Diagnosing Your Heart Condition (Matthew Sermon 112)

Introduction

Truly, it is said that God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. If it had been up to me, John’s gospel would have ended at Chapter 20. What an incredible end there is there, and I know we’re preaching on Matthew, I haven’t forgotten. Your pastor hasn’t lost his mind. But this is how I’m beginning the sermon today. You remember what happened in John 20, how Jesus, resurrected from the dead, appeared suddenly through locked doors and stood in the midst of his disciples and said, “Peace be with you,” and showed them the evidence of his resurrection, his hands and his side, and said again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, I’m sending you.”

Thomas wasn’t there. Doubting Thomas. Over that next week, he asserted that unless he saw the physical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection, he would never believe. A week later, Jesus comes again, though the doors are locked, and stands in their midst, and says, “Peace be with you,” and then he shows the evidence of his resurrection to Thomas. Hands and his side. Stop doubting and believe. And Thomas makes that confession, which everyone on the face of the earth must make if they want to be saved.

That saving confession, which must come from the heart, saying, to Jesus, “My Lord, and my God.” That’s the pinnacle. Maybe the pinnacle of the Bible right there. The evidence of Jesus’ deity, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and then a sinner standing and saying, “My Lord and my God,” to Jesus. “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And then Jesus did many other miraculous signs which are in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and believing you may have life in his name.” That sounds like a good place to end to me. What do you think? But there is a whole chapter 21, after it. What is the purpose of that chapter 21?

You remember what happened, how the disciples seemingly having nothing to do, decided to go back to fishing. I mean like physical fishing, not fishing for men, I mean, fishing. And so they’re there fishing, in the Sea of Galilee, and suddenly a stranger stands by the shore and says, “Have you caught any fish and they’d fished all night and hadn’t caught anything. And he said, “Why don’t you try the right side of the boat.” Suddenly the nets are so filled that they are ripping and breaking and it suddenly dawns on them who the stranger is by the shore. It’s the Lord. Peter dives in, swims in there, they barely are able to haul that filled net to shore. Jesus makes them a breakfast of fish and bread and serves them.

And then he turns to Simon Peter, and starts to work on him. You remember what happened, don’t you? Simon Peter had denied Jesus three times. Three times he said that he didn’t even know him. He was trying to save his own life. The very thing that Jesus told us we should never try to do, whoever tries to save his life, will lose it. And so, he denied him.

And that very night, you remember in the providence of God, and the sovereignty of Christ, Jesus, being moved from one side of his trial to the next, just as the cock crows and Peter has denied him for the third time, Jesus turned and looked right at him, without saying a word. What did he need to say? “You are guilty. You’re guilty of not loving me, you’re guilty of denying me.” Just the crushing blow of that look, and you know what it did to Peter.

Oh, he went outside and wept bitterly, he wept. To look in the face of Jesus and to see that disappointment. Is there a future for me? Is there a place for me? I mean, yes, Jesus, you’re risen. But is there a place for me? I’m the one who denied you. I don’t love you like I should, I know it now. I know who you are. I agree with Thomas. You’re My Lord and my God, but what am I? And is there a future for me?

And so, Jesus says to Simon, he says, “Simon son of John. Do you truly love me more than these?” I don’t know what “more than these” means. More than these fish? More than these friends? More than these people love me? Do you love me more than you love anything else? I don’t really know. I don’t have to know ’cause I’m not preaching on John 21 this morning, but at any rate, “Do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord”, he said, “You know I love you.” And Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Sometime later, he turned to him and said again, “Simon, son of John. Do you love me, do you truly love me?” “Yes, Lord,” he said. “You know that I love you.” “Take care of my sheep,” he said. The third time he said to him, “Simon Son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus had asked him this question three times. Now let me ask you, do you think that Jesus knew this would hurt Peter? I think he knew it. Did he intend to hurt Peter? I think he did. But not the kind of hurt that Satan would intend or an enemy would intend. It’s the heart of a friend. It’s the wounds of a friend. And the issue is, “Do you love me?” Jesus is saying. And I just feel that this is vital. We don’t just need to know who Jesus is, we don’t just need to know that his death was for us, and all that, we need to have this problem dealt with in our hearts that we don’t really love Jesus.

And we need Jesus to stand in front of us, and probe our hearts to reveal to us that we really don’t love him like we should. And it hurts, friends. And so, I don’t have any desire to hurt you today but Jesus may. And I just want to step out of the way and let him do his work on you, because we’re coming, as I said two weeks ago, to the foot of Sinai here. This is the law, friends, with all of it’s delightful language and loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength we know the truth, don’t we? We don’t love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Some time ago, I came across these lyrics, “Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession, give me one glorious ambition for my life to know and follow, hard after you.” I couldn’t sing it. I couldn’t sing it. I actually kind of almost hated it. I was like turn the page. I don’t wanna sing this one, ’cause it just isn’t true of me. I don’t have one pure and holy passion. I’m a man of many passions. And I yearn to be a man of one passion, I really want that.

And so John 21 actually ministers to me. Maybe it ministers to you to have Jesus stand in front of you and probe you on this very issue. Do you love him? Do you love Jesus? Do you love him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength? Do you? And that’s what this sermon is about today. It’s really diagnosing your heart condition. None of us enjoys a trip to the doctor. You know that annual check-up. Some just go ahead and skip it. That’s not a good idea, but that’s what we do. And so this is just diagnosis. This is just God probing us, by the Scripture. He’s probing our hearts. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

I. What God Wants More Than Anything Else

Jesus Texted by a Lawyer

Now, let’s set the context. You remember Jesus was in the final week of his life, and his enemies are there trying to make trouble for him and Jesus deals with many, many different difficult questions. And then along comes this lawyer from the Pharisees, and he says “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?”

Jesus’ Very Orthodox Answer

Jesus gives a very orthodox-ed answer as you remember. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Love the Lord Your God with Everything You Have

We saw two weeks ago as we looked at this, “with all your heart” means that central part of you. Your heart is that part of you that thinks, it feels, it decides, it plans, it desires everything inside you, that heart of you, the core of you, love God. And love God “with all of your soul,” the “nephesh”, the life principle, with every fiber of your living being as you live and breathe, love God. And “with all your mind,” the part of you that thinks, and reasons and meditates, the part of you that imagines your thought life. All your mental powers, your science and philosophy, and logic, and all of that thinking, love God in all of it. And then with all your strength. With your body, present your body. All of its powers and its faculties to God, ready for service. God, I want you to use my body. I want you to use all of my strength, I wanna be poured out like a drink offering, I wanna drop exhausted on the pillow at the end of the day, having given everything for God.

With ALL Your Heart, and ALL Your Soul, and ALL Your Mind and ALL Your Strength

And it says with all of your heart, and all of your soul and all of your mind and all of your strength, and the full teaching of the Word of God is all the time. So you do all of that all the time and never fail. Now you see why I’ve said this is a trip to the foot of Mount Sinai. Who wants to stand up here and testify. I have kept this law. I have kept this law. This week has been the best week of my life. I have kept this law 100 percent. Who would dare to testify like that, I wouldn’t.

In Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian, the character that’s moving from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, before he comes to the cross, he comes to Mount Sinai and it’s like a mountain leaning over ready to crush him. And I think we think, “Oh wow, boy. The first and greatest commandment, love God.” It’s the very thing, friends that we don’t do.

II. A Second Commandment Like It

And so we talked about that last time. And Jesus gives a second commandment which I’m going to speak fully on, more fully next week, but he said “The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” The two of them are interconnected. I’ll make that point next week.

Everything Depends on these Two Commands

But everything, all the law and the prophets, everything God wants from you everything he commands from you hangs on these two things, summarized by these two things: Love God and love your neighbor.

“Everything, all the law and the prophets, everything God wants from you, everything he commands from you … [is] summarized by these two things: Love God and love your neighbor.”

Judgment Day: God Actually Requires This

And I said last week, God actually in fact requires this of us. It’s not theoretical. It’s not theoretical, it’s not like he’s gonna dismiss it and say, “Oh, well we all know nobody kept it. And so you’re fine. I’m gonna grade on the curve.” God doesn’t grade on the curve. Did you or did you not love me in this moment or at that moment, etcetera? And then you just start to see the times where you didn’t piled up.

And I said at this point, you must understand the purpose of the law, is it not to crush self-confidence? Is it not just to crush it into a powder where you realize, I cannot do this? I can’t be perfect, I can’t. I must have a savior. The law brings wrath dear friends, not salvation, Romans 4, read about it. It doesn’t bring salvation. The law brings wrath. By the works of the law, Romans 3:20, no one, no flesh will be justified in his sight. You can’t do this, that’s the testimony of the Word of God.

But thanks be to God, there’s a gospel, amen? Thanks be to God, that’s not the final word. Could have been, that could have been the final word on us. You didn’t love me. And therefore go to hell. God could have said that, that could have been the final word. We are condemned by that law, ’cause God really did mean it.

But it says in Romans 8, “What the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son.” Praise be to God. For sending Jesus who went and actually did this for 30 plus years, he actually did it in space and time with his body, he loved God perfectly every moment of his life. And he won for us a perfect righteousness that he now just offers you as a free gift. Oh dear lost friend, that’s your only hope, that’s the righteousness God actually does require, he’s just gonna give it to you as a gift. Just as a free gift.

He’d just say “Here, put this on. Give me all of your wickedness, and all of your sin.” And he puts it on Jesus, Jesus dies under the wrath of God. Remember I said the law brings wrath. There’s the wrath at the cross. And he just gives you a gift. Perfect righteousness. Well, that was all last week.

III. What Does it Mean to Love God?

Now I wanna ask a deeper question, “What does this mean?” Thanks be to God that if you have trusted in God, this righteousness is credited to your account, it’s imputed to you or reckoned to you. You’re thought of as righteous as Jesus, is that the end of our salvation? You’re free from the law, oh happy condition. You don’t need to love God with any part of you.

Is that so? Is that what the Bible teaches? That cannot be. You know, what he says, “Okay now that you’re forgiven now that I see you as perfectly righteous from this point forward, for the rest of your existence on into eternity, I see you as perfectly righteous, now I want you to get up and obey this law.” Romans 8:4, “For what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of the flesh, to be a sin offering. And so we condemn the flesh in the flesh in order that,” listen, “the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

So he actually does want you to obey this, friends. He wants you to love him now and for the rest of your life, and more and more and more, as you live by the Spirit. It’s what he wants you to do. He wants you to walk in this law with all of your heart.

So I’ve tried to understand what it means to love God. I’ve studied my own heart, I’ve studied the scriptures, I study other people as they study me. I look and I try to understand love. Love is a pretty common topic in our society. What are the odds that you’ll turn on the radio and hear the word “love” within the first minute in some song or something. It’s just all over the place.

Jonathan Edwards: Treatise on Religious Affections

So it’s a very familiar topic. What does it mean here? Well, I thank God for the brothers and sisters in Christ that have gone before us, and one of my favorite men from church history is Jonathan Edwards. And Edwards kind of sorted it all out for me, in a book that he wrote called Treatise on Religious Affections.

Let me give you the context historically, of what Edwards wrote. It was the first great awakening, perhaps one of the greatest revivals in all of church history. It was in 1742, and the Holy Spirit was poured out. There were sweeping changes, there was religious excitement, there were major upheavals, all kinds of things were happening. Huge crowds were leaving their fields and their shops and going out to hear gospel preaching, especially George Whitfield. People were coming from miles around to hear Whitfield and others preaching the gospel. And many people swooned, sometimes even physically, under the influence of the gospel. And there were some changes, some changes happened.

However, you know in the parable of the seed and the soils, Jesus warned about what they call the stony ground hearers, the ones that hear the Word with joy and immediately respond, but when trouble comes they quickly fall away. And so now it’s been a number of years later, five or six years later. And Jonathan Edwards is looking back on the experience of the Great Awakening and what’s happened since then. And he’s probably the most careful thinker and accurate spiritual assessor, maybe, in all of church history. And he put his skills to work in assessing the nature of true revival or more deeply the nature of true religion, a true right relationship with God, what is true Christianity, that’s what he was looking at, what’s the truth?

And he likened the initial enthusiasm of many of those hearers of the gospel to the cherry blossoms of spring, that come each of them promising some sweet cherry fruits later on, but many of them flutter to the ground without ever bearing any fruit at all. But some of them ripen into maturity and produce delicious sweet cherries. So he wanted to assess spiritual experience and try to get at what is the nature of true Christian experience, true Christian religion.

Now, there are opposite views of the Great Awakening two equal and opposite errors concerning all of the excitement and outward emotion. Error number one, is that religion is only a matter of the emotions, the feelings and especially extreme outward displays of emotion: raising of hands, melting, falling on the ground, screaming for joy, dancing in the aisles, whatever. Big displays of emotion. And if you don’t get to that level, you’re really not truly saved.

But then there is an opposite error, that religion is never in any of those displays. And if you see any of them you know there religion isn’t. Religion is more in the reason and judgment, and in dutiful behavior. Dear friends, both of those are ditches. Edward sought to steer in the middle to try to find what it really was. Satan’s scheme here, friends, was to push unstable souls into excesses, and that created a backlash effect.

Early in the awakening, Satan pushed people to extremes, to burning clothes and books and doing all kinds of things and just outward huge displays of emotion. And the tendency was, if you don’t have all that you’re not really saved. And a few people only a few people seemed interested in trying to probe what was really going on in the hearts of people. Edwards was one of them. What were the root causes? Eventually people just threw out the baby with the bathwater, went the opposite direction, you ended up with a cold formalism, in which no emotional displays were permitted at all.

So he’s like, what is the truth, what is the nature of true religion? And as he thought through, prayed through, the Lord led him to this text, 1 Peter 1:8. Just listen, don’t turn there, but just listen, “Though, you have not seen him,” Christ, “you believe in him; and even though you do not see him now, you love him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” You love him, the invisible one, you believe in him.

I think it’s beautiful, isn’t it? That it was Peter that wrote that, the one who was probed by Jesus. Do you love me, do you love me? He says, you’ve never seen him, but just like me, you love him, don’t you? And so, Edward said, there it is. True religion then in great part consists in holy affections, emotions, holy emotions, holy affections.

Now this is what he does, he breaks open the human heart, he breaks open the human heart so we can understand what it does. And he said the human heart has two capabilities. There are two things it can do. Okay? First of all it can understand, and second, it can have affections toward what it understands. These are the two things the heart does, you do it all the time. You may not know you’re doing it, but you are.

And so, first the analytical side, the heart has the ability to perceive things, everything it encounters, and to assess those things, to analyze them, to understand them for what they are, to judge them. That’s what the heart does.

Secondly then, the heart has the ability to be inclined toward or repelled away from everything you’re analyzing and assessing. And you do it without any matter of the will, it’s not something you’re choosing to do, it’s just the way your heart is. In short, then you’ll either love or hate to a greater or lesser degree everything you analyze in the universe. Everything. So then, I just started to think, I get it now, I get it. It’s got to do with attraction and repulsion, my engineering mind started to kick in. Alright, bear with me, guys. That’s what you have as a pastor. This is who I am. I’m a mechanical engineer.

Years ago, I worked at a company that made ion implanters and there were these awesome magnets, these rare earth magnets samarium-cobalt magnets, strongest magnets I’ve ever seen in my life. Boy, were they fun? We had lots of fun with those things. You could do lots of pranks, like putting important messages for your roommate. And most of the message is covered by a magnet that could not be moved with 10 men. Oh, that was fun, I enjoyed that.

“Whatever you do be sure you…” That kind of thing, and covered with the magnet. And I remember seeing my roommate leaning on it, pushing, trying to pull it in something and that was fun. That’s sick, though, that you could even do that to someone that you love and a friend but I did that. The Lord has his ways though, that magnet erased all my credit cards too. So, you know, the Lord, he got me back for that one, it was right there in my pocket. And then I went to use the card and that was that.

But I remember these magnets and I would hold it and you could just throw a paper clip and any, just within feet, and you just see the thing go like that and just move to this magnet. And we did all sorts of stuff. We put it like on the other side of walls and we’d stick things there and wonder how it’s sticking on the wall, and it was just a lot of fun. We did all kinds of things.

So alright, now you have this image of this powerful magnet in your heart. The object lesson is on the basic nature of the human heart. God has designed your heart with the capacity to be attracted to or repelled from everything that there is, to a greater or lesser degree, all the way down to no attraction or repulsion because you know nothing about it at all. That’s where you start and the more you get to know things then you more love or hate. That’s what happens. And again, the amazing thing is you actually have no control over your heart as it does this. This is something just the heart does. It has to do with the nature of the heart.

And so now in comes mathematical engineering analysis part two. Picture a number line, okay. And you’ve got the plus side and zero and the minus side. What your heart does is it puts everything on that number line, in an array. Positive and negative. I love it, I don’t love it. I desire it, I don’t desire it. I want it or I wanna stay away from it, to a greater or lesser degree. Everything in the universe, it’s all there, your heart is just doing it.

And what is God saying? God has to be number one affection farthest as far right on your positive number line as possible, and nothing can be equal to it, or surpass it, or frankly even be close to it. You must love God more than anything else in the created universe. That’s what it’s saying. And Edwards is saying true religion is in the nature of the attraction to God. And that you love Him with holy affection. That’s what it is.

And at the moment of conversion everything gets rearranged – Not everything, but many, many things, all things of spiritual import get rearranged. You heard a testimony earlier, 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation.” Everything gets rearranged, and then, sanctification starts to move things, you start to love God more and more and more. And love the people of God more and more and the Word of God, more and more. And the kingdom of God more and more. And all of the things of God, that’s sanctification.

Conversely, you start to hate sin more and you start to hate what it does to you and hate pride, and lust, and you want it out more and more. That’s it. That’s the nature of true religion, that’s what’s going on in your heart. And as I said, we don’t have any control over our hearts directly, we just can’t. All we can do is just know our hearts, and say, “God, God, there isn’t an infinite gap between you and created things in my life. There are some times that it actually seems that I love some other things more than I love you. God, would you change me?” And that yearning to change is evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in your life.

Oh, I wanna convict you, but I wanna encourage you too this morning, I want you to know when the Spirit’s at work in your life. And if you’re discontent with how little you love God, then that’s the Spirit’s work in you. And if you yearn to love him more, then that’s the Spirit’s work in you. Ezekiel 36:27, “I will put my Spirit in you and I will move you to keep my laws and my decrees.” And so this is the first and greatest one. He’s gonna put the Spirit in you and move you to love him. He’s gonna move you to do that.

Loving Nothing More Than or Equal to God

And so compared to our love for God, any other affection should look even like hatred. So God should be on your number line, so far that when you stand at the God position and look down, there’s such a gap between you and the next thing that it almost looks like hatred. And so, Jesus says in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife, and his children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.” That’s what it means now. You understand what that means. It doesn’t mean you actually hate those, but by comparison, standing there at the position of your love for God, everything else it’s almost all the same at that point. That’s how much you love God.

Cheerful Sacrifice of Obedience

Alright, so what then should love look like in my life? That’s what it is. How should it play out in my life? So I’ve thought about that too. You know the Bible verse, it says, “We love because he first loved us.” Well, I think that that has more to teach us, I think we also love like he first loved us, He teaches us how to love. Right. So we should love like he has loved us.

How has he loved us? This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. He’s demonstrating love. God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners, Christ died for you. And he demonstrates the heart of it, when he says, “Do not fear, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He just enjoys doing this, it’s for the joy set before him that he did it. So I put all that together and this is what I think love for God is: Love for God, then, is measured by cheerful sacrifice in the obedience to his commands. You’ve gotta have all three, friends, if you don’t have all three, you’re not loving God. Cheerful sacrifice in obeying his commands.

Sacrificial Obedience

Let’s start with the last one, obedience. You cannot love God without obeying him. John 14:15, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” “This is love for God,” 1 John 5:3, “This is love for God: to obey his commands.” God is telling you, if you love me, you’ll obey me, you must obey my commands.

Okay. So it has to be obedience, but is that enough? No, there has to be sacrificial obedience. It has to cost you something. I mean, you just know the way it is. Valentine’s Day is coming up, friends. Husbands, let me say something, don’t forget it. Love your wives but let me tell you something. They wanna be sure that there’s some sacrifice involved. Don’t dig something out of your glove compartment and give it to her. There’s gotta be some sacrifice. It’s gotta hurt you, it’s gotta cost you something. If it doesn’t cost you something, it isn’t love. Did God’s love for us cost him anything? Oh yes, it did. He sent his Son for us. It’s got to be sacrificial obedience to the law. It’s gotta cost you something to obey, and he’s gonna make you prove it too. He’s gonna make things hard for you sometimes to obey to see how much do you love him.

But that’s not enough, either. Isn’t that amazing how much God wants from us? It’s not enough to just obey, it’s not enough even just sacrificially obey, you have to cheerfully sacrificially obey. You have to do it with joy and delight in your heart. You have to want to do it. We’ve covered that before. Valentine’s Day, don’t tell your wife, “Hey, I didn’t take this out of the glove department, I did just what the pastor said. I want you to know how much this cost me. Alright. I have obeyed and I have sacrificed.” That will not get you any further than giving the cheap gift dug out of your glove compartment. She needs to know how much you love giving it to her. Right? And so you have to have a delight in the giving. This is gonna work horizontally next week when the same definition is gonna work for people too. Cheerful sacrificial obedience, that’s what it’s gonna be for people, too.

But here’s the thing, it says in 1 Corinthians 13:3, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,” that’s sacrifice, huge sacrifice, “but if I have not love, it profits me nothing.” What is it saying? There’s a heart disposition that apparently is missing. Well, this guy is dying for people. And that’s powerful, isn’t it? God doesn’t just want the sacrifice, he wants you to delight in doing it for God.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, when a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy, he went and sold everything he had and bought that field.” I think it’s a privilege for us in the Christian life to buy that field, in some sense, again and again. Day after day, you get to sell everything for Jesus. Day after day for the joy set before you, you get to make sacrifices for Jesus. I’m not in any way denying the permanence of justification or anything, you’ve got to feel it’s yours, I’m just saying we get to make that sacrifice again and again, and that’s the nature, the essence of our love relationship with God.  “For God loves a cheerful giver,” dear friends.

IV. Diagnosing Your Own Heart

How Love for God is Assessed: Cheerful Sacrifice of Obedience

So there it is.  So diagnose your own heart. What’s going on? Is there a principle of sacrifice in your relationship with God? Does it cost you anything to be a Christian? Does your quiet time in the morning cost you something? Does your giving, your financial giving, cost you something? Does your service in your ministry to the church here, or in any other way, does your evangelism cost you anything?

And when it does, are you doing it cheerfully or under compulsion? Do you feel like you have to do it? You gotta do something to prove yourself to God? Well, you’re back under the old work system then. Are you doing it cheerfully or under compulsion? And is the pattern of your giving to God set by his word, by his commands? He’s told you what he wants. Are you following his laws, and his commands? Is that what’s going on in your life? Diagnose your heart, Friends.

Evidence that the Love of God is Not in You

And you know what’s gonna happen when you do? You’re gonna come to the conclusion that I did earlier this morning, and I just said, “How can I preach this sermon? How can I preach? I feel like my heart is distant from you, I don’t love you like I should. I don’t. So who am I to stand up in front of a bunch of people and tell them they need to love God?” And I just kinda was like that for as much as 90 minutes this morning and I kept thinking, and then suddenly I felt the grace of God come into my heart. And I felt then like the Lord testified to me. Now you’re ready to preach, because you’re not preaching as a self-righteous man. I’m not standing in front of you telling you that I do this 100 percent. I’m just telling you, I wish I did. I yearn, I hunger and thirst to do this.

“What is love for God? It is cheerful sacrificial obedience to his commands.”

V. Therapy for Distant Hearts: James 4

And so what do I do then if my heart’s distant? I want to commend briefly, another passage of scripture. It’s printed right in your outline. James 4:4-10. I just wanna read through it briefly, it’s not another sermon within a sermon, but I just want to bring it to you to heal you.

Start with Christ: Imputed Righteousness is His Perfect Obedience to these Commandments

First and foremost I wanna bring you back again to the cross. If you feel like your heart’s distant, remember this, Christ is your righteousness. Keep that in mind, never forget. It’s not how much you love God, it’s how much he loved you in Jesus. Never forget that. Go to that again and again. But is that enough? No, we need to have our wandering hearts brought back.

James: Steps to Recovering our love for God

James 4:4-10. “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think the scripture says without reason that the Spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you, Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

There’s the remedy. Just let me say some brief things. First of all, be honest and call the wandering of your heart what God calls it: spiritual adultery. Don’t call it by any other name. The thing, the created thing you love more than God is an idol. Someone who loves idols is an idolater. Call it what it really is, spiritual adultery is idolatry.

So identify the idols. What is it? Is it worldly pleasure? Is it sexual sin? Is it materialism? Is it Power or workaholism? What is it? Is it worldly entertainment? Is it food? What is the idol that you love more than Jesus? Identify it, and call it spiritual adultery to love it more than you love Jesus. This is the essence of worldliness. Understand the jealousy of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Spirit he caused to live in you, envies over you.

Imagine a husband and wife and they go to some party, and the wife is starting to be a little too familiar with another guy there. What is that husband going to feel toward that? What’s he gonna feel? That’s what the Holy Spirit feels when you wander into idolatry. He’s jealous over your affections. And he goes and gets you. And he will not let you wonder, and so just understand that that spirit he caused to live in you is envious over your heart.

And then rejoice in the promise that God will give you more grace. Anybody here need more grace? I need more grace, I need fresh infusions of grace. Not just grace for justification, but I need grace to stay loving Jesus. I need grace right now. So give me more grace, God, I need more grace. Just humble yourself and say, “I need more grace.” And James points to the scriptures to the way to get it. You get more grace here, this is where it comes from. The Scripture says that he gives us more grace. Read the scripture, get the grace from the Bible. “Grace to you,” Paul promises it. So go get it, go get yourself some more grace to deal with that idolatry in your heart.

“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Then humble yourself. Identify pride in your heart. It’s always pride that causes us to stray from loving God. First of all, we make too much of our own pleasure and happiness. I must be happy, I must be happy right now, I need to do this. That’s just pride, friends. And it’s pride for you to say, “I know best how to make myself happy.” God actually knows better than you do how to make you happy. So let God oppose the proud, but let him give grace to the humble.

Then submit yourself humbly to God. Resist the devil. It is the devil who is the pimp, who is dressing the world up, the prostitute world, painting her eyes and making her look attractive, that’s his doing, that’s what he does. Resist him in this, and he’ll flee from you. O blessed thought! The Holy Spirit will make him run. The omnipotent spirit will turn him and put him to flight, if you’ll just dig in and resist.

Come near to God then. Say, “Lord, I love you. I’m sorry, I strayed. I’m sorry I allowed my heart’s precious affections, the ointment of my heart to be poured out at the foot of an idol. Please forgive me. Please forgive me and take me back.” Come near to God, and what is the promise? He will come near to you. Then “wash your hands, you sinners.” That means turn away from the things you were doing. Stop doing them. Don’t just keep doing this again and again, wash your hands, change your life. “Purify your heart, you double-minded.” Start thinking differently about those idols. And be willing to be broken and hurt: “Grieve, mourn and wail.” Peter wept when Jesus looked at him. Maybe you need to weep and cry. This is one of those scriptures that the good-time people and good-time churches will never preach. Grieve, mourn, you all need to grieve, mourn, and wail. Hey, let’s all have a time together of grieving, mourning and wailing. That’s sometimes what needs to happen, dear friends. Cry. And then humble yourself before the Lord and let him lift you up. Spiritual physician telling you how to heal your straying heart.

We come now to the time of the Lord’s supper. I can’t think of a better time for you to look after your heart. It says in Corinthians that in order for you to come to the Lord’s supper, you have to assess your spiritual condition. You have to look inwardly. Have you been convicted today? Then bring that to God, and say, “Lord, heal me. Draw me in and use the Lord’s supper, use the Lord’s Supper to draw a sinner like me back into a healthy relationship with you.” The Lord’s supper is for people who have testified plainly to faith in Christ. We had baptism. They’ve testified by water baptism. If you have come to faith in Christ, and have testified to that by water baptism, you’re welcome at this table. If not, I urge you to refrain lest you eat and drink judgment on yourself, but instead, I urge you to come to Christ and trust in him.

Close with me, if you would, in prayer. Father, I thank you for the message of the word and as we give our attention now to the Lord’s supper, we pray for the sending forth of your Holy Spirit, so that we can enjoy you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.

The greatest grief of my life… that I don’t love God more than I do!!

Look at what God the Father has done for me… by creating me and sustaining me with food, clothing, shelter, and a hundred thousand pleasures; by choosing me before the foundation of the world and calling me to be one of His own;  by granting me saving faith and repentance;  by forgiving all my sins and adopting me to be a child of God;  by sending the gift of the Holy Spirit; by bearing with me all these many years and sustaining me spiritually as a believer

Look at what Christ the Son has done for me… overlooking my blasphemies and my low opinion of him while I was lost; taking all my sin from me and laying on His own shoulders;  dying in my place under the wrath of God;  rising again to give me new life; sending His Spirit into my heart;  protecting me from the Evil One and interceding constantly on my behalf at the right hand of God

Look at what the Holy Spirit has done for me… convicting me of sin and working faith within me, revealing Christ crucified in my heart; sealing me as a child of God, breathing our “Abba, Father” within me;  convicting me in an ongoing basis of sin and bringing me again and again to repentance;  leading me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake

And yet, I struggle with how cold and distant my heart is from God

How like the church at Ephesus I can be, forsaking my first love

How distinterested in the things of God I can be

How I can sing a passionate songs about God and my heart be far from Him:

Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after you

When I see lyrics like that, I am convicted by the weakness of my love for Christ

I want instead to burn with love for God… but my heart is sluggish and peevish

This morning we are confronted for the second time with the First and Greatest Commandment:

Matthew 22:37 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

What is this love?  That is the question ahead of us this morning

More than that, how can we remedy the problem if we know we lack that love??

Love is the greatest subject in the world…

Love inspires more songs, more poetry, more novels, more drama, more artistic expressions than any other topic by far

We use the word love to express a remarkably wide array of feelings:  we can love cherry pie, college basketball, our newborn infant, our wife of thirty years, our favorite movie, a beautiful sunset, and yes, we can love God

We use the word “love” to express all of these attachments, these attractions, these drives and desires

I. What God Wants More Than Anything Else

A. Jesus Tested by a Lawyer

Matthew 22:34-36  Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.  ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:  ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

B. Jesus Very Orthodox Answer

Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

Fuller account:

Mark 12:29-30  “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  ³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

C. Love the Lord your God with everything you have

1. “with all your heart”

a. Heart = the central part of you… the part that loves and hates, the part that thinks and chooses… in Scripture, the heart does MANY THINGS

i) Thinking

ii) Feeling

iii) Deciding

iv) Planning

v) Desiring

2. With all your soul

Usually throughout the Scriptures, however, the “nephesh” refers to the human soul…

a. BUT we could take “nephesh” to refer to the principle of LIFE

b. As if to say “with every fiber of your being” love God

c. Or “as you live and breathe, so you must love God”

3. With all your mind

a. The mind is that part of you that thinks… that reasons… that meditates…

b. Christ is commanding that all your thought life be pleasing to God, in every way

c. Your intellect given fully to loving God… to delighting in the depths of His mind

d. Your imagination in full services to the worship and admiration of God

e. Your mental powers, your science, your philosophy, your logic, your deductive skills, your powers of observation and argumentation, your MIND given over fully to love for God

4. With all your STRENGTH

a. The focus here is on the BODY

b. That you would present your body to God every moment as a living sacrifice

c. That you would present to God every power available to you, that you would POUR OUT your strength and energy completely at the foot of God’s throne in devotion to Him

d. That you would be spent, used up, poured out, given over completely to God… even to death if need be

D. With ALL Your Heart, and ALL Your Soul, and ALL Your Mind and ALL Your Strength

1. The concept is to HOLD NOTHING BACK

2. To love God completely, with everything you have

3. To be WHOLEHEARTED in your devotion

Psalm 9:1 I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders.

II. A Second Commandment Like It

A. Jesus Went Beyond their Request… Adding a Second One

B. The Second Commandment is Like the First One

Matthew 22:39  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

C. We’ll Discuss it more next week

D. Everything Depends on these Two Commands

1. Jesus neatly organizes all 613 commands in the Law of Moses… indeed, all the commands in the Bible, in these two headings

Matthew 22:40  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

2. If you truly LOVE GOD as God commands, and truly LOVE NEIGHBOR in the same way, Jesus said, you will be perfectly obeying all the commands of God

E. Judgment Day:  God Actually Requires This!

F. Saving Yourself is Impossible

^ESV Romans 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

This is the perfect Law that Paul means:  LOVE GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART SOUL MIND AND STRENGTH

1. We MUST HAVE a Savior… and that Savior is Christ

2. Christ HAS kept this Law perfectly!!!

III. What Does it Mean to Love God?

A. Jonathan Edwards:  Treatise on Religious Affections

1. Context:  assessing the First Great Awakening

a. Sweeping changes… religious excitement… major upheavals

b. Huge crowds coming to hear gospel preaching, especially by George Whitefield

c. Many people swooned under his influence… initial changes occurred

d. However, in the parable of the Seed and the Soils, Jesus warned about stony ground hearers of the word, who at once heard the word with joy, but since they had no root quickly fell away

e. Some years later, now, Edwards—the most careful thinker and accurate spiritual assessor perhaps in church history—put his skills to work in assessing the nature of true revival

f. He likened the initial enthusiasm of the Great Awakening to the cherry blossoms of spring;  some of them may ripen into mature and sweet fruit;  many others simply fall to the ground and produce nothing

2. Opposite views of the awakening… two equal and opposite errors concerning all the excitement and outward emotion….

Error #1.  Religion is ONLY in the extreme displays of emotion, turbulent outward experiences

Error #2.  Religion is NEVER in these displays, but is ONLY in “reason and judgment, and in dutiful behavior”  [Opposition from “Old Lights”… Charles Chauncy]

3.  Satan’s scheme:  push unstable souls into excesses, create a backlash effect;  early in the Awakening, Satan pushed people to EXTREME displays of emotion toward God, and the tendency then was to see true religion only in that light;  if you didn’t show these extreme emotional displays, you weren’t really born again;  and few people seemed interested in genuinely enquiring concerning the ROOT CAUSES of all those emotions; but as things moved on, there came a BACKLASH… people began to think of ANY emotional display whatsoever as from the devil, resulting in a COLD, LIFELESS FORMALITY to their Christianity

3. Edwards’s goal:  to determine a way by which we can judge true Christian experience… “What is the nature of true religion?”  What is that virtue that is pleasing to God?

4. Central text:  Sermon Series on 1 Peter 1:8

1 Peter 1:8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy

5. Edwards’s doctrine:  TRUE RELIGION IN GREAT PART CONSISTS IN HOLY AFFECTIONS

6. Edwards’s amazing insights into the human heart

a. Every human heart has two great faculties

i) Understanding:  The ability to perceive everything it encounters, to assess it, analyze it, understand it for what it is, judge it, etc.

ii) Affection:  the ability to be INCLINED TOWARD something or repelled from it… in short to LOVE IT or to HATE IT… to a greater or less degree;

Engineering job;  Ion implanter used a rare-earth magnet called a samarium-cobalt magnet to bend an ion stream;  these magnets were the most powerful magnets I had ever seen and they were a lot of fun to play with;

·      Paper clip thrown anywhere within a four foot radius would immediately be drawn to the magnet with incredible speed

·      The magnetic force worked right through drywall or other metals like aluminum;  I could make metal objects stick to an aluminum strip by hiding the magnet on the other side of a wall

·      Object lesson on the basic nature of the human heart:   God has designed the heart with the capacity to be ATTRACTED TO or REPELLED FROM everything in the universe;  the attraction of the heart TOWARD something is called LOVE;  the repulsion from something is called HATRED

·      The stronger the ATTRACTION the greater the LOVE;  and in this passage we are commanded to LOVE GOD with every power we have, with every motion of the heart, with every action of the body

·      We are commanded to love God more than anything else in the universe

·      This is the first and greatest commandment… and it stands over every instant of your lives, assessing you

b. True religion in great part consists in the heart ATTRACTION TOWARD GOD, and toward the things of God and the people of God and the commands of God and the Kingdom of God and the plans of God and the word of God

Picture a number line of affections… the further right on the line, the more you love something;  “0” is perfect neutrality; and negative means you dislike something;  the further left on the line you move, the more you dislike, and even hate something

c. This is the very thing that Christ is commanding here… this is the SUMMATION OF THE LAW OF GOD

d. It is for this reason that the Holy Spirit has come… to move us to obey this command

Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

God wants us to LOVE HIM

A. Loving Nothing More Than God or Equal to God

1. To love any created being more than God is IDOLATRY

2. Compared to our love for God, any other affection should look like hatred

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters– yes, even his own life– he cannot be my disciple

B. Cheerful Sacrifice of Obedience

Love for God is measured by cheerful sacrifice in the obedience of God’s commands as recorded in Scripture for the delight in and display of God’s glory and the good of God’s people.

C. Sacrificial Obedience

1. Love is measured by obedience

John 14:15 “If you love me, you will obey what I command.

1 John 5:3 This is love for God: to obey his commands.

2. Love is measured by sacrifice

Luke 14:33 In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

3. Love is measured by delight in sacrificial obedience

a. 1 Corinthians 13 implies that even immense sacrifices can be made with a wrong attitude

1 Corinthians 13:3  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

b. It is not enough just to obey, or even to obey sacrificially obey… we need to delight to obey

2 Corinthians 9:7  God loves a cheerful giver.

IV. Diagnosing Your Own Heart

A. How Love for God is Assessed:  Cheerful Sacrifice of Obedience

Love for God is measured by cheerful sacrifice in the obedience of God’s commands as recorded in Scripture for the delight in and display of God’s glory and the good of God’s people.

1. Is there a principle of sacrifice in your love for God?

2. Is the sacrifice done cheerfully or under compulsion?

3. Is the pattern of the sacrifice God’s commands as recorded in Scripture?

4. Is one motive of the cheerful sacrifice the display of God’s glory?

5. Is another motive of the cheerful sacrifice an expectation of delight?

6. Do you have the good of God’s people in mind?

B. Evidence that the Love of God is Not in You

Presbyterian evangelist Samuel Davies, “Evidences of the Want of Love to God”, preached April 14, 1756 in England

John 5:42  I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.

Evidence that you do not have the love of God in your hearts:

1. If the native hatred for God in your hearts has not been subdued

2. If your thoughts and affections do not fix upon Him with affectionate endearment above all things

“If you love God sincerely at all, you love Him supremely above all…”

3. You do not give God and His interests preference above all other things

Many claim to love God, but they never make the LEAST SACRIFICE of anything precious to them for His sake;  one who loves God will regularly and cheerfully make sacrifices to pursue a love relationship with God;  it is bitter evidence of a lack of love for God in your hearts if you make no sacrifices for Him

4. You do not labor for conformity with Him

The goal and finish line of our salvation is this:  CONFORMITY TO Christ

Romans 8:29  “In love he predestined us to be conformed to the image of His son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”

It is a bitter evidence that you do not have the love of God in your hearts if you make no effort to be conformed to Christ

“Do you delight in holiness?  Is it the great business of your life to improve in it?  And are your deficiencies the burden of your spirits, and a matter of daily mourning and repentance to you?”  If not, how can you say the love of God is in you?

5. You do not delight to draw near to God in the ways He’s ordained

God has laid out means by which we are to seek Him, to draw near to Him:  prayer, Scripture intake and sweet meditation, consistent reflection on the death of Christ, personal worship… drawing near to the throne of grace in time of need;  public worship, the Lord’s Supper, etc.

These are the means by which God will be found by us as we seek Him with all our hearts;   it is a bitter evidence against you that you do not have the love of God in your hearts if you do not delight habitually to draw near to God in these ways

6. You do not make it the great business of your life to please Him by keeping His commandments

John 14:15  “If you love me, you will obey what I command.

If you habitually disobey in any one area, or if you obey only under duress and as if in constraints, it is bitter evidence against you that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.

“Now recollect, is there not at least some favorite sin which you willfully and knowingly indulge yourselves in?  And are there not some self-denying, mortifying duties which you dare to omit?  And yet you pretend to love God?

“You may have your excuses and evasions: you may plead the goodness of your hearts even when your practice is bad—you may plead the strength of the temptation, the frailty of your nature, and a thousand other things; but plead what you will, this is an eternal truth, that if you habitually and willfully live in disobedience to the commandments of God, you are entirely destitute of his love.”

7. Summary:

“Does the love of God dwell in you or not?  Or even worse, do these descriptions of the LACK of the love of God dwell in you or not?  Are you deluding yourselves if you say, ‘I love you Lord, though my natural enmity against you still remains unsubdued.  I love you above all, though my thoughts and affections are scattered among other things and never fix upon you.  I love you above all, though I prefer a thousand other things to you and your interest.  I love you above all, though I have no interest in having an intimate relationship with you.  I love you above all, though I am not careful to please you by obeying your commands.’  Can anything be more absurd?  Make such a profession of friendship to some other person and see how they will take it!  Will they believe that you really love them?  No, common sense will teach them better.  And will God, do you think, accept that as supreme love to Him which will not pass for common friendship among mortals?… DO NOT BE DECEIVED, GOD IS NOT MOCKED…”

V. Therapy for Distant Hearts:  James 4

A. Start with Christ!  Imputed Righteousness is His Perfect Obedience to these Commandments

1. Christ DID love God with ALL of His heart, soul, mind, and strength

2. He would rather die than disobey His Father

3. He lived every moment of His life loving His Father

John 14:31  the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

John 8:29  I always do what pleases him.

4. Our salvation in Christ is BASED on this love… it was for love of the Father that Jesus died for us

5. And it is the very fabric of the garment of perfect righteousness Christ wove for us with His thirty plus years of perfect obedience to the Father:  Christ saying I LOVE YOU, FATHER

6. This is the righteousness given to us as a gift

1 Corinthians 1:30  Christ Jesus… has become for us … our righteousness

Romans 3:22  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

Say to yourself:  “I can never perfectly love God with all my heart…  but Jesus did.  And by simple faith in Christ God will see me as loving Him perfectly in Christ.”

BUT… don’t end there

The essence of salvation is to conform us to Christ so that we are LIKE HIM… so that we actually DO love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength

Much of sanctification is grieving at our own hardness of heart, and idolatry and proneness to wander from loving God

B. James:  Steps to Recovering our Love for God

We all tend to have adulterous hearts that stray into worldliness… that is, into idolatry which is spiritual adultery:

James 4:4-10  You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.  ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?  ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  ⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.  ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

1. Call the wandering of your heart spiritual ADULTERY

2. Identify worldliness:  the idols that had taken Christ’s place in your heart

a. Worldly pleasures

b. Sexual sins

c. Materialism

d. Workaholism

e. Worldly entertainments

f. Food

3. Recognize that to live for these things is the ESSENCE of worldliness… and that it makes you an enemy of God

4. Understand the JEALOUSY of the Spirit within you… He ENVIES INTENSELY (NIV)… means He is very jealous for your affections

5. Rejoice in the promise that God will give you “MORE GRACE”… we need “MORE GRACE”

a. Not merely grace for initial salvation

b. But MORE GRACE… the grace to keep you loving Jesus day after day and year after year in this tempting world filled with idols

6. James points to the Scripture as the avenue of this additional grace

James 4:5  Or do you think Scripture says…

James 4:6  But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

a. Scripture is the primary avenue for the recovery of a heart of affection for Christ

b. Saturate your hearts with Scripture for the goal of recovering your love for Jesus

7. Meditate on the statement James gives you

James 4:6 “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

8. Identify PRIDE in your heart… it is always pride that causes us to stray from loving God… we think too highly of ourselves and think we know better than God how to be happy and fulfilled

9. Submit humbly to God… come back to Him as to your KING, and put yourself under His authority

10. Resist the devil… understand the devil was the one feeding you temptations to get your heart to wander from Christ;  the devil is the pimp who gets the prostitute of the world so alluring;  the devil dresses up the world and makes the world very attractive, painting her eyes, choosing the glittery and skimpy costume that makes the world overpoweringly tempting… it is the DEVIL who set the whole thing up;  RESIST THE DEVIL and he will FLEE…. He will RUN FOR HIS LIFE, because the powerful Holy Spirit will cause him to flee

11. Come near to God:  draw close to Him with prayer and words of love and worship… say “I love you Lord;  I am so sorry I strayed;  I am sorry I allowed my heart’s precious affections to be poured out on an idol rather than on you

12. God will then come near to you!!!

13. Wash your hands, you sinners

a. Get rid of the practices that you are confessing

b. Change your life… stop doing the things

14. Purify your hearts, you double-minded

a. Fight the battle of the mind

b. Think of your Lord, and set your affections on Him

15. Be willing to grieve emotionally over the straying of your heart… be emotional over it… the Spirit was grieved when you strayed… so you should be also

James 4:9  Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

16. Humble yourselves… however painfully, and let the Lord restore your heart

James 4:10  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.