November 14 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"My son, give me your heart" Prov. 23:26)

Devotional

The human heart is naturally idolatrous. Once its affections supremely centered in God. But now, disjoined from him, they go in quest of other objects of attachment, and we love and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Rom. 1:25).

The circle which our affections traverse may not indeed be large. Perhaps there are but few to whom we fully surrender our heart. No, the circle may be so circumscribed that one object alone shall attract, absorb, and concentrate in itself our entire and undivided love—that one object to us as a universe of beings, and all others comparatively indifferent and insipid. Who cannot see that, in a case like this, the danger is imminent of transforming the heart—Christ's own sanctuary—into an idol's temple, where the creature is loved, and reverenced, and served more than he who gave it?

But our God will cleanse us from all idolatry, and Christ will wean us from all our idols. The Lord is jealous, with a holy jealousy, of our love. Poor as our affection is, he asks its complete surrender.

The Bible nowhere intimates that he requires our love at the expense of all attachment to creatures. God himself created our affections, and God himself provides for their proper and pleasant indulgence. There is not a single precept or command in the Scriptures that forbids their exercise, or that discourages their intensity. He exhorts husbands to caringly love their wives even as Christ loved his church, and wives to fondly respect their husbands. He commands parents to cherish a like affection toward their children, and children are bound to render back a filial love not less intense to their parents. He commands you to love your neighbors as yourself.

Nor does the Word of God furnish examples of Christian friendship less interesting and devoted. One of the choicest and tenderest blessings with which God can enrich you, next to himself, is such a friend as Paul had in Epaphroditus, a "brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier" (Phil. 2:25); and such an affectionate friendship as John, the loving disciple, cherished for his well-beloved Gaius, whom he loved in the truth, and to whom, in the season of his sickness, he thus touchingly poured out his heart's affectionate sympathy: "Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul" (3 Jn. 1:2). Count such a friend and such friendship among God's sweetest and holiest gifts. The blessings of which it may be to you the sanctifying channel are immense. The tender sympathy, the jealous watchfulness, the confidential repose, the faithful admonition, and above all, the intercessory prayer connected with Christian friendship may be placed in the inventory of our most inestimable and precious things.

It is not therefore the use but the abuse, of our affections—not their legitimate exercise but their idolatrous tendency—over which we have need to exercise the greatest vigilance. It is not our love to the creature against which God contends, but it is in not allowing our love for him to subordinate all other loves. We may love the creature, but we may not love the creature more than the Creator.

When you lose sight of the Giver and forget him in the gift, then comes the painful process of weaning.

When your heart burns its incense before some human shrine, and the cloud as it ascends hides the beauty and the excellence of Jesus, then comes the painful proves of weaning.

When the absorbing claims and the engrossing attentions of some loved one are placed in competition and are allowed to clash with the claims of God, and the service due from you personally to his cause and truth, then comes the painful process of weaning.

When devotion to his creatures deadens your heart to the Lord, lessens your interest in his cause, congeals your zeal and love and liberality, detaches you from the public means of grace, withdraws you from the closet, the Bible, and the communion of saints, thus propagating leanness of soul and robbing God of his glory, then comes the painful process of weaning.

Christ will be the first in your affections. God will be supreme in your service. And his kingdom and righteousness must take precedence over all other things.

All praise to God, who reigns above,
the God of all creation,
the God of wonders, pow'r, and love,
the God of our salvation!
With healing balm my soul he fills,
the God who every sorrow stills,
to God all praise and glory!

(Johann J. Schütz, 1675, cento)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.