ve turned marriage into idol worship.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband

“It is a sophisticated spiritual challenge to not compare your spouse’s weakness with another spouse’s strength.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Loving Him Well: Practical Advice on Influencing Your Husband