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Over the next few weeks this new affection took over my life. It was a

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greater affection for this for this man this this man named Jesus than it was

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for alcohol. It was a there was a greater affection for this man Jesus than it was

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for women. It was a greater even a greater affection for this this

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beautiful man Jesus than even for gymnastics.

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How do we replace the idols of our heart with new affection? We replace our

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affections, the old affections, with a greater more passionate affection in our

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life and as I said in my last message the Scottish pastor Thomas Chalmers

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preached a great sermon in 1819 the expulsive power of a new affection and it

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shows that the only way to dislodge one affection from our heart is for it to be

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pushed out and replaced by a new and stronger affection. He writes in a word

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if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and

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dominant object is to bind it in positive love to another then it is not

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by exposing the worthlessness of the former but rather by addressing to the

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mental eye the worth and the excellence of the latter that all old things are to

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be done away with and things can now become new. So I'm calling this the

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principle of a greater affection and I want to give some illustrations of this

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just naturally from my life and one that comes to mind was in 1972. So in 1972 I'm

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in high school, ninth grade, and I go to PE class and at PE class the way it was

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back then, I don't know if it still is now, but back then you went through different

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sports so you had a period where it was volleyball and then we had a period where it was

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basketball and then we had a period where it was flag football, things like that. So the

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phys ed teacher was always teaching us some new sport and we came to wrestling. I didn't

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know anything about wrestling, couldn't have cared less about wrestling and I was

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thrust into wrestling matches with guys sometimes almost twice as big as me

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because I was so little. There weren't that many that I could wrestle at my

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weight because I only weighed 95 pounds. I was really good and I didn't even realize how good I was. I was

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very strong for my size. I was actually very strong for anybody's size because I was

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taking on guys that were maybe 50 pounds heavier than me and beating them.

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And so it just so happened that my phys ed teacher was also the wrestling coach,

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Coach Chonko. I remember his name was Coach Chonko. And so he came up to me after about ten of these

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matches where I just did really well. I didn't even know, I didn't even have any moves. I didn't even know how to

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wrestle really very well, but that was part of the class. He was showing us, you know, a half

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Nelson. He was showing us how to do what you call the banana split, but I still remember some of these things.

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But I kind of caught it really fast and enjoyed it. So he asked me then to consider coming out for the

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wrestling team and I think the idea of having a kind of a uniform with Clarkston

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wrestling on it, I think that's what really appealed to me. I thought that would be cool to have a

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sweatshirt I could wear. I'm this kid who's really got no identity. I'm in, again, I think it was

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eighth or ninth grade. Here was something that gave me identity, got into it, and really became good.

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And over the course of the year, I think I had 72 bouts, both on the JV and the freshman team, because they kept

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moving me up and down, as well as in the PE class, and nobody defeated me. So it was crazy. I was crazy good at it.

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It was awesome. So I thought, oh, maybe wrestling's what I want to do. Well, it's 1972. Well, 1972 was the

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Olympics and the Olympics came along and I started watching gymnastics on TV. And I got so enthusiastic about

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gymnastics that it was like, what's wrestling? I just forgot about wrestling. And I went into gymnastics and for the next

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eight years was a committed gymnast instead of a wrestler. So it's an example, though, of it wasn't so much that I

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thought, well, I think I could be better at gymnastics than wrestling. I don't even remember ever thinking that.

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What I remember is I want to do gymnastics. I was engulfed in kind of a revival of a greater affection. I quit wrestling, went

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into gymnastics. New coach came the next year.

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Who was a gymnast at University of Georgia and actually a really really good coach

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And so he began to work with me

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And I became you know a gymnast for the next eight years and went on to college with a scholarship for gymnastics

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But it was a greater affection

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So that's what I'm talking about is that it wasn't so much that I began to say to myself

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You know I want to be I really like

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You know

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Wrestling so I'm gonna stick to wrestling it was more that this new affection came

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and I think a lot of things in our life are like that that God's wired us a certain way and

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The greater affection takes over, and I'm not terminal. I want to just be clear. I'm not talking about feelings

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It wasn't an emotional thing because I might have been at first it might have been at the very beginning

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But it was more of a growing conviction of a greater affection

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That was more important than a lesser affection one time

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I mean, I'm in Japan on a mission trip. This is

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1982 and then we go to China and we're smuggling Bibles into China and

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This blonde haired gal comes up to me from UCLA

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her name is Liz and

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BAM I

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Was just captivated by her beauty and as I got to know her through the trip that we were on I realized

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Her inner beauty too, so her outer beauty caught my eye or inner beauty really captured my heart and

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suddenly

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From that day forward that day forward and then for the next three years

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My letter writing my thinking

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My phone calls were all around an affection a new affection that I had in my life

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For for Liz so you could say that I fell in love with Liz the first time

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I saw her a lot of people say that and you like yeah, right, but I think it was true that it that I was

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attracted to her

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almost immediately and then three years later, we were able to get married and

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But it was a new affection a fresh affection in my life. Now. Here's here's my point. I suddenly

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Disciplined my life if you just said to me I want you to start

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Practicing three and a half hours a day

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six days a week

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For the next four years of high school and then four years of college

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In the sport of gymnastics when I didn't know anything about you Max. I said you're crazy. There's no way I'm gonna do that

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I'm not gonna do that in any sport and yet the the new affection drove me to a

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Discipline that confounded in any and in every way

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How I used my time because the new affection was what I was in love with and it was the same thing with falling in

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Love with the Liz is that I began to think about her. I began to be

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Powerfully affected by her and so what followed were these convictions and this discipline in my life

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Well my freshman year, I'm at the University of Georgia. I got injured really a friend of a friend

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Took me out for lunch and then out to this grassy hill

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University of Georgia and he opened up a little mustard colored booklet called the four spiritual laws

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and he shared with me that God loved me and that God had a wonderful plan for my life and

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That Jesus died on the cross for my sins

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he shared with me that Jesus rose in the third day from the dead and that his power could come into my life and

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That if I would put my faith in him if I put my trust in him, Jesus would come into my life. Save me

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but also

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restore

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the true creation for which I was created by Christ to be that the true identity that was mine and

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so after a few

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Months of thinking about this one day. I went into a little chapel at University of Georgia

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I gave my heart to Christ and all I can tell you men and women is there's like suddenly

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Over the next few weeks this new affection took over my life

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It was a greater affection for this for this man

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This this man named Jesus than it was for alcohol

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It was a there was a greater affection for this man Jesus than it was for women

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It was a greater and even a greater affection for this this beautiful man

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Jesus than even for gymnastics. That's how we break idols in our heart

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We break idols in our heart by discovering a new affection and going for it

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And so what I'm going to talk about in the next episode is I want to talk about the principle of a greater

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affection and how this works spiritually and emotionally and

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mentally even physically in our life so I'm gonna give you three thoughts under

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the rubric of the principle of the greater affection and let me give you a

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little bit of a teaser for the next one here's my thesis this is my thesis the

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only way to be free from a sinful affection is to replace it with more

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passion for a holy affection let me say that again the only way to be free from

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a sinful affection is to replace it with a more with a greater passion for a

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holy affection the only way to replace an old affection is with a new one

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greater than the former one so in my next episode I want to talk about how to

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do that in your life

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you