Over the next few weeks this new affection took over my life. It was a
greater affection for this for this man this this man named Jesus than it was
for alcohol. It was a there was a greater affection for this man Jesus than it was
for women. It was a greater even a greater affection for this this
beautiful man Jesus than even for gymnastics.
How do we replace the idols of our heart with new affection? We replace our
affections, the old affections, with a greater more passionate affection in our
life and as I said in my last message the Scottish pastor Thomas Chalmers
preached a great sermon in 1819 the expulsive power of a new affection and it
shows that the only way to dislodge one affection from our heart is for it to be
pushed out and replaced by a new and stronger affection. He writes in a word
if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and
dominant object is to bind it in positive love to another then it is not
by exposing the worthlessness of the former but rather by addressing to the
mental eye the worth and the excellence of the latter that all old things are to
be done away with and things can now become new. So I'm calling this the
principle of a greater affection and I want to give some illustrations of this
just naturally from my life and one that comes to mind was in 1972. So in 1972 I'm
in high school, ninth grade, and I go to PE class and at PE class the way it was
back then, I don't know if it still is now, but back then you went through different
sports so you had a period where it was volleyball and then we had a period where it was
basketball and then we had a period where it was flag football, things like that. So the
phys ed teacher was always teaching us some new sport and we came to wrestling. I didn't
know anything about wrestling, couldn't have cared less about wrestling and I was
thrust into wrestling matches with guys sometimes almost twice as big as me
because I was so little. There weren't that many that I could wrestle at my
weight because I only weighed 95 pounds. I was really good and I didn't even realize how good I was. I was
very strong for my size. I was actually very strong for anybody's size because I was
taking on guys that were maybe 50 pounds heavier than me and beating them.
And so it just so happened that my phys ed teacher was also the wrestling coach,
Coach Chonko. I remember his name was Coach Chonko. And so he came up to me after about ten of these
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
wrestle really very well, but that was part of the class. He was showing us, you know, a half
Nelson. He was showing us how to do what you call the banana split, but I still remember some of these things.
But I kind of caught it really fast and enjoyed it. So he asked me then to consider coming out for the
wrestling team and I think the idea of having a kind of a uniform with Clarkston
wrestling on it, I think that's what really appealed to me. I thought that would be cool to have a
sweatshirt I could wear. I'm this kid who's really got no identity. I'm in, again, I think it was
eighth or ninth grade. Here was something that gave me identity, got into it, and really became good.
And over the course of the year, I think I had 72 bouts, both on the JV and the freshman team, because they kept
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.
It was awesome. So I thought, oh, maybe wrestling's what I want to do. Well, it's 1972. Well, 1972 was the
Olympics and the Olympics came along and I started watching gymnastics on TV. And I got so enthusiastic about
gymnastics that it was like, what's wrestling? I just forgot about wrestling. And I went into gymnastics and for the next
eight years was a committed gymnast instead of a wrestler. So it's an example, though, of it wasn't so much that I
thought, well, I think I could be better at gymnastics than wrestling. I don't even remember ever thinking that.
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
into gymnastics. New coach came the next year.
Who was a gymnast at University of Georgia and actually a really really good coach
And so he began to work with me
And I became you know a gymnast for the next eight years and went on to college with a scholarship for gymnastics
But it was a greater affection
So that's what I'm talking about is that it wasn't so much that I began to say to myself
You know I want to be I really like
You know
Wrestling so I'm gonna stick to wrestling it was more that this new affection came
and I think a lot of things in our life are like that that God's wired us a certain way and
The greater affection takes over, and I'm not terminal. I want to just be clear. I'm not talking about feelings
It wasn't an emotional thing because I might have been at first it might have been at the very beginning
But it was more of a growing conviction of a greater affection
That was more important than a lesser affection one time
I mean, I'm in Japan on a mission trip. This is
1982 and then we go to China and we're smuggling Bibles into China and
This blonde haired gal comes up to me from UCLA
her name is Liz and
BAM I
Was just captivated by her beauty and as I got to know her through the trip that we were on I realized
Her inner beauty too, so her outer beauty caught my eye or inner beauty really captured my heart and
suddenly
From that day forward that day forward and then for the next three years
My letter writing my thinking
My phone calls were all around an affection a new affection that I had in my life
For for Liz so you could say that I fell in love with Liz the first time
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
attracted to her
almost immediately and then three years later, we were able to get married and
But it was a new affection a fresh affection in my life. Now. Here's here's my point. I suddenly
Disciplined my life if you just said to me I want you to start
Practicing three and a half hours a day
six days a week
For the next four years of high school and then four years of college
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
I'm not gonna do that in any sport and yet the the new affection drove me to a
Discipline that confounded in any and in every way
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
Love with the Liz is that I began to think about her. I began to be
Powerfully affected by her and so what followed were these convictions and this discipline in my life
Well my freshman year, I'm at the University of Georgia. I got injured really a friend of a friend
Took me out for lunch and then out to this grassy hill
University of Georgia and he opened up a little mustard colored booklet called the four spiritual laws
and he shared with me that God loved me and that God had a wonderful plan for my life and
That Jesus died on the cross for my sins
he shared with me that Jesus rose in the third day from the dead and that his power could come into my life and
That if I would put my faith in him if I put my trust in him, Jesus would come into my life. Save me
but also
restore
the true creation for which I was created by Christ to be that the true identity that was mine and
so after a few
Months of thinking about this one day. I went into a little chapel at University of Georgia
I gave my heart to Christ and all I can tell you men and women is there's like suddenly
Over the next few weeks this new affection took over my life
It was a greater affection for this for this man
This this man named Jesus than it was for alcohol
It was a there was a greater affection for this man Jesus than it was for women
It was a greater and even a greater affection for this this beautiful man
Jesus than even for gymnastics. That's how we break idols in our heart
We break idols in our heart by discovering a new affection and going for it
And so what I'm going to talk about in the next episode is I want to talk about the principle of a greater
affection and how this works spiritually and emotionally and
mentally even physically in our life so I'm gonna give you three thoughts under
the rubric of the principle of the greater affection and let me give you a
little bit of a teaser for the next one here's my thesis this is my thesis the
only way to be free from a sinful affection is to replace it with more
passion for a holy affection let me say that again the only way to be free from
a sinful affection is to replace it with a more with a greater passion for a
holy affection the only way to replace an old affection is with a new one
greater than the former one so in my next episode I want to talk about how to
do that in your life
you