Quotes from Gary L. Thomas

Prayer pushes eternity back into our lives, making God ever more relevant to the way we live our lives.

Prayer helps us to regain the proper priorities, discern biblical wisdom, and make right judgments. Without prayer, Glaspey might say, we live as temporal people with temporal values. Prayer pushes eternity back into our lives, making God ever more relevant to the way we live our lives. PRAYER PUSHES ETERNITY BACK INTO OUR LIVES, MAKING GOD EVER MORE RELEVANT TO THE WAY WE LIVE OUR LIVES.

It's far better to move somewhere on a trial basis as a single person to try out the option than to get married first and then see if you like it.

Everyone who enters the marriage relationship will come to a point where the marriage starts to rub somewhat adversely. It is for these times that the promise is made. Anticipating struggle, God has ordained a remedy, holding us to our word of commitment. In this struggle we become nobler people.

It marks prayer as the heart of our devotion, the constant awareness of God's presence, our consistent submission to his will, and our frequent expressions of adoration and praise.

Seeking miraculous experiences simply for the sake of experiencing the miraculous makes us spiritual drug addicts who simply want to get "high." This book is about learning to love God, not learning to join a spiritual circus. Enthusiasts need to be especially careful to remain true to seeking and loving God rather than searching for new experiences. When we seek "spiritual experiences" for their own sake, they can actually become, and be used for, evil.

God has much to say to us, but we are often too busy to listen. Our minds have a tendency to get too occupied during the day, or sometimes we are too busy praying to God with our own agendas and have lost our listening ears. Dreams are one way God can "break in" and get something across to us that we might not be open to hearing during the day.

If a woman essentially abandons her family to ambitiously serve God, she will likely display the same lack of compassion and empathy for others as she does for her own family, who feel her absence keenly.

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.

Abraham's servant prayed for success: "O LORD, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today, and show lovingkindness to my master Abraham" (Gen. 24:12 NASB). This is the first time in Scripture that we read of someone asking God for specific guidance.

I am called to love her out of reverence for God. Any other motivation is less than Christian.

You may think you're merely raising children, but during this process, God is also raising you to become a stronger and more capable servant of his kingdom.

Your heavenly Father-in-Law never takes his eyes off his beloved child. He hears every word uttered in anger toward his children. He sees every act of violence; he witnesses every act of denial, manipulation, and control. Never imagine that he witnesses such assaults with a dispassionate apathy; on the contrary, he feels each slight as though you were persecuting Christ himself.

The best gift you can give your spouse is to fear the God who made him or her. That's a gift that truly keeps on giving.

In the end, I found that physical fitness offered to God, surrendered to God, pursued in cooperation with God has enormous spiritual, emotional, and physical benefits.

When I first began spending daily time in prayer, I often grew frustrated at how I could forget about God's presence by lunchtime, even after praying for an hour in the morning. Shorter but more frequent times of prayer may actually help us to live with an increasing awareness of God's presence in our lives. How difficult would it be for us to set aside five minutes in the morning, five minutes at noon, and five minutes before or after dinnertime to meet God in prayer?

We realize it's not about what we get out of our marriage but about what we become in our marriage.

el honor no es pasivo sino activo. Honramos a nuestras esposas demostrándole nuestra estima y respeto: halagándola en público; ratificando sus dones, habilidades y logros y declarando nuestro aprecio por todo lo que hacen. El honor que no se expresa no es honor».

spend much of their time and effort trying to bring people down to their level of misery rather than blessing others with joy and encouragement.

MARRIAGE HELPS US TO DEVELOP THE CHARACTER OF GOD HIMSELF AS WE STICK WITH OUR SPOUSES THROUGH GOOD TIMES AND BAD.

What's so fascinating about all of this is that what we need to develop to enjoy an intimate marriage — commitment, tenacity, perseverance — is exactly what Scripture says we need to develop as faithful servants of God. This isn't a coincidence. It makes sense that God would design the fundamental human relationship — that between a husband and wife — as a relationship that complements our spiritual walk.

The wife smiled and added, "Never forget that your twenty- or thirty- or even forty-something husband is still a little boy inside who used to say to his mom, 'Watch me! Watch me!' They never completely get over that.

The desire for ease, comfort, and stress-free living is an indirect desire to remain an "unseasoned," immature Christian.

Incarnational spirituality — the living, reigning, and ascended Jesus living through us and transforming us into different people — does not exist to uphold a few rules but rather speaks of a process that creates an entirely new person who sees with new eyes, feels with a new heart, hears with renewed ears, and lives with a new passion. It is, I believe, the only life worth living.