WORLDLINESS-CONSEQUENCES
You may have
wealth. It cannot profit long. You may have health. Decay will cause its flower
to fade. You may have strength. It soon will totter to the grave. You may have
honors. A breath will blast them. You may have flattering friends. They are but
as a summer brook. These boasted joys often now cover an aching heart, but they
never gave a grain of solid peace; they never healed a wounded conscience; they
never won approving looks from God; they never crushed the sting of sin.
[James 4:3-5]
pictures the church as the wife of God. God has made us for Himself and has
given Himself to us for our enjoyment. Therefore it is adultery when we try to
be “friends” with the world. If we seek from the world the pleasures we should
seek in God, we are unfaithful to our marriage vows. And, what’s worse, when we
go to our Heavenly Husband and actually pray for the resources with which to
commit adultery with the world, it is a very wicked thing. It is as though we
should ask our husband for money to hire male prostitutes to provide the
pleasure we don’t find in Him!
John Piper
Desiring God, 1996, p. 141, Used by
Permission, www.DesiringGod.org.
There will be
no people in heaven who want to be around their things more than Jesus.
John Piper
Of all that
have tried the selfish experiment, let one come forth and say he has succeeded.
He that has made gold his idol, has it satisfied him? He that has toiled in the
field of ambition, has he been repaid? He that has ransacked every theater of
sensual enjoyment, is he content? Can any answer in the affirmative? Not one!
Samuel Johnson
Prosperity
knits a man to the World. He feels that is "finding his place in it,"
while really it is finding its place in him.
C.S. Lewis
If there
lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly
hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has
crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering
nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord
finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures,
fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us,
like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because
he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased
C.S. Lewis
The problem
with Christians is nobody wants to kill them anymore.
Delighting in
worldly things – effectually prevents our delighting in God. Therefore it is
often the case, that the Lord strips us of these things, or incapacitates us to
enjoy them – in order to bring us back to delight in Himself.
James Smith
The Believer's Companion in Seasons of Affliction and Trouble,
1842.
I counted
dollars, while God counted crosses;
I counted
gains, while God counted losses.
I counted my
worth, my things gained in store;
And He sized
me up by the scars that I bore.
I counted
honors and sought degrees,
He counted
the hours I spent on my knees.
I never knew
until one day by the grave
How vain are
the things that we spend life to save.
Author Unknown
All the
danger is when the world gets into the heart. The water is useful for the
sailing of the ship; all the danger is when the water gets into the ship; so
the fear is when the world gets into the heart.
Thomas Watson
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 313.