86: Marriage: The Good, The Hard, and The Beautiful with Gary Thomas
Imagine what would happen if you stopped expecting your spouse to make you happy? What if you no longer believed that a good marriage is something you find, but rather it is something you work for? How would your relationship change if you embraced difficult times as a season of your marriage instead of an excuse to leave it?
In Episode 86, Daniel and Christina interview best selling author, Gary Thomas, about God’s beautiful design for marriage. Gary will help us stop highlighting where our spouse falls short and encourage us to focus on the divine mysteries of marriage and the lessons it has to teach us.

In This Episode, You Will Hear About:
- God’s design for marriage
- What happens when we admit marriage is difficult
- How our struggles in our marriage can be sacred
- What we should do if we are not happy in our marriage
Resources Mentioned During the Episode:
- Grab your copy of Gary Thomas’ books, The Sacred Marriage and The Sacred Search
- Check out Gary’s newest book When To Walk Away: Finding Freedom from Toxic People
- Listen to our previous episode about Dating Your Spouse in Every Season of Life
- Make sure to tun into Episode 76: 4 Things to Remember When Marriage is Hard
Quotables and Tweetables:
- “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?” – @garyLthomas
- “To spiritually benefit from marriage, we have to be honest. We have to look at our disappointments, own up to our ugly attitudes, and confront our selfishness.” @garyLthomas
- “Romantic love has no elasticity to it. It can never be stretched; it simply shatters. Mature love, the kind demanded of a good marriage, must stretch, as the sinful human condition is such that all of us bear conflicting emotions.” @garyLthomas
- “We can run from the challenges of marriage, or we can admit that every marriage presents these challenges and asks us to address them head on.” @garyLthomas
- “It’s not holy instead of happy. Holiness preserves happiness.” @garyLthomas
- “You are going to have good seasons, quiet seasons, and frustrating seasons in your marriage. But, you don’t define your marriage by any particular season.” @garyLthomas
- “Marriage calls us to an entirely new and selfless life.” @garyLthomas
- “Though marriage is an amazing institution that reflects God’s creative genius, when we want to get the largest portion of our life’s fulfillment from our relationship with our spouse, that’s asking too much. God didn’t design marriage to compete with himself but to point us to himself.” @garyLthomas
- We preserve our marriage because it brings glory to God and points a sinful world to a reconciling creator.” @garyLthomas

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Meet Gary Thomas:
