The Power Of Preference: Fight Desire With Desire - Psalm 63:3

Dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

When you asked the man in Mark 9 if he believed You could heal his son, he said, “Lord I believe – help my unbelief.” Lord that is so often how I feel about loving You.

We love You Lord; help our lack of love.

We desire Your presence Lord; help our lack of desire - forgive us for the pathetic weakness of our desire.

We hunger and thirst for the experience of Your favor dear Lord; overcome our lack of appetite.

We rejoice in You; help our lack of joy - excite our dull affections.

We delight in Your love; triumph over our indifference and lack of delight.

So many things have to go right for these kinds of things to take place in our hearts, Lord. We are all here tonight because we believe Your Word has the power to do all this, but Your Word is preached and taught to millions of people without bringing about these results. People hear Your Word every day and go away unmoved, unchanged, unfed, uninterested. For this to work tonight Lord, I need to teach Your Word accurately, and from the right perspective, and with the right emphases, I need to explain things in a way that makes Your truth understandable, and in a way that makes the implications for our lives very clear.

And beyond that, Lord, each heart needs to be receptive to You. Please, Lord, let these truths come into our ears tonight and be accepted into our hearts, and digested into our lives with joy. Protect us from the evil one, who would distract us, introduce doubt, or try to generate boredom. We are seated tonight at Your banquet table in Your honor looking to You to feed us that we might glorify You by rejoicing in You. So fill us full, we pray, in Your holy and wonderful name, Amen.

Affections are at the Core of Love

Last time we talked about the fact that the affections are at the core of loving God. I want to say a little more about that before we move on. First, I want you to understand what I mean by the term “affections.”

Affections are the best measure of the heart

When you and I look out over the world, we interpret and evaluate everything we see. God made us that way. We do not just observe – we observe and evaluate. There are some things that you love and there are other things you do not love at all. In the words of Jonathan Edwards, there are some things that your heart in inclined toward in a favorable way and other things you are inclined away from in a negative way.

Imagine driving along and seeing three different bumper stickers. The first one says something you strongly agree with, or you think is funny. The second one says something that makes you angry. And the third one you do not care about at all. Your mind does not see those in a detached, analytical way only. When you see the first one, not only does your mind read it and think about it, but your heart is inclined favorably toward it. When you see the second one your heart is inclined away from it. And when you see the third one your heart is indifferent.

Part of what makes you a good or evil person depends on your inclinations. If your heart is inclined toward evil and away from good, you are an evil person. If your heart is indifferent and unmoved by things that are truly beautiful and good, or if your heart is indifferent and unmoved by things that are truly evil - that is a sign of something wrong in your heart. If your heart is inclined toward good and away from evil, that demonstrates a measure of goodness in your heart.

In fact, I would suggest that the inclinations of your soul are the most important factor in measuring the righteousness and wickedness of your heart – even more than your actions, thoughts or the decisions of your will.

Actions are not the best indicator of righteousness, because they can be done with wrong motives. True thoughts are not the best measure; demons believe many true things. Not even the choices of the will are the best measure. If a person strongly desires to commit murder and rape, but chooses not to only because he wants to avoid prison, he is not a righteous person. If a person wants to give to the poor, but chooses to give his money to some scam instead because he is deceived through no fault of his own, that is good, not evil.

The best measure of godliness is your affections – what you love. Henry Scougal was right when he said, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” The Bible is clear that evil people are evil because of what they love, and righteous people are righteous because of what they love.