Doing Things Right In Matters of the Heart 3

This is the 3rd installment of a series through John Ensor's excellent book Doing Things Right In Matters of the Heart. Below are a series of quotes from Chapter Three: "What the Heart Lacks." Enjoy and then purchase the book and read the whole thing!

'Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.' I'll go with Augustine on this one. Our endless search for happiness explains just about everything we do, good and evil. We look for sex and drink beer because it makes us happy almost instantly. We repeat this because it is a fleeting happiness and so must be sought again and again.

If we do not seek our happiness in God and make him our perfect and everlasting happiness, then every good thing becomes a substitute for God; it becomes an idol.

Idyllic love is idolatry because it places on a man what only God can provide.

Sisters, to look to any man to be your all-encompassing delight is to set him up for failure, and then you will hate him for disappointing you. You will find what you are seeking only in Christ...Likewise brothers, there is no eternal bliss in breasts...God is the wellspring of our life.

Discretion is God at work in our heart, giving us the means to fulfill our heart’s desire by first protecting us against fraud...Without discretion you will fall prey to the dimwitted notion that you are ready for sex when you are in love. Nothing is more typical and nothing is more wrong.

The powerful urge within you will either be channeled into one enduring and precious love or it will drag you off, strip away all you cherish, and when you are left with nothing but yourself, it will eat away your flesh! Can a man play with fire and not be burned? Discretion, get discretion.

I am the only condom my daughter will ever need. I am her protection. I have modeled for her what kind of man to look for in marriage by how I live and love her mother. I have shown her what to look for—someone who values integrity and lives in submission to God, someone works hard to his family and laughs loud with them and can’t keep his hands off his wife. My boys too are watching and learning from me.

What we desire and describe as a healthy, tender, passionate, enduring, mutually-satisfying relationship, God simply calls marriage.

As you can see, this was a very good chapter!