day no. 15,535: intellect before affect

"We are to invite people with truth that affects the emotions, not emotional appeals through which we hope to give them the truth." -- Rick Holland, The Art of Crafting a Life-Changing Sermon, The John MacArthur Handbook of Effective Biblical Leadership

Affection must follow intentions, by necessity and in that order.

Intentions left unexpressed fall flat. Information without manifestation is meaningless. Affections must materialize in order to justify the intention. However, you cannot begin with affection in order to get to intentions. You cannot use emotion to lead to the notion. Just as potions never produce long-lasting effects, emotions never lead to transformation that takes. Additionally, in employing emotions on the front end, you teach people to see the world through the subjectivity of their feelings instead of training them to see the world objectively as it truthfully is.

God's declarations are to be understood, believed and loved. You cannot love what you don't understand. You cannot love what you don't believe. But if you begin with loving feelings, what you know or how you understand will forever be clouded by them and what you believe will have no basis other than how you feel about it. You cannot create love out of lovely sentiments. All that to say, what you know must come before how you feel about what you know. How you feel is subject to change and cannot, therefore, support anything being built upon it. But what you know should produce affections which can flourish inside the protection of the walls built for it by solid intentions and reliable information.