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God Calls For Our Best Affections, April 7
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the
other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve
God and mammon.
Matthew 6:24
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Many are on the enchanted ground of the enemy. Things of the least
importance—foolish social parties, singing, jesting, joking—engross their minds
and they serve God with a divided heart.... The declaration of Christ, “No man
can serve two masters,” is unheeded.
One of the most marked features of the earth’s inhabitants in the days of Noah
was their intense worldliness. They made eating and drinking, buying and selling,
marrying and giving in marriage, the supreme objects of life. It is not sinful, but
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the fulfillment of a duty, to eat and drink, if that which is lawful is not carried
to excess.... God Himself instituted marriage when He gave Eve to Adam. All
God’s laws are marvelously adapted to meet the nature of man. The sin of the
antediluvians was in perverting that which in itself was lawful. They corrupted
God’s gifts by using them to minister to their selfish desires....
Excessive love and devotion to that which in itself is lawful, proves the ru-
ination of thousands upon thousands of souls. To matters of minor importance is
often given the strength of intellect that should be wholly devoted to God. We
need always to be guarded against carrying to excess that which, rightly used, is
lawful. Many, many souls are lost by engaging in those things which, properly
managed, are harmless, but which, perverted and misapplied, become sinful and
demoralizing.
If we are constantly thinking of and struggling for the things that pertain to
this life, we cannot keep our thoughts fixed on the things of heaven. Satan is
seeking to lead our minds away from God, and to center them on the fashions, the
customs, and the demands of the world, which bring disease and death....
In this world we are to obtain a fitness for the higher world. God has left a
trust with us, and He expects us to use all our faculties in helping and blessing our
fellow men. He calls for our best affections, our highest powers.
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