Pentecost 2026 - Week 1 - Day 2

Good morning.

In 1819, a Scottish pastor named Thomas Chalmers stood before his congregation and preached a sermon with an unusual title: The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.
It was not a call to try harder. It was not a warning about moral decline. It was not a list of spiritual disciplines.

It was a diagnosis.

Chalmers observed something we all know to be true, even if we struggle to admit it: the human heart does not empty easily. We do not simply stop loving something because we are told it is bad for us. We may agree with the argument. We may feel the weight of conviction. We may even make sincere promises to change.

But the heart will cling to a lesser love rather than live in a vacuum.

You can remove behavior for a season. You can interrupt patterns. You can create accountability. But unless the affection underneath is addressed, something else will quietly take its place. The heart is always fastening itself to something.

From the earliest days of the church, Christians understood this. Sin is not merely misbehavior. It is misdirected affection. Idolatry is not first about statues carved from stone; it is about treasure misplaced in the soul. It is about loving something finite as if it were ultimate.

Thomas Chalmers' point way back in 1819 was this — You cannot remove an old love by force alone. It must be displaced. Darkness is not shoveled out of a room. It vanishes when light enters.

The gospel, then, is not merely subtraction. It is replacement. It is not only the forgiveness of sin. It is the awakening of a greater love. And that changes everything. If we miss this, we will reduce Christianity to behavior management — a spiritual self-improvement plan.  

Most people will measure growth by what we have stopped doing. We will evaluate maturity by visible restraint. And for a while, that can look impressive.
In many ways I think that also sounds very intuitive.  It is what I always do -  But!  (There's always a "but!")

 The biblical story moves differently.

Jesus speaks of treasure hidden in a field. Of a pearl beyond price. Of joy that drives a man to sell everything he owns — not because he despises what he has, but because he has seen something better. That detail matters.

The man is not coerced. He is not shamed. He is not threatened. He is joyful.
Transformation, according to Jesus, begins there.

When Christ becomes more beautiful than what competes with Him, obedience stops feeling like constant loss. When the kingdom becomes treasure, surrender begins to look like gain. The expulsive power Chalmers described is not emotional hype. It is the steady reordering of the heart around something — Someone — greater.

We do not drift toward holiness by white-knuckled resolve. We grow as our vision of Christ expands.  We might even still love those things we have and remember - but that love is not even close to this new Love of Christ that we now have.

So perhaps the better question is not only, “What should I stop?”
Perhaps it is, “What have I truly seen? What do I believe is worth everything?”

The heart will not remain empty. It will love. The invitation of the gospel is not simply to love less.
It is to love better.

Prayer
Father,
You know how easily our hearts attach themselves to lesser things. You know the habits we battle and the quiet affections we rarely name. We confess that we often try to change by effort alone. We try to manage what only You can transform.
Would You show us Christ more clearly?
Would You awaken in us a deeper love that makes lesser loves lose their grip?
By Your Spirit, reorder our desires.
Teach us to treasure what is eternal.
Free us from what promises life but cannot sustain it.
Let our obedience grow from joy.
Let our surrender flow from seeing something better.
Make Christ our true treasure.
Amen.