Audio Transcript

This is maybe a little bit more of an abstract question than normal, and it comes from two listeners. First, Mark asks, “Pastor John, I’m an analytical thinker and have devoured your books in the past. I find myself intellectually satisfied and yet spiritually lacking in my heart. I believe and understand and am thrilled by what I read, but it isn’t mine. I haven’t experienced it as my own. I figure I need to seek Jesus myself in prayer and meditate on the word, and not just read about it. You are certainly analytical, but you have made biblical truths your own. Can you comment on how to move beyond ‘unapplied analysis’?” Related, Chris emails to ask this, “Many times I feel like I know a lot ‘about God’ instead of ‘knowing God.’ Pastor John, am I missing an intimacy other Christians have?”

Well, let me take those together, because I think that they are coming from the same place. And my answer is, to use the words of Chris’s question, Yes, you are missing an intimacy that some — and I am going to say some — other Christians have. They don’t always have it. They have it now maybe, but they may not have it tomorrow. You have something that they, some of them, don’t have in your grasp of Scripture. And the point of saying both of those — that, yes, they have something you don’t have, and yes, you have something they don’t have — is to protect us from thinking in a kind of simplistic way about the affections of the human heart.

Affections Rise and Fall

There are so many different kinds of Christian hearts, and different kinds of experiences — emotional heart experiences of the living Christ. So we must beware of thinking in simple either-or categories.

The kind of experience that we are talking about, and that I think these brothers so long to experience, is a heartfelt brokenness, a heartfelt fear of God, a joy or thankfulness or tenderheartedness, remorse for sin, compassion for the lost, admiration for Christ, hope in his promises. Those are the kinds of things we are talking about when we speak of our heartfelt affections or emotions. And the fact is, they are never constant. Not even from one hour to the next in the soul of a saint are they constant. They rise, they fall, they burn, they cool, they hover in the middle, and they dip and rise. They are a moving target.

So every one of us with our unique capacities of emotion in Christ have to be very careful never to say as a Christian, “I don’t have those.” And we should never say, “I have got all I need.” No Christian has all he needs, and no Christian has none. You are not a Christian if you don’t have any awakenings of affection for Jesus. There are always greater ones to be had at any moment. We live in a fallen world with fallen bodies and fallen minds and fallen hearts and we groan, Paul says, longing for the final deliverance (see 2 Corinthians 5:2–4).

And what strikes me as especially encouraging in these questions — and I would just address these brothers, Mark and Chris, directly — is that you are really bothered by the level of affections that you have for God. You wish you had more.

You feel like second handers. You read a book and see what others feel and that gives some measure of satisfaction, but you feel, “They’re not mine, at least not in the intensity that I seem to be reading about in others,” and I simply want to say, That is very encouraging to me because I know Christians who are cool in their affections, and it doesn’t bother them at all. They are not writing anybody for advice. They are not desperately seeking help with this. And so the very longing to have what you don’t feel you have is a having which is more precious than you may realize.

Pray Earnestly for Joy

So my concern here is simply to help you fight for joy rather than to give you a momentary high that you might have right now, and then not have tomorrow, and then wonder what happened to you. And the simplest strategy that I can give is to say, Pray earnestly for these affections the way the psalmist does and the way Paul does: “Incline my heart to your testimonies” (Psalm 119:36); Open my eyes to see wonders (see Psalm 119:18); Satisfy me in the morning (see Psalm 90:14). “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. . . . Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Psalm 51:10–12).

It is amazing to me that the psalmist prays that way, because he is praying like Mark and Chris would want to pray, I think. And Paul does the same for his churches. He says to the Ephesians in chapter one,

I remember you in my prayers asking that the eyes of your hearts would be opened so that you know the hope that you have been called to and know the riches of your inheritance and know the power that is working in you. (see Ephesians 1:16–18)

And he doesn’t mean know like the devil knows. I mean, the devil knows these things and hates them. He means, know like you know honey is sweet when you taste it, and you know velvet is smooth when you touch it, and you know that the new cut grass out in the front is sweet when you smell it. That is the kind of knowing Paul was praying for here.

God’s Great Name

I do this virtually every day. I just want these brothers to know that I am with them in the fight. I pray every day for my affections not to die, and to be quickened and made lively. And the phrase that is right at the top of my prayer list is, “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). And if you stop and think about the word hallowed — sanctified — what you are praying for is, “God, help me with my whole being to set your name in a place of great sacredness and great purity and great love and great honor. Help me to see and savor the worth of your name with all my heart and soul and mind and strength.” So that is right at the top of my prayer list every day, and it is a prayer from my heart.

“Never take the sword by itself. Never pray by itself. Always take the word of God and pray it into reality in your life.”

So take the word of God, praying. That is the key: “Take the sword of the spirit [comma] praying at all times. Take the sword, praying. Take the sword, praying. Never take the sword by itself. Never pray by itself. Always take the word of God and pray it into reality in your life. And then bank on one aspect of that sword, namely the promise of God: “I will put the fear of me in [your] hearts, that [you] may not turn from me” (Jeremiah 32:40).

So I would say to Mark and Chris and the hundreds of people who share this struggle, God will complete the work that he has begun in us (see Philippians 1:6).