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Gary Thomas: One marriage therapist told me, “Gary, I think 90% of divorces would be stopped if two people would start to wake up and say, ‘All right, God, how do I bless my spouse today?'”
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John Fuller: Well, that’s Pastor Gary Thomas, and he has some helpful insights for your marriage today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I’m John Fuller.
Jim Daly: Gary is going to share four secrets to having a closer relationship, either in a marriage or a friendship. And he has a lot to say, so let’s get into it.
John: All right. And Gary’s been on the show a number of times. He’s a teaching pastor at Cherry Hills Community Church right up the road here in Denver, and he’s a prolific author. Here now, Gary Thomas, speaking to our staff on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Gary: That’s what I wanna talk about this afternoon, not just on marriage, although we’ll focus on marriage, but in our relationships, how do, how, how does becoming who God has called us to be and doing what God has called us to do enrich our relationships? One of the ways I like to describe it … never done this at a wedding, although I’d like to try one time, is you always say, “I do.” To make it work, I’d like to say, “What if the couple could say, ‘I do and I will.'” It’s easy on the wedding day to make a commitment, “Oh, I’ll do that.” But for the relationship to go deep, our commitment has to be, “I do and I will. I’m agreeing to do this not just today, every day of my life, I will make these vows a priority.” And the reason I say that is I’m sure you guys get these letters, or if you’re answering the phones, all the time, emails, “What if I married the wrong person?” Or, “How do I do this?” Or whatnot.
And once we decide we’re married and once we are married, the question isn’t, are we a good match? It’s really we should put all of our effort in how do we become a better match? So let’s get to these four things. The first thing is what scripture calls us to do, and that is honesty. Honesty. Colossians 3:9 says this, “Do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its practices.” I don’t wanna be sexist here because women can struggle with this as much as men, but I found a lot of us men have a difficult time being particularly honest with our wives. And this might shock some of you women, but a lot of us are just astonished that we got one of you to marry us.
I know there’s some guys out there, they think they’re God’s gift to women, but I think far more of us, we just think women are better relationally. You smell better, you look better, you tend to be spiritually … I mean, and we’re just thrilled. And we’re really afraid if you really got to know us, you wouldn’t want to be with us anymore. And so we start to put up a wall, and once you start to build that wall of deception, you have to keep building it higher and higher. But, guys, here’s what I want to tell you. When I talk to wives, one of their biggest concerns is that they know something’s going on with their husband, but … They say, “Gary, he won’t let me in.” And what happens when a husband doesn’t let a wife in? She goes, “I think the worst the worst. I imagine the most painful thing that can come to my mind. That must be why he won’t let me in.”
Guys, we think we’re protecting our wives when we refuse to share with them. But nothing threatens them more when we refuse to be honest with our wives. So, guys, why would you wanna push through that? It’s one of the most healing things in my life for me, to be honest, to be married to my wife. It’s actually 40 years now that we have been married. And the thought that here’s a woman who knows me better than anyone, literally on the planet, still likes me. By definition, intimacy is being fully known and fully accepted. Your spouse, your husband, your wife, your workmates, they, they can’t accept you, they c- if they don’t know you, if we’re using deception to do it, Jeremiah 8:5 warns of those who cling to deceit. And that’s our natural bent. But with the Holy Spirit within us, we’re called to be people of the truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” So to invite honesty into our relationships is to invite Jesus into our relationships.
But He said, “Satan is the father of lies.” So if we think we’ve gotta keep a relationship together by lying, we’re using Satan’s methods. We’re inviting Satan’s spirit into our marriages and into our relationships instead of Jesus if we think we really keep our marriages and relationships going by lying. But then I think of a couple that found honesty as the way back. Justin Davis wrote about this in his book, Beyond Ordinary. He was a pastor, it, had a pretty decent marriage, but he also had this porn habit that he had just never really shared with anyone. And often, an unshared struggle gets worse and worse, and certainly, his did. His wife didn’t have a clue, his church didn’t have a clue, and often, it tends to escalate until he ended up having an affair with his wife’s best friend.
Now, imagine being Trisha, in one horrific disclosure, you lose your best friend, your pastor, your children’s father, and your husband. I mean, she was devastated, and they were separated. But she loves the Lord, and Justin was truly repentant, and he went through the right things, and he demonstrated that with right actions. And through weeks and months of prayer and counsel, they were able to pull things back together till they have not only a marriage that’s intact, but a marriage ministry where they help couples come through times of betrayal. But if you were to talk to Justin today, he would tell you the biggest issue in his marriage wasn’t lust, as most people would think, it was dishonesty, because the dishonesty was sort of the springboard through which the lust kept growing. That if he would’ve lived an honest life, it would’ve been dealt with before it became so tragic.
And so he always asks himself four questions, he’s committed. “To have an intimate marriage, I have to live in an honest marriage.” And these are the four questions, “Is the fear of the consequences of the truth greater than my commitment to tell the truth?” See, that’s why we usually try to get around the truth. We focus on the consequences, not, “Is this true?” But, “Will it hurt to share it? Am I telling myself the truth?” A terrible thing about deception is that we start to deceive ourselves. It becomes a character trait. It’s who we are, not just what we do. “Is there truth I have distorted or am distorting right now?” We act like, “Well, it’s not really a lie,” but if we’re letting somebody believe something that isn’t true, in the end, it is a lie. And he says, “Is there something I’ve withheld or I’m currently withholding from my spouse?” We can only be as intimate as we are honest.
Lying is to a relationship, what murder is to the body. And it could be a thousand little cuts or one dramatic injury, but ultimately, it will bring it down. And what I found working with so many couples is that nothing destroys personal peace like lying. If you’re lying to someone that you live with, certainly with a spouse, what happens? You live in perpetual fear of being found out. How can you cherish, and appreciate, and, and honor someone when you feel like they’re, they’re a cop just waiting to catch you and always having to hide? If you’re always having to hide, you’re not blessing them. You’re not getting to know them, you’re putting up the walls. And I wanna stress, though, this isn’t just about sin, not even close. There was a, a famous … he was actually a sexual therapist. He worked with a lot of couples. He died a couple years ago. But he worked with a couple where the husband had finally admitted to him in private that he dealt with an issue that a lot of younger husbands deal with.
And when it comes to physical intimacy, most guys will eventually be able to, to deal with it. For whatever reason, he couldn’t. And for 20 years, he struggled with this. And so the therapist asked the wife, “Did you know about this?” She says, “No.” “‘Cause do, do you realize it? For two decades, the two of you have been making love. And every time, every time it was angst, it was anxiety, and it was worry. Rather than being able just to enjoy it and give himself over to it, he was just filled with embarrassment and fear.” His wife couldn’t believe it. They had been making love for 20 years, but she didn’t really know him. She didn’t know what it was like for him.
Now, before I move on to the other points, let me give one very important proviso. Please hear this even if you’ve tuned me out. Honesty is a journey. We wanna get there but that doesn’t mean you get there tonight. If it’s not just sharing a hurt, or a fear, or a dream, but it’s sharing something that could be traumatic to your spouse, please talk to a counselor first. Find out the appropriate way, the appropriate time. Make sure your spouse has someone there. Um, when I would send people in Houston to this one ministry that was dealing with men in porn addictions, they would recommend that a man have six months of sobriety before he share it with his wife so there isn’t the whole problem of reoffending and, and all of that. We wanna get to the place of honesty, but let’s be wise, and kind, and loving about how we get there.
The second spiritual trait we’re called to possess and to express if we wanna grow our relationships is a blessing mentality. A blessing mentality. There are two dimensions of marriage. Th- this is what it means to be one of God’s people. Genesis 12:2 says, “I will bless you,” why? “So that you will be a blessing.” The whole point of the Christian life is that we worship God, we receive from God. We are empowered by God so that we can be a blessing to others. We receive to pass it on. And so we have to live by one of two questions. Every day I have to consciously remind myself, “Am I living with this question, how can I bless you?” Or my natural man, “How can I get my needs met?” Your marriage, your relationships will turn on, “How do I get my needs met?” Or, “How am I here to bless this person I love today?”
Back when our kids were a lot younger, I was in a busy season and I was going to leave the next day for a pretty big conference. I’m trying to pull the notes together. One of our children went to, um, therapy in Seattle. We lived up in Bellingham, Washington, at the time, twice a week. And going from Bellingham to Seattle, it could be an hour and a half, two hours of driving e- each way. The therapy session would be out a hour and a half. My wife would always take this child. So one morning I’m praying before I go off and I’m, “Lord, how do I bless my wife today?” And it was so clear, “You can take your child to therapy today.” I said, “Well, God, obviously you haven’t looked at my schedule yet. Let me try to explain it to you. I gotta get these notes together. I gotta get the PowerPoint ready that’s gonna blow the whole half of the day.”
But you know how God is, you’re gonna have no peace if you don’t obey God. So I went ahead and did it, and went upstairs and my wife, said, “Yeah, I I think I’ll take our, our, our child to therapy today.” And she’s like, “Oh, okay.” I, I have to confess, I was hoping for a little bit more than that. I was thinking there might be, “Oh, you’re the most thought- You’re gonna gimme half … This is incredible. Thank you. You’re just amazing.” But I’d already committed to do it so there I was. Later that day, my wife started to feel sick. She took a nap, which she almost never does. There’s nothing wrong with naps, but that’s very unusual for her. And then she got a call in the late afternoon that her big sister was gonna visit her the next day.
Lisa’s the last born. She’s always gotta set an example. So she was tearing through the house, trying to clean things up, wanting to make a good impression for her big, uh, sister, having to deal with the two kids that were home, one of whom was very good at trying to turn things around saying, “Mom, our house doesn’t usually look like this. And so when you want us to clean it for Aunt Luanne, you’re asking me to lie. And the Bible says we’re not supposed to lie, so I think I should just keep watching Gilmore Girls. I don’t want to lie to Aunt Lu- She’s just dealing with all of that.
What amazed me at the end of the day is when I prayed to God, “How can I bless my wife today?” I didn’t know that she was feeling sick, and Lisa didn’t know that she was feeling sick, but God knew and said, “Hey, Gary, she needs a little extra help today.” I didn’t know, and Lisa didn’t know that her sister was gonna come the next day. She needed extra time and energy to get things ready to welcome her sister. But God knew. And marriage changes when you become a partner with God saying, “How can you use me to bless the person I’m married to?”
John: You are listening to Gary Thomas on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And you can find more insights in his book called A Lifelong Love. We’ll send that to you for a donation of any amount to the ministry today. And we’ll also include a free audio download of Gary’s entire presentation with extra content. Donate today and request those at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or call for details. Our number is 800, the letter, A, and the word, FAMILY. 800-232-6459. While you’re online with us, look for a free collection of audio downloads called Nurturing the Heart of Your Spouse. Let’s return now to more from Gary Thomas.
Gary: The third thing I found that is so helpful to grow closer to others is learning how to kill spiders. Learning how to kill spiders. Galatians 5:13 through 14 says this, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather serve one another in love.” The entire law is summed up in a single command, love your neighbor as yourself. I call it killing spiders because my wife hates spiders. I don’t. I think actually spiders can be helpful. They get other worse insects that they take care of. But Lisa doesn’t like ’em, so if I find a spider in our house, he’s gone. I’m, I’m sorry. You know what? It, it bugs my wife. I care about my wife more than I care about you. If they’re by a door, I can just push him out.
But I’ll kill a spider just because it brings pain to my wife. So what, what is a spider that people might kill? Let’s imagine … this is not true at all. My, I had a wonderful father-in-law, but let’s just say he was an alcoholic before Lisa and I got married. I think a great spider to kill would be any alcohol use. Memory is connected to smell. And every time she smells that on my breath, I could imagine what it brings up of her childhood memories. And maybe one night I have just a little tiny bit too much to drink and there’s a little slurring of the words, or I, I’m not walking as straight as I might. And I’m reminding her of the horror of her childhood. If I want my wife to feel close to me and connected to me, this is a spider I’ve gotta kill.
So spiders are those things where they might be biblically allowed, but Paul says (laughs) “The strongest way of the weak …” We always just talk about alcohol with this, but I’m saying anything that might impact our spouse in a negative way. It’s not about is it wrong or not, it’s, “Does it push them away?” It’s recognizing that our spouse has legitimate hurts. It’s just recognizing that those we love, those you work with, your, your parents, your spouses, maybe your kids, it’s recognizing are there spiders that I can kill so that we can stay intimate and close, and they can feel protected and known? So what does that mean? You might have to ask your spouse which spider needs to be killed or how to kill that spider. Guys, we may not know. Wives, you may not know how your husbands want you to talk to them without them feeling disrespected.
So put it back on them. At work, if relationships are just frustrating saying, “Look, I know this really bugs you when we’re doing it this way. What’s a better way for us to do it?” When we apply humility to that and the determination that we will kill the spiders, it does wonderful things for our relationships. So we go through those three things that we, we’re committed to honesty, a blessing mentality, a willingness to kill the spiders. And the fourth thing is so key. It’s, “I was born for this mentality.” Proverbs 17:17, “A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.” And I love this because usually where we get frustrated with relationships is when they become a hassle. It’s never convenient for something to go wrong. But if I say, “I was born to help this loved one face their adversity,” I have the attitude of a fireman.
When a fire goes off, I’m like, “Oh, I haven’t finished my lunch, or we weren’t finished with the Scrabble game.” It’s like, “No, that’s my job, to put out fires.” And if I have the attitude in relationships that I was born for adversity, when somebody has a rough patch and it blows up my whole schedule, well, I was born to do just this, because nothing matters more to God than the people we are relating to, our dreams, our goals, what we think we need to get done, the tasks don’t compare to the passion with which God looks at the people that we are relating to. Our great friends of ours, Grant, and Laurel, Grant was a pastor up in Canada for a number of years, gifted man, great communicator. It was one of those awful situations where the church just blew up in the worst sort of way for the worst sort of reasons.
He was an associate, he was fired, he was out of a job. People were trying to find people to blame. It was just terrible, one of those awful things that happen. Grant had never prepared for anything other than ministry. So he found himself earning about eight bucks an hour. Now, this was 30 years ago, so it was a lot different back … but it still wasn’t enough. And it would be easy for his wife, Laurel, to think, “Grant, how am I supposed to feed the kids while you’re crawling under houses, coming home dirty, and stinky and, and earning so little money? How could you let this happen?” But that’s not the kind of wife Laurel was. She was like, “How do I …” She believes in Grant, “How do I support him? How do I build him back up?”
One day, Grant came home from work early. He was quiet. His wife didn’t hear him. And Grant overheard his wife on the phone. And he could tell this wasn’t the first time she had a conversation like this. Her voice was raised, and that’s not Laurel’s normal style. And essentially she’s saying this, “No, you can’t talk to my husband. I’m sick of this. And if you find a way to go around me, just know this, he is my husband and you’re gonna have to deal with me. Goodbye.” And she slams the phone down. Grant realized she’d been doing this. She’d been trying to take the heat from him. He’d been beaten down enough. She just wanted it to stop. Well, Grant got a job in Washington State, and then that pastor had to leave, and he became the senior pastor. And the church grew to the point where it became the largest church in the nation of a community that size.
Community limited it a little bit, but he was phenomenal, he was just, for all the right reasons, just a godly man. I remember talking to one of his elders long ago saying, “Yeah, we know we’re gonna lose Grant. There are churches in the South that could literally pay him four times what we could pay him. The church could keep growing. We’re limited here in this community, and, but we’re just thankful for him while we have him.” 20 years later, Grant was still there. And I thought I knew why so I called him up. I, I, we recounted this conversation with the elder. I said, “Grant, just between you, and me, and a few hundred people at Focus on the Family that I’m gonna tell this story to, I’m, I’m guessing I know the reason that you’re still there.”
Grant’s wife slowly began to go blind about 20 years ago. Today she’s completely legally blind. But before she went completely blind, she knew the house. She had her healthcare community, she had friends. It was a small community where she knew how to get around and how things were supposed to look. I said, “I, I’m, I’m guessing that you knew it was really best for Laurel to stay where she was.” And he reluctantly admitted. “Yeah, of course. I, I knew that.” It would’ve been so easy for Grant to say, “How unlucky. If my wife wa- wasn’t losing her eyesight, I could be famous, I could be wealthier, I could have this national imprint.” But Grant didn’t have that out. His attitude was, “I was born to help my wife face blindness. Nothing will please God more than that.” And I love the picture how when Grant needed a wife who was born for adversity, she was that wife.
And when Laurel needed a husband who would say, “I was born for this adversity to be there,” he was that husband. And while a lot of people don’t know them and haven’t heard about them because of that, they know each other. And it’s so much better. What they have goes far beyond being adored by people who don’t even really know who you are. And that’s the whole point behind these four things. The attitude, the goal is this, “I am yours. I am yours.” And why does that matter? Because these aren’t easy things to do. It’s terrifying to be honest. It gets frustrating to say, “I wanna wake up and see how I can bless you,” instead of, “How can I manipulate you and make you feel guilty so that you’ll meet my needs? Why do I have to put up with this adversity? That’s not what I signed up for.”
But the reason you’ll do this is if your goal is to say, “I am yours,” is because … I’m speaking as a man married 40 years, there is nothing on this planet that matches two people who’ve become one through the seasons of life. There’s no vocational achievement, there’s no financial goal, there’s no fleeting fame that will even begin to compare with two people that will be who God called them to be in these areas and their souls are knit as one. And I’m, I work with couples all the time that have never lived as one. They’re roommates, they live in the same house, but they’re not honest. They’re not blessing each other. They’re pulling each other down. Now, let me just stress, you should be frustrated in a disconnected marriage ’cause you have all of the responsibilities, and none of the blessings, and none of the fun. I, I get that. That should be frustrating.
But rather than thinking you need to get a new marriage, look at intimacy as a skill, not a state and say that, “We could get there.” Put this up. If you’re disappointed in a disconnected marriage to your current spouse, that doesn’t mean you’d be disappointed in a connected and intimate marriage to your current spouse. See, that’s usually Satan’s (laughs) method, “If your marriage is sati- dissatisfying, break it up, run away and try it with someone else.” Intimacy is something that can be built. And when we do what God calls us to do, to live with honesty, to bless each other, to kill those spiders, not to use our freedom to hurt our spouse, to have a I-was-born-for-this mentality, then we can rebuild that marriage instead of changing spouses. Why not first trying to change disconnected to connected and see how it goes?
John: Well, some great insight and advice today from Gary Thomas on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Jim: That is good stuff. And we so appreciate Gary Thomas coming to visit our campus. If you enjoyed this message, I’ve got a great gift for you. We’ve compiled a free collection of audio downloads featuring some of our best marriage advice from experts like our own Dr. Greg Smalley, Shaunti Feldhahn, and more. Visit us online to access the Nurturing the Heart of Your Spouse Collection. And I’d also recommend that you get a copy of Gary’s book on this subject. It’s called A Lifelong Love. And we’d be happy to send it out to you for a monthly pledge of any amount. It doesn’t have to be a large gift, it’s the consistency that helps us even out our budget month-to-month. You know, our research is telling us that only about 1% of our listeners actually donate to Focus on the Family, 1%. Imagine how much more we could do together for all families if we could double that figure just to 2%.
We wanna be here when you need us, and we have our staff manning the phones, our counselors who can give you a consultation, and help you find a counselor in your area, and so much more. Please help us support the manpower needed to help families to thrive in Christ. And when you get the book from us, we’ll include a free audio download of this entire presentation from Gary with extra content. And if you can’t make a monthly donation, that’s fine, we get it. We can also send Gary’s book for a one-time gift as well. We want to help your marriage with this great resource.
John: Yeah, donate at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast, or call us, 800, the letter, A, and the word, FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
