JOLLYBLOGGER: When You Just Don't Feel Like Loving the Word of God

Yesteday, I did a post on Psalm 119:1 suggesting that the key to happiness is found in devoting ourselves to the Word of God, wholeheartedly, per the instructions of Psalm 119. Today I want to follow that up by quoting from my sermon notes for this Sunday as I address the problem of having a divided heart that really doesn't want to devote itself to the Word of God.

I'll give my usual preface when I quote from my sermon notes. I write sermons to be heard, not read. I type out every sermon word for word, but as I type it I picture myself standing before the congregation. I just point that out because when you write something to be heard, and particularly when writing a sermon, you are going for a different affect than when you when you are writing to be read. Sermons aren't as tightly argued as written tomes, they have to appeal more to the emotions. Anyway, I hope some of what follows is helpful.

And, I think that all of you John Piper fans out there will quickly see his fingerprints and my debt to him as you read through this.

Psalm 119:2 says:

Blessed are they who keep his statutes
and seek him with all their heart.

In this verse we again see the link – happiness comes from keeping God’s statutes. It comes from knowing that you are seeking to live a life pleasing to Him.

But how are we able to keep his statutes? We are enabled to keep His statutes when we seek God with all our heart. Jeremiah 29:13 says:

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

And therein lies the problem doesn’t it. We don’t really seek God with all our hearts. Ephesians 4:14 addresses this. This verse speaks of what happens as we grow and mature:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.

Our hearts and our minds are often tossed up by every wind of doctrine, but even more to the point, we have divided hearts. James 1:5-8:

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6 But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

By the way, if you are wondering why I would use a Scripture like James 1 to talk about a divided heart when it clearly addresses double mindedness, I would point out that in the ancient world they didn’t make the same kinds of distinctions we make today – they didn’t see that there was a division between heart and head the way we do today. So, the word “heart” meant the totality of one’s being, with the primacy being on the mind, the intellect.

So, it is reasonable to assume that what James says here about a divided heart can apply equally to a divided heart.

Matthew 22:37-40 tells us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and strength. That is our problem, we love Him half-heartedly.

In Psalm 86:11 David says “unite my heart to fear your name.”

This is what we are after, but the question is “how do we do this?”

Proverbs 21:1 tells us this:

The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord;
he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.

Ultimately, God must change our heart, He must be the one to give us a heart that desires to love His word and to keep His statutes.

C. S. Lewis says that when he came to believe in Christ he had the sense that it was not so much him choosing Christ as it was him being chosen by Christ. He said that he had the sensation that he was swept along in something much bigger than himself. That’s how it is with us and our divided hearts, if our hearts are to change, God must change them.

So, does that mean that we are hopeless, we just have to sit around waiting for God to zap us with a new heart?

No, and I would give you just a couple of thoughts on this to help you out practically.

First of all, let me tell you something from my own experience that I have found tremendously helpful.

On many occasions I have felt my own heart growing cold toward God and the things of God and I have prayed a simple prayer that goes like this:

God, I know in my heart that I really don't want you more than other things, but I want to want you more than other things. Please change my wants.

That’s probably the most honest prayer I have ever prayed. I have tried many times and in many ways to work up a feeling of devotion to God and get serious and it never really works.

But, what I have found is that this is a prayer that God will honor. It is an admission of the truth – the truth is I don’t want God, I want my own pleasures. God knows that – I can use all of the religious language in the world, and I can even use some big theological or spiritual sounding words, but they don’t mean anything if my heart is cold toward God.

This is a prayer of confession and an acknowledgement of my submission to the sovereignty of God. And I have, on more than one occasion, having prayed that prayer, had the experience that John Wesley talked about when he said that he felt his heart “strangely warmed.”

So, if you find that you really aren’t seeking God with all your heart, confess that to Him, just pray and ask Him to change your heart.

Secondly, I would point out that there is a way to warm your heart to the things of God.

Some people talk about their favorite verse, or maybe a favorite poem or a favorite book. I have a favorite paragraph outside of the Bible that I think is one of the most important paragraphs ever written. This was actually a part of a sermon by Thomas Chalmers. I’ve shared this with you before, and you can count on my sharing it with you again many times. Chalmers says:

There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world; either by a demonstration of the world's vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment; so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon, not to resign an old affection which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one. My purpose is to show, that from the constitution of our nature, the former method is altogether incompetent and ineffectual and that the latter method will alone suffice for the rescue and recovery of the heart from the wrong affection that domineers over it.

Do you have a cold heart? Chalmers says there are two ways that you can get rid of a cold heart. One way is simply to show the ugliness of what your heart is set on and try with all your might to stop loving it and to love something else.

Or, you can set before your heart something more beautiful that will draw your affections toward it.

I’ve seen this especially among teenagers – actually in my own life and in other teenagers I have known and worked with. I’ve seen it in young adults who are dating. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of the American dating scene, so don’t take this as an endorsement of that, but it illustrates a point.

Watch a guy when he gets dumped by his girlfriend. The world could be ending. The same thing goes for girls.

That young person will be absolutely distraught and will be sure that life will never, ever go back to normal. That is until . . . they meet someone else.

I can’t tell you how many times that happened to me when I was a young person – I got dumped a lot – (we'll have a moment of silence now while everyone feels sorry for me). Lynette was the only woman who didn’t dump me – she took pity on me.

I would be devastated until I found someone else to date and then I had forgotten about the last girl.

Well, that’s a silly example, but it makes a point. The way to turn your heart away from something that should be unattractive is not to tell your heart how unattractive the other thing is but to bring something before your heart that is more attractive.

Too often in the church we take the first of Chalmers approaches. We go to people and say “you better start loving God and obeying God and you better love Him from your heart and I mean now, right now and if you don't you're gonna be in big trouble mister, DO YOU HEAR ME??” How attractive does that make God seem?

Can you imagine my wife sneaking up behind me one day and putting me in a hammerlock and saying “you better fall in love with me right now buster, or you’re gonna be sorry, I’ll make you pay?”

Of course not – that’s ridiculous. But we do that when we're trying to get people to love God don’t we? We tell our kids – you better start loving God right now, or you’re gonna pay, and I mean really pay. The more serious people say “you better start loving God right now or you’re gonna burn in hell forever.”

Call me crazy, but that’s not the kind of thing that endears one to God.

I fell in love with Lynette just because of who she was. Looking at her, talking to her, getting to know her, eating her lasagna, all of that drew love out of my heart for her. That was it – just setting her in front of me was enough to make me love her.

Folks, God is more beautiful and gracious than we can imagine. We don’t need to threaten people into loving Him, we don’t even need to try to motivate people to love Him. Proclaim Him, talk about who He is and that is sufficient to cause people to want to seek Him with all their hearts and to love and obey His word.

C. S. Lewis said it this way:

“We are halfhearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”