There is only one escape—to ask God to fill you with new affections, his loves. For forever joy and peace, it’s wise to nurture new and better loves in the here and now. God alone is the source of all that is true, good and beautiful, and as fallen creatures, we need his loving hands to shape and reshape us.  Best new affection? A genuine love for God.

LIFE is different now. It’s like this meadow mist. Fresh and new every morning. What I cared so much for, I couldn’t care less about. All has changed, seemingly. I have new joys, new affections that are precious to me. I now love people. Especially older slower wiser ones. 

What or who changes us? God. What we lack relationally, he supplies. And he blesses us with those who’ve learned to love rightly. 

God often uses trauma to transform us. And in doing so, he fans the flames of true and better loves. He doesn’t simply swap affections—the shabby for the shiny—he drivesthem out by refilling us with his loves. 

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. ” (I John 2:15-16 ESV)

The Scottish theologian and astronomer Thomas Chalmers described our attempts to not love the world thusly. (I enjoy using words of smarter men … like thusly.) 

“There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world—either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one.”

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