Playing Spiritual Defense

God designed relationships to be life-giving and life-affirming.

Author and pastor Gary Thomas says some relationships are life-depleting. They're toxic. Toxic people want to control you. You will do what I want you to do. I'll pretend to be your friend. I'll pretend I'm in need. I'll pretend I'm going to threaten you. I'll pretend I'm going to protect you from others.

And so whenever you're feeling controlled, demeaned, like they don't want you to do what you believe God has called you to do, that's a big sign that you're dealing with a toxic person. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com.

How can we recognize toxic relationships and what do we do when we have one? We're going to talk more about that today with Gary Thomas. Stay tuned. And welcome to Family Life Today. Thanks for joining us. So you guys know, our listeners don't know, but you guys know the amazing Tonda, right?

Yes. She is amazing. She is amazing. She has for more than 25 years done research for Family Life Today.

I calculated this the other day. She has to have read more than 2,000 books on marriage and family over the last 25 years. And she's a single woman, right? So she's given us all kinds of data and information, helped us out. She came to me, I don't know, a month or so ago, and she said, so Gary Thomas has a new book coming out. And I said, book him. And she said, don't you even want to know what the title is or what?

I said, I don't need to know. It's Gary Thomas writing a book. It's going to be on relationships because that's what he's on. It's going to be biblical. It's going to have wisdom.

I mean, you don't need to know anything else. Who doesn't want Gary Thomas? Then I see what it's about and I go, well, maybe we should talk to him. Gary, welcome to Family Life Today. Thank you, Bob. Gary has been a regular guest here since the book Sacred Marriage was released now 20 years ago? Twenty years ago.

Wow. And I actually, I read Sacred Pathways before I read Sacred Marriage, and that was so helpful on the whole subject of worship and different approaches to worship. I still think of that as one of those books I recommend to people. Since then, Sacred Parenting, Sacred Influence, you've written 20 books, give or take?

Yeah, I don't really actually count, but I think it's at 20. But you have influenced a generation, really, through your writing, and Sacred Marriage Today still continues to sell so well, and people still reference the subtitle of that book as such a paradigm shift in how we think about marriage, right? Oh, sure do. Can I thank Family Life Today for a second? Because Sacred Marriage, I was a nobody when it came out, and it was just limping along, and it was the Family Life Today. You guys did five shows on Sacred Marriage that made it take off. Really? And at the time that this broadcast came out, it should hit a million copies.

Wow. We're 10,000 copies away at this point, but I will always be beholden to Family Life Today because you gave it its first push. Well, to be able to be catalytic for an important message about what if holiness is more important than happiness, it's just an honor to be able to be a part of that. And if there's a listener that hasn't read it yet, they can go to the website right now and get it. I was going to say join the millions, but I can just say join the million.

Make it a million, yeah. Gary has written a book called When to Walk Away, Finding Freedom from Toxic People, and I'm thinking about subjects you could tackle. And you, I mean, I know you. This is kind of like Gary's writing about toxic people, because you're so nice.

It's so nice. Exactly. Well, and that's how I got eaten up by toxic people. It was terribly prideful, but I had this false messianic complex that if I was walking in holiness, walking in wisdom, prayed up, surrendered to the Holy Spirit, had the right words and the right attitude, that everybody I talked to would see the glory of Jesus and say, of course, you're right, and turn to him, because we see Jesus, what he's done in our life, and why doesn't everybody want him? And that gave way then to some people taking advantage of that, and it took me years until I learned in addition to spiritual offense, you need to sometimes learn how to play spiritual defense. You had somebody come to you and say, would you read my book and give me some feedback, right? Well, it was really two. I'd written a blog post on a particular issue, and it exploded. Yeah.

People were talking about it, so you would think she would be happy because it was sort of her issue, and she said that this is great. Here are two books you need to read to get up on it. I said, you know, this isn't going to be a ministry of mine. There are others that could address it more. It was a one-time blog post. I don't have time to read two full books.

I'm sure they're great books, but in the meantime, I just didn't want to lie. And boy, talk about making an enemy. She came after you. She did attack reviews on Amazon and other books, and I've never seen anything like it. And then what really shut it down and what opened up my eyes is when the attacks were on my wife because she wrote a post defending me. The thought was he wrote this post because secretly he probably abuses his wife, and it's cover for that because we know that's what abusers are. And Lisa, it's just not her to get involved in social media or public debates. But when they started doing that, that's easier for me.

Even though I'm a people player, you mess with my wife, and now I know where you're coming from. Honestly, I thought about as I was reading that story, I thought of the current environment on Twitter. I think more than on Facebook or Instagram, Twitter kind of seems to be the ground. Twitter is the ground. I don't know why. Where it's just toxic relationships blossom and thrive on Twitter, and people are daily having to block followers to avoid the kind of toxic engagement that you talk about in this book.

And to engage, Bob, is to increase it. It just gets worse. If we don't walk away, we have sleepless nights. We lose a lot of time. We're not present with our families.

We're focused on people that will never change. And what helped me was a good friend of mine, Dr. Steve Wilkie. He's out in California. He's been a marriage and family therapist for over 30 years. And he saw I was just hitting my head up against the wall and he thinks I'm too nice. And he said, Gary, I want you to read the Book of Luke. Count how many times Jesus walked away from people when they resisted him or how many times he let people walk away from him. Well, I'm a little OCD. We've talked about that.

I'm not clinically, but I live in the neighborhood right next door to it. So I have to read all four gospels and I count every possible occurrence and came up with 41. Now, some of those because of the synoptic gospels refer to the same accounts, but still left a couple dozen encounters where Jesus spoke the truth. People asked him to leave and he left. He didn't sit there and fight. And then many times when people were attacking him, he didn't take it.

He slipped away through the crowd. Now, we think of Jesus as the martyr who allowed himself to be crucified once. But there were almost half a dozen occurrences where people tried to beat him up and attack him where he said, not today, not today.

He chose when to lay down his life, but he didn't allow people to abuse him throughout his life. That was eye opening. I can't tell you how that changed the way I looked at ministry. Yeah, that was eye opening for me when I read it in your book. I never I mean, I've been a pastor almost 40 years. I've taught the Book of Luke.

I've never looked at it through that lens. And so I'm reading what you wrote and I want to know exactly. That was a shaker for you, right? I mean, you read that and it's like, OK, I got to change the way I live. Is that what ended up happening? It did it. It freed me up because I looked back and I realize all the time I've spent with toxic people has kept me from being present with my family. I'm worried. I'm obsessed.

What do I say? It's kept me from positive ministry and interaction. What is never done is bring a redemptive resolution with the toxic person. They don't change. I don't change them. They don't change me.

It's wasted time. There's malice. There's ill will.

A lack of focus on healthful, positive, fruit fulfilling ministry. And so here's what I've learned, David. I think this is really one of Satan's most subtle attacks. He can't keep us from caring because the Holy Spirit makes us care. I mean, it's God's love through us. We want to love people and he can't fight that. But what he can do instead of having if you look at that love and care as pure water to irrigate the fields, what he can do is divert that water that would irrigate fields and produce a great crop and get us to port straight down the gutter with someone who not only won't receive it, but who resents it and who will attack us.

And it was Jesus's parable of don't throw your pearls before swine that really opened up my eyes to that that some people are so spiritually closed. You invite abuse upon yourself when you get involved with them. So at what point do you diagnose the difference between somebody who's honestly engaged and trying to get help and somebody who's just a toxic drain on you?

And how do you know the difference between one of the fine toxic? Yeah, I love that question because I want to make it clear. Difficult people are not toxic. Difficult people can just be difficult. The best way to describe it is they're bringing you down. They destroy your peace, your joy, your strength. And somebody says, so what's a big deal if they destroy my joy?

Well, the joy of the Lord is our strength. They make us weaker and they make us obsessed. So I tried to in three chapters give sort of landmark qualities of toxic people. Toxicity is a stew more than it's a soup. I don't think everybody is all of these, but when any one of these are present in a strong way, it gets me concerned.

The first one is a very controlling nature. And this is what hit me because it's so against God, as strong as God is, as powerful as God is. He's so uncontrolled. Choose you this day whom you will serve. He said he he gives people the truth and he lets us choose. The New Testament talks about demonic possession. It never talks about God possession. Paul says the spirit of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets.

And so there's this freedom in Christ. But toxic people want to control you. You will do what I want you to do. I'll pretend to be your friend. I'll pretend I'm in need. I'll pretend I'm going to threaten you.

I'll pretend I'm going to protect you from others. But I am determined you will do what I want you to do, which is basically trying to take the role of God in someone's life. And so whenever you're feeling controlled, demeaned, like they don't want you to be you or don't want you to do what you believe God has called you to do. That's a big sign that you're dealing with a toxic person. The second thing is a murderous spirit.

And I know that sounds extreme. But just as God is a God of life and he was a God that gave choice, Satan is the bringer of death and destruction. Jesus said Satan is a murderer and he includes malice as a part of murder. So toxic people destroy reputations. They gossip up. They destroy churches. You put one or two in a church and just little undercutting and they can even seem nice, but they're undercutting the leadership and they destroy peace. They destroy joy. Everybody's having a good time and they find a way to bring in, you know, guilt or condemnation or or whatever it is.

But basically, when I see them, they're murdering. And I've seen this in marriage and that was a big eye opener for me. And I've seen it in parenting when somebody is being destroyed in front of my eyes, that they're really having the life ground out of them. God is a life giving God.

Christian fellowship brings life and encouragement. Toxic interaction brings death and despair. There's people who would tear you down, people who would attack you, people who would, I'm thinking you've seen this, insults, anger, that kind of demeaning language that husbands and wives can use against one another, parents and children can use against one another.

That's what you're talking about. Let me give an example. A woman I worked with, God had called her, used her in ministry, was using her in ministry, married, I would say a toxic narcissist. This guy's world revolved around him and he controlled her and he murdered her schedule. She had to do what he wanted her to do. She had appointments, she had her own thing. Her schedule had to revolve around his. He murdered her self-esteem when he had an affair early on in her marriage. She's a godly woman, beautiful woman.

Of course, that doesn't have anything to do with it. If a guy's going to cheat, he's going to cheat. So now she's thinking, how could I be more as a wife?

I must have let him down. And then he murdered her occupation. If he had to move, he moved regardless of how well her ministry was going, she had to follow. So she did that her whole life. And then they were in another situation where because of his situations, money was tight, she was on a budget. And so she's at a party and she sees this younger woman in just this beautiful dress, the kind of dress she couldn't afford anymore. And her husband paying more than passing attention to her.

And her wife since went off and said, there is more to hear than an attraction. So she told him after the party, look, I've been through this before and I forgave you. And she forgave him heroically. I don't have time to get in the whole story. I'm not going to do this again. And he got so angry, she realized it's already happened. This isn't an attraction.

This is already happening. And he knew because he was involved in Christian circles, his church and his occupation would not look well on a divorce and an affair. So he set about murdering her reputation and his prayer requests. I don't think she's well.

Would you please pray for my? And she figured out because all these people say, how are you doing? Really?

Are you sure? And just the way they looked at her and she she thought she was losing her mind because he's kind of murdering her sanity. And she's like, what's going on? Until he had set it up and then he divorced her. And of course, like two days after the divorce is final, Mary's the woman who was in that dress at the party.

Thanking God that, boy, in a year of difficulty and darkness, he's provided this comfort and this help. It was a digital murder. I saw the Facebook page. My son saw the Facebook page and we were appalled because he called her Mrs. John Doe. Of course, not her real name, which had been this other woman's name a week before. Meet Mrs. And it was like he was just wiping her out. And then he still spread the stuff so that her ministry would end. It wasn't enough to take away her family, her reputation now split the time with the kids. If he thought anybody would hire her, that would look ill on him because if she's so awful, he had to escape from her. Then it might question his judgment if somebody thought she had anything to say.

So he set about murdering her ministry. And that's toxicity at its highest level, where they just want to kill everything about you. And Gary, we hear an account like that and all of us, I think, cringe and some of our listeners are going, that does sound like me. You said there's a third component to toxicity in addition to control on a murderous spirit. What's the third one?

The third one is loving hate. And I use the cilantro analogy. I hate cilantro. I call it the adolescent of herbs.

Notice me, notice me, notice me. It wants to own the room. But it's a genetic thing where most people love cilantro. They find it delicious.

And I just genetically, I just hate it. And it's about our spiritual taste buds, loving hate. What do you find delicious spiritually? In a healthy person, according to Colossians 3, things that we love, what we want to be, where we feel it fits, this is delicious to us, is compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and love. We don't all get that, but that's what we should aspire to. It's the kind of people we want to be around. That's what gets us energized.

We recognize that and say that's that's a good meal. Paul says the other kind that we need to worry about is in Colossians 3, 18. And this is the toxic people who love hate. They love anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language and lying. They come alive when they're in a battle. They come alive when they're whispering about someone.

They come alive when they're attacking someone. It makes them feel like they have purpose, like they have mission. A lot of us, we get angry and we might even gossip. But when we do, it's like having the flu. We want to take a shower. We want to say, man, I want to get off of that.

That's not who I want to be. If you come out of a gossip session, you just feel, oh, man. But for a toxic person, those kinds of activities, they like it. They love it. With all due apologies to McGraw, they want some more of it. And so those are three things where control mongering, murdering, loving hate, where you don't just do it.

You draw energy from it. Yes. Those are things where my senses go up now and I'm realizing I think I may be dealing with a toxic person. And it's interesting. Several of your examples are extreme.

And so there's part of me that goes, OK, I don't know somebody that bad or hopefully I'm not that bad. But it doesn't have to be that extreme to be toxic. Right. Because one of the things you really do a good job of that really got my interest was why do I want to confront somebody? It isn't they're stealing my joy. They're stealing me from my mission.

That was huge. Explain that. For me, this isn't about self-protection. I am not a therapist.

I'm not a psychologist. I seek the scriptures. And when you hear the toxic title, most people think it's the psychological word of the day. There is more scripture and when to walk away than any book I've done. I was astonished at how often it is addressed conceptually in scripture.

Of course, the word isn't there. What got me excited was this is to preserve your mission before the Lord. And we get in that for me, Matthew 633, seek first the kingdom of God. Second Timothy 2 to ground into me by a wonderful, gifted and godly campus pastor.

I'll be forever grateful. Find reliable people with whom you can invest what God has given you. That your life should be a search of giving what you have into others and building them up. And I realized this is about protecting my spiritual offense. If I'm seeking first the kingdom of God, I wake up with his agenda. Who does he want me to talk to?

How does he want to use me today? How do I find reliable people to invest in, to encourage, to build up? I don't have time for the toxic people.

And so I have that paradigm now. Is this person reliable or toxic? I believe it's a biblical command to find reliable people and build them up and equip them and release them. And it's easy to get diverted into being distracted and wanting to improve toxic people or take out toxic people. And I think that's like driving by a freeway and stopping every time you see trash. That's not what you're supposed to do in life. Somebody else will deal with it. When it's toxic people, the difference is if you're driving down a road and the trash is so big, you can't drive your car.

You get out, you remove the tree limb, you remove the trash, you remove the tire, and then you go. And that's my attitude toward toxic people. Drive by when I can, confront when you must, but only to the extent that you can move them out of a way to complete the good work God has called you to do.

And this was helpful for me, too, as I read through that analysis. But I found myself thinking, Gary, what about lonely people who can be draining and can divert you from a broader mission? Are we to invest in the lives of lonely people?

I have an exact example of that. Dave and I were first married. We were pouring into all these people, but there was one woman that would dominate the conversation and she was she lived close to us. So every single day she would come over and spend hours, hours and hours talking about her problems. And even when she was given some sort of advice or maybe you could do this, she would never change.

And it would be the same thing every single day. Was she toxic? Is that an example of a toxic person?

Here's what I found. And it takes humility. It's almost counterintuitive. I'm not the best person to reach every person in this world. That's why we need a church. I think God has given some people particular gifts to reach certain people, but I don't think any of us are best with other kinds of people. And so when somebody is bringing us down and keeping us from the ability of investing those we are called to invest to, we can trust God that, OK, he's going to bring someone that can at least give this person a chance.

It's like this. If we go to Dave's football background, when you've got a guy who's one hundred and sixty five pounds, the coach isn't putting him on the offensive line. He's the kicker or he's the punter because he's going to get destroyed by a defensive lineman. And in the same way, if you've got a guy that's 350 pounds, he's probably not kicking the field goal. So it's recognizing in humility. God is over his church. God is building his church.

God is gifting his church. We need more workers. So let's reach those we can. And this is where it's hard in.

But I think the image of triage on a battlefield, I think of D-Day when those medics would go and put M on a guy's forehead. And what that meant is I gave him morphine. He can't be saved. I want to find somebody who might yet be saved. And Jesus says throughout scripture, pray for the Lord of the harvest. We need more workers. And today we need more workers. And so to divert our work to somebody that we know we're not going to reach, in fact, that will remove our joy, remove our peace, remove our zeal.

So we'll lose an opportunity to talk to five other people. I think we kind of have to have spiritual triage. I want urgency for the church. We have a generation running away from the truth. We need more workers and we need urgency.

And that means we have to play defense and not waste our efforts. Well, we're going to spend some time this week looking at how this applies in family relationships, because that's really where it gets tricky. Marriages, parents, kids, extended family relationships. In-laws.

Yeah, right. And I hope our listeners will get a copy of your book, Gary, and start to meditate on this, pray about this, look at the relationships in their lives from a missional perspective, as you're saying, not from a self-interest perspective, not from a what would please me, but from how can I best serve God and how do these relationships fit into that. That's really at the heart of this book. And we are making your book available this week, Gary, to listeners who can help support the Ministry of Family Life with a donation. I think most of our listeners know that Family Life Today is listener supported. The reason you've been able to listen to today's conversation is because other listeners like you made that possible for you. And we want to ask you to join the team and make Family Life Today possible for people in your city and people literally around the world who are connecting with us on the Family Life Today app, those who are tuning in via Alexa, those who listen on this local radio station.

You make that possible when you support this ministry. And if you can help with the donation today, we'd love to send you a copy of Gary's book, which is called When to Walk Away. You can go to our website to donate, go to familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make a donation. So again, donate online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

And just say I'd like to make a donation and I'd love to get a copy of Gary Thomas' book, When to Walk Away. Now, tomorrow, we're going to continue our conversation with Gary Thomas and talk about how we can know whether we actually have a destructive, a toxic relationship, or whether we're just dealing with somebody who's a little hard to get along with from time to time. Gary will be with us again tomorrow. We hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch.

We got some help from Bruce Goff. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.