First things first

On occasion as the need has arisen, I have had the opportunity to preach at my church.

One of the challenges with preaching one Sunday on rare occasions comes in seeking the passage upon which you will preach. The expositional pastor, the man who goes through a book of the Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, doesn't have to worry about what he's preaching Sunday; he follows the flow of the text. Yes, this is gross oversimplification because much goes into God-honoring expositional preaching. To my mind, it is the best preaching. Still, the passage does not have to be chosen. Pared down and poured over, yes. Chosen, no.

The guy who has one Sunday would be hard pressed to get through 3 John in three, which leaves him to search for a small passage or small topic that he can treat with respect and honor in a single Sunday. God burdened me with "The Greatest Commandment."

As I poured through the text, Mark 12:28-34 and its myriad of byways, I wondered about this blog. Jesus said with unwavering clarity,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Do I over emphasize the need for husbands to love their wives? Am I encouraging you to set your bride up as an idol? My heart leaps up in defense, "Certainly not!" That is not my intent.

I began this corner of the universe to encourage men, Christian men specifically, to love their wives because I have seen too many men junk their marriage. Honestly, they first have to junk God before they get to their wives. If my relationship with him is in tatters and his voice has no sway in my life, my bride stands vulnerable to my every whim and idiosyncracy.

The Greatest Commandment must impel me in all things.

And really, it is no contradiction to impel you and others toward loving your wife. Peter did this very thing. As did Paul. So, too, did Jesus Christ when he did not stop with the greatest commandment-- though that is what he was asked--but continued into the second which he said was like the first:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Indeed, on these hang all the law and the prophets. Our vertical relationship with God must be right, I must love my God above all things, and yet God makes plain in the pages of Scripture that our love for him must bear out in our love for one another. Our sacrificial laying down of ourselves to God, our willingness to see his name glorified at any cost to our lives, is most vividly seen in our love for our neighbor. You have no neighbor closer to you, husband, than the beauty who sleeps at your side.

• Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness...whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. (1 John 2:9, 11)
• Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:15)

Hate is a strong word. Were I to ask you point blank, "Do you hate your wife?" you would look at me as if I'd just sprouted eight-legs. While we might not confess such a thing, do we live it in practice? Neglect. Biting words. Stilted conversation. No conversation. No tenderness. No nurturing. No leading. Do our actions betray us?

• If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? (1 John 3:17)

Great question, John. Husbands?

If we do love God, it will blossom in our love (care, concern, affection, etc.) for others. So says the word of God.

• Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7)
• Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (4:11)
• If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (4:12)
• He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. (4:20)
• And this is the commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. (4:21)

C.S. Lewis summed it up with his usual incisiveness:

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.  In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all.  When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.

The priority remains: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength. If you find me deviating from the course in these proddings, prod back. Let me know if the supremacy of Christ is lacking in these things.

Since you cannot have the one without the other, I pray you will understand what I mean when I spur you on with, "Husband, love your wife!"

An MRI

Husband, do you spend time with God in his word?

Next question, when's the last time someone asked you that face to face? Or turn it around, when's the last time you asked that of another brother in Christ? Gents, those questions can expose what's going on inside our hearts better than any MRI. I dare you to lay that question on a brother. Lay it on me.

Consider the follow-up questions that the previous Q's will naturally elicit:

• If you are not in the Bible daily, why not?
• How important is God's word to you? Why or why not?
• What keeps you from spending time with God in his word?
• Do you thirst for God and his word like a football player thirsts for water during August's two-a-days (Psalm 63:1)? If not, why not?
• When you open God's word, do the pages spring to vivid life more than a 50-inch HDTV, or do the words lie there with the appeal of shredded wheat?
• If you are reading, what are you reading? Do you remember what you read this morning? Yesterday?
• What has God taught you in his word?
• How has God manifested his love for you through his word?
• How has God revealed his glory and majesty to you through his word?

All of this because of my relationship to God through his word.

This is no mere book we hold in our hands. It is the breath of God. It is his on-going conversation with us.  It is not static nor stagnant. It is living and active (Hebrews 4:12). It is Christ (John 1:1)! God forbid that we should get into the word as merely filling the square or as mowing the lawn just because it needs it. I should relish being with God in his word as much as I delight in being with my bride in our bed (Jeremiah 2:2).

If God has no place in my life, if I have no appetite for him, I am sick and I need a physician. Little will function as it should if I am malnourished of that which I need above all things. If I do not have a passionate love for God and his word, I will be ill-equipped to love my wife as I should.

So husband, I ask again, do you spend time with God in his word?

First things first

Hope you had a good Labor Day, brothers.

Sitcoms of yesteryear provided great family entertainment because the events with each episode were events lived by everyone.  They provided us an opportunity, really, to laugh at ourselves.  Not so in 2011.  While no comedy on television examines the humor of every day life, retreating into the commode or the jockstrap to find a laugh, the artists on the funny pages have picked up the baton.

Take Zits for example.  It's a strip about a high school sophomore and his two parents.  I don't know if it's funnier for me or for my sixteen year old son.  Why?  Because we can empathize with the characters.  Been there.  Done that.

Baby Blues is another one.  It's the story of a once-married couple (I know, a rarity) and their three kids Zoe (10), Hammie (7), and Wren (1). It makes no bones about the challenges involved in being married, working hard, and raising kids. It delights, sometimes side-splits, and sometimes skewers my soul.

My wife has a Baby Blues page-a-day calendar in our bathroom. This was yesterday's fare:

Gents, I had to think of you. Well, first, I had to think of me, then I had to think of you. Before I ramble any further, consider what these artists are saying about us loving our wives.

Getting any vibes?

There's going to come a day, brothers, if the Lord tarries and if you both live a long life when the kids will be gone and only you and your woman will be left in the house. May I ask you, based upon what you have today, what you will have then?

Too many relationships die when the last child leaves home because that couple's foundation for the marriage no longer exists. It sickens my heart when I see wives whose child or children have an obvious priority over their husband. This is an especially dangerous trap for a mother of youngsters. The baby, the toddler, even the elementary-aged child depends upon us and especially depends upon momma, but the momma who begins to cling to her child with greater tenacity than Linus clung to his blanket has begun to ship her man out of his rightful and God-ordained place in her life (not to mention the self-centered little monster being cultivated when balance isn't struck).

Lest you think momma's the only one susceptible to misplaced priorities, papa can cave to it at exactly the same time. When little ones are in the house, dad's in the earlier days of his career.  That means longer hours and quite possibly a second job.  Busting one's posterior to make ends meet can become habitual.  As the money gets better (if the money gets better) and the hours could possibly slacken, they don't. The woman begins to play second fiddle to his occupation. "We need to pay off the boat." "We won't be able to go back to Cancun this year." "Looks like we might have to start eating at home."  Yikes. Yes, many of us have to work long hours and some have to work two jobs to make ends meet but for many, their occupation has become their mistress.

Gents, you know this. God comes first. In a distant and rightly placed second is the filly you nestle up to every night. The order should be the same for her. When those priorities start to get askew, that's a great time to do what Darryl MacPherson did to his wife Wanda. Call her aside, take her in your arms, dip her to the floor, look into her eyes and plant a kiss on her that will reverberate 'til Thursday.

You lead the family. You lead your wife. God says so (1 Corinthians 11:3, Ephesians 5:23). If things start getting goofy, the only person to blame is the one in the mirror.

So husband, go love your wife--and make things reverberate from time to time.

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NOTE:  In researching this post, I came to find out that the creator of  Zits is one of the co-creators of Baby Blues.  From Wikipedia.

In 1996, Jerry Scott was drawing Baby Blues, a comic strip about raising children he co-wrote with Rick Kirkman. He realized, however, that his profession as an independent cartoonist was limited to whatever joke he could conceive next. A friend suggested he begin a strip about a teenager. Scott heeded the proposition but was unsatisfied with his characters sketches, finding them similar to those of his existing strip. After Scott discussed the issue with his artist friend Jim Borgman, the two corresponded with one another over the next few months and eventually collaborated on the characters that would become the Duncans. King Features, already distributing Baby Blues and Borgman's editorial cartoons, began running the new comic strip in 1997 with Scott writing and Borgman drawing.

Considering the quality of the two, I'm not surprised.