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Moderate your delights. Do not set your heart too much upon any creature comfort. What we over-love, we shall over-grieve.https://gracegems.org/Watson/art_of_divine_contentment2.htm
Delight in God's service makes us resemble the angels in heaven. They serve God with cheerfulness; as soon as God speaks the word, they are ambitious to obey. How are they ravished with delight while they are praising God! In heaven we shall be as the angels; spiritual delight would make us like them here. To serve God by constraint is to be like the devil. All the devils in hell obey God, but it is against their will; they yield a passive obedience. But service which comes off with delight is angelical. This is that we pray for, that "God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven." Is it not done with delight there?
Delight in religion crowns all our services. Therefore, David counsels his son Solomon not only to serve God but to serve Him "with a willing mind" (1 Chron. 28:9). Delight in duty is better than duty itself, as it is worse for a man to delight in sin than to commit it because there is more of the will in sin. So delight in duty is to be preferred before duty: "O how love I thy law" (Ps. 119:97)! It is not how much we do, but how much we love. Hypocrites may obey God's law, but the saints love His law; this carries away the garland.
That, therefore, which we are to understand ourselves called to, under the name of delighting in God, is the keeping of our souls open to divine influences and communications—thirsing after them, praying and waiting for them, endeavoring to improve them and cooperate with them, and to stir up ourselves to such exercises of religion as are most suitable to our present state, together with an allowing and applying ourselves to stay and taste, in our progress and course, the sweetness and delightfulness of those communications and operations whereof we have any present experience.
Rightly understand what delight in God it is that you must seek and exercise. It is not a mere sensitive delight, which is exercised about the objects of sense or fancy and is common to beasts with men; nor is it the delights of immediate intuition of God, such as the blessed have in heaven; nor is it an enthusiastic delight, consisting in irrational raptures and joys, of which we can give no account of the reason. Nor is it a delight inconsistent with sorrow and fear, when they are duties; but it is the solid, rational complacency of the soul in God and holiness, arising from the apprehensions of that in Him, which is justly delectable to us. And it is such as, in estimation of its object and inward complacency and gladness though not in passionate joy or mirth, must excel our delight in temporal pleasure and must be the end of all our humiliations and other inferior duties.
Diligently labor, that God and holiness may be thy chief delight. And this holy delight may be the ordinary temperament of thy religion.
Behold Him in the infinite perfections of His being: His omnipotence, omniscience, and His goodness; His holiness, eternity, immutability, etc. And as your eye delights in an excellent picture or comely buildings or fields or gardens not because they are yours, but because they are a delectable object to the eye, so let your minds delight themselves in God considered in Himself, as the only object of highest delight.
A smooth, if a false way should not delight us; nor should a rugged, if a right way, dishearten us.
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7. John Flavel (88)
8. John Piper (87)
9. George Swinnock (83)
10. John Owen (73)
11. A.W. Pink (68)
12. William Gurnall (66)
13. Louis Berkhof (63)
14. Thomas Manton (61)
15. C.S. Lewis (59)
16. B.B. Warfield (59)
17. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
18. R.C. Sproul (55)
19. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
20. Matthew Henry (51)
2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. Thomas Brooks (98)
6. J.I. Packer (93)
7. John Flavel (88)
8. John Piper (87)
9. George Swinnock (83)
10. John Owen (73)
11. A.W. Pink (68)
12. William Gurnall (66)
13. Louis Berkhof (63)
14. Thomas Manton (61)
15. C.S. Lewis (59)
16. B.B. Warfield (59)
17. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
18. R.C. Sproul (55)
19. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
20. Matthew Henry (51)
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