25 January 2011

Don't Love The World

1 John 2:15-17 (New International Version, ©2010)
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.
16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.
17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

I get a daily bible reading sent to me via email, and this was today's. It's a reading that particularly influenced me this morning.

This year has seen me trying to break away from increasing frustrations caused by a struggle between the spiritual and the secular aspects of my life. I am consciously setting out to carefully rebalance these two aspects. In the reading above, John is reminding us that we constantly need to return to our first love. When we do so and concentrate on loving God, any affection that we may have for the world is relegated to second place. That therefore means we should work to a heavenly agenda, not necessarily a human one.

Instead of listening to others who tell me what I would want (better pay, better treatment, a new job), I'm trying to listen to God, to hear what He would want me to do.

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