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God Calls for Our Best Affections, March 14
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 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 ruination 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 engag-
ing 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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