Marriage expert and bestselling author Gary Thomas remembers a time more than 30 years ago when a man spoke \u201chard truth\u201d into his life.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Gary, I\u2019m praying that God will make you and your girlfriend miserable,\u2019\u201d Thomas recalled, \u201cbecause it wasn\u2019t a wise relationship. And I hated him for saying it. He said \u2018Gary, there\u2019s something better in store; don\u2019t settle for this.\u2019 And [my girlfriend and I] broke up, and it\u2019s good that we broke up. And today I love that man for speaking the hard truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hard truth approached through love is what he recommends to parents and ministers addressing such cultural challenges as homosexuality and premarital sex.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that the Bible\u2019s truth is unclear, it\u2019s that it\u2019s painful, and we like to avoid painful truths,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cI believe God wants our best; He wants us to thrive and flourish, and we don\u2019t help people by lying to them about how God created the world and how He designed marriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really hard for 20-somethings and teens to go against the force of culture that ascribes [teaching against homosexual behavior] to hate of others rather than love for God\u2019s truth,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cGod\u2019s way is always the best way. And I think we have to be willing to speak the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas, teaching pastor and writer in residence at Second Baptist Church in Houston, spoke with Baptist Press during a speaking engagement near Nashville in advance of the January release of his latest marriage book \u201cCherish.\u201d<\/p>\n
With such topics as gay marriage at the forefront in culture, Thomas, known for his 2000 bestseller \u201cSacred Marriage,\u201d finds it important to rely on Scripture when the topic arises — but to also allow God to direct the focus of one\u2019s ministry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important to engage the fight when Scripture brings it up but, he noted, \u201cThe reality is we probably have far more people in our church that are having premarital, heterosexual sex than we have people who are engaging in homosexual acts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to let the world set the agenda for what needs to be proclaimed. As it comes up in Scripture, we need to preach God\u2019s truth without shame, believing that every command of God is birthed in love with a motivation of love, to call us to a life of love,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so we can speak those words of love with love; but on the other hand, I\u2019m not going to let the world\u2019s insistence that we need to talk about [homosexuality] set the agenda for what the church really does need to talk about. I trust Paul and James and Peter and Jesus to set the agenda more than I trust lobby groups and interest groups and social groups based in New York and L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n
The topic of premarital, heterosexual sex is relevant to Thomas\u2019 upcoming book, which takes the focus of marriage beyond loving to cherishing. While Sacred Marriage dealt with the difficulties of the union, Thomas\u2019 upcoming book addresses what Thomas calls the \u201csweet spot\u201d of marriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you\u2019ve accepted that God can do good things with the difficulty of marriage, how do you begin to build a marriage where you truly cherish each other?\u201d Thomas asked. \u201cIt dawned on me; virtually every marriage book explores love. None that I could find was exploring what it means to cherish.\u201d<\/p>\n
As love is the muscle of marriage, Thomas sees cherishing as the poetry of marriage. \u201cYou need the stamina and the love,\u201d he said, using the art of ballet as an analogy, \u201cbut you are also looking for the grace and the beauty and the poetry, and that\u2019s cherish.\u201d Every woman wants to be cherished and to be seen as Adam\u2019s Eve, the only woman in her husband\u2019s world. Thomas believes abstaining from premarital sex makes it much easier to cherish one\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cA cherishing marriage is based on that Adam and Eve, the only man, the only woman in the world. And it is much easier to build that attitude when you have sexual experience focused on one person,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cGod\u2019s not malicious. There are reasons behind His commands, and if we break those commands, there are consequences. It boggles my mind that we think we know better than God.\u201d<\/p>\n
The best of marriages can be difficult, said Thomas, who believes his marriage ministry has resonated with readers long-term because he has been willing to admit the difficulty of the union. The greatest challenges in marriage are the same as they\u2019ve always been, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLargely selfishness and pride. Both of those will assault the notion of infatuation, and no infatuation of course stands the spiritual assault of selfishness and pride,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cGod didn\u2019t create us to have happy lives if we\u2019re selfish. He created us to be involved in a purpose larger than ourselves, and if we\u2019re not doing that then I think we\u2019re going to undercut our marriages and suffocate it by asking too much of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthew 6:33 is still true, said Thomas, who is online at garythomas.com: to first seek God and His righteousness before other life pursuits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marriage expert and bestselling author Gary Thomas remembers a time more than 30 years ago when a man spoke \u201chard truth\u201d into his life. \u201c\u2018Gary, I\u2019m praying that God will make you and your girlfriend miserable,\u2019\u201d Thomas recalled, \u201cbecause it wasn\u2019t a wise relationship. And I hated him for saying it. He said \u2018Gary, there\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[860,859,68,799,53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}