The idea of too much. Often this is an opinion about other people or from other people. It is a changeable measure according to perceptions. What one person regards as too much, another might think it not enough..!

The things we have become too much, when we are simply responding to what we feel we want. Need and want are not the same. Passing over the line is a point in each persons mind and we each must realise it.

In the wealthy Western world, too much is encouraged in the name of entrepreneurial principles. We create need, to make money, to keep economies afloat and business booming. People have problems with covetousness, and business taps into that predisposition in our psyche. Christmas is a time when we see this rampant. We can see it’s ugliness and the misery it causes people who cannot purchase the dreams on display.

It is cruel. The inability to get the stuff everyone else has, or to meet the heightened expectations of family, leads to misery. There must be a way out of this endless cycle of greed. Our deeper needs remain unmet and we focus on the trivial, rather than the other way round.

How much love for God and holiness of life can you take? How much love for God’s ways is too much? We have the idea in our minds that if we are too holy, people won’t like us or be able to relate to us. We hear comments about “Holy Joe’s” and “little Miss perfect”. We make fun of people who seek to live good lives and who try to do what is right. Names are used to sideline people who reject the world’s way and to keep ourselves from feeling too bad.! After all, we must not be extreme.!

Jesus is perfect. We can love and trust Him because He is perfect. The scripture says we must follow Him and be like Him. That means we must seek holy lives and attention to the detail of the motivations of the heart. Sounds like “holiness” all round for those who seek heaven.

Perhaps the truth that we are forgiven all when we come to Christ, makes us complacent. We become careless so easily, and stop “working out our own salvation with fear and trembling.”
We don’t examine the Word, and so do not go deeper into truth and grow to maturity in the ways of God. Daily living becomes sloppy and we stop examining ourselves and think that to be that extreme in seeking God, is not “normal.”
If others around us are also accepting of less than godly deeds, words and thoughts, then we sink down lower still. People who love God are supposed to sharpen each other and help each other grow in grace..!

In holiness, there is only perfection. If we desire God, then holiness is the aim and priority in our lives. After all, heaven is the place where holiness is the norm, and true believers want to be there for that reason. We get contaminated very easily. We substitute religious practices with growth in godliness. We think going to church is evidence of belief.. the devil is in church too. His job is to keep the people asleep and unaware of what is happening to them. Self-righteousness is a deadening sin and gives a false impression of holiness. Let us search the scriptures for real. Only as we put on Christ, are we becoming holy.

Holy? You can never get too much.

Worldly inclinations? We will always love them too much, until we are made perfect in righteousness. When we finally see the face of our Beloved, it will all fall away, and we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.