Quotes from Gary Thomas

But if someone's character has no foundation, there's nothing to build on.

I think we need the same attitude with our marriage. All of us experience certain things about our spouses that may be difficult for us to accept.

I ache for the day when people make such wise marital choices that they can pray through where to live to make the most significant impact for Christ instead of praying that they could merely be able to exist in the same house without yelling and fighting.

Becoming one — in the deepest, Most intense sense — takes time. It takes at least the span of a decade for the sense of intimacy to really display itself in the marriage relationship.

Christians who demonstrate compassion because they are passionately in love with God will thus speak prophetically to a selfish culture and, sometimes, a selfish church. Selfishness distorts true sacrifice, and sacrifice is at the heart of true care.

What we can control is where we're going. If we've been less than healthy, we can commit ourselves, as a spiritual exercise, to deal with the spiritual issues behind the physical problem.

Would that it were the reverse, with girlfriends seriously discussing with their friends their boyfriends' weakness so that they could make a wise decision, and wives seriously defending their husbands' honor so that they could make a lasting marriage. Unfortunately, ignoring your boyfriends' weakness and gossiping about your husband's failures are two sure paths to divorce.

If we take our faith seriously and make our way through a difficult marriage in pursuit of witnessing God's reconciling love for a sinful world, then a difficult marriage becomes part of our exercise to prepare us for heaven.

If you haven't talked about it to your partner, you have no business talking about it to someone else, unless it's a particularly touchy issue and you're seeking godly wisdom as to how to share it or broach the topic.

Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial... "Christianity does not therefore depreciate marriage; it sanctifies it."

If we accept that the love of praise is a sin, that the lust to be known and appreciated by others is not just a fool's errand...but perhaps evidence of a heart focused on the wrong things, our marriages will be transformed.

Each day we must die to our own desires and rise as a servant. Each day we are called to identify with the suffering Christ on the cross and then be empowered by the resurrected Christ. We die to our expectations, our demands, and our fears. We rise to compromise, service, and courage. In the same way Jesus gave his body for us, We are to lay down our energy, our bodies, and our lives for other.