Inspirational Quotes by Gary Thomas

“start these conversations with questions that seek understanding, not with accusations that seek submission”

“Some use the label toxic much too broadly as an excuse to avoid difficult, different, or hurting people.”

“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.”

“Don’t pass over this thought, because it’s crucial: Isaiah 40:29 assumes that God will call us to various tasks for which we lack enough power on our own.”

“But ask God to help you. Partner with him to build up and encourage the person with whom you’ve chosen to spend the rest of your life. Ask. “How can I love my spouse today like he [or she] has never been or ever will be loved?” When we focus on what we can do, it’s amazing how little time we have left to become consumed by our disappointments.”

“Individual acts don’t make a person toxic; toxic describes someone who feels comfortable in those acts and energized by those acts and who makes those acts the common approach to their relationships.”

“We are called as believers to treat others with charity. Rash judgment is the opposite of charity. Toxic people deserve to be called out—for what they are doing. We become toxic ourselves, however, when we apply rash judgment to someone not necessarily for what they are doing but for how we are interpreting what they are doing in the light of how others sinned against us in the past. We become toxic ourselves when we employ rash judgment, almost with glee, immediately jumping to the conclusion that someone is in the wrong”

“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.”

“have had to come to grips with the fact that people have lied and will lie about me; they will rip a few sentences out of context, twist a few passages, and make me sound like I believe something I don’t because they need something to be angry about and oppose.”

“Regaining God’s perspective — refocusing our spiritual eyesight — is one of the greatest blessings of the believer. It changes everything. If we don’t consciously take a step back and adjust our vision, we’ll live under a perpetual cloud of illusion. This is a conscious, meditative turning, a determined effort to set our sights on what really matters. Will you pause for just a moment and consider where your eyesight may be growing dim? Are you blinded to God’s daily blessings because you’re too focused on financial concerns, health issues, or frustrated relationships? Have you stopped seeing people as important and instead stare persistently at possessions, power, and pleasure? Are your eyes so preoccupied by your comfort that they have grown too tired to look at your life and your circumstances from God’s perspective?”

“One of the most powerful antidotes to addiction is participating in different activities, lifting the addicts out of themselves and into positive, constructive acts of creation.”

“The grand point is not to wear the garb, nor use the brogue of religion, but to possess the life of God within, and feel and think as Jesus would have done because of that inner life. Small is the value of external religion unless it is the outcome of a life within. Charles Spurgeon”

“Keep in mind: if your marriage and family feel like a joke or as if they’re bordering on chaos, it’s not anything that God hasn’t seen or isn’t capable of redeeming. So much of Christian teaching today is about us developing “our” gifts, improving “our” talents, reaching “our” potential, yet so much of Jesus’s teaching and modeling is about surrendering to the work of the Holy Spirit. Let’s allow marriage to teach us to trust this Holy Spirit. He’s proven Himself.”

“We’re not called to judge our spouses—ever; we are called to love them. We are not called to recount their failures in a Pharisaic game of “I’m holier than you”; we’re called to encourage them. We are not called to build a case against them regarding how far they fall short of the glory of God; we are called to honor and respect them.”

“Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes, “I am most quoted for this line: ‘If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it.’ Always someone else has to suffer because I don’t know how to suffer; that is what it comes down to.”

“Here’s what I’ve come to terms with in regard to mission: My first goal in life isn’t to defend me. What someone thinks about me won’t impact their future spiritual destiny.”

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

“Honesty demands directness: God has to discipline us to transform us.”

“We learn to love imperfect people by serving them out of reverence for a perfect God...”

“Healthy Christians create. It is the nature of our God to create. He’s introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator of everything. One of the last images given to us in the book of Revelation is God creating the new heaven and the new earth. The Bible is literally framed around the act of God creating.”