A Challenge to be moved by Religious Affections

When your heart is hardened as mine often is, it helps to consider the gospel and pray for the softening of your heart. I have been reading Jonathan Edwards' famous book, Religious Affections, to great benefit and came across this excerpt on Saturday. It is definitely worth sharing:

In things which concern men's worldly interests, their outward delights, their honour and reputations, and their natural relations, they have their desires eager, their appetites vehement, their love warm and affectionate, their zeal ardent; in these things their hearts are tender and sensible, easily moved, deeply impressed, much concerned, very sensibly affected, and greatly engaged; much depressed with grief at losses, and highly raised with joy at worldly successes and prosperity. But how insensible and unmoved are most men about the great things of another world! How dull are their affections! How heavy and hard their hearts in these matters! Here their love is cold, their desires languid, their zeal low, and their gratitude small. How they can sit and hear of the infinite height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of God in Christ Jesus, of His giving His infinitely dear Son, to be offered up a sacrifice for the sins of men, and of the unparalleled love of the innocent, and holy, and tender Lamb of God, manifested in His dying agonies, His bloody sweat, His loud and bitter cries, and bleeding heart, and all this for enemies, to redeem them from the deserved, eternal burnings, and to bring to unspeakable and everlasting joy and glory--and yet be cold and heavy, insensible and regardless! Where are the exercises of our affections proper, if not here? What is it that does more require them? And what can be a fit occasion of their lively and vigorous exercise, if not such a one as this? Can anything be set in our view greater and more important? Anything more wonderful and surprising? Or more nearly concerning our interest? Can we suppose the wise Creator implanted such principles in the human nature as the affections, to be of use to us, and to be exercised on certain proper occasions, but to lie still on such an occasion as this? Can any Christian who believes the truth of these things entertain such thoughts? If we ought ever to exercise our affections at all, then they ought to be exercised about those objects which are more worthy of them. But is there anything which Christians can find in heaven of earth so worthy to to be the objects of their admiration and love, their earnest and longing desires, their hope, and their rejoicing, and their fervent zeal, as those things that are held forth to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

I pray that never describes me, but that I am always moved to affection for the Lord through the gospel of Jesus Christ.