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Associate With Those Who Love God, July 31
Recreation and Amusements
I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep
thy precepts.
Psalm 119:63
Between the associations of the followers of Christ for Christian
recreation and worldly gatherings for pleasure and amusement, will exist
a marked contrast. Instead of prayer and the mentioning of Christ and
sacred things, will be heard from the lips of worldlings the silly laugh
and the trifling conversation. Their idea is to have a general high time.
Their amusements commence in folly and end in vanity. We want in
our gatherings to have them so conducted, and to so conduct ourselves,
that when we return to our homes we can have a conscience void of
offense toward God and man; a consciousness that we have not wounded
or injured in any manner those with whom we have associated or had an
injurious influence over them.
We are of that class who believe that it is our privilege every day of
our lives to glorify God upon the earth; that we are not to live in this
world merely for our own amusement, merely to please ourselves. We
are here to benefit humanity and to be a blessing to society.
Those who truly love God will not cultivate the society of those who
do not love Jesus. They will find that Christian society and conversation
is food to the soul, that in the society of those who love God they breathe
in the atmosphere of heaven. Christians will exercise love and sympathy
one for another. The encouragement given one to another, the esteem
manifested one for another, the helps, the instruction, the reproofs, warn-
ings, the Christian counsel that should be found among the followers of
Christ will further them in the spiritual life; for Christian fellowship is
according to God’s plan.... They will have tender consideration for all
of like precious faith, and will draw toward those who love God. There
will be fellowship such as the world knows not of.
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