Stirring Affections

Stirring Your Affections

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23 

What does it mean to “stir” something? One of the first images that comes to mind is a haggard old witch, like that in a Disney film, who with a massive wooden spoon stirs a monstrous cauldron filled with some green soup/concoction. While that is not the prettiest of pictures, it does provide an image of the work of stirring up something, causing certain elements in the soup to be mixed or permeated throughout the entire thing.  

Is your affection for the Lord being mixed or permeated throughout all of your life? Or do you sprinkle some moments of attention or affection for the Lord on the top of the soup of your life, never to stir so it permeates your life? I’m often the second option. I sprinkle in Bible reading. I sprinkle in listening to a moving Christian song. I sprinkle in a podcast, a sermon, or a radio program. What is worse is that I often find myself pursuing that which extinguishes my affection for God.  

As a newly married college student, I remember the day that I realized that playing video games extinguishes my affection towards God and towards my wife. My game system had a fateful meeting with the trash can that day. As the years have passed, I continue to learn that there are certain passions which make dull my affection for God. It can be different for each person but for me it is things like Fantasy Football, tracking daily sports headlines, keeping up a constant identity on social media, video games (on phones, computers, and game systems oh my), and watching TV programs or movies that are borderline at best in their content.  

I also learned to begin to ask the question, “what stirs my affections for the Lord?” In the same way that talking with my wife daily stirs my affections towards her, talking with God in intentional prayer (of all lengths and topics) and listening to God by reading the Bible daily stirred me to love the Lord more. I began to keep a list of the things that stirred me (Reading the prayers of deceased saints or missionary biographies, singing to God daily with my family, saying what I was thankful for out loud when I was especially ungrateful, etc). Certainly, life with the church, Bible reading, and prayer will be somewhere in our lists.  

In the season of Lent, of drawing your attention and affection away from other things and fixing it on Christ, are there practices/things that have stirred your affections for the Lord? How could they be carried on beyond this season? What activities should you leave behind because they dull your affection for God? 

Would you join me in a simple prayer, “I was made to love and worship you, would you by your grace stir my affections for you God, so that I’d love you and long for you more than this world? Amen.”  

Thoughts for Reflection:

What stirs your affections for the Lord?

What extinguishes or dulls your affections for the Lord?

All Saints Contributor - Ben Leatherberry