Read by the author.
The wisdom and insight every couple needs to keep your marriage together when the trials of life threaten to rip it apart and how you can fortify your marriage ahead of time.
Every marriage will face disaster. Illness or cancer. Job loss or financial burdens. Addiction. Anxiety. Infidelity. Loss of faith. It's not a question of if your marriage will face trials. It's a question of when.
Whether you've been married for five years or fifty, your marriage will either become part of the problem or part of the solution, and it's within your power to ensure your marriage is prepared for those seasons, is a place of refuge and safety throughout those seasons, and can recover well after those seasons.
In Making Your Marriage a Fortress, Gary Thomas, bestselling author of Sacred Marriage, guides you and your spouse in building a marriage that can withstand any storm or difficult season. In these pages, you will . . .
- Discover helpful and practical principles to protect your marriage from any struggle
- Learn to detect the warning signs of trouble and how to act on them
- Understand how the state of your marriage is magnified during a crisis and how to improve it
- Be encouraged through stories from Gary's marriage, as well as others, that you and your spouse are not alone
- Gain spiritual insight about God's view of marriage and how to live it out in all circumstances--for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, till death do you part
Every marriage will face setbacks and seasons of disappointment, but this book will help you keep your marriage strong before and after a setback happens.
In this audio Bible study, Gary Thomas uses a unique lens to look at parenting, moving beyond raising great children to becoming more holy as a person.
What if one of God's primary intentions for you as a parent isn't about successfully raising perfect children, but about you becoming more holy? In Sacred Parenting Gary Thomas illustrates how God can transform lessons in raising children into opportunities to grow in the image of Christ.
It will help you rediscover parenting from a different perspective: as a method of spiritual formation expressly designed by God to shape your soul in ways you could not imagine! This study will help you dig deeper into learning how God can transform dirty diapers, toddler tantrums, and a teenager's silence into occasions for becoming more like Christ.
Sessions include:
- Parenting: God's Hammer on Our Souls (23:00)
- It's All About Him: God-Centered Parenting (16:30)
- The Hardest Hurt of All (20:30)
- Embracing Our Insignificance (23:30)
- The Gold Behind the Guilt (18:00)
- The Sweet Side of Sacrifice (22:30)
Coordinating study guide available separately.
The Audio Bible Studies series provides a unique audio learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook's direct narration of a book's text, this audio Bible study includes high-quality, live audio sessions from the author that cover important Bible-based topics. These sessions will reflect the ambiance of the unique recording locations, immersing the listener into the teaching. While not required for the audio experience, these studies are designed to partner with the coordinating study guide, sold separately.
In this six-session audio Bible study, Sacred Marriage, writer and speaker Gary Thomas invites you to see how God can use marriage as a discipline and a motivation to reflect more of the character of Jesus.
Your marriage is much more than a union between you and your spouse. It is a spiritual discipline ideally suited to help you know God more fully and intimately. Sacred Marriage shifts the focus from marital enrichment to spiritual enrichment in ways that can help you love your mate more. Whether it is delightful or difficult, your marriage can become a doorway to a closer walk with God.
Everything about your marriage-from the history you and your spouse create, to the love you share, to the forgiveness you both offer and seek by turn-is filled with the capacity to help you grow in Christ's character.
Sessions include:
- God's Purpose for Marriage: More Than We Imagine (24:30)
- The Refining Power of Marriage (12:30)
- The God-Centered Spouse (17:30)
- Sacred History (21:00)
- Sexual Saints (23:00)
- Marriage: The Love Laboratory (20:30)
Coordinating study guide available separately.
The Audio Bible Studies series provides a unique audio learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook's direct narration of a book's text, this audio Bible study includes high-quality, live audio sessions from the author that cover important Bible-based topics. These sessions will reflect the ambiance of the unique recording locations, immersing the listener into the teaching. While not required for the audio experience, these studies are designed to partner with the coordinating study guide, sold separately.
Since the early Egyptians human beings have formalized the business of learning, setting up a designated environment of some form to pass knowledge and learning on to groups of students. In this second edition of his Very Short Introduction, Gary Thomas explores how and why education has evolved as it has, examining the ways in which it has responded over the centuries to various influences in politics, philosophy, and the social sciences. Focusing on education today, he considers especially the controversies over progressive versus formal teaching, and also examines education worldwide, assessing the accelerating trend on both sides of the Atlantic of the move to charter, academy, and 'free' schools.
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated moves to online learning in schools and universities, and in this new edition Thomas looks again at curriculums and what shape they should take in a rapidly changing world. He asks why action on race, gender and social inequality has borne so little fruit thus far, questioning the oft-made claim of education to be a force for social mobility, and offering an analysis on how education may develop over the coming century.
Millions of married couples have pledged to 'love and to cherish, until death do us part.' Most of us understand and get the love part... but what does it mean to cherish your spouse? Why do we say it once at the wedding and then rarely ever mention it again?
In this six-session video Bible study (guide sold separately), bestselling author Gary Thomas draws on personal stories and teachings from the Bible to show how cherishing can have a powerful effect on marriage. Learning to truly cherish each other turns marriage from an obligation into a delight. It lifts marriage above a commitment to a precious priority. Cherish is the melody that makes a marriage sing.
If you find yourself going through the motions in your marriage, Thomas will walk you and your spouse through real ways to reverse the pattern:
- Erase contempt and honor your spouse
- Stop comparing and focus on the unique traits in your spouse
- Let go of hurts and forgive your spouse
- Go beyond serving and showcase your spouse
- Don't stop trying. The more you cherish your spouse, the more you will cherish your spouse.
Many couples survive by gritting their teeth and holding on. Or they find themselves just 'going through the motions' in their relationship. But cherishing your spouse can reverse this pattern. Cherishing can breathe light, hope, and new life into a marriage--even one marred by neglect and disrespect.
Sessions include:
- To Love and to Cherish (20:00)
- Your Honor (25:00)
- Taking Your Marriage to the Next Level (23:00)
- Cherishing Your Unique Spouse (21:00)
- This Is How Your Spouse Stumbles (22:00)
- Keep on Cherishing (24:00)
Designed for use with the Cherish Study Guide (9780310080732), sold separately.
The Audio Bible Study series provides a unique learning experience. Instead of sitting down to watch a video teaching for Bible study, listen to the same quality Bible study content on the go! Whether you listen on your commute, while walking outside, or over a lunch break, you can access high-quality audio Bible studies wherever you are. Get the most out of the teaching by diving into the accompanying study guide (sold separately) to walk through reflection questions and individual Bible study to go deeper.
Read by the authors.
A unique, comprehensive guide to sexual intimacy for Christian couples in every season of marriage.
A great sex life is something you make, not something you find. If you feel confused or frustrated about your sex life--or simply wonder, Is there more to it than this?--Married Sex is exactly what you need to make your marriage stronger, in and out of the bedroom.
Including the stories of real-life couples, research results from hundreds of comprehensive surveys, and professional perspective from a bestselling spiritual writer and a licensed counselor, Married Sex will:
- Help you understand why married sex is one of God's best ideas
- Teach you the inner workings of your body and your spouse's body in order to achieve optimal pleasure
- Guide you through the most common sexual problems couples have and what to do about them
- Help you see how your past experiences and expectations influence your present sex life
- Give you practical suggestions and techniques to enhance your sexual experience
- Encourage you to take ownership in the process of making love, seeing a great sex life as a beautiful opportunity to honor both God and your spouse
Psychology, theology, research, story, and let's-get-started ideas combine to make Married Sex a resource for you and your spouse like no other book you've read before. Discover practical, biblically informed answers to your questions about intimacy as you find more satisfaction in your marriage than ever.
In the revised edition of his hit book The Sacred Search, author Gary Thomas helps single people of all ages make wise marital choices, in large part by rethinking what basis those choices should be made on.
Readers are encouraged to think beyond finding their "soul mate," an idea that has its roots in the philosophy of Plato, and instead adopt a more biblical search for a "sole mate"- someone who will walk with them on their spiritual journey.
Thomas asks, What if we focused on why to get married more than on who to marry? What if being "in love" isn't a good enough reason to get married? And most of all, what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?
A good marriage isn't something found; it's something made. In this revised and updated edition of the bestselling book A Lifelong Love, author Gary Thomas shares that when couples pursue spiritual purpose and worship it builds lasting intimacy and friendship between them.
In A Lifelong Love, Thomas takes couples on three essential journeys leading to a strong marriage:
- The journey toward each other
- The journey toward God
- The journey toward love
Whether readers are feeling discouraged about their marriage or simply want to infuse their relationship with greater spiritual and relational passion, A Lifelong Love offers the guidance they need to embrace the eternal intentions that God has for them.
As believers in Christ, many of us today fall into the trap of thinking we have to approach God in a certain way. This one-size-fits-all mentality typically leaves us feeling frustrated and distant from God. But the truth is that not every person will engage with God in the same way. For this reason, it is important to discover the particular pathway that will best help them to experience God's presence.
In this five-session Audio Bible Study, bestselling author Gary Thomas uncovers nine of these spiritual 'pathways' that people have used over the centuries to grow closer to God. He provides tools for participants to assess their key pathway (much as the Enneagram does for personality types) and encourages them to investigate the ways they most naturally express themselves in their relationship with God. Gary also points out the strengths and pitfalls of their primary pathway and helps them discover the key spiritual tendencies of their friends, family, and others around them.
Whatever temperament or blend of temperaments best describes our personality, we can rest assured that it is not by accident. It comes by the design of a Creator who knew what he was doing when he made us according to his own unique intentions. Sacred Pathways will reveal the true route we were made to travel.
Sessions include:
- The Journey of the Soul (Introduction to the Pathways)
- Pathways of Wonder (Naturalists, Sensates, Aesthetics)
- Pathways of Contemplation (Contemplatives, Traditionalists, Intellectuals)
- Pathways of Action (Activists, Caregivers, and Enthusiasts)
- Tending the Garden of the Soul (How the Pathways Applies to Your Life)
The Audio Bible Study series provides a unique learning experience. Instead of sitting down to watch a video teaching for Bible study, listen to the same quality Bible study content on the go! Whether you listen on your commute, while walking outside, or over a lunch break, you can access high-quality audio Bible studies wherever you are. Get the most out of the teaching by diving into the accompanying study guide (sold separately) to walk through reflection questions and individual Bible study to go deeper.
A Life-Changing Book on Christian Virtues from the Author of Sacred Marriage
"When we practice the virtues of Christ," writes bestselling author Gary Thomas, "we become who God created us to be." In this classic book of spiritual formation, we encounter true discipleship―the life we were made for―by observing Jesus in his daily life: his interactions with the people around him, his reactions and responses to spiritual warfare, his thoughtful engagement of complicated questions about faith and profound temptations. Jesus embodied the virtues that God has invited us all to cultivate. This book becomes instrumental to our spiritual growth.
There aren't a lot of books that focus squarely on classical Christian virtues; those that do often approach the topic in a scholarly, detached fashion. Gary Thomas has a deep concern for the spiritual vitality of his audience, and that concern comes through in this book.
Gary Thomas is one of the most celebrated writers on spiritual formation, with beloved books sitting alongside other contemporary classics by authors such as Dallas Willard, James Bryan Smith, and Richard Foster. In his distinct style, he provides a heartfelt survey of humility, chastity, generosity, patience, perseverance, and more, as demonstrated in the life of Jesus. These virtues are for us, and this book draws lines from our lived experience to the lived experience of Christ, and back to us, pointing the way to a more vibrant faith and a more fulfilling life.
Si vous ne savez pas pourquoi vous marier, vous ne saurez pas qui épouser. Alors, vous qui n’êtes pas encore marié, ne franchissez pas le pas avant d’avoir lu ce livre!
On ne se marie pas uniquement parce qu’on a des sentiments réciproques. Mais quels sont les autres critères pour choisir le bon conjoint? Et surtout, quelles sont les raisons pertinentes pour choisir son conjoint? Et si Dieu désirait que vous vous mariiez pour votre croissance spirituelle plutôt que pour votre bonheur personnel? Et s’il ne s’agissait pas de trouver «la bonne personne», mais plutôt d’être au service de Celui qui vous aime d’un amour infini?
L’auteur vous met au défi de trouver un partenaire de valeur – celui qui vous accompagnera dans votre cheminement spirituel. Alors dès maintenant, ayez pour objectif de construire une relation autour d’une mission spirituelle commune et de placer l’éternité au cœur de votre projet de mariage.
Sacred Pathways reveals nine distinct spiritual temperaments--and their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies--to help you improve your spiritual life and deepen your personal walk with God.
It's time to strip away the frustration of a one-size-fits-all spirituality and discover a path of worship that frees you to be you. Experienced spiritual directors, pastors, and church leaders recognize that all of us engage with God differently, and it's about time we do too.
In this updated and expanded edition of Sacred Pathways, Gary Thomas details nine spiritual temperaments and--like the Enneagram and other tools do with personality--encourages you to investigate the ways you most naturally express yourself in your relationship with God. He encourages you to dig into the traits, strengths, and pitfalls in your devotional approach so you can eliminate the barriers that keep you locked into rigid methods of worship and praise.
Plus, as you begin to identify and understand your own temperament, you'll soon learn about the temperaments that aren't necessarily 'you' but that may help you understand the spiritual tendencies of friends, family, and others around you.
Whatever temperament or blend of temperaments best describes you, rest assured it's not by accident. It's by the design of a Creator who knew what he was doing when he made you according to his own unique intentions. If your spiritual walk is not what you'd like it to be, you can change that, starting here. Sacred Pathways will show you the route you were made to travel, marked by growth and filled with the riches of a close walk with God.
Accompanying exercises and discussion questions are available in the audiobook companion PDF download.
