The Duty of Devotion and more...

B.B. Warfield has gone down in history as one of America’s great theologians, and for good reason. He was a bulwark of orthodoxy against the rising tide of liberalism. Even a century after his death, many of his works are as powerful and relevant as ... --------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue... - [The Duty of Devotion](#0) - [A La Carte (September 11)](#1) - [How To Grieve Like a Christian](#2) [] [The Duty of Devotion]( B.B. Warfield has gone down in history as one of America’s great theologians, and for good reason. He was a bulwark of orthodoxy against the rising tide of liberalism. Even a century after his death, many of his works are as powerful and relevant as the day they were written. Yet while he is known for his keen intellect and profound theological insights, he was also a man of tender affection. Soon after his marriage to Annie, the young couple journeyed to Europe together. During this trip, Annie underwent a terrifying experience that resulted in a kind of nervous trauma she was never able to overcome. She returned home an invalid whose condition continued to deteriorate for the rest of her life. Warfield responded to these tragic events by diligently committing himself to her care. For the duration of their marriage, he rarely left her side for more than a couple of hours at a time, and never for longer than necessary. A friend recalls, “I used to see them walking together and the gentleness of his manner was striking proof of the loving care with which he surrounded her. … During the years spent at Princeton, he rarely if ever was absent for any length of time.” Warfield was not only a great theologian but also a great husband. There are few virtues more powerful than devotion. There are few character traits we honor more highly than this one. In this short series, we are considering the 10 duties of every Christian, and among these is the duty of devotion. The Purpose of Devotion Christians often speak of devotion. We speak of “devoting ourselves to God” and, more commonly, of “doing our daily devotions.” This word is familiar to every believer, but I wonder how often we consider what it means and what it entails. What is this devotion we offer to God? And what’s the connection between devotion to God and personal devotions? What is its purpose of our personal devotions what do we hope to gain from them? In both uses, devotion is an expression of love and loyalty rooted in both duty and delight. B.B. Warfield owed his wife certain duties by virtue of being her husband, and his devotion flowed out of his duty. God expected no less than what Warfield offered, for his devotion was an expression of obedience to the vows he had made to her on their wedding day. Yet his devotion was also an expression of delight. He loved his wife and found joy in her, and it was out of this delight that he was devoted to her. It would be unfair to disconnect his long devotion to his wife from either duty or delight. Similarly, the Christian’s devotion to God is both duty and delight. It is an expression of the love we have for God and the loyalty we long to express to him. It is the overflow of the joy we have in him and our commitment toward him. Our devotion to God leads to certain habits or disciplines. We devote ourselves to God by devoting ourselves to practices that inform and enhance our relationship with him. Among these practices is the one we know as “personal devotions.” The Pattern of Devotion God has created us to be creatures of habit. While we are certainly more than our habits, we are not less. Our habits shape us and make us who we are. The activities we repeat soon become ingrained in the fabric of our lives so that after a time it is more difficult to skip a habit than to perform it (which is exactly why it is so important to develop good habits and to repent of harmful ones). Much of our struggle with sin can be traced directly to our failure to develop good habits and our inability or unwillingness to destroy bad ones. Habits are one of the ways we experience God’s refreshing and renewing grace. David Mathis says, “Our God is lavish in his grace; he is free to liberally dispense his goodness without even the least bit of cooperation and preparation on our part, and often he does. But he also has his regular channels. And we can routinely avail ourselves of these revealed paths of blessing—or neglect them to our detriment.” One of the key habits every Christian ought to begin is the habit of personal devotions. This is certainly not the only means through which God blesses us with his grace and certainly not the only meaningful habit. Yet it is a crucial one that benefits all who diligently pursue it. In most cases the habit of personal devotion is expressed in a daily quiet time, a time committed to hearing God through his Word and to speaking to God through prayer. In this way our devotion is conversation between two people—God and ourselves. While the Bible instructs us to “pray without ceasing,” it also models the importance of setting aside particular times for deliberate and even planned prayer. Though Jesus lived in constant communion with God, he still escaped from his responsibilities and followers to spend time—even long hours—alone with God. And while the Bible commends those whose thoughts turn regularly and naturally to God’s Word, it also tells of the importance of diligently studying it. If we are to live for God, we must live with God. If we are to honor him, we must know him, and we know him through this habit of devotion. Such devotion requires the diligence and discipline that will build the habit and improve upon it. Most Christians find they must set aside time every day and train themselves to maintain it. After some time of building the habit, they soon find themselves naturally opening God’s Word and praying to him. That habit is then used by God to build relationship, to teach godly character, and to compel obedience. The Danger of Devotion I once lived in a town that became the scene for a film set during the Second World War. For the film to be successful, the town’s Main Street needed to have all traces of the 1990s removed and replaced by the 1940s. It was fascinating to watch work crews sweep over the town. Within days they had transformed it. As I stood at the end of town and looked down Main Street, it was like I was looking into the past. Yet when I walked through the town my deeper look revealed that this transformation was only skin-deep. The crews had merely covered the modern buildings with false fronts and filled store windows with old-fashioned merchandise. Yet behind each false front were the common, modern storefronts, and just behind the front windows was the regular merchandise. Even something as good as devotion can be misused. Religious deceivers and hypocrites put on a “false front” when it comes to devotion. They want to maintain the outward appearance of faithful followers of God when they are in public but remain unchanged in private. Jesus warned of people who behave like this: “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:5). The only reward they have is the fleeting accolades of the easily-impressed. They know nothing of the reward God dispenses to those who truly love and seek him. Such people are devout when they are in the congregation but destitute in private; they are saints in the church but atheists in the home. Even as true Christians, we face the danger of interpreting our standing with God through our diligence in devotions. We can measure our obedience and our walk with God solely by how often we devote time to Scripture and prayer and how we feel about the time spent. This can lock us into a pattern of depending on our works to be right with God, of thinking that our standing before God depends upon our performance. Jerry Bridges reminds us, “Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.” We must never forget that the duty of our devotion is founded in Christ’s initiating devotion toward us on the cross. The Duty of Devotion As Christians, we are devoted to God. We have a deep love and loyalty to him, and we express and foster this by what we refer to as “personal devotions.” “Thus says the Lord: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me” (Jeremiah 9:23). The discipline of personal devotions is one of the key means through which we come to understand God, to know God, and to be known by God. It is our delightful duty. [Like on Facebook]( [Share on Google+]( [Pin it!](https%3a%2f%2fwww.challies.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f10%2fLigonier_Logo_Challies.jpg) [Tweet This]( [Subscribe by email]( [Subscribe by RSS]( Related Stories - [How To Grieve Like a Christian]( - [What’s the Purpose of … Marriage?]( - [Let the Wife See She Respects Her Husband](   • [Email to a friend]( Duty of Devotion;5762617) • [] [A La Carte (September 11)]( Today’s [Kindle deals]( include a long list of top-quality books. Don’t miss these deals! (Yesterday at the blog I considered [How To Grieve Like a Christian]( [Rejoice in the Wife of Your Youth]( Ray Ortlund has a wonderful letter to a would-be adulterer. But what he says is equally valuable to those who are not tempted to wander. [Escaping from the Love of Money]( Simple: “Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with money, there’s something desperately wrong with devotion to money.” [The Decade That Built the Next iPhone (Video)]( This video explains just a little what an incredible impact the iPhone has had on us as individuals and on all of society. [Pastor, Strive to Learn Their Names]( “People say I’m naturally gifted at learning names. To some extent that might be true. The full truth, however, is I cheat. But before I tell you how I cheat, let me stress why—as a pastor—I labor to learn the names of those who attend our church.” [Taking Sin Seriously]( Aaron Armstrong says the gospel is more beautiful when we take sin seriously. [How Should a Worship Service Be Ordered? (Video)]( Matt Merker of Capitol Hill Baptists explains briefly that in their services they “Preach the Bible, read the Bible, pray the Bible, sing the Bible, and see the Bible.” [Flashback: Greetings From Heaven: A Modern History of Heaven Tourism]( The heaven tourism genre has proven remarkably lucrative to authors and their publishers, tallying well over 20,000,000 books sold over the past decade. When 90 Minutes in Heaven was released in 2015 I teamed up with Josh Byers to prepare an infographic titled “Greetings From Heaven: A Modern History of Heaven Tourism.” It is not enough to have a song on your lips. You must also have a song in your heart. —Fanny Crosby [Like on Facebook]( [Share on Google+]( [Pin it!](https%3a%2f%2fwww.challies.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2017%2f09%2fChallies_sept10-16-01.png) [Tweet This]( [Subscribe by email]( [Subscribe by RSS]( Related Stories - [Weekend A La Carte (September 10)]( - [A La Carte (September 8)]( - [A La Carte (September 7)](   • [Email to a friend]( La Carte (September 11);5762617) • [] [How To Grieve Like a Christian]( This life is full of loss and full of grief. Though there are times we experience great swells of joy, we also experience deep depths of sorrow. No sorrow is deeper than the sorrow of loss. At such times it is important to consider how Christians grieve. Christ has Lordship over all of life, even grief. The gospel informs all we do, including our grieving. When dealing with the loss of a fellow believer, it is a privilege to grieve in a distinctly Christian way—to grieve in one way instead of being left to grieve in another way. What is that way? How do Christians grieve? Paul provides helpful instruction and begins with these words: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). The first thing is this: Grieve! It’s good and right to grieve. We grieve genuinely and unapologetically. Death is tragic; death is sorrowful; it is good to grieve and this text gives us permission to do so. While it’s always important to ask “what does a text say?” it’s equally important to ask, “what does a text not say?” In this verse Paul could have said something like, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve.” He could have ended his sentence there are forbidden all grief. He could have been a good Stoic and insisted that Christians must not waste their time and emotional energy in crying. But no, he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t tell us we must not grieve at all. Rather, he tells us we must not grieve in a certain way. There is a way that Christians must grieve. What is that way? Grieve hopefully. When Paul says, “you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” he is really saying something like, “we grieve, but not in the same way as all those other people who have no hope.” Or, “even though we do grieve, we grieve differently from those other hopeless people.” Again, we see there’s a distinctly Christian way to express grief. We must not grieve like unbelievers do. What is this Christian form of grieving? Christians experience grief but without despair, sorrow but without defeat, sadness but without hopelessness. It’s true sorrow and true hope. These things don’t cancel out one another. We feel the great weight of sorrow and the great thrill of hope. In moments of deep sadness, we feel both. But why? How? How is it that we can have hope? The reason we have hope is that Christians grieve temporarily. We grieve genuinely but hopefully because we grieve temporarily. Our grief will come to an end. Paul proves this by pointing back in time, then pointing forward: “For since we believe that [in the past] Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will [in the future] bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:14). Paul anchors future hope in past reality. He first points back in time to the historical events of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus truly died and truly returned to life and his resurrection is a promise, a proof, and a down payment that we, too, will return to life. What happened to him will happen to us. If it wasn’t for Jesus we’d have no hope! But Jesus rose so we have the greatest hope! Having pointed back, Paul points forward. “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” He goes from the past to the future. He points forward to the time when Christ will return. He points forward to the time when the great promise will be fulfilled. At that time those who are dead and those who are alive will be reunited. They will be united to Jesus and live together forever. Here is how the passage continues: “The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” Our hope for the future is that we will be with the Lord. We will be with the Lord together and forever. Those who have gone before and those who remain will be reunited in the presence of Jesus Christ. While our loved ones have left us, they have not ceased to be. They’ve simply gone on ahead. Because Jesus rose again, they will rise again. Because Jesus conquered death, they will conquer death. Because Jesus lives, they live. And so we grieve. We grieve in times of loss and our grief may last many days, weeks, or years. The pain is real, the sorrow is real, so the grief is real. But we grieve hopefully because we are convinced we grieve temporarily. No wonder, then, Paul concludes in this way: “Therefore encourage one another with these words.” [Like on Facebook]( [Share on Google+]( [Pin it!](https%3a%2f%2fwww.challies.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f10%2fLigonier_Logo_Challies.jpg) [Tweet This]( [Subscribe by email]( [Subscribe by RSS]( Related Stories - [What’s the Purpose of … Marriage?]( - [Let the Wife See She Respects Her Husband]( - [The Duty of Introspection](   • [Email to a friend]( To Grieve Like a Christian;5762617) • --------------------------------------------------------------- [Contact Us]( •[Past Issues](5762617/52189706/aad4fbf0ed7e32091ac68c76aa05668e) •[Unsubscribe]( [Click here to safely unsubscribe]( from "challies.com - Informing the Reforming." [Click here to view mailing archives](, [here to change your preferences]( or [here to subscribe]( • [Privacy]( Email subscriptions powered by [FeedBlitz](), LLC, 365 Boston Post Rd, Suite 123, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA.