- [John Piper] So to sum it up again,
right thinking, I'm arguing, is the servant of right feeling for
God and logic exists for love. Reasoning about Christ, or the
kingdom, or the cross, exists for rejoicing in Christ on the cross. Doctrine exists for delight. Reflection about God is meant
to serve affection for God. The head is meant
to serve the heart. Knowing truth is meant to be
the basis of admiring truth. And for that to happen, for
the mind to function rightly in the service of the right
explosion of the heart with white-hot affections for God,
the gospel has to shape them both. So we saw that the mind is shaped by the
gospel in that the gospel turns the mind into a servant of
objective reality. It doesn't create reality,
it serves reality because the gospel describes objective reality. Secondly, the gospel shapes the
mind by making it the servant of of all truth, even self-incriminating
truth that you don't have to run from anymore or use your mind to distort
reality, to conceal it from yourself because God has solved the self-
incrimination a better way than deceit. And therefore, you're free to say it all
and see it all even if it hurts because that hurt can't kill you anymore. And third, it shapes the mind by making
the mind a servant of heart-awakening regeneration so that the dynamics of
1 Peter 1:23, "Through the living and abiding word, the gospel, you
are born anew," that is born unto a heart that sees Him for who He
is and savors Him for who he is. Thus the gospel, articulated with the mind
and the mouth, becomes the instrument of awakening in the power of the
Holy Spirit and it does that not just at the beginning, but all the way
along, over and over again as just in the last hour. Now, how does the gospel shape the heart? Each speaker so far, Tim, last night,
Don, both at the beginning said, "We need to say what the gospel is." And it's interesting how each
of them said it a little more fully, Tim, it's news and just a little bit, and
then unpacked the gospel-shaped life. And Don, a little more as far as
the specifics of the cross and its dynamics go, and now, I'm
going to take a whack at it. Because for me to ask how the gospel
shapes the heart, I need to say more about the specifics than has been said. So in my effort to define the gospel,
which is not everything, I think that's one of the most important
sentences you said, Don, that the minute you begin to
say everything is a gospel, you begin to lose the gospel. I like that sentence. That's an important sentence in our day. So here's my effort to describe the
massive gospel that is not everything. It's got six elements to it. Number one, it is a plan. According to the Scriptures,
Christ died for our sins. It's been planned. It's old. From before the foundation of the world,
He chose us in Christ for holiness and predestined us for adoption. So this is not a sudden development
as a result of the fall, this is a plan. If you take the plan
away, there's no gospel. Number two, it's an event in history. Christ died. Number three, it's an achievement through that event. Propitiation by substitution. J.I.Packer's three-word
summary of the gospel. Christ's death in that moment did
something between us and God. Namely, he propitiated the
wrath of God for all the elect. He dealt with it decisively. In history, that's not done again
at mass, or in our conversion. And fourthly, it's a free offer for faith. I asked Don one time, "Should we,
must we, say that salvation is by faith, apart from works is part of the gospel?" And he said, "Yes, it must be because if
you offered the achievement of the cross for you to be worked for,
there'd be no good news." The gospel includes, is
free, receive it, believe it. So that's the fourth
aspect of the gospel. Romans 3:28, "We hold that a man
is justified by faith apart from works of the law." Number five, that achievement is
then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in an act of conversion, applied to you,
and the effect is forgiveness of sins, and justification, and eternal life. Acts 10:43, "Everyone who believes
in Him receives forgiveness of sins." When you believe, you're forgiven. The events achievement is applied through
faith to you now and you enjoy the effects of that achievement called forgiveness
and a declaration of your righteousness before God and an inheritance
that is secured of eternal life. Now, in my experience, that's where
the description of the gospel usually ends for many preachers. And I wrote a whole book
to say it shouldn't end there called "God is the Gospel." Because why would you want to be forgiven? And you can answer that question
in a very God-belittling way and a very God-exalting way. If I said, "What? Of course,
I want to be forgiven. I hate having a guilty conscience," that's a bad answer. It has nothing to do with God. When my wife is angry at me because I
have sinned against her, some ugly word, maybe, when I get up in the morning
and see something that didn't get done, I want it done and I speak harshly, which
a husband is not supposed to do and she's hurt and angry and I'm
guilty, I need her forgiveness. Why? Why would I want that? Because as she stands at the
sink, her back manifestly to me, I want her to turn around
and I want her to face me. I want to be able to look into her eyes
again and have it be really good. That's what forgiveness is for with God. And if you don't cherish
your justification and your forgiveness and your eternal life
because they get you God, you need to deal with Him more deeply. 1 Peter 3:18, "Christ suffered once for
sinners, the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God." That's the end of the gospel. So my sixth element in the gospel is what
Christ purchases for us most ultimately is God, the gift of himself, all
that God is for us in Christ. Now, my point here is that when that
six-element gospel penetrates like a sword by the power of the Spirit into the
fallen, and sinful, and hard human heart, it recreates it, shapes it in distinct
ways, and I'll just mention three. One, it frees that heart from
the misery of guilt and all the affections that surround it and ruin life. Guilt is taken away and the heart is no
longer shaped by this inner thing called guilt, around which it's constantly
fitting itself and miserably adapting. And now that guilt is gone. And number two, it is fitted for a
whole range of new affections. Not guilt anymore, but the fruit of the
Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, and so on. So the heart is now…the Holy
Spirit has moved in and he now, he has shaped a love shape, a peace
shape, a joy shape, and the heart begins to be shaped, fitted for these
affections, not the old, angry, hateful, guilty affections. And the Holy Spirit is breeding a whole
new range of emotions and affections. And third, that heart is shaped
by being fulfilled with what is ultimately valuable, namely God himself. This heart is now satisfied with
all that God is for us in Jesus. That is its new, sweet, beautiful shape. It is a heart satisfied by all
that God is for us in Jesus. So those three things, freed from guilt,
fitted for joy, fulfilled with God, is the new shape of the Christian heart. 1 Peter 3:18 says, "He died once,
righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God," it doesn't
mean that he might bring our hearts to God to be bored, bring our hearts to God to
be moderately interested, bring our hearts to God
to be analyzed, known. It's not what he means. He means bring your heart to God to be
shaped by white-hot affection for God. Your heart hasn't arrived fully at the
blood-bought destiny of it until it is passionate for God, loving God,
delighting in God, satisfied with God, treasuring God above all things. That's the end of the gospel and the
final shape of the gospel-shaped heart. So the gospel shapes the mind and the
gospel shapes the heart by giving the mind the capacity to know God and giving
the heart the capacity to enjoy God. The mind is shaped to see God,
the heart is shaped to savor God. That's the gospel reclaims. You were given a mind to know Him truly
and you were given a heart to love him duly, and when the gospel does its
shaping work, the mind is free to do its right-thinking about God, and the
heart is freed to feel it's white-hot affections for God. That's what the gospel
does for the mind and heart. So I return to my point. You have a mind and you have a heart. And the heart, when rightly served
by the mind, is full of white-hot affection for God. Redeemed thinking about God exists for redeemed feeling for God. And gospel-shaped reasoning is for
the sake of gospel-shaped rejoicing. Now, there's a cluster of clarifying
questions that I ask myself, it might be helpful for you to
hear me try to answer. Four clarifying questions about
that and then four closing pastoral implications of that. Question number one, what do
you mean by the word affections? You keep using it. It's not quite the way
I have heard it used. It's like 18th-century use, yes, but
you don't know about that, maybe. So what do I mean by affection? I mean things like joy, fear, gratitude,
desire, hate, anger, tenderheartedness, peace, loneliness, sorrow,
regret, shame, hope, etc. We call them emotions, but we
need some clarity here because the connotation surrounding
these words may be different than what I intend. When I think of the Holy
Spirit awakening affections, I think of spiritual affections. And spiritual affections are affections
that have been awakened by the work of the Holy Spirit in accordance
with truth, not just any old affections or emotions, but affections
that are spiritual, of the Spirit, born of the Spirit, conform to the truth
that the Spirit reveals to the mind. That's the kind of affections I want to
have and that's the kind that the gospel-shaped heart is meant to be
full of, which means that it's different from bodily sensations. This is important. None, none of the affections I
care about ultimately are bodily. Fluttering eyelashes, sweaty palms,
shaky knees, pits of the stomach drops, fast pulse, none of that
is what I'm talking about. And the reason I know that what I am
talking about exists distinct from that, even though in this body they are never
separate from that and thus easily confused with that, is that I will have
these affections when I am dead and my body is decaying in the ground. And I know that because of Phillipians
1:23, "To die is to be with Christ," which is far better, better. I will love Him more. He will be my greater delight and my body
will not be there to have a fast pulse. I know it also to be distinct from
the bodily motions because God has these affections
and He has no body. Hosea 11:8, "My compassion
grows warm and tender." Jeremiah 4:8, "The
fierce anger of the Lord." Ephesians 4:30, "Don't
grieve the Holy Spirit." Zephaniah 3:17, "God rejoices
over you with loud shouts." And he has no body. And therefore, these affections that I'm
talking about, that are the goal of your heart and the thing that the rightly-
exercised mind is serving are not bodily sensation, which is why we must
be so careful with gifts of music and art because the world knows these things
produce emotions and they are not spiritual in and of themselves
because they are not spiritual. The mind of the flesh and the
mind of the spirit are not the same. And the mind of the flesh can have very
high emotions with very beautiful art, and that is not what
I'm interested in at all. Until the miracle happens when that very
music by the touch of the Holy Spirit combines with God's
truth in a kind of, C.S. Lewis would call transposition or
incarnation, can awaken in me Spiritual affections for God. Very delicate. This would be worth a
whole conference someday. So that's my answer to
my first clarifying question, what do you mean by the affections? They are emotions, but
they're not bodily emotions. And when they count, that is
when they are coming from a gospel-shaped heart and
serving to honor God. They are spiritual affectations,
both in their negative dimensions of proper anger and positive
dimensions of joy and delight. They honor God because they're born
of his Spirit, rooted in His truth and serving His glory. That's question number one. Question number two, say again, why
do you make the affections of the heart ultimate as the goal and the right
use of the mind, a subordinate servant of that instead of the other
way around or side by side. Why do you do that? That was last night's message. But just two other observations that
might shed a little more light on it. Jesus said, John 8:32, "You will
know the truth and the truth will set you free." What does that mean? In the context, free from sinning. Everyone who sins is a slave of sin. Two verses later. So he's thinking freedom from sin. You know the truth and the truth, rightly
known by the gospel-shaped mind is a sin-destroying, freedom-
giving power in the mind. Question. What is sin? Sin is not an act of the body. The body has no moral standing. The body is just stuff. The acts of the body become sin by
having motives, drives, orientations on God or the world. And therefore, when he says, "You
will know the truth and the truth will free you from the power of sin," he
means something deep inside is getting changed by knowing this truth. You stopped loving the world. Don't love the world or the
things that are in the world. Love God. That's what starts to happen. So I take him to mean right knowing is serving right affections. That's what I take Jesus to mean. Here's another illustration. Psalm 100. Let me do this with my hands, okay? This hand over here is the affection hand
and this hand over here is the knowledge, and the mind, and the
reflection hand, all right? Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. When I lift off, make a
joyful noise to the Lord. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God. It is He that made us and we are His. Enter His gates with Thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless
His name for the Lord is good. His faithfulness endures
forever to all generations. Do you get that? Rejoice. Know. Be thankful. Know. That's the way it works. These are ground clauses over here. These are high affections, and gladness,
and thanksgiving, and praise over here. That's what life is ultimately
for, and this serves that. That's the structure of the
Psalms over and over again. So my answer to this second question is
that the reason for saying that we have a mind and we have a heart and the mind
rightly exercised is a servant of the heart's affections is because I find that
to be the structure of biblical thought, and it makes sense and that will come
clear, perhaps, as we keep moving. Number three, you haven't even made any
attempt, Piper, to show why maybe action or behavior should be
in that order as the goal. Like, maybe the mind is meant
to serve the affections so that they will give birth to fruit in behavior. And that's the ultimate goal of life. Why don't you go there? Because it says, "Out of the abundance
of the heart, the mouth speaks," and speaking is an action, and
there are many other such texts about fruits of behavior coming
out of a heart of affection for God. And haven't we even heard you say
that love for people in its practical expression is the overflow of joy in
God that meets the needs of others? So where's behavior in this
little duo of messages? My answer to the reason I do not say that
the ultimate goal is behavior is because what makes action of the body, this
thing right here, that kind of thing. What makes action of the body an
honor to Christ is the affections that drive it, and without them, it is nothing. Matthew 15:8, "This people honors
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, in vain, do they worship me." Vain, vain means zero. So if I walked into a room and I
saw people doing worship, doing it, singing and saying all the right things
and I knew their heart was far from it, I would not have the
least interest in that. I would not call that the achievement
of any of God's goals in salvation. And so, the behaviors,
the singing of the song, the praying of the prayers, the
preaching of the sermon in and of its raw physical self is nothing. But when it is animated by, indwelt
by, when it becomes the incarnation of an affection, then it has beauty and is
part of this final goal because it's one and the same with that white-
hot expression of affection. Oh, here's another illustration. If I speak with the tongues
of men of angels but have not love, I'm nothing. If can speak in tongues, if
I understand all mysteries and have all faith so as to
move a mountain and have not love, I'm nothing. If I give away all I have and deliver
my body to be burned and have not love, nothing. So I just don't get excited about
behaviors in and of themselves. If you see somebody laying his life
down, that might be a good thing, it might not be a good thing. If you see somebody giving away all of
his money to the poor, that might be a good thing, it might not be a good thing. God has to enter in here
and how you feel about God. Why are you doing this? What does it have to do with God? It might be sheer idolatry of the poor. So I'm just not into
behaviors as the goal. I'm into God and how you are
passionately engaged with Him. And if I see your behavior as
expressing that, then I will see that whole and love it and
worship Him with you for it. Here's another one. This is just text showing you
why I don't go that direction. This is 2 Corinthians 7 and 8. "He who sows sparingly
will reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully
will reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his
mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because the Lord loves a cheerful giver." So I say to my people,
"I don't want your money. I want your cheer and your money. But if I have to choose, keep your
money because God says, "Look, this writing of checks,
business, this is nothing. I want your heart. And if I have your heart,
you'll write the check in appropriate ways." So what is decisive in establishing a
virtue that the body performs is what the heart is doing when the body is doing. And that's why I say with or without
a body, we are hearts and minds, and the mind will serve the heart to
have white-hot affection, and that's what now question number four,
I'm about to give the answer, what does all that have to
do with the glory of God? You have a mind which when it's shaped
by the gospel, is thinking rightly and serving the gospel-shaped heart,
which is now being filled with kindling of truth for the sake of the flame of
white-hot affection as the fire of the Holy Spirit falls. Glory of God. God. Well, I keep saying white-hot affection
for God and if you just wonder, "Why does he keep using that phrase?" Because it's as far from lukewarm as I
can get and you're going to be spit out if you're lukewarm and I don't
want you to be spit out. See? We're not playing here. That's one of the scariest statements in
the Bible, "You are lukewarm and I will spit you out of my mouth." That's scary. So I'm pushing white-hot, okay? Now, what does that language
have to do with the glory of God? And I have tried in everything I've
preached and written to defend this sentence, God is most glorified in
you when you are most satisfied in Him. Now, that's a true statement. God is most glorified in you when you're
white-hot satisfied in Him, then for the sake of his glory, you will care about
being satisfied in Him because if you're not satisfied in Him, you belittle Him. You glorify what you're satisfied by. That's my answer to the question. But is it biblical? And last Sunday I preached on this text,
so let me give you a 3-minute summary of a 55-minute sermon. Philippians 1:20. I preached on this sermon when I came to
Bethlehem and when I candidated in the February 1980s, a very
precious text to me. It's right, the heartbeat of my life. "My eager expectation and hope…" This is Philippians 1:20, "My eager expectation
and hope is that now as always, with full courage, Christ might
be magnified," megaluno, magnified in my body, whether
by life or by death, for to me to live and to die is gain. Now, the logic of that break between verse
20 and 21, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" is the key
to all my Christian hedonism. "I want Christ to be magnified,"
Paul says, "That's my heartbeat. That's my' life. I want Christ in my bodily life. Whether I'm living, whether I'm dying,
I want Him to look really great." That's what he says. And then he gives the explanatory
unpacking for, "To me to live is Christ and two dies is gain." So Christ will look great if my living is
Christ and Christ will look great in my dying if my dying is gain. And if we wanted to unpack the
living pair, we'd go to chapter 3:8, "I count everything as lost for the
surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord." So when he says, "My life to live is
Christ," he means I count everything less valuable than Christ and all my life
is devoted to showing how supremely valuable Jesus is. That's the way you make him look good. Choose him over everything
over and over again. He's cherished, and loved, and
delighted, and he's satisfying more than all the temptations of life. He looks really good in your
life when he's that valuable. Or the death half, I want you to be
magnified in my dying for to me to die is gain, gain because verse 23,
more of Christ, go to be with Christ. So if you're dying and you see
everything that life has offered you going away...won't have my
wife anymore, no kids anymore, no dreamed marriage, no dream
retirement, all the physical, bodily pleasures, they're going, I 'm lying
there, in a few I'll be gone and all I get is Jesus, and you smile to all
those standing around your bed and you say, "Gain, gain, gain,"
you make Jesus look really good. That's the way it works. From which I infer, if you want
to magnify Christ in your life, which is what I want to do,
you will treasure him more than all that life can give
and all the death can take. And I call that Christian hedonism. Christ is more most magnified in you
when you are supremely satisfied in him. So my answer to my fourth question,
what is this heart mind, white affection, white-hot infection, have to
do with the glory of God? That's the way you most glorify God. So the mind is bent on glorifying God and
it does it by serving the heart and the heart is bent on glorifying God,
and so it does its thing, namely, its affectional thing by burning
with white-hot affection for God so that everything else, by
comparison, Paul says, is refuse. Oh, if New England were filled with
such Christians, just this many. They'd smell it. They would smell the
aroma of Christ that way. So for closing pastoral implications,
number one, since gospel shape, the gospel-shaped heart is shaped for
the supreme joy of God, that's what it's shaped for, supreme joy in God, and since
God is most glorified in that heart and that mind when that joy in God
is being experienced, therefore, your people should unremittingly
pursue their joy in God, even if it costs them their lives. "Rejoice in the Lord and again
I say rejoice," Philippians 4. "Delight yourself in
the Lord," Psalm 37:4. "Be glad in the Lord," Psalm 32:11. In my sermon last Sunday,
I got to this point and I said, "It changes everything, this vision
of what we are as human beings and what God offers us in
Himself changes everything." And I gave 11 illustrations, which
is what I'd like to do right now, but I'm not. So you can go watch that at <i>Desiring
God</i> or listen and hear those 11 ways this changes everything. But that's my first pastoral implication. It's going to have a massive effect on
how you do church, a massive effect on small groups, a massive effect on
preaching if you believe what I just said, that your people should devote
themselves, 24/7, if you can do it in your sleep, to pursuing
total satisfaction in God. In His presence, is fullness of joy. At His right hand are
pleasures forevermore. That's what your people want and
they don't know where it's found. They want full and they want forever and
they're settling for half and 60 years and then perish. And you've got in your hand, full
and forever, and it's called God. Don't discourage them. Don't turn Christian life
into a duty for them. Stoke their engines. Implication number two. Here's Hebrews 13:17. "Obey your leaders…" Now, this sounds like
it's being addressed to the people without reference to
any implications for the leaders, but that's exactly not what's
going on, and you'll hear. It is for the people, but
then it is for the elders and the leaders. "Obey your leaders, submit to them for
they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy, not with
groaning for that would be of no advantage to you." Okay, now, as a pastor, as I read
that, I say, "I love my people." I want to be an advantage
to them, not a disadvantage. This text says, "If I watch over their
souls with moaning and groaning instead of with joy, it is of
no advantage to them." So in order to love them, I
must be happy in the ministry. Which I understand to mean be happy
in God, overflowing in the delights of ministry, even the painful ones. So, pastors, implication number two
is you don't have any option here. You must pursue the fullest possible
affections for God, love for God, delight in God, treasure in God,
satisfaction in God, because your people depend on it. It will be of no advantage to them if
you go about your ministry looking like you'd rather be doing something else
because God hasn't satisfied your soul. There are so many sick churches in
this country because of sick pastors. We're all sick, which is really
why that all churches are sick and we're just more or less sick and
it's good to move off the scene sooner or later so that new kinds of sicknesses
can move in and avoid the kind you messed Him up with for so long, which
I really mean that with all my heart. I've not served my church
well in significant ways. I've served them
well in some ways. I'm okay with that. The Lord will be my judge but
could my replacement, Jason, is so much better than
me in so many ways. He will overcome so
many dysfunctions in my church that ruined me. But we try, right? This text says, "Your people will
get an advantage from your joy." And if you just go moaning and
groaning and dutifully trying to be a pastor, they'll get
sick or they'll leave. That's number two. Number three, implication for your
preaching, all of your ministry. 2 Corinthians chapter 1:24,
been right at the heart of my self-understanding as a pastor. "Not that we lorded over your faith, but
we are workers with you for your joy." What a beautiful self-understanding. I'm shifting from implication two,
which is the pastor's joy to his mission to come alongside his people
and become a worker for their joy. What if you went to every committee
meeting, "My job tonight is to work for their joy," every sermon prepared,
"My sermon is for their joy," would that flavor everything? I think the key in preaching is that
your job is to spread a banquet for them to eat from so that when
they eat they can say, "Uh." And that "Uh," is worship and it's
joy in what you've just spread. But you have to have the mindset,
"I'm going to give them what will make them glad." Now, that may involve some very
hard, bad, painful news, right? We all know that, but they will hear that
bad news in a pastor who's got their joy on his heart because that's
what the apostolic mission was. "Not that we lorded over your faith,
we are workers with you for your joy." Finally, last implication will be done. This is a little complicated. I think I can make it understandable. If you follow me, and I hope me
means the Bible here, in that your mind, when rightly functioning and
thinking rightly about God is serving your heart and throwing kindling
of truth on the Holy Spirit-ignited fire of affections for God, when that's
happening in a church, that church will be protected from
two pairs of errors. One, the pair of errors that I
have in mind first comes when right thinking is cut off from
that process of right affection. And the first result, the
first error when it's cut off is dead orthodoxy. You could call it intellectualism or
you could call it, in its pragmatic form, a kind of plastic pragmatism,
most blatantly manifest in certain forms of the seeker movement. Now, here's what happens. When that reaction to the absence
of affections in thinking result in intellectualism and dead orthodoxy,
another reaction happens called anti-intellectualism, charismatic
excesses, and that was really owing to the absence of affections,
and they're trying to get it back, so that these two seemingly opposite
errors, namely intellectualism and anti- intellectualism, dead orthodoxy and
charismatic accesses, and I'm using not excesses because I'm not down
on charismatic in its biblical form, those two errors are owing to a failure to
get the heart right, to get it prominent, to make it big, and strong, and
joy to be prominent in the church. When that's succeeding and there's
rich, solid doctrine and theology feeding that, you're not going to get as
many people moving into dead orthodoxy, or pragmatism, or reacting
over here with charismatic excesses or anti-intellectualism. Those two things are just
not going rise as easily. That's number one. Number two, second pair of errors that
would be spared us if we got this right. Separating this affectional riches from doing. So the first one was we separated it
from thinking and thinking became intellectualism and its reaction and then
the second one is separate it from doing and what you get is legalism or, Tim,
last night says moralism and legalism are the same for him. I'm okay with that. Pragmatic doing or
moralistic doing, liberal. This is good, what he did last
night, that the liberal dimension, the conservative dimension, do, do,
do in social justice and do, do, do in not going to the wrong movies, Just either one is coming
in large measure from a pulling of the affections out of doing
so that God is no longer there and a passion for Him, and a love for Him,
and a satisfaction in Him has no longer rained in the church and now
the church is doing, and doing. And when you try to do without those
affections, you become a legalist. Or, here's the reaction,
antinomianism, emergent. It's almost gone now, but it
won't ever be quite gone because it's endemic in a reaction. When you see legalistic conservative
strivings or legalistic liberal strivings, one of the effects over here is going to
be, "We're going to do it another way,' which is not going to have anything like
that," and they create everything under the sun and say, "Doing doesn't matter. Laws don't matter. Rules don't matter. Behavior doesn't matter. What matters is relationships." I've talked to these folks. They're very hard to talk to
because they don't reason. I said one time… No, I shouldn't go there. I shouldn't do that. I might mess everything up. Let me draw things to a summary. From all this, I reaffirm my point that
you were created with a mind and you were created with a heart so that when
the mind is rightly serving the heart, the mind finds itself in its proper use of
expressing a white-hot affection for God, a treasuring of God above all things,
and that happens when the mind and the heart are shaped by the gospel. The heart is shaped, freed from guilt,
freed from joy, freed from…or four, being fully satisfied in all that God is
for us in Jesus so that it has a white-hot affection for him. And the gospel-shaped mind is
about its business day after day in your personal reading, in your
conversing with other people, in your listening to preaching. The gospel-shaped mind is about its
business of mainly loading the fuel of truth into the furnace of the
gospel-shaped heart so that the flame of white-hot affection for
God keeps burning until we see Him. Let's pray. Father, I pray now for the miracle. These words are relatively easy to say
and what I'm talking about is a miracle, a miracle of truth being ignited by the
Spirit so that there is awakened spiritual affections that are not humanly
possible to produce or sustain in the face of suffering and death,
which is where they shine most brightly. And so, I ask for the miracle
to happen in New England, in the churches represented
here, in the hearts that are here. Lord, come. Baptize this region in a fresh
outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that the truth that is well
known in this room would become incendiary
in its heat and light. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
