Gary Thomas
20 min read ⭑
“When you start to build your life on who God is, it’s a different life. There’s hope, there’s joy, there’s peace, there’s new confidence.”
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to a meal than palate and preference. How does your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
One of my favorite restaurants right now gives you an insider’s look at my marriage. My wife and daughter are always looking for ethnic food places, and they found one not too long ago called Lúa Viet Kitchen, a Vietnamese place in Houston. I never would have chosen it on my own, but it’s become my favorite, and I go there ten times more than my wife does. She prefers variety, so she may like a place, but then she has to go to a different place. But if I like something, I get the same dish at the same place once or twice a week, which is what I tend to do at Lúa Viet Kitchen with their fried rice. So it tends to be a good thing when our initial resistance to something breaks down because it often leads to better things. It’s not easy for me to do that, and I wish I would do it more. But I’m glad I listened to my wife this time and found a favorite place.
Perhaps, though, it’s not so surprising that a Vietnamese restaurant has become my favorite. After all, I’m from the Pacific Northwest and, to be honest, I’ve never really bonded with the food. Sushi and seafood are not my favorites, and that’s what Seattle does best. Since then, I’ve moved down to Houston, which has been somewhat of a problem because I love everything there! I love Mexican. I love steaks. I love barbecue. Now that I’m in my 50s, though, I’ve settled on my favorite restaurant.
Matt Wang; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests, but we tend to hide them. What do you love doing that might surprise (or shock) people?
Throughout my life, I’ve loved running and training for marathons. When I was growing up, I realized most people saw running as a punishment instead of something to look forward to, but it just fits who I am. I’ve never been diagnosed with OCD, but I live in a neighborhood right next door to it. And there’s something about long runs that puts my mind to sleep, helps me deal with stress and helps with the creative process. Right now, though I have plantar fasciitis, so I haven’t been able to run for about two months. It’s been tough for me to rearrange my life around that.
One time, I was experiencing a tough stretch where I had a lot of stress going on. So I went out for a run even though I knew my feet would hurt terribly afterward — and they did. But it was one of those times when it was worth it. I thought, I don’t care about the pain. I need to get this run in! In a way, running isn’t always about health, especially if it’s hurting your health. For me, running is a part of who I am and I’m not ready to let it go yet.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We're just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
Well, I can’t speak to superheroes, but I can speak to Clark Kent. I think of myself as more of a Clark Kent than a superhero. As I look back at my life, I can see I’ve had a real problem with passivity, which people might not notice because I hit every writing deadline. You might think a guy who has written over 20 books and speaks at a lot of conferences doesn’t have a problem with passivity. But the reason is that I’m prepared for those things, so I’m not passive in those things. With bigger things, though — sometimes in leading my family or seeing the bigger picture vocationally — I kind of let life pass me by in a way that I don’t think is appropriate.
For example, people always ask me, “How did you get where you are?” The truth is, I don’t know. It just kind of happened. Looking back, I wish I was a little bit more Type A with a take-charge attitude as opposed to just sticking with things because that’s the way they are.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
I’m excited about a book I just co-wrote with Debra Fileta called “Married Sex,” which just came out October 5. And what strikes me about it is that sex in marriage is like nuclear energy — it can light up a city or it can blow up a city. It’s that powerful. It can do so much good when it’s channeled in the right direction, but I’ve seen it do so much damage and create so much devastation when it’s not. What makes me excited about the book is knowing the potential it has to impact couples. There are so many consequences of giving up on marital intimacy. And sadly, a lot of couples do give up because, at first, the sexual chemistry is there and they don’t have to work on their sex life, but eventually, there comes a time in their marriage when they do have to work on it, and a lot of couples choose not to. They just let it become dull or even nonexistent. You give up so much when you do that.
One of the sweetest times in my marriage was when my wife and I were a young couple. At that point, we didn’t have much money, but we did have three small kids and a tiny townhouse. And yet we decided to splurge and get a hotel room, which we hardly ever did. We couldn’t afford to do it. And I’ll never forget driving there because there was a sense of anticipation — I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. I was thinking, Here I am driving to the hotel with my wife. We’re going to have sex. And I can’t remember a single thing that happened, but I remember the anticipation. I remember the excitement. I remember the gratitude, thinking, God, you created this. This is my wife. I’m looking forward to this.
Another occasion when we had to work to be sexually intimate was on a cruise. It was difficult because our kids were young and they shared a cabin with us — they had key cards. So we had to figure out a way for them to be gone, which was hard at their age! Once again, I don’t remember what happened, but I remember that, later that night, we were with my extended family. Lisa and I were just looking across the table at each other and just kind of smiling at each other. We knew what had happened. We had some nice, pleasant memories that nobody else did. Marriage just creates that special intimacy. Something that is shared, that is secret but not shameful, that really gives life and energy to marriage.
I’m excited about the book because it’s really the first collaborative effort I’ve done in years. I used to do collaborative books with famous people before my own books were able to support my family. But since then, Zondervan has just said, “No, no, no,” every time I brought the idea up — until now. In this case, I felt it was so helpful, as a 50-something male pastor, to write about married sex with a 30-something female licensed counselor. We’re coming from different decades of marriage, different perspectives — Debra as a counselor and me as a pastor and spiritual writer. We really want both men and women to feel understood and heard. The critiques we’ve heard about most of the books out there are that they don’t get guys right or they don’t get women right or the author comes across as a creepy guy or they’re just outdated.
That’s why Debra and I tried to make this book different — and it has exceeded my expectations. I think Debra did a brilliant job with her chapters. Before the book launch, we were getting requests from churches asking, “How do we get a hold of early copies?” Two months before the book officially came out, people were saying, “We can’t wait two months — we need it right now!” They have this line in publishing — “Sell Tylenol, not vitamins.” What that phrase means is that people should take their vitamins to stay healthy, and some people are willing to pay for those vitamins. But when someone has a horrible headache, they’re willing to pay whatever they have to for Tylenol because they need it. A lot of books are vitamin books in the sense that people know they should read them. And initially, I thought “Married Sex” would be a vitamin book with its message of “Have a healthier marriage.” But I’m pleasantly surprised that it appears to be a Tylenol book in the sense that people are saying, “No, we need this now!”
[Click here for FREE PDF excerpts from Married Sex: What Gets Her Going and What Gets Him Going.]
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it's God when it happens?
I love this question because I love the Holy Spirit. I think we don’t spend enough time talking about God in his fullness, especially when it comes to the Holy Spirit. This is going to sound very earthly, but I feel the Spirit empowering me most through the three R’s. The first is running — a lot of thoughts come to me there. Then reading — expanding on the thoughts of others and reading Scripture. And lastly, relationships — I believe God makes himself real to me, known to me and heard by relating to others. And so I look at those three R’s.
We live in such a contentious world. Every time I go on Twitter, I just grieve at the Christians fighting other Christians. There’s so little talk about God, the beauty of who God is, and the wonder of who God is, and how in the Father we get our affirmation and acceptance. And with Jesus, we have our advocate in the Holy Spirit. He’s our Comforter and our Counselor, and yet we’re not telling the world what we’re for — this beautiful, wonderful God. We’re telling the world what we’re against.
I’m in my late 50s, and my wife and I have one grandchild, whom I believe the Holy Spirit uses to remind me of what life is about. I remember one particularly contentious fight in which people who write about the things that I write about were fighting with each other. I wasn’t even involved in the argument, but I still hated the conflict, so I would just go look at pictures of my granddaughter and smile and say, “This is what the world is about. Here’s a little girl, who calls me PaPa, laughs, takes my hand and wants to play Ring around the Rosie 100 times in a row.” It’s a good reminder that relationships are what matter. When your marriage is clicking and when you have good friendships, it doesn’t matter what the world says — you see a new side of God through that.
The Holy Spirit gives me great courage and confidence. Without him, I would be terrified. Without him, I would be thinking, What’s the next book? What’s the next sermon? because I don’t feel overly confident in my intellect. I don’t think I have anything extraordinary in that regard. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t run out of ideas! The Holy Spirit isn’t limited in helping to explain Scripture to a new generation. And I just marvel at how he brings creative ideas together in my mind through those three things — while I’m running, while I’m reading and in relationships. Often, it’s this incredible symphony. Like a director, the Holy Spirit brings in the wooden instruments, the strings and the percussion. I might be running and have a thought, or I might be reading and think of a new place in my writing to put that thought, or I might be talking with somebody and they share an insight. And sometimes, I honestly feel like God is writing the chapter or the sermon by bringing all of these disparate parts together. I get to be, not the cook, but the waiter. God is doing the cooking, handing me the plate and saying, “Here, just give that to them.”
The Holy Spirit is what makes ministry life-giving and fun because it’s not about you and it’s not on you — it’s receiving and giving. That’s the life we were created to live. And I’m so grateful for the Holy Spirit in that regard.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Some people divide things sacred and things secular. But you know, God can surprise us in unlikely places. How do you find spiritual renewal in so-called "nonspiritual" activities?
I would say getting out into nature is where I find spiritual renewal. When I was a much younger man, living in that small townhouse I referred to earlier, I would sometimes take the long way home from work and stop at a battlefield. For me at that time, being in nature was like a spiritual bath. Money was a real concern at that time — just this constant pressure. I was trying to spend as much time with my family as I could and yet pay as many bills as I could, and it was difficult for me to do both. But when I visited the battlefields out in Northern Virginia — that’s where we lived at the time — I could go an hour without seeing anybody. I realized I was just as wealthy as a billionaire because I was getting to enjoy this scenery. There’s something about nature, even the small details. You see an insect and then the mountains in the background. You see the grandeur of God and the detail of God.
I’ll never forget a mountain climber who told me he was on a trail one time when he saw a startlingly beautiful flower. During that time of the year, no one else would really be going up that trail, and yet God put that beautiful flower there. He told me how much that incident showed him about the character of God. That he creates beauty for the sake of beauty, not just for someone else to see it. That’s incredible. I think that’s such a great sermon because so often in our own art and creativity, we think that, if it’s not commercial, it’s not worth it. Or if it’s not appreciated or popular, it’s not valuable. But God creates beauty even when he’s the only audience. That’s just one way that nature screams the existence of God and the nature of God. Just as Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” All aspects of creation do that.
I also love to be out on the water. Not so much a lake, but an ocean or a bay — those speak more to me. Being in the woods, being able to see the mountains — it’s just incredible. I have to travel to do that now because I live in Houston, which my wife calls the Cement City, but even there, you can find little pockets of life. Memorial Park is actually one of the nicest parks in the country.
Besides nature, I also find spiritual encouragement in novels that help me understand human nature and relationships. My life would be so much poorer without novels. I read pretty widely, more literary novels than the commercial ones, but I don’t mind reading funny fiction. I just finished “Crazy Rich Asians.” It’s always delightful when I can learn about a culture I wouldn’t know about otherwise. So for me, novels are a huge aspect of experiencing God in the world and being renewed and refreshed.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith. But you know about some really great stuff too. What are three of your favorite resources?
I’ve been a lifelong student of the Christian classics. People say, “What’s a Christian classic?” Books today have a shelf life somewhere between yogurt and milk. Simply put, a Christian classic is a book that’s lasted 100 years, or 500 years, or 1,500 years that the church has recognized as useful for all generations.
I love to read outside of my own Christian tradition because I find that other people ask different questions than I would ask and emphasize different things. When I read through the classics, for instance, the greatest sin by far is pride, and the greatest pursuit is humility. And there are three verses in the Bible that say God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. But we don’t see that emphasis as much today. I don’t want to be critical, but when I look around, I’m not always inspired by people’s faith. I’ve been able to meet a lot of famous people who are into business, systems, impact and leadership. But when I read the Christian classics, those authors are into the heart, into how to pray, how to get through the boredom, how to hear from God when I stop hearing from him, how to deal with sin in the heart, what to do when God seems silent. For whatever reason, the classics deal with the questions that I deal with even though I may be a different gender, part of a different branch of the church, or living in a different century. I can listen to my brother or sister in Christ all the same. That’s why I love the Christian classics. It’s a rare day that I’m not in one of the Christian classics — they’ve transformed my life.
If I had to pick one Christian classic, it’s usually the one I’m reading. They all speak to me differently, and they speak to me differently in different decades. For example, when I read “The Screwtape Letters” (which is technically not a classic because it was written in the 1950s, but it’s still a powerful book) as a single man in my early 20s, it impacted me differently than when I read it in my 30s as a husband and father, and it impacts me differently now that I’m getting into the grandfather stage. And that’s the wisdom of a classic — it can reach you at every stage of your life.
Dom Lorenzo Scupoli wrote a great classic, “The Spiritual Combat.” Now, he was Roman Catholic, so he ends every chapter with a prayer to Mary. But boy, the stuff he writes is gold. John Owen and John Calvin are two other great Christian authors. I’m not a five-point Calvinist, but I still love reading their works and get so much out of them. Another great writer is John Climacus, who wrote “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” in the sixth century — a classic on Eastern thought. I’m not a monk and I’m not Eastern Orthodox, but I love the way Climacus looks at the world differently. I also love reading books by women like Teresa of Ávila or Julian of Norwich and others. A lot of the feminine spiritual classics have this emphasis on surrender that seems to be lacking from a lot of the male writers. And it’s just anecdotal — I’m not trying to draw a conclusion from that. I’m just saying I’ve seen that trend. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I saw that Kay Warren — who obviously is very much alive — wrote a book called “Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God,” a fabulous book. Again, it reminded me of how these great women writers somehow truly understand this need to surrender.
When it comes to Julian of Norwich’s “Revelations of Divine Love,” I don't know that they’re all revelations. I don’t think they are, but I read them as poetry, and some of them are great. I’m able to read books for what’s right about them instead of for what’s wrong about them. I think we live in a world where people read books to find something to attack. I read books to find something to chew on. And if I can’t chew on everything, that doesn’t mean I think the book isn’t worth reading or that you should take it off the shelves, which is what we hear nowadays. We should take what’s good, use it, and move on. Because there will always be a difference between Christian classics and Scripture. You read one paragraph in Ephesians, you read three sentences in Colossians and you can immediately tell it’s different. The best minds in all the centuries can’t compete with the Holy Spirit!
The second thing that I’ve found to be a great well to draw from is neuroscience. We’ve learned so much more about the brain in the last 25 years than people knew for all of human history. I find topics like neuroplasticity fascinating for understanding ourselves, for understanding spiritual growth. Did you know our brains are literally shaped by our decisions? That’s what creates the grooves for addiction and also the grooves for positive growth and habit. It’s all about learning how to manage that. So often, we speak about willpower, but we don’t speak enough about brainpower. Sometimes we have to think about what we think about. We have to take charge of our brains instead of letting our brains just take over. So understanding the way the brain works is fascinating to me. To give people hope and tools that I think other generations weren’t aware of.
Neuroplasticity also plays into perseverance, and Jesus talked so much about perseverance. In Luke 8:15, he says, “Persevering produce a crop.” And James 1:4 says, “perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.” Jesus, James and Paul agreed that, even in an age of miracles, perseverance is the way to grow. Well, that’s neuroscience. That’s neuroplasticity — that we create new grooves in our brain. So when we make a habit and follow it up and persevere, we gradually point our brains in a different direction. It takes perseverance.
Prayer isn’t a substitute for perseverance. I grew up in a tradition where you just pray, there’s a big spiritual breakthrough, and then you’re free. And that’s not true to most human experience, and it’s not what the Bible teaches. And so it’s fascinating to me that the Bible predicted neuroscience 2,000 years ago, and we’re just now catching up to understanding why that works!
In the book that I wrote with Debra, she accused me of wanting to be a neuroscientist. And it’s true! It fascinates me. Part of that book was helping men understand women and women understand men. And for some reason, in this day and age, I think because of issues of equality, some are trying to throw out any sense that men are different from women because it’s been used in forms of power, oppression and domination. I understand that, but to deny the differences is to hinder marital partners from understanding the person they married.
In the book, I quote Dr. Daniel Amen, who counsels and does brain scans. He’s gone through tens of thousands of brain scans. I don’t think anybody knows the brain like he does. And he said something fascinating: “If I’m looking at a brain scan, I can’t tell you if I’m looking at a Caucasian brain, an African-American brain, an Asian brain or a Hispanic brain. I know instantly if I’m looking at a male brain or a female brain.” Now, there are always differences, and you can do great damage to your marriage if you treat your husband in a way he doesn’t like to be treated — even it’s how most other people like to be treated! So it’s so helpful to understand neuroscience as a starting point for the couple’s conversation. To deny the brain differences between a husband and wife, particularly in regards to sexuality, causes you to miss out on a lot.
The third one is very recent and life-transforming. I don’t want to sound too negative, but I feel like we live in such an ugly, polarized world right now. Even within the church, people are fighting each other. And I’ve been reading through the Bible very slowly to annotate every instance where God describes himself in Scripture. I’ve now got over 60 pages of when God describes himself. In the book of Exodus, it says that God hears his people suffering and then later that he’s concerned about his people suffering. That’s great if God hears any concern. And then it goes on and says that, as your warrior, God is the mighty one; God can do something about it. So it’s great that he hears — that he’s aware, but it’s even better that he’s concerned, and he’s a warrior — he can do something about it. When you start to build your life on who God is, it’s a different life. There’s hope, there’s joy, there’s peace, there’s new confidence.
I also recently read John Owen’s book. He was a classic Puritan of the reform movement, who started at Calvin’s writings and developed a system. He wrote a book called “Communion with the Triune God” in which he talks about God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit. It’s not surprising he’s a little bit weaker on the Spirit. It’s a much shorter section, and to be fair, there isn’t as much in Scripture to talk about regarding the Spirit. (But I do think it was sort of a Puritan tendency to not emphasize the Spirit as much.) Going through his book and studying the Trinity while also going through Scripture and writing down how God describes himself has been so life-giving — so soul-building. While the rest of the world is fighting, I’ll happily go watch this great sunset. In our contentious world, it’s like everybody is around the campfire fighting about politics or theological issues, and you suddenly say, “Hey, look behind you! The sun is setting. I’m going to go watch the sunset and look.” Maybe that concept feeds into my passivity, which I said was a weakness earlier, so maybe it’s a fault or an escape. And yet just getting lost in who God is has been a wonderful new chapter in my life.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it's done for you.
I would say that John Owen’s book, “Communion with the Triune God,” was a resource that I found indispensable during this time because it focused on God. In a world where Christians disagree on who to vote for and on every issue you could imagine, we can agree on the excellence of the Holy Spirit, that he is our comforter, our counselor, our equipper, our empowerer.
We can agree on Jesus being the perfect sacrifice for our sins, our Lord, our King, our Savior. We can agree on God creating us, affirming us, loving us. And that’s where I keep going. It’s a pretty thick book — about 450 pages. So instead of disagreeing with everybody, can we just take a step back and say that we agree that we worship a really good, beautiful, powerful, glorious, true God?
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I think it comes from reading the book of Acts and seeing how God works with such power — even miraculously. I don’t think all of this ceases, but I do realize the danger of emphasizing that topic to the point that we have this binary thing. Either you believe God doesn’t move miraculously at all or you expect the miraculous in every instance and end up getting these carnival meetings, like a circus. And yet I do think we’re in a day and age when the world needs to see a demonstration of power. And let’s define what that power is — it’s not feelings on demand. I don’t think you see that even in the book of Acts. There were a lot of people who weren’t healed by Peter. But that power could also be the power of holiness, the power of preaching, the power of the Spirit to make the Word applicable and powerful, and to bring conviction. At the same time, we can’t deny the other powerful parts of God. Nowadays, we focus so much on gifted people and charismatic people, but we’ve seen where that’s led us — to broken hearts and headlines and podcasts that recount, “Where did this person go wrong?”
The thing about power and the supernatural is that they’re dependent on a supernatural God. And maybe that’s what we need — to put the focus back on God and say, “God, what can you do that everybody knows we can’t do on our own? Do something that is so totally new so that everybody will think about you.” The problem is, we hold people up as super anointed and miss the whole point that miracles should be pointing people to God. But I’m praying for and open to God. We need to ask him how he wants to move supernaturally, not demand that he do it in a certain way, with the traditional healings or miracles we’ve known him to do. Our heart should, “Lord, reveal yourself today, work today.” Where in our church services and in our individual lives are we perhaps not ceding control or ignoring that surrender that so many women writers have spoken about? That quenches the Spirit. That causes us to resist the Spirit. Often, people don’t even want to talk about the Holy Spirit. He’s the forgotten member of the Trinity. In my writing and in my speaking, I sense a supernatural rising up, not in doing miracles, but just in seeing God bring things together. I think we need more of that and less of us.
In this contentious world of ours, are we open to what the Holy Spirit wants to do — in us, in our lives, in our communities? If so, will you join us in this prayer?
“Father, thank you for sending the Holy Spirit to seal me, live in me, transform me and empower me. I’m hungry to see you move in my life and in our world however you want. Whatever you want to do, God, I want to see it happen. I surrender to you, to your will in my life. Purify my heart so that you alone are my number one desire — not the miracles or the provision — just you.”
Gary Thomas is the bestselling author of over two dozen books, including Sacred Marriage, Cherish, Authentic Faith and his latest with Debra Fileta, Married Sex. Gary is an international speaker whose ministry brings people closer to Christ and closer to others. His unique studies of Scripture, church history and Christian classics foster spiritual growth and deeper relationships within the Christian community.