Do not leave the affections behind…

Last night, I saw that the Passion 2025 Conference is going on right now in Atlanta. As it happens I was reading Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections when the notification came across my screen. I know next to nothing about what is happening in that part of Christendom right now. But last night, I stopped reading, prayed for that 3 day conference and gave thanks to God for all that He gave my wife and I, and subsequently our children, through 3 days of a Passion conference back in 1999. I have moved into a remarkably different part of the church since those days. We don't have smoke and lights. We don't use screens during our worship. The vast majority of our music comes from hymns and psalms set to music several hundred years ago. Nobody dances during our church's worship (maybe we get an occassional sway). The congregation raises its hands as we sing the Doxology each week, and while a few may raise their hands during other parts of the service, for the most part the congregation just sings loudly, joyfully, and increasingly, beautifully. I love the Reformed Confessions. I mostly preach straight through books of the Bible. Our elders offer congregational prayers. There might be few gatherings more different, externally, than what's happening in Atlanta right now and Trinity Church on most Sundays. I wouldn't trade a Sunday at Trinity for all the lights and smoke and guitar swells in the world. I love our worship - or I've come to love our worship for reasons I have articulate elsewhere.

But I am grateful for what God wrought in me during those three days in 1999. And I pray that work is never lost in my own life and that it burns brighter in the lives of my children. I was introduced to a Reformed vision of God as well as a taste of what it means to chew on the argument of a text of Scripture where I was introduced to the preaching of John Piper. But I also sang my voice raw at Passion with guitars and drums and the whole shabang. I lifted my hands, I prayed fervently, even desperately, pleading with God for myself, for our nation and for the nations. I wept over my sin. I laughed at the sheer enormity of God's mercy. I trembled before the holiness of God. There was forever linked in those three days the hard and glorious truths of God's sovereignty, God's righteousness and God's mercy together with the movements of the heart. I did not simply comprehend the propositions concerning Christ's atoning work - I marveled at his atoning work. I did not simply understand arguments for God's pervasive sovereignty, I was in awe and overwhelmed by his authority and power. I did not simply sing songs articulating Christ's rule over the nations, I rejoiced that Christ is the King of the nations and our nation. There was joined, I pray forever, the beginnings of a rigorous biblical understanding of the world, and affections moved and stirred by that vision of the world.

Now to an Evangelicalism saturated with sentiment and emotionalism, I would warn - with the Scriptures, that our emotional moods are no sure sign of biblical faithfulness or understanding or obedience to the truth. Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections is a wonderful corrective here. The fruits of the Spirit's work are never short-lived and not designed to make one feel good all the time. Strong emotions are no indicator that what you are affected with is either true or good. Obedience is often difficult and counter to good feelings. Truth is regularly troubling. But to the corner of the church I currently reside in, Conservative Presbyterianism - may we be profoundly moved by what we know and confess. Even as we strain for beauty in our congregationally-centered singing, may we learn to be moved by what we sing. As we preach doctrinally and exegetically sound sermons - may we seek to not simply inform our listeners, but to move them with the substance and force of God's Word. When we pursue righteousness and godliness in the public square, fighting vigorously for God's glory among our nation and the nations, may we be moved to action and argument by the beauty and holiness and mercy of God - and always rejoicing. And may we pray, ceaselessly, full of joy and hope and trembling before the word God has given to us. Do not leave the affections behind.