PRIMED: DEVOTIONAL
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: 1 JOHN 2: 15-17 NRSV
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; 16 for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever. †
Today, we come to the end of our “Why We’re Here” series detailing our First Pres core values which spell PRIMED—Prayerful, Relational, Intentional, Missional, Evangelical, and, today, Devotional. We’re going to look at what it means to be devotional with head, heart, and hands.
HEAD: Preserving Truth
The Preservation of the Truth & Defense of the Faith
According to the Presbyterian Book of Order, one of the Great Ends of the Church is “The Preservation of the Truth.” I’ve always loved this, and it has been a constant source of inspiration to me in my ministry. “The Preservation of the Truth”—it has such a noble ring to it. It goes along with phrases like “Defenders of the Faith,” historically, a title given to British monarchs, whose role, in part, was to keep Britain Christian—which turns out to be more challenging than it sounds.
To preserve or defend the truth suggests specific images: a soldier on a wall, a guard at a gate, a shepherd—or even a sheepdog—watching a flock. It’s no wonder that in the early 1200s, the then-Pope launched an order of preachers out the Dominicans—the “hounds of God” —on a crusade to “preserve the truth” against falsehood and heresy.
There is no better image of devotion than a dog, but whereas the Dominicans were seen as hunting dogs trained to sniff out heretics and faithfully deliver them to their masters, we can find a better image in dogs for their simply loyalty and love.
To be devoted means to be unflinchingly loyal. Devotion means loyalty.
Devoted minds are loyal to Christ in preserving the truth, but this has become deeply problematic in a world that doesn’t believe in truth—not absolutes, anyway—but has moving goalposts for morality and user-friendly “truths” adaptable to one’s feelings and preferences. What does it mean to “preserve the truth” if your truth is merely “your” truth—one truth among a world of other truths?
If we were to say, “Preserve your truth,” then we split up humanity into a chaos of personal preferences, where authentic community is not possible. This is the enemy of faith, not an expression of faith. If we are to pursue The Preservation of the Truth, there must be a truth at the core we agree to preserve.
Let’s be clear: faith is the antidote to chaos. By faith, we express our loyalty to the non-fungible Truth of God’s revelation of Jesus Christ. There are some things—and let’s be clear, very few things—for which we need to be rigid, inflexible, and unmoving. God is real, God is good, Christ is risen, Christ is Lord, Christ will return—these essential tenets of our faith deserve our total defense, service, and loyalty.
Our devotion to the truth of Christ is guaranteed to get us into some trouble as well because our world sees such conviction as narrow-mindedness and intolerance. But let’s say it: minds devoted to the truth will grow increasingly intolerant of falsehoods, as they should.
The devotional mind defends the faith, preserves the truth, and grows increasingly intolerant of falsehood without becoming prideful and arrogant. We must be humble as well as convicted, accepting that we are all students and still learning. We are not fanatics—we are free to question and doubt our convictions—but what never changes is our dogged—dog-like—loyalty to Christ.
HEART: Total Commitment
But feelings can also be misleading
With a word like “devotional,” our first idea may have been a matter of the heart. To be devoted is most often driven by deep feelings of love and longing. And yes, when our hearts are in it, we are “all in.”
Love is a heartfelt commitment, and the commitment is what makes it real.
Is it any wonder that the words love, and devotion are so often used together? “Love and devotion”—devotion looks like love. Your dog is endlessly devoted, so you call it “love.” Does your dog really love you? Now there’s always the one who is going to say, “That’s not love; he’s just looking for his next meal!” That person is not a dog lover; he is a dog feeder. Dog lovers know their dogs love them and that it has nothing to do with food, right?
Our dogs are devoted and would love us if we ran out of food completely. They would lay down their lives for us in danger—that’s love.
I also have two cats, and the verdict is still out in my mind. I may be wrong, but I think they would throw me under the bus for the first can of Little Friskies to come along, but I may be wrong.
In worship, we show our devotion to God, but our devotion is expressed in more than one way, which is why we have the so-called “worship wars.” In general, churches argue and disagree about music and worship style. One group wants more deep and heartfelt singing, basking in the Spirit with songs of praise—and that’s great stuff—if you don’t get it, you’re missing out.
The other side seeks constancy—regularity and preservation of old standards. For them, the experience of worship is immersing oneself—not in warm feelings—but in a deep richness of faith handed down through generations. Both sides feel love and devotion for God; it’s just different feelings, different sentiments.
We need both, and we need to beware of both because our feelings can mislead us.
The great bath of praise in the Holy Spirit can become all about me and my feelings. If I felt really good, then worship was great, but if things didn’t significantly move me, worship wasn’t that good. Do you see? It ceases to be about our devotion to God and all about how the event serves our nervous system.
The other kind goes off just as quickly. The preservation of hymnbooks, organ music, and choir robes is not the same thing as the preservation of the truth—but folks can fail to make that distinction.
This is the problem with our hearts—when they’re good, they’re really good, but when they’re self-serving, we lose all perspective on our core task, which is to honor and glorify God.
HANDS: Devotion Action
Get off your knees and get into the fray!
Getting back to loving our dogs. Some folks are mere “dog-feeders” instead of dog lovers, but that needs qualification. What kind of person loves their dogs but doesn’t feed them? An abuser. If you say you love your dogs so much but don’t feed them, you may as well hate them. So much for feelings.
It doesn’t really matter if the dog-feeder doesn’t go all gooey with emotion when Fido turns on full cute mode. What matters is that he loves the dogs enough to give them what they need: food, shelter, medical care, and an occasional flea bath. Is that not love?
Perhaps the most crucial kind of devotion we can show is the kind we practice after getting up off our knees. If your devotion to God ends once you’ve gotten into your car and driven off the parking lot, something’s wrong.
How different would the church’s witness to the world look if church were seen as the place to exercise all our vileness, sin, and anger? Imagine that: we come here to dump all our negativity and fear, but the moment we’re out of the parking lot and in the world, our devotion to God is in full effect. Be bad here; be good there! Doesn’t that seem like a better witness?
Devotion off one’s knees is what we call obedience. We show our best devotion to God by how we act in His world, and our behavior is our best devotion of all.
In Matthew 25, at the last judgment, the sentimentalists cry out:
‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ [Matthew 25: 44b-45]
Obedience is the highest spirituality. Not high idealism, not mystical, magical feelings—but devotion in action. We honor Christ and glorify God when we follow through with what Christ wants us to do.
Jesus was walking among the dog-lovers—the dog-lovers and dog-feeders—and he says to them:
“Follow me, and I will make you lovers and feeders of human beings!”
If we love one another, we must be feeders and carers—providers of food, shelter, medical care, and—as needed—the occasional flea bath.
The Key: GRATITUDE
Gratitude is the beginning and the end of all devotion
One element, one virtue, stands at the center of devotion—in fact, it may stand at the heart of everything we call our PRIMED values--and that is gratitude.
When we pray, in weekly worship or daily devotions, we must begin by thanking God for all he has done and does. After we’ve prayed for everything else—confessed our sins, prayed for others—we finish by thanking God for hearing us and for his answers in advance. Gratitude is the beginning and the end of devotion.
It’s more than that: gratitude is the reason for our service. We don’t serve The Lord in order to make up for our shortcomings or as a strategy to win His favor—make it into Heaven, etc.—but we serve out of gratitude for what He has already done for us through Christ. Salvation isn’t something we’re earning; it is what God has already provided, so all our lives are a lived response to grace—not some kind of attempt to secure God’s grace.
Because we are grateful to God, we come to feel gratitude for all things in our life. We see all things as a blessing and nothing as a curse. Since God has secured life eternal for us, this life is not a threat, and death is not an end but a passage.
Our gratitude for God’s grace comes to reflect on everything else in our lives. Gratitude for anything ends up in giving thanks to God. My love for my wife quickly becomes thanks to God for bringing us together. I thank God for my dogs because I love them, but more so because I love the Lord who made them and put us together. By the way, I’m still learning how to pray for cats. Give me some more time on that.
Gratitude is forever. Gratitude is eternal. Did you ever think of that? Do you think we will ever cease to be grateful to God for eternal life and eternal salvation? Do you imagine we will ever get to the point where we feel like it’s all settled and even? No, as God is infinitely good, we will grow infinitely grateful. We will know the feeling of thankfulness after a trillion years in Heaven.
Finally, gratitude is happiness. I can make no meaningful separation of them in my mind. To be thankful is to find contentment, and to feel happy about anything is to have gratitude working in our depths. Gratitude is the root structure of joy and the true heart of our devotion.
Are you feeling sad? Seek gratitude. In pain? Suffering? Seek gratitude. See someone else sad? In pain? Suffering? Let us be thankful for the opportunity to show our devotion to God by helping. Let us give the poor of the world something to be grateful for in God’s name and to His glory. †
Questions
- Devotion of the mind includes the preservation of the truth. How can one’s defense of the faith become a larger problem?
- Should Christians resolve to be intolerant of falsehoods?
- How can heartfelt devotion go wrong?
- Why is heartfelt passion critical to Christian devotion?
- How do you best feed your heart to grow in its devotion to God?
- What is another word for devotion off of one’s knees?
- Why is devotion-in-action superior to devoted thoughts or feelings?
- “Gratitude is the beginning and the end of all devotion.” Discuss.
- How does gratitude—for anything—end up leading to thanking God?