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R edeem er Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

Loving God, Part Four:

Inflaming Our Love through Prayer
Selected Scriptures

Introduction
I think that we all intuitively understand that love involves our emotions. What
kind of father would I be if I showed no affection for my kids? Would you think that I
loved them? What kind of husband would I be if a showed no affection for my wife?
Would you think that I loved her? What kind of pastor would I be if I showed no
affection for the brethren, for the sheep under my care? Would you think that I loved
you? If all that I did in all my so-called love relationships was respond to people out of a
sense of duty, if I took no delight in what I did for them, you would question whether or
not my profession of love was genuine. Your experience would tell you that I wasn’t a
very loving father, husband, and pastor.

And yet, if it were our experience alone telling us that love involves our
affections, then we would be on shaky, shaky ground. For the truth value of a
proposition is not determined by our experience. Rather, it is the objective revelation of
Scripture that should define our experience, especially when it comes to how we relate
to the Lord and to one another. So the critical question here is this: What does the Bible
say about our love for God? Should it have an emotional component?

Well, in Scripture, Christ commands us to love the Lord with all our heart, soul,
mind, and strength. And when the word “heart” is used in distinction from other faculties
(as with this command), it means the emotions. We are commanded to love the Lord
with every human faculty, mind, will, and emotions.

Paul’s famous description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 also indicates that our

emotions are involved if our love is to honor the Lord. He says that love is not jealous,
that love is not provoked, that love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with
the truth, and that love hopes all things. What is jealousy? It is a feeling. What is
irritation? It’s a feeling. How about joy? It is a feeling. How about hope? It is a
feeling. Love entails our emotions!

And in case we were thinking that our love can be reduced to performing
sacrificial deeds for others, the Apostle Paul says: “And if I give all my possessions to
feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits
me nothing.” In other words, he is saying that we can perform even heroic acts of self-
sacrifice and be without love. Love, therefore, must be more than what we do.

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As we continue to search the Scriptures we see that God’s love for us is

emotional, so it follows that our love for him should be the same. Isaiah 62:5 says, “For
as a young man marries a virgin, So your sons will marry you; And as the bridegroom
rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.” And Zephaniah 3:17 says,
“The LORD your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with
joy, He will renew you in his love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy” (Zephaniah
3:17).

The Bible teaches us that God’s love for us is exuberant—he rejoices over us in
his love for us; his love for us cannot be measured. And if this is how God loves us,
what kind of return of love to him would be appropriate? He loves undeserving
wretches like us with this kind of abounding love. How much more ought we to love the
all-deserving, all-delightful One with emotions appropriate to him?

God’s word also says that it is our love for the Lord makes every duty a delight.
Therefore we can know that we are lacking love for the Lord if we do not enjoy obeying
his commands; if they are a burden to us. 1 John 5:3 says, “For this is the love of God,
that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” If
love for God simply meant obeying him, then it wouldn’t matter whether or not we
performed our duty with delight. But from God’s perspective, drudgery is the sign of a
lack of love. This means that love for God involves our emotions.

And then, if we look very closely at the Scriptures we see that the words that God
has inspired for love involve our emotions.

The most common word that is used for love is the Greek word avgaph. Here is
how the standard Greek lexicon—the one that is used by every preacher and
commentator and Bible translator in the world—here’s how it defines the word: “the
quality of warm regard for and interest in another, esteem, affection, regard, love.” The
verbal form of this term is used in Christ’s command to love the Lord with all the heart,
soul, mind, and strength that we mentioned earlier.

The second term that is used for love in the NT is the word filew; it means, “to
have a special interest in someone or something, frequently with focus on close
association, have affection for, like, consider someone a friend.” This term, too,
involves the emotions. And it is the very one that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 16:22,
which says, “If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed.”

So, then, even the terms that the Bible uses for love make it clear that love
entails our affections. So your experience (in this case) does comport with biblical
reality: the reason you would wonder whether or not I loved my kids, my wife, and my
sheep if I had no affection for them is because biblical love involves our affections. It is
true that love for God cannot and must not be reduced to our affections, but it is equally
true that our love for God cannot and must not be reduced to the cold performance of
duty.

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The love that the Lord demands from us must be emotional; it must be warm; it
must be affectionate; it must be delightful. Henry Scougal’s definition of love is dripping
with Bible. Listen:

The love of God is a delightful and affectionate sense of the Divine

perfections, which makes the soul resign and sacrifice itself wholly unto him,
desiring above all things to please him, and delighting in nothing so much as in
fellowship and communion with him, and being ready to do or suffer any thing for
his sake, or at his pleasure.1

Notice that Scougal is careful to bring together our acts of obedience and our
affection for God in his definition of love. Our delightful and affectionate sense of the
divine perfections works in us the desire to please him in every way. Both the affections
and the resignation to sacrifice oneself are essential components of love for God. If one
or the other is missing, love is not present. If you delight in God without obeying him,
then you also are failing to love him. And if you obey God without delighting in God,
then you are failing to love him.

Perhaps the best example from Scripture of truly biblical love is found in 2
Corinthians 8-9. First, let’s read 8:1-4, 8:

Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which
has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction
their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their
liberality. For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability, they
gave of their own accord, begging us with much urging for the favor of
participation in the support of the saints...I am not speaking this as a command,
but as proving through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also.

Look with me closely at verse 8. Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to imitate

the Macedonian Christians: I am not speaking this as a command, but as proving
through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also. Perhaps the
most important word in this verse for our purposes is the word also. If the earnestness
of the Macedonians is being used to prove the sincerity of the Corinthians’ love also,
then it means that what the Macedonians had done itself was a powerful example of
love. If Paul did not see what they had done as a loving deed, then he would not be
telling the Corinthians to manifest the sincerity of their love also.

So, then, what did the Macedonian churches do that exemplified biblical love
such that the Apostle Paul holds them up as worthy of the Corinthians’ imitation? After
all, he wrote the chapter on love to the Corinthians in an earlier piece of
correspondence. So we ought to expect that Paul knows what he is talking about when
it comes to love.

Verses 1-4 tell us that the Macedonians had given their possessions to feed the poor—
the very thing that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13:3. The only difference is that in 1

1
Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2001
reprint), 53.

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Corinthians 13 the act is loveless, while here in 2 Corinthians it is set forth as a powerful
example of love. Let us find out, then, what makes the Macedonian’s charitable giving a
genuine act of love.

Notice verse 2: that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and
their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. Their donation to the
poor was a loving act because it was the product not of their abundance of money, but
of their abundance of joy. Their deed was truly loving because it was performed out of
a deep delight in God.

So they gave beyond their ability (verse 3) and they begged and urged Paul for
the favor of participation in the support of the saints (verse 4) because they were
overflowing with joy in God. This, then, is what made their act a loving act. This is
what transformed giving their possessions to feed the poor into an act of love. It was
done with joy. This explains what Paul means in 9:6-7:

Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he
who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do just as he has
purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a
cheerful giver.

When people don’t find pleasure (‘cheer’) in their acts of giving, God is not
pleased. He loves cheerful givers, cheerful servants. So the giver that God loves is the
one whose joy in the Lord overflows cheerfully in generosity to others. This is what
makes the Macedonians’ gift to the Jerusalem poor a loving act—not the act itself, but
that the act was fueled by heart-felt joy; the act was fed by their affections, by their
emotions, by their joy.

Now if this is true of our love for one another; if love may be defined as the
overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of others, then how much more must
our love for God himself bubble over with deep delight in the divine perfections? How
much more must our love for God be an affectionate sense of the beauty and majesty
and splendor of God? So I say again: in order for the Lord to be pleased with your love
for him, you must have affection for him; for if anyone does not have affection for the
Lord, he is anathema!

And yet, for those of us who do love the Lord, we often find our love for him, our
affectionate and delightful sense of the divine perfections simmering down to something
even less than room temperature.

Don’t you often wonder where your love for God has gone? Don’t you find
yourself closely identifying with the church at Ephesus, rebuked by Jesus in Revelation
2:4 for leaving their first love? Don’t you often find yourself feeling dry? I know I do.
Don’t you hate it? Don’t you long to be able to say with David that your soul is satisfied
with the Lord as with the choicest of foods? Don’t you want to want the Lord more? If
you’re a Christian, I know you do.

Increasing Affection for God

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Of course, the real issue is how. How can we stir up our affection for God? Well,
part of the answer is found in 2 Corinthians 8. Look again at verse 1: Now, brethren,
we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the
churches of Macedonia. Biblical love is a gift of God. It is a product of God’s grace.
And it is clear in this context that the grace of which Paul is speaking is not the grace
that is received at the moment of our conversion, but it’s the grace that God continually
gives to his people for the carrying out of his will.

What this means is that the exercise of biblical love, whether it is directed toward
God or others, is the product of God’s benevolence in our lives. And the reason I say
that this helps us to uncover how we can stir up our love for God is that it reminds us
that we can’t. We are completely dependent upon the grace of God for the exercise of
our love. Therefore the answer to our “how” question is found in employing whatever
means of grace God has designed for our growth in the Christian life.

The “means of grace,” as you will remember, refers to “any activities within the
fellowship of the church that God uses to give more grace to Christians.”2 Since love for
God and others is the product of the grace of God, then we need to participate in those
activities that God has ordained as the instruments to deliver more of that grace to us.
Last time we were together we explored the area of meditation—meditation on general
revelation and special revelation—on creation, Scripture, and supremely on the person
of Jesus Christ. The more we set our minds on the word (capital and lowercase “w”)
and the works of God, the more endeared to him we will be.

This morning let us explore two other means that God has given us whereby we
may fan into flame our love for him: prayer and fellowship.

Prayer
Prayer is so basic. We do not have because we do not ask God (James 4:2b).
Prayer is the primary means by which we draw near to God. And if we draw near to
him, he will certainly draw near to us (James 4:8). Hebrews 4:16 says, “Therefore let us
draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and
find grace to help in time of need.” If we are falling short in our love for God, we need to
beg him to change our hearts. We need to ask him to melt the stone of our hearts.

Remember that loving the Lord is an activity of faith. 1 Peter 1:8 says, “And
though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but
believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.” We love the
Lord we haven’t seen through the eyes of faith. So we need to see our lack of love for
what it is; a lack of faith. Though we do believe; we need the Lord to help our unbelief
(Mark 9:24).

So the kind of prayer in which we ought to engage first involves begging God for
a change of heart, begging the Lord for love for him. We need a greater capacity to see
the Lord; for the more we see him, the more we’ll love him. And the only way to see

2
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1994), 950, italics omitted.

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him is with the eyes of faith. We need, then, to pray that the Lord would give us the
faith to see him as he really is. We need to pray for ourselves what the Apostle Paul
prayed for the Ephesians:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every
family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you,
according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His
Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and
that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all
the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the
love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the
fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).

We need to pray that the Lord would allow us to comprehend more of the
limitless dimensions of his love. We need faith to see God as he is. We need to pray
that the Lord would enlarge our faith. For when we see him as he is, we won’t be able
to help but have great affection for him. John Owen has said,

So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him,

and no more. Every other discovery of God, without this, will but make the soul
fly from him; but if the heart be once much taken up with this the eminency of the
Father’s love, it cannot choose but be overpowered, conquered, and endeared
unto him.3

But it is not enough for us to ask the Lord for the faith to see him as he really is.
We need to remember that our lack of love for God, our lack of affection for him is itself
a sin. It is a sin that is rooted in our unbelief, yes; but it is a sin nonetheless. So in
reality, the strategy that we need to employ to attack weak affection for God is the same
as that which we should adopt for dealing with any sin in our lives. Proverbs 28:13
says, “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and
forsakes them will find compassion.” And 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He
is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.”

We need to begin our prayers with a full confession: “Forgive me for not feeling
love for you, O Lord. You are deserving of my every faculty: mind, will, and emotions.
Forgive me for withholding my affections from you.” And, of course, it is not enough
simply to say that we have sinned without also purposing in our hearts never to do it
again. We need to turn away from the sin of lacking love for the Lord as well. Without
this, our so-called confession will be just so many words.

Of course, it probably seems difficult for you to imagine turning away from the
absence of a feeling. But it shouldn’t. You see, it is not simply that our affections have
gone cold with respect to God; it is that, like the adulteress, we have transferred our

3
John Owen, “Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Each Person Distinctly, in
Love, Grace, and Consolation; or, The Saints’ Fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Unfolded,” in The Works of John Owen, Vol 2, edited by William Goold (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth
Trust, 1997 reprint of the 1850-53 edition), 36.

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affections to a different object. So turning away from a lack of love for God will entail
identifying the things, persons, or ideologies in our lives to which we have transferred
our affection. We need to ask ourselves what we are loving instead of the Lord that is
drawing us away from delighting in him above all things.

We believe the lie that there is something or someone other than God that is able
to satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. Is it the approval of your boss, your
husband, your children, your brethren? Is it the love of a friend, a colleague, a fellow
student? Is it worldly comfort? Is it money or vacations or cars? Our hearts are more
deceitful than all else and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). We so easily run after
things and persons other than God. We are prone to wander, prone to leave the God
we love.

So in our prayers for greater love for God we need to begin with the notion that
we are sinning in our lack of love for him. We need to see our dryness for what it really
is—a sin against God. I cannot overemphasize the helpfulness of this truth. Let me
illustrate this with something that my wife gave me permission to share.

Early in her Christian life, my wife was riddled with anxiety. She was nearly
paralyzed with all kinds of fears—fears regarding her classes (she was in college at the
time), fears regarding what her family thought of her, even fears of demons. Together
and separately we would pray earnestly that the Lord would take away her anxiety, and
yet we didn’t see much progress. Then through the aid of a pastor, we had a
breakthrough: anxiety is a sin. Jesus says, “Do not worry” (Matt 6:31, 34). The Apostle
Paul commands us not to be anxious about anything (Philippians 4:6).

Although this sounds patently obvious; it was not to us at the time. Once both of
us acknowledged that her feelings were sin, she was in a wonderful position for
experiences of victory. She began confessing her anxiety and begging God that she
would trust him more. Amazingly we started to see immediate results that progressed
to the point of substantial growth.

So when I say that we need to begin with the acknowledgement that our lack of
love for God is a sin, I am saying something extremely significant. For we cannot
forsake a sin about which he have no knowledge. And we will never see change if we
do not recognize what is really happening in our hearts. We are setting our love on
another object; we are sinning grievously. And the answer for sin is always confession
and repentance.

Yet, as you well know, even when we are diligent to confess and repent of our
lack of love for God, we often do not immediately feel different. What should we do
then? In other words, what if I don’t feel love for God, even after I have confessed and
repented of my sinful lack? Let’s say, for example, that as you began singing and
praying here this morning, you felt as if your heart was a stone. Let’s go further and say
that for the past several weeks your worship hasn’t been heartfelt. What should you
do?

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Some would suggest that you stop joining the community for worship until you
are properly motivated. After all, it does not honor the Lord simply to go through the
motions. Psalm 51:16-17 says, “For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would
give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” And in Hosea 6:6 the
Lord says, “For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God
rather than burnt offerings.” So perhaps we should wait until our attitude is right before
we gather for worship.

Although this may sound right, it would be a grave mistake. For we are
commanded to praise God, we are commanded not to forsake the assembly, and we
are commanded to love God from the heart. If we were to forsake the assembly until
we felt like we were loving God from the heart, then we would be committing two sins:
forsaking the assembly and failing to love God from the heart.

I once knew a young woman who was hesitating to be baptized because she was
(in her words) “feeling legalistic” about it. She knew she was commanded to be
baptized but her heart was not warmed to it. She felt as if she would be acting out of
duty alone. I pointed out that she was attempting to address her sin of acting out of
duty alone by committing another sin; namely, failing to be baptized. I told her that what
she needed to do was to confess her duty mindset as sin and follow through on God’s
command to be baptized.

All this is to say that our sinful lack of love for God does not give us permission to
disobey the other commandments he has given us. John Piper is helpful here:

It is true our hearts are often sluggish. We do not feel the depth or
intensity of affections appropriate for God or his cause. It is true that at those
times we must, inasmuch as it lies within us, exert our wills and make decisions
that we hope will rekindle our joy. Though joyless love is not our aim (“God loves
a cheerful giver!”), nevertheless it is better to do a joyless duty than not to do it,
provided there is a spirit of repentance for the deadness of our hearts.4

You see, this is the only appropriate response to cold, sluggish hearts.
Joylessness is a sin. Our feelings matter to the Lord. So our prayer for love for God
begins with the open acknowledgment that our lack of love for God, our lack of delight in
him is a sin. We must confess it. Then, close on the heels of our confession, must be
the spirit of repentance—the heart that says, “Lord, I do not want to be this way any
more. My desire is never to sin this way again.” From here we work to ascertain what it
is we’re setting our hearts on instead of the Lord and turn away from those things.

So confess and repent of your lack of love for God. Pray that he would rekindle
passion for him in your heart. Pray that he might give you feelings appropriate to the
realities of Scripture. Hardly anybody feels the realities of heaven, the miseries of hell,
the love and wrath of God demonstrated on the cross. Beg him to help you grip the
reality of what you are learning.
4
John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986,
1996), 248.

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Fellowship
Now in addition to prayer there is another means of grace that God has given us
that is often neglected in the church today: the means of fellowship. God has created
us in community. He has not ordained that we would grow in the faith apart from the life
of the church. So if you want to experience growth in your love for the Lord, you need
to be plugged into the life of the believing community.

Hebrews 3:13 says, “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is
still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” All
it takes is a day to become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And the way in which
the writer of Hebrews tells us to battle against our own hardness of heart is to
encourage one another daily. We need one another in our fight for loving God.

F F Bruce’s commentary on Hebrews 3:13 is worth repeating:

The exhortation to mutual encouragement is wise: in isolation from fellow-

believers each individual among them was more liable to succumb to the subtle
temptations which pressed in from so many sides, but if they came together
regularly for mutual encouragement the devotion of all would be kept warm and
their common hope would be in less danger of flickering and dying.5

I love that! He is absolutely right. Gathering with one another for mutual
encouragement works to keep our devotion warm. We are like coals in a fire. Together
we are hot; separated the fire is quenched. Perhaps the reason you are finding yourself
lacking love for the Lord is owing to your unfaithfulness to the life of the believing
community, your unfaithfulness to the local church. We need one another if we are
going to grow in grace. Whether it is the grace of love for God or any other grace, we
need one another.

And when we come together for the public worship, in addition to the mutual
ministry of one another, we ought to seek to have an environment of worship that aids
our affections. I am not saying that we should appeal to our sinful desires for
entertainment and the like, but I am saying that the form and content of our worship
should work to stir up our affection for God. Listen to what Jonathan Edwards has said,
“But undoubtedly, if the things of religion in the means used are treated according to
their nature and exhibited truly, so as tends to convey just apprehensions and a right
judgment of them, the more they have a tendency to move the affections the better.”6

He puts it even more clearly in his “Thoughts Concerning Revival”: “I should think
myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly
can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not
disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.”7 So long as our aids in
worship point us to the God with whom we have to do, then we ought not to be afraid to
employ them to that end.
5
F F Bruce, Hebrews (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 100.
6
Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986), 51.
7
Quoted in Piper, Desiring God, 91.

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At this point I should emphasize the enormous difference between the way
Edwards aimed to move the hearts of his people and the way many churches attempt to
move their people today. Speaking about the act of preaching, Edwards said that there
ought to be light and heat—heat in the heart and light in the mind.

If a minister has light without heat, and entertains his auditory with
learned discourses, without a savour [sic.] of the power of godliness, or any
appearance of fervency of spirit, and zeal for God and the good of souls, he may
gratify itching ears, and fill the heads of his people with empty notions; but it will
not be very likely to reach their hearts, or save their souls. And if, on the other
hand, he be driven on with a fierce and intemperate zeal, and vehement heat,
without light, he will be likely to kindle the like unhallowed flame in his people,
and to fire their corrupt passions and affections; but will make them never the
better, nor lead them a step towards heaven, but drive them apace the other
way.8

So there is a danger here. We can fall in love with loving God. Listen to John
Piper’s description of this phenomenon: “We begin to savor not the glory of God but the
atmosphere created by worship.”9 What we are after is greater love for God, not greater
love for loving God. And so although we should employ means that have a tendency to
move the affections, we need to be careful not to get superficial with the truth while we
do so. What Edwards is addressing is the misconception that emotional worship will
necessarily draw people away from the Lord. This is patently false. So do not inhibit
yourself by the same misconception.

So then, in our reflection the importance of the fellowship of the believing

community for increasing our love for the Lord we focus on two things: (1) the necessity
of mutual edification; and (2) the necessity of a gathered worship that is emotional. We
need one another’s life and we need the life in one another. Passionate people beget
passionate people. And since there are always some of us up and some of us down,
we need a vibrant church life to aid us on our way to loving God.

Conclusion
Don’t you just love how practical and how simple this is. If we are going to grow
in our love for the Lord, if we are going to see our affections stirred up to greater
heights, then we need to confess and repent of our lack of love, pray that the Lord
would enlarge our hearts, and participate in and work toward an effervescent church
community.

By God’s grace, we can do this. We can love him more than we do. God wants
us to love him with all our hearts, and he has given us the inexhaustible resources of his
grace for the fulfillment of his command. Let us seek his face in prayer and in
community life that we may love him to the glory of Christ. Amen.

8
Quoted in John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Baker, 1990), 84-85.
9
John Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway
Books, 1997), 133.

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Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com
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Loving God, Part 4: Inflaming Our Love through Prayer © 2004 by R W Glenn