Where to Place Our Love

Like the fire of the sanctuary that never went out, so is the affection of love for God, that if it be once kindled in the heart it will never go out. It is a kind of miracle in reverse when we love other things besides God, baser than ourselves; it is as much as if a river should turn backward. For man that is an excellent creature, to be carried with the stream of his affection to things worse than himself, it is a kind of monster for a man to abuse his understanding so. Our love is the best thing in the world, and who deserves it better than God and Christ? We can never return anything, but this affection of love we may return. Can we place it better than upon divine things, whereby we are made better ourselves?
Does God require our affections only for himself? No. It is to make us happy. It advances our affection to love him; it is the turning of it into the right stream. It is for the making of us happy that God requires it. What is any sin but the abuse of love? For the crookedness of this affection turns us to present things and that is the cause of all sin. For what is all sin, but pleasure, profit, and honour (1 John 2:16), the three idols of the world? And what are all good actions but love well placed? The well ordering of this affection is the well ordering of our lives; and the misplacing of this affection is the cause of all sin.
To make us the more careful, consider the vanity of placing our affections upon anything other than God. We lose our love and the thing and ourselves. For whatsoever else we love, if we love not God in it, nor love it for God, it will perish and come to nothing ere long. The affection perishes with the thing. We lose our affections and the thing; and lose ourselves too, in the misplacing of our love.
These are forcible considerations for understanding persons.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
A Glance of Heaven, Works, vol. 4, p. 199
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