Quotes from Gary Thomas

Marriage is a good thing, and being intentional about your pursuit of it is commendable, not shameful.

Instead of trying to make toxic people happy or satisfied (which is a waste of time, since they can't and won't be mollified, live to help reliable people serve and worship God. Our job is to open up new avenues of worship with people who want to reverence God. Rather than living to make toxic people feel good about us, let's live to make reliable people excited about God.

This is the journey marriage calls us to, to seek to understand and empathize, for each of us to strive to become a redemptive partner rather than a legal opponent.

if you remove the cross from Christianity, all that remains is some wise moral teaching not terribly different from any other religion.

we can use marriage for the same purpose—to grow in our service, obedience, character, pursuit, and love of God.

When she gets into an argument, a humble person considers the fact that she may be wrong and that there may be something she has missed or is overlooking. She is more concerned with walking in light and truth than with being right. Aware of his spiritual poverty, a humble person prays and studies and confesses and asks people to hold him accountable, as he knows he is a work in progress.

In this generation, we parents have gone out of our way to protect our children from pain and to see that they succeed. The problem with this approach is that the kids don't learn wisdom, and they don't learn decision-making skills. I believe we learn more from failure than success, but when parents keep kids from failure, our children inevitably end up lacking wisdom.

Virtue, though often mocked and ridiculed, is as beautiful as wickedness is ugly. Self-denial curiously spawns joyful happiness, while selfishness and arrogance produce desperation and obsession. Being faithful to duty brings great fulfillment, while following unchecked passions eventually leads us to despise ourselves. And the greatest truth of all: There is no higher end, no more glorious life, no better aim, than to live in the fear and favor of Almighty God.

When our happiness is dependent on what happens to us and when our self-focus determines our daily mood, our joy will necessarily be limited to whatever good thing happens to us. But when we learn to truly delight in the welfare of others and rejoice in what God is doing in their lives, the potential for increased joy skyrockets.

Done well, marital sexuality can be a supremely healing experience.

Finding fulfillment in God is the most powerful antidote to any sin.

The sad reality is that when we get married for trivial reasons, we will seek divorce for trivial reasons. We need something much more lasting on which to base a lifelong commitment—one that even has eternal implications.