Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Thursday February 11, 2010

On Monday morning I had the privilege of hearing an old friend address a group of clergypersons at Grace Baptist Church in Terre Haute. Larry Gilaspy is back as pastor of Fairbanks Missionary Baptist Church having been in Alabama for 22 years. His message was refreshing for the most part. His section on husbands helping the wife with dishes etc failed to ring any bells with me. Perhaps he hit the Mobile water too much.

Larry shared a very good bit about helping love to grow rather than diminish over time. You know the kind that grows and grows instead of comes and goes.

Pastor Gilaspy stated, with the forcefulness of the proverbial Baptist Preacher:

"LOVE is an attitude whereby I commit myself to meet the needs of the other person regardless of the cost to myself or of the response of the other person."

A commitment to the other.

Committing to the other is not the popular statement that most hear when attempting to help those formerly in love, but the whine, "He/she fails to meet MY needs." Popular society arrogantly proclaims "life is all about me" yet the human heart longs for the courage, even the inner power to love in the truest biblical sense.

Larry pointed out what preachers loudly proclaim about love with most of us failing to do that magical act which we proclaim vociferously, namely to love our wife as "Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it."

I think I could commit to love the Great Blonde like our neighbor loves his wife, but to actually love Joyce as Christ loves the church? Well I admit this is nice philosophy but to actually put it into practice would take divine intervention.

Many clergy wives appear easy to love as they appear to have never had an original thought, or even any thought and therefore simply do as they are told. Joyce does not fall into this category as you know from the regular articles. Whenever I share a thought, she gives me that look, with left eyebrow slightly raised that silently communicates to me that she had that thought many years ago and had hoped it would dawn on me sometime. She had given up hope, but alas, God broke through. I am not sharing Larry's "four indicators of Christlike love" as husbands would fervently hate me. I will pay Larry to come to our church and talk about them. I will then have a place for blame when I give account to our men for such modern talk. After all the Bride of Christ is actually symbolic, seeing as He never married. Correct exegesis bears this out.

When women are present in a meeting men should use great caution in talking about symbolism lest those of lesser intellect take the allegory literally. Loving the wife as Christ loved the church is a good theme to talk about to an audience of men only.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2010 Use with credit.

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