AFFECTIONS-SPIRITUAL
Delight in the glory of God
includes, for example, hatred for sin, fear of displeasing God, hope in the
promises of God, contentment in the fellowship of God, desire for the final
revelation of the Son of God, exultation in the redemption he accomplished,
grief and contrition for failures of love, gratitude for undeserved benefits,
zeal for the purposes of God, and hunger for righteousness. Our duty toward God is that all our
affections respond properly to His reality and so reflect His glory.
Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Strong affections for God, rooted
in and shaped by the truth of Scripture – this is the bone and marrow of
biblical worship.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 91, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
He who has no religious
affection is in a state of spiritual death and is wholly destitute of powerful
quickening influences of the Spirit of God.
Religious Affections.
Holy affections do not have
heat without light.
Spiritual emotions result in
Christian practice because they always exist alongside spiritual
humiliation. Humility before God
inspires obedience, just as pride inspires rebellion. Humility, then, necessarily leads to Christian practice.
I should think myself in the
way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly
can, provided they are affected with nothing but the truth, and with affections
that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.
True religious affections
are distinguished from false.
Affections that are truly spiritual and gracious, do arise from those
influences and operations on the heart, which are spiritual, supernatural and
divine.
Spiritual emotions result in
Christian practice because their object is the loveliness of spiritual things,
not our self-interest. People have a
defective Christianity because they are seeking their own interests in it, not
God’s. So they accept Christianity only
to the extent that they think it serves their interests. By contrast, a person who accepts it for its
own excellent and lovely nature, accepts everything which has that nature.
Such is man's nature, that
he is very inactive and lazy unless he is influenced by some affection, either
love or hatred, desire, hope, fear, or some other. These affections we see to
be the springs that set men agoing, in all the affairs of life, and engage them
in all their pursuits.
Jonathan Edwards
The Works of Jonathan Edwards.
What are you to yourself?
Worthless? Vile? Empty? What is Jesus
to you? Precious? Lovely? All your salvation? All your desire? What is sin to you? The most hateful thing
in the world? What is holiness to you?
Most lovely? Most longed for? What is the throne of grace to you? The most
attractive spot? What is the cross to
you? The sweetest resting place in the universe? What is God to you? Your God? Your Father? The spring of all your
joys? The fountainhead of all your bliss? The center where your affections
meet? Is it so? Then you are a child of God!
Those low views of yourself...that brokenness, that inward mourning,
that secret confession, that longing for...more spirituality, more grace, more
devotedness, more love, does but prove the existence, reality, and growth of
God's work within you. Cheer up,
precious soul! That soul never perished, that felt itself to be vile, and Jesus
to be precious!
Grace comes not to take away
a man’s affections, but to take them up.
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
2000, p. 89.
How would you finish (this)
sentence? “One thing have I desired of
the Lord; that will I seek after _________.”
What is the greatest desire and longing of your heart? In the answer to that question lies the
explanation for much of what we do – our choices, our priorities, our use of
time, the way we spend money, the way we respond to pressure, whom or what we
love. (King) David’s answer (see Psm.
27:4) reveals why God could say, “This man’s heart beats like mine.”
A Place of Quiet Rest, Moody, 2000, p. 39.
In an authentic spiritual
experience, emotion, feelings, and the senses often become intense,
transcending the normal. These may
include strong feelings of remorse over sin, a mighty sense of trust that
surpasses the pain of a traumatic situation, an overpowering peace in the midst
of trouble, the overwhelming sense of joy related to confidence and hope in
God, intense sorrow over the lost, the exhilarating praise in understanding the
glory of God, or a heightened zeal for ministry. Spiritual experience by definition is an internal awareness that
involves strong emotion in response to the truth of God’s Word, amplified by
the Holy Spirit and applied by Him to us personally.
Charismatic Chaos, Zondervan, 1992, p. 26.
Motion is the most perfect
discoverer of life. He that can stir
his limbs, is surely not dead. The feet
of the soul are the affections. Hast
thou not found in thyself a hate and detestation of that sin whereinto thou
hast been miscarried? Hast thou not
found in thyself a true grief of heart, for thy wretched indisposition to all
good things? Without a true life of
grace, these things could never have been.
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
2000, p. 25.