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The Bible defines worldliness by centering morality where we intuitively know it should be. Worldliness is the lust of the flesh (a passion for sensual satisfaction), the lust of the eyes (an inordinate desire for the finer things of life), and the pride of life (self-satisfaction in who we are, what we have, and what we have done). Worldliness, then, is a preoccupation with ease and affluence. It elevates creature comfort to the point of idolatry; large salaries and comfortable life-styles become necessities of life.
Worldliness is reading magazines about people who live hedonistic lives and spend too much money on themselves and wanting to be like them. But more importantly, worldliness is simply pride and selfishness in disguises. It’s being resentful when someone snubs us or patronizes us or shows off. It means smarting under every slight, challenging every word spoken against us, cringing when another is preferred before us. Worldliness is harboring grudges, nursing grievance, and wallowing in self-pity. These are the ways in which we are most like the world.
Dave Roper, The Strength of a Man, quoted in Family Survival in the American Jungle, Steve Farrar, 1991, Multnomah Press, p. 68.
I read that the Eskimos of Canada and Greenland have an interesting, if rather cruel, way of hunting bear. They will take a bone, preferably a wolf bone, and they will sharpen it at both ends. Then they will coil it through a process, freeze it in blubber and lay it across one of the paths the bears travel. As the bear comes along he smells the blubber and in one gulp he takes it and swallows it, not knowing that it’s just blubber on the outside, but on the inside there’s this twisted, sharpened bone. And the minute he swallows it he’s dead. He doesn’t drop down just yet, but every move he makes, every step he takes, causes that bone to twist and to slash and to tear and the internal bleeding starts and the Eskimos just follow the tracks of that bear until it dies. It’s the same way as a person who says, "I’m going to save my life, I’m going to keep my life for myself, I’m going to do what I want to do." The minute you do that you are already in the process of dying and destroying your life.
C. S. Lewis said: "to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. Wrap it around carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable .... The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is .... Hell."
UNSELFISH AND HAPPY
A fascinating study on the principle of the Golden Rule was conducted by Bernard Rimland, director of the Institute for Child Behavior Research. Rimland found that "The happiest people are those who help others."
Each person involved in the study was asked to list ten people he knew best and to label them as happy or not happy. Then they were to go through the list again and label each one as selfish or unselfish, using the following definition of selfishness: a stable tendency to devote one’s time and resources to one’s own interests and welfare--an unwillingness to inconvenience one’s self for others."
In categorizing the results, Rimland found that all of the people labeled happy were also labeled unselfish. He wrote that those "whose activities are devoted to bringing themselves happiness...are far less likely to be happy than those whose effor...
Think how many temptations you and I face in an ordinary day. Staying in bed late - the temptation to laziness. Growling at the breakfast table - the temptation to unkindness. Arguing over who should change the baby this time - the temptation to selfishness. Starting work 10 minutes late - the temptation to slothfulness. Losing your temper when a co-worker crashes your computer - the temptation to impatience. Flirting with that good-looking woman, taking a second look at the good-looking man - the temptation to lust. Refusing to speak to a person who has hurt you - the temptation to malice. Repeating a juicy story of your neighbor’s misfortune - the temptation to gossip. Lying awake at night thinking sensual thoughts - the temptation to impurity. Taking your anger out on the children after a hard day - the temptation to cruelty. Going out the eat when you can’t afford it - the temptation to self-indulgence. Having a second helping and then a third - the temptation to gluttony. Firing off a hasty letter to a friend who hurt you - the temptation to revenge.
(Moody Monthly)
Mark Winter
In the Pacific Northwest, where it’s overcast most days, lots of people suffer from light deprivation, which results in mood swings and depression. There’s even a scientific name for this problem: “Seasonal Affective Disorder,“ or S.A.D. People suffering from S.A.D. have to set up special light panels in their homes and get heavy doses of illumination in order to be happy campers. We need light. We can’t survive without it.
We can’t survive without the Son of God, either. Our shadowy hearts, tinted by selfishness and confusion, need His light.
Once, when I was in the seventh grade, my dad, my brother, and I were traveling from Oak Ridge, TN to Jellico, TN.
My dad was going to preach, and I was going to play
the guitar and my older brother the saxophone.
We got into a discussion, I will never forget.
Dad is a student of the English language and his
vocabulary far exceeds any one I know.
Dad ask us, ...
"What is the hardest to say word in our language?"
I knew the answer right away?
It has to be.....
Supercalafragalisticexpealadoist, 33 letters,
I felt so smart, I solved the problem before my
older, who’s who brother!
Dad said, "No, that is not the hardest to say
English word. Besides that is not a real word."
Well, I was not as smart as I thought?
Charles Edward, my older brother,
pondered a while, and he came up with the answer,
praise God for smart people!
Eddie said the largest real word in English was:
ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTTARISM ...
26 letters.
He is so smart, he even knew it’s meaning.
The largest real word means people that are
against establishing churches.
Well, dad did not agree with us.
Dad said big words could be easy to say if you
broke them down in syllables.
We rode on down the road, pondered,
what could the world’s hardest word to say be?
Finally, dad ask us did we give up?
We had no choice, then wisdom flowed like a river.
Dad said, "Sin is the next to hardest word to
say."
He went on to explain, when we break the heart of
God, we made a choice, and that selfishness and a
lack of fear and respect of God and His Word caused
sin.
He said the older we became, the easier it would be
to excuse our actions, and compromise the values
that we now accepted.
He said, "Flee from sin and the very appearance
of wrong doing.
Well, what is the hardest word to say: ... ???
NO!
No!
No, no way?
No is only two letters, it is easy to say.
Well, I carry a head of gray hair,
and I know NO is a hard word to say!
EMPTIED OUT AND FILLED UP
D. L. Moody said,
“I believe firmly that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts.
But if we are full of pride and conceit and ambi...
I love the story of a king that wanted to show his people how much he loved them.
So, he decided to pay for a great feast for his kingdom.
He decided to have a great meal and invite every family.
The king would provide all the meat, all the vegetables, all the desserts ...
everything, the king would provide all, but the wine.
The king asked every family to bring one bottle of their best wine.
He would see that there was a several thousand gallon vat for all to pour in their bottle of wine.
What a feast this would be! The King wanted to honor his people.
One poor farmer decided, he would slip in his bottle, nothing but water, no wine.
How would the king ever know his selfishness?
His one bottle of water mixed with thousands of bottles of wine would never be known.
The King would never know? The taste would still be good.
So the poor farmer climbed the stairs to the top of the vat and while no one was looking,
he poured in his bottle of wine, I mean his bottle of water in with the thousands of other
wine bottles.
No one saw him. He had fooled every one there.
He laughed, he got away cheap!
He sat down at the kings table ready for the feast.
The king was so proud, he honored his precious people.
He filled his plate with delicious food.
The King picked up his Royal Gold Chalice.
The king placed his chalice under the spout of the huge vat of wine.
The king looked into his chalice, and to his surprise ... it was clear, pure water.
Seems everybody in the kingdom thought their little bottle of water would not matter
in the vat of wine..
Dear friend, your part matters!
Doubt cannot feed on doubt else it would die.
Doubt degenerates into cynicism, faultfinding, doom, gloom, pessimism.
Life is what you should emphasize...
Do you emphasize adverse, negative attitudes that fall into hopelessness and despair?
Self inflicted depression? You decide?
Are you going to leave and quit also?
Owen Bourgaize
Conference after conference is held to discuss the destruction of the Earth’s environment and to solve the poverty of two thirds of the world’s population but very little gets done when the talking is over. Isn’t it essentially a problem of selfishness, greed and exploitation? Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town, said famously, “When missionaries came to South Africa, they had the Bible and we (the Africans) had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land!”
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