Prayer - Lesson 8

Professor James Houston

Prayer

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Evidence of Gracious Affections for God (Part 1)

Lesson Transcript

Let us now look at the 12 signs that Edwards saw were necessary for us to have in the cultivation of true affections for God. In fact, he doesn’t call them true affections. He calls them gracious affections. And the reason for this is that they all come from the initiative of God's grace, of what Bernard of Clairvaux would call leaning on his breast of grace. And if we ask what do we mean by God's grace, what he means, says Edwards, is that God's grace is simply the expression, the embodiment of God's love and that God's love is given to us in the most practical way in the most personal intimacy. That’s what we mean by grace. And so these affections that God would give us are the gift of His spirit.

And so the first observation that Edwards makes is that they're not natural to us. These are not natural affections. They're not part of our natural personality any more than our natural love is the love that we should give God, but God's own love. So they reflect the implantation of a new heart that God has given to us. It's what we find in the Book of Ezekiel, where four or five times Ezekiel the prophet is speaking on behalf of Yahweh, who is promising His people that they will have a new heart and a new spirit within them. And it suggests that, as Edwards is also emphatic about this implantation of gracious affections being the gift of God, we now have a new pulse beat of desire for God because there's a whole new spirit that dwells within us.

Some time ago, I was reflecting about the significance of heart transplants that were being made by surgeons in the 1980s and I was thinking of how various heart patients had these artificial heart pumps implanted within them. There was nothing wrong with the efficiency of the heart transplant, but incessantly the new mechanical heartbeat was crippling patients to be so repressed or depressed because their emotions were never in tune with the technical heartbeat and so what was happening was not the failure of the surgery. It was the failure of the patient's spirit that they were going into deep depression and they were dying of depression. They were like saying take me off this beating instrument that’s destroying my own consciousness, my own spirit. In other words, it wasn’t what Ezekiel was promising, that with a new heart there would be a new spirit. There was no spirit that they had that could match the pump, pump, pump of the machine.

We didn’t think we would ever live to see literally a heart transplant. But just a month ago, one of the close friends of my youngest daughter, Penny, had this amazing gift that she was given a new heart. That new heart - and we can pray for her that they'll be no rejection of it - has literally given her a new life. Her husband is saying I've got a new wife. She was always so depressed. She was always so frail. I married somebody that I had compassion for, but now I don't need to have any compassion for her at all. She's more awake than I am. She's got a new life. She's been born again. And the tragedy of that metaphor, as we've already spoken about, is so many Christians are still-born because they don’t have a new spirit that goes with this new birth. They need them both. And so that’s a very vivid picture of what it is that we need to have, that we have to have a spirit that isn't natural. It's given by God to be affectionate for God

Secondly, observes, Edwards, affections are never self-directed. Our affections, naturally speaking, are always looking after number one. It's always poor me. It's always my insecurity that’s my preoccupation. But these gracious new affections that God gives to us are affections for God, not for myself. One of the great joys that we begin to have in our life is when we see that really the very gift of desire for God is God's gift to us. God does not satisfy merely our own hearts' desires. He does. But he transforms those desires for something better. We can say from our natural desire I can't imagine anything more desirous than this, but oh, how God gives us a very different kind of desire.

You see, when I think of natural desires, as I think I mentioned on another occasion, I think of my birthday being at the end of November and Christmas round the corner and for a child it was a desire for a present. And of course, it was intensified by the fact there were going to be two presents: one for my birthday and one for Christmas. So the whole time for a month I was just thinking about desire. But even a small child felt if I desire too explicitly, the magic will be that I don’t get it. So squash your desire. Don’t get disappointed. So in other words, it's so easy to paralyse our own natural desires, you see. But what Edwards is telling us: no, we can have boundless desire because those desires are the desires that God directs us to have and they are indeed boundless in what He gives to us. He's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think

So thirdly, says Edwards these affections create a new sensing. We have a new kind of monitoring system. We have new empathies. We have new feelings towards God in the life of prayer. What are these new sensings? What are the new feelings that God is giving to us? Well, he's giving us a new aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of God, of the holiness of God, of the greatness of God. The new aesthetic desiring of God that He gives to us is what was given to the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration when they saw Jesus was transfigured before them. And we think how glorious is that desire for the beauty of God.

But when I was with my daughter Claire in Japan just a few months ago and speaking to Japanese women who understand aesthetics so beautifully: the decoration of the flower on the table or in the bathroom, the gift-wrapping, the present-giving, the wearing of the kimono. They have a beautiful aesthetic sense have Japanese women and so it's natural that they would amplify that and say but how much more wonderfully aesthetic it will be if we are transfigured in our desiring like the disciples were to see the beauty of God. But my dear daughter had had a brain tumour removed. Her head was cut from end to end of her skull. She was wearing discreetly a bandeau to cover the scar. She had her hair cut by the surgeon discreetly so it would cover the scar. Oh, she said, if you want to desire the beauty of God, Jesus didn’t desire to have that body of the transfiguration. What He chose was to bear the scars of the cross. It's the beauty of the scars of Calvary that Jesus wears. Well, of course, they were in tears and, of course, they were aware she was speaking about her own scars.

And Jonathan Edwards doesn’t go into this, but I'm meditating it with you now, that when God gives you a new sensing, He gives you a new sensing of the beauty of suffering. That’s the transformation of sensing, of a new desire. Not that we’re masochistic about bearing the suffering, but Jesus deliberately could have chosen the body of the transfigured Lord that the disciples saw. But you and I, when we enter into the glory of Heaven will in the midst of all the archangels and the seraphim, identify Jesus from all their glory by the scars of the cross. That gives you a whole new perspective on suffering. This is a whole new appreciation of beauty.

Then fourthly, Edwards discovers that we’re given a new spiritual understanding. Our mind changes as our desires change. So he prays in Ephesians 3 that we may be strengthened with all might in the inner man to have a whole new cosmic understanding of what is the length and the breadth and the depth and the height of the mystery of His will in His love for us. We’re now able to discriminate the reality of a life of godliness. The love of God becomes appreciated so much more deeply than we ever imagined what His love is all about. But we need to let this mind be in us, which was also in Him. And as we've seen, that mind is the mind of His humility. That's transformation. And so says Edwards, fifthly, this in turn brings a profound conviction that it's not rational; it isn't logical; it's something that seizes the whole life of the believer. We’re embraced eternally and underneath are the everlasting arms. We’re embraced in a process of total transformation. We now desire to be completely different people. And this is only God doing this. And we rejoice that He's bringing something of this about. Oh yes, not as though already I have attained, but I seek after. I'm in pursuit of godliness.

And so we come back again in number six to what we've already been echoing all the way through this meditation. The evidence of gracious affections is corroborated by an intensification of the experience of humility in our lives. The greatest goal of our life, we may say, is to be humbled by God, because we become much more awed by His presence. We're much more aware of the profound thankfulness that we owe it all to Him. We’re becoming much more deepened in our desire for communion with Him and so profound thanksgivings simulated by this humility fills our hearts with gratitude and praise. Our lives become much more doxological.

As my dear friend Bruce Waltke and I are finding in our third series of Psalms that really how can we ever go beyond the realm of praise? One of the objections that C.S. Lewis saw that was common among people is, is God an egotist that we’re always praising him? Nonsense. We don’t have any clue what we’re talking about when we have that kind of attitude. No. It's wonder, love and praise that fills our being. Of course, it's pride that makes us prayerless. It's pride that has no experience of gratitude. It's pride that has no experience of God.

Well, perhaps before we get to our next point, which is the seventh trait that Edwards is talking about, we have to ask ourselves in this change of heart, does that affect both our temperament and our personality? And the answer is yes indeed, they do.