The sixth season, the season of duty, is a season that involves keeping our hearts in every area of life, whether public or private. In other words, this is the season of keeping your heart to God with regard to your commitments to Him. When you read the Bible, this means focusing on Him, on what you are learning in Scripture, and how it can be applied to your life. When you pray, this means keeping your prayers focused on what God would desire. When you are in public, this means living as one who serves the Lord diligently, and so on. Whatever the duties God calls us to do, we must keep our hearts on Him. Then our duties to Him will be true and honourable. Here is Flavel on season six:
The sixth season requiring this diligence in keeping the heart, is the season of duty. Our hearts must be closely watched and kept when we draw nigh to God in public, private, or secret duties; for the vanity of the heart seldom discovers itself more than at such times. How often does the poor soul cry out, ‘O Lord, how gladly would I serve thee, but vain thoughts will not let me: I come to open my heart to thee, to delight my soul in communion with thee, but my corruptions oppose me: Lord, call off these vain thoughts, and suffer them not to prostitute the soul that is espoused to thee.’
The question then is this: How may the heart be kept from distractions by vain thoughts in time of duty? There is a two-fold distraction, or wandering of the heart in duty: First, voluntary and habitual, “They set not their hearts aright, and their spirit was not steadfast with God.” This is the case of formalists, and it proceeds from the want of a holy inclination of the heart to God; their hearts are under the power of their lusts, and therefore it is no wonder that they go after their lusts, even when they are about holy things. Secondly, involuntary and lamented distractions: “I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me; wretched man that I am,” &c. This proceeds not from the want of a holy inclination or aim, but from the weakness of grace and the want of vigilance in opposing in-dwelling sin. But it is not my business to show you how these distractions come into the heart, but rather how to get them out, and prevent their future admission.
Flavel describes two kinds of distractions that, when entertained, nullify any worth of the duty being performed. Of the formalist, many seem to think that a duty is something that is characterized by formalism (doing a duty just for the sake of doing it). Far from it! The Bible is full of duties that God gives to His followers, but what makes them pleasing and complete in the sight of the Lord is when they are done from a heart after Him. In Isaiah 29:13, the Israelites themselves have become formalists. God said, “these people approach Me with their mouths to honor Me with lip-service—yet their hearts are far from Me, and their worship consists of man-made rules learned by rote.” This is exactly the sin of the formalist, and why God did not accept much of what Israel did for Him. On the outside, people can often appear to others to be loving God and doing good things for Him. Yet, when our hearts are not behind these duties, then not only is our worship nullified, but we may actually be sinning. Our acts of outward obedience, when lacking inward obedience, become simply another act of rebellion. Yet, this is only so for those given over to formalism, whose hearts have yet to be changed by the gospel. For those of us who are saved, there will be times when we do our duties to God in a formal way, and this requires diligence and prayer to keep our hearts on Him. For believers, being formal in our duties is a distraction from God that opens access to all sorts of temptations and evils. Keeping our hearts is the remedy for this. Likewise, when we are doing our duties for the Lord, these are often times when wicked thoughts and reasonings come into our minds. Keeping our hearts thus also means keeping our minds fixed upon Him, holding every thought captive to Him.
Help number one is the following:
1. Set apart some time for solemn preparation to meet God in duty. You cannot come directly from the world into God’s presence without finding a savor of the world in your duties. It is with the heart (a few minutes since plunged in the world, now in the presence of God) as it is with the sea after a storm, which still continues working, muddy and disquiet, though the wind be laid and the storm be over. Your heart must have some time to settle. Few musicians can take an instrument and play upon it without some time and labor to tune it; few Christians can say with David, “My heart is fixed, O God, it is fixed.” When you go to God in any duty, take your heart aside and say, ‘O my soul, I am now engaged in the greatest work that a creature was ever employed about; I am going into the awesome presence of God upon business of everlasting moment. my soul, leave trifling now; be composed, be watchful, be serious; this is no common work, it is soul-work; it is work for eternity; It is work which will bring forth fruit to life or death in the world to come.’ Pause awhile and consider your sins, your wants, your troubles; keep your thoughts awhile on these before you address yourself to duty. David first thought, and then spoke with his tongue.
Setting apart time daily to be spent in prayer, Bible reading, family worship, singing, and the like is a first step (this is not an exhaustive list of duties) . It is our loving duty to the Father to set aside time for godly disciplines. Remember that when we come to prayer and Bible reading (and our other duties), we are in God’s presence, in a time that is solely dedicated to Him. Yes, all time is to be dedicated to Him, but the time of duty is a time of refocusing on God and not on the world and its ways. This time is to be as an anchor for a storm: a time when our hearts are tuned to Him. Such duty will help carry us through the rest of the day and keep us focused on Him and His ways. Ensure that you are right before God by confessing sins and forgiving others, petitioning Him for your needs and trusting in Him to do what is best. Then you will be in a better place to keep your heart focused on Him when you do your duty.
2. Having composed your heart by previous meditation, immediately set a guard upon your senses. How often are Christians in danger of losing the eyes of their mind by those of their body! Against this David prayed, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity, and quicken thou me in thy way.” This may serve to expound the Arabian proverb: “Shut the windows that the house may be light.” It were well if you could say in the commencement, as a holy man once said when he came from the performance of duty: “Be shut, O my eyes, be shut; for it is impossible that you should ever discern such beauty and glory in any creature as I have now seen in God.” You must avoid all occasions of distraction from without, and imbibe that intenseness of spirit in the work of God which locks up the eye and ear against vanity.
For a Christian to “meditate” means for him to think carefully and reflectively about the truth of God’s Word. It does not mean, as many false teachers say, emptying your mind or practicing eastern mysticism (such as what is found in Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoga, or Contemplative Mysticism). For a Christian to meditate is to be as the Psalmist:
I will meditate on Your precepts and think about Your ways. . . .
Help me understand the meaning of Your precepts so that I can meditate on Your wonders. . . .
I will lift up my hands to Your commands, which I love, and will meditate on Your statutes. . . .
Let the arrogant be put to shame for slandering me with lies; I will meditate on Your precepts (Ps. 119:15, 27, 48, 78).
Meditation is like a careful and slow chewing of the truth to ensure that it gets properly digested, nourishing your body and making you wise.
In order to meditate, we need to make sure that we set aside time for God apart from our regular doings (step 1), and further guard against being distracted by our bodily senses so that we can focus on God and His teaching (step 2). Cultivate a desire to focus on God and a disdain for unholy distraction, and seek to prevent them before you begin your duty.
3. Beg of God a mortified fancy. A working fancy, saith one, how much soever it be extolled among men, is a great snare to the soul, except it work in fellowship with right reason and a sanctified heart. The fancy is a power of the soul, placed between the senses and the understanding; it is that which first stirs itself in the soul, and by its motions the other powers of the soul are brought into exercise; it is that in which thoughts are first formed, and as that is, so are they. If imaginations be not first cast down, it is impossible that every thought of the heart should be brought into obedience to Christ. The fancy is naturally the wildest and most untameable power of the soul. Some Christians have much to do with it: and the more spiritual the heart is, the more does a wild and vain fancy disturb and perplex it. It is a sad thing that one’s imagination should call off the soul from attending on God, when it is engaged in communion with him. Pray earnestly and perseveringly that your fancy may be chastened and sanctified, and when this is accomplished your thoughts will be regular and fixed.
When Flavel says “fancy,” he means vain, unprofitable, and unholy imaginings that often come to invade times of duty to our Lord. It detracts the heart from God, dragging it after imaginings. So, these need to be mortified (killed). Upon performing our duty to God, we keep our hearts focused on Him when we kill thoughts and imagining that detract from Him. Upon killing them, we replace those fanciful thoughts with thoughts of His Word and truth, to bring honour and glory to God with humble submission to Him. When we enter our duty with fanciful thinking still going on in our heads, our time of duty is not profitable, being rendered as if we did not or had hardly performed it. Allowing these thoughts to persist is irreverent and spiteful to God, which is why they need to be all killed and submitted to Christ, as the Bible says,
For though we live in the body, we do not wage war in an unspiritual way, since the weapons of our warfare are not worldly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-6).
This passage is not only applied to our living out in the world, where we are to defend the truth, but also to those same battles that rage within ourselves, which seek to take us captive to do its bidding. Don’t let your hearts be taken captive! But mortify your imaginings and detracting thoughts, so that you can focus on God and meditate on His Word. The battle for the heart rages whenever vain thoughts enter your mind. But take heart, Christian! God gives us exactly what we need to win our battles. Petition and beg God to remove those vain thoughts and trust Him to do so as you work diligently to mortify them. Then you can perform your duty with a heart focused on God. Cultivate this, and every other area of your life will be more fixed on Him. I can think of no better way to improve a person’s life than to fix their hearts on Him.
Next time we will be looking at three more helps for the season of duty.