“Don’t love the world, neither the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love isn’t in him.”

The undermining effect to our faith by the things of this world is insidious and often goes unnoticed until God pulls us up about it. I am not speaking about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, but the seemingly innocuous things of life that take us away from our love of God. It is the dedication to duty and the daily hum-drum that can fill our life with activity and squash out all consideration of God. We have no time to read, pray or meditate on the Word, but it all becomes part of a daily chore and a series of hurdles we must get through to feel in control and living life well, in our own considerations.

We are not to love the things of this life above our beloved Father in heaven. We are to subjugate all our involvements to the will of God, which is a living fellowship with Him and not a series of religious duties we must perform. We can praise God in all the standard things of life, and we should be living our lives for His glory whatever we are doing.

It is too easy to be the dutiful Christian, with no spiritual life in Christ at all. We can seem so good on the outside, but inside there is no love for God and not much love for others either. We look after our families, do our jobs really well, perform our Christian service and find ourselves just going through the motions of life and not really living to God. We can become taken up with the activity and not with the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. We become focused on achievement of goals and finished jobs, and cease to live life in the power of the Spirit. It quickly becomes too much for us and we crumble. God must teach us to trust Him for our lives and not the incessant activity.

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.”

Psalm 46:10

Unless we stop and take account of our faith, it will eventually fail us. We will find it to be in the things of this life and not on our Lord and God. The whole purpose of our life is for Him, as is all things, therefore we must serve Him and wait on Him for all we need. If we follow after the mindset of this world, we are showing we do not know the Lord at all, and have no living faith in Him. We are dependant on the success we feel as we accomplish our tasks. This is not living faith and we are yet dead to spiritual life. We need to change our minds and hearts and humble ourselves before the Lord and seek Him.