Our Love Must Be Properly Nurtured

Driving home: Not only must our love to Christ be properly rooted if we would maintain our love in an age of abounding wickedness in the second place it must be properly nurtured.

Bunyan's illustration from the House of Interpreter depicts a fire against a wall, with water being thrown on it, yet it burns hotter. Unseen, oil is poured from behind the wall. This illustrates how the Holy Spirit secretly sustains the fire of a Christian's love for God despite Satan's efforts to extinguish it.

Remember Bunyan's picture in the House of Interpreter. There was the wall and the fire before the wall and one who was throwing buckets of water upon the fire and yet the more the water spattered upon the fire, the fire instead of being extinguished grew hotter and higher and the answer was that unseen behind the wall was one pouring oil upon that fire and Bunyan has to...

6:56 - 7:26 Read in full sermon

The point: Understand the principle that love to Christ is always responsive, reactive, and reciprocal to avoid stumbling when hearts are cold.

The pupil of the eye cannot be willed to dilate or constrict but always reacts responsively to light. This illustrates that our love for Christ is never self-initiated but always responsive, reactive, and reciprocal to the 'light' of Christ's love.

It is. Never self-initiated, self-created, or self-perpetuated. And if you and I can get hold of that principle and save us from a thousand stumblings in our Christian lives. For every true Christian grieves when his heart is cold. And every true Christian is determined to do something about the torpor, the coldness. The dullness of his love to Christ. But if he does not understand this principle, that love to Christ is always a responsive, reactive, reciprocal reality. It is never self-initiated, self-created, or self-perpetuated. It's like the pupil in my eye. I cannot stand before

12:43 - 13:45 Read in full sermon