Considering Spiritual Delight and Danger

Ran across this in my reading this morning.  Great stuff!

“Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer’s soul and they promote satisfaction.  We are not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration, and the Christian who goes a long time without the experience of heart warming will soon find himself to be tempted to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not, as he ought, from the Spirit of God.  The soul is so constituted that is craves fulfillment from things outside itself and will embrace earthly joys for satisfaction when it cannot reach spiritual one … The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ and savoring the felt comforts of the Savior’s presence.  When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers.”  Maurice Roberts, quoted in Instructing a Child’s Heart, from The Thought of God.

He says the same things as Thomas Chalmers in The Expulsive Power of a Greater Affection, but from a different angle.  Chalmers puts it in terms of sanctification- how we put our sinful desires to death.  Roberts puts it in terms of avoiding spiritual declension and danger.  One for growing in Christ, the other for maintaining spiritual vitality.  If we are not often pursuing our satisfaction, delight, in Christ, we will be in danger of seeking it in earthly things.

Think for a moment of how pervasive it is.  Many church-goers don’t really have a vital relationship with Christ.  It is more pragmatic than dynamic.  So they find themselves drinking from the cesspools of society- wrapped up in the pursuit of wealth, sensuality, power, entertainment etc.

The Tripps bring this up in the context of raising kids.  As parents we should find our satisfaction in Christ, that they may see that Christ is greater than all the world has to offer.  Instead of feeding their idols, we need to point them to Christ by example, not just by words.  Great words for pastors, youth workers, SS teachers, evangelists etc.  Our dynamic relationship with Christ overflows in our communication with others.  Our stagnant relationship with Christ will stifle our attempts to communicate the “sweetness and excellency of Christ” (as Jonathan Edwards was fond of saying).

I see it tying in with my sermon on Sunday.  As Nehemiah 8:10 notes, the joy of the Lord is your strength.  How do we get the joy of the Lord?  Meditating on his person and acts as we read the Scriptures.  This is what the Levites do in Nehemiah 9- draw out the cycle of apostasy (declension), battering, crying out and deliverance that marks the history of Israel (and each of us and our churches).  We need to ponder biblical history, and our personal history, to rehearse God’s acts of power, deliverance, grace, compassion and faithfulness.  By this means of grace we will delight in God and be strengthed.

“The more you meditate on God’s attributes and his works, the more you will delight in him.  Delighting in him will enlarge your capacity to trust him and rejoice in him.  You are delighting in God when you can trust and rejoice in God when he is all you have.  The person who has everything plus God has no more than the person who has only God.”  Tedd Tripp

When we are spiritually depressed, we fall into declension as well.  We take our eyes off of Christ (Heb. 12), and focus on our woes.  We then lose sight of His sweetness and excellency, stop delighting in Him and fall into the danger of seeking satisfaction elsewhere.  We will only regain our spiritual vitality if we regain our delight in Christ, which only happens as (by God’s grace thru the ministry of the Spirit) we fix our eyes on Christ again and meditate/consider Him and His great act of deliverance.