Soren's Song

Meet Soren. Soren believes in God, and Jesus Christ, and the cross which saved him from his sins. But Soren, like most Christians, lives on what some might call the spiritual roller coaster. For awhile, everything is great: he loves God with his whole heart and he continually strives to reflect that love with the actions of his life. He lives out each day with the goal of “walking by the Spirit” and therefore “not carrying out the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). At times though, Soren struggles. The weight of his sins begins to pile up, and he fails to lay them in turn at the foot of the cross, upon his Savior. He becomes discouraged with his failure, and his sin escalates until the point of desperation, at which he eventually turns back to the loving arms of the Father, repenting and placing his hope once again in Christ.

The pattern continues. From the spiritual high to the spiritual low… a seemingly unending cycle of “right-ness” with God. See, Soren is just an ordinary Christian. But he grew tired of the cycle, of the roller coaster. His emotions ran dry. Did his tears of repentance really hold meaning anymore? Could he experience true sorrow over his sins, knowing that he would come crashing back down sooner or later? He knew it wouldn’t be any different this time than it had been any time before, so why bother? Why subject himself to the pain of failure, and the disappointment in himself?

There’s something else you should know about Soren. Like most others, his emotions hold much influence over his entire being. Though his will and his mind may be focused on God, his emotions are indeed prone to wander and often tear down the strength of his will and mind.

So, as you can imagine, when his emotions ceased to care about sinning or not sinning, about loving God or hating God, the rest of Soren’s life began to fall apart. See, Soren reached the point where even sin no longer held the appeal that it once did, but neither did the life and hard work of sanctification and glorifying God. Nothing mattered, and nothing felt right or wrong. He just… existed.

But he didn’t want to give up. He had tried that before, and he knew the result would bring only further suffering. No, he knew that giving himself up to a life of sin was not the answer. But what, then? Could he make himself feel what he did not indeed feel? He wanted the desire to live for God, but there was only emptiness.

What Soren was experiencing was an internal battle within his own existence. He knew the truth: that to live his life for God would ultimately bring him lasting and fullest joy and bring God most glory. But he didn’t feel the truth. Quite simply, he did not care about joy or glorifying God. Under the sin-wrought control of his emotions, he didn’t care about anything.

Soren was confused, and hopeless. But Soren has a friend who cares about him very much: a friend who shared the following quote with him:

“What we cannot at once attain, it is well to desire. God judges us very much by the desire of our hearts. He who rides a lame horse is not blamed by his master for want of speed, if he makes all the haste he can, and would make more if he could; God takes the will for the deed with his children.”

The words of Mr. Charles Spurgeon resounded throughout Soren’s mind. There was truth in those words… there was hope… but there was also pain. There was pain in wanting desperately to feel that desire by which he was to be judged. He said as much. And so the friend replied, “There's not much difference between the want of that desire and the desire itself.”

Soren turned to his journal, and he wrote. He wrote to God: “All You ask is for me to try. You don’t ask for perfection. You got perfection at the cross. You ask only for ‘holy desires which lead to resolute action’ (Spurgeon).” As he wrote, and as he prayed, feeling began to return. Not feeling alone, but feeling accompanied by truth, by knowledge; emotion that flowed from truth, rather than overpowered truth. Soren began to fall in love with his Savior once again.

What great power lies in the emotions! The great Puritan writer John Owen writes of protecting our emotions from the influence of sin: “First, we guard our affections by mortifying our members. [In Col. 3:5] the apostle is saying, ‘you are to prevent the working and deceit of sin, which is in your members.’ He also says, ‘set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.’ Fixing and filling your affections with heavenly things will mortify sin.” Owen continues, “Second, let us fix our affections on the cross of Christ… When someone sets his affections upon the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ, and you will find no room for sin… Remember also that the vigor of our affections toward heavenly things is apt to decline unless it is constantly looked after, exercised, directed, and warned… Let us be jealous over our hearts to prevent such backsliding.”

Indeed, let us direct our emotions toward the Savior who loved us first. And let those emotions, governed by the mind and the will, cultivate a holy desire for a life that glorifies God. And as Spurgeon exhorts, such ‘holy desires must lead to resolute action.’ God is asking us only to try as hard as we may with what we have been given. So let us try.