What Do You Want?
Why Training Our Affections is Essential to Resisting the Devil
“Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
— Psalm 37:4 (BSB)
As I’ve said before in this series, spiritual attack comes in 2 forms: Lies and Lust — (or, deception and temptation). In this post, I said that this means our side of this spiritual battle is (1) to know and be committed to the truth so that we can discern the lies, and (2) to cultivate self-control so that we have the strength to resist temptation.
In my last post, on resisting the devil, I explained that we need to know and believe sound doctrine, to be discerning in distinguishing truth from error, and to be willing to defend the truth and expose error (Eph. 4:1); and we need also to cultivate the self-control to reject the wrong and choose the right.
But here’s the thing: we can’t forget the heart in this. It’s not just about knowledge, it’s about your affections. It’s about what you love. Because the reality is that if you don’t love what you know to be true more than you love a lie, you’ll betray the truth every time. You can know the good… you can know the right thing to do… but if you don’t love the Good more than you love what you’re being tempted by, you’ll stray from goodness every time. And you must be aware of this (and this is especially important for young people), and we must be busy cultivating the moral excellence of rightly ordered, rightly prioritized loves and affections, because the world is pulling young people away from the faith not primarily (although this is certainly involved) through trying to change your minds about things, but through seeking to capture your hearts.
If the dominating, controlling motivation in your life is not Christ, then your moral compass will always lead you astray. If we don’t love Christ so much that we want to be like Him when it means exercising discipline to know Him better, self-control to resist temptation, perseverance to endure hardship and opposition from the world, and godliness to carry out our responsibilities in obedience to Christ’s Word, then knowing what is right will not keep us from doing what is wrong. If we are not approaching this like we’re actually in a war, resisting the devil and drawing near to God, then we will consistently face defeat, rather than victory.
Victory does not come by knowledge of facts, nor by our own sheer willpower. Victory comes by abiding in Christ. Abiding in Christ means walking in faith (2 Cor 5:7), walking in the Spirit (when we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh: Gal 5:16), walking in the light (1 John 1:7; cf Eph 5:8), and confessing our sin when we stray into darkness (1 John 1:9). I’ll come back to the centrality of confession another time.
If we train our desires and loves to be more and more aligned with what God values and loves, then when we delight in the Lord (Psalm 37:4), He will give us the desires of our hearts because the desires of our hearts will be in line with the desires of His heart.
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.” — John 14:23 (NKJV)