When The Door Slams
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLT).
In times like ours, it is more than ever so necessary for the individual to train himself, or be trained, according to objective norms of good, and learn to distinguish these from the purely pragmatic norms current in his society. He will come to know the difference between the "ways of the Lord God and the ways of Satan." We cannot trust our society to tell us this difference.
Everything is confused, and the men of our time blindly follow now the Lord God and now Satan, blown this way and that way by every changing wind of urgency and opportunity, judging only by what seem to them to be the immediate consequences. We must recover our inner faith not only in God but in the good, in reality, and in the power of the good to take care of itself and us as well, if only we attend to it, observe, listen, choose, and obey.
The Lord God wills that we act humanly, therefore intelligently. The Lord God wills that we act for His sake, for of the truth, not out of concern for immediate material interest: therefore He wills that we act in a "detached manner." Detachment is not pure indifference, but ...a concentration of attention on the subject of the act itself, not on the results or the consequences. We are not responsible for more than our own action, but for this we should take complete responsibility ...
Think about this: We have only to judge whether the act is right, just, and accords with truth and love here and now, because we "believe in the good" and are therefore convinced that, whatever consequences may follow, they will certainly be good ones, beneficial to ourselves and to society.
Petition: Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever (1 John 2"15-17 NLT).
Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the LORD and thank Him for His forgiveness.
Never Rest Ministries
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