October 30No man can serve two masters — Matt. 6:24.
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." Experience and observation corroborate this; and hence as a rule we find that people are either cold or hot in spiritual things. … We are to "seek first [chiefly] the Kingdom of God." It is to be our chief concern and to receive from us all the time, attention, thought, energy, influence and means we have—the things needful for the present life being understood to be excepted; and our love and zeal will be manifested by the proportion of even these we are willing to sacrifice in the interest of heavenly things—Z '01, 61 (R 2764). Our Lord here means by two masters, not two whose interests and aims are one, but whose interests and aims conflict. Otherwise we could not serve God and Christ, as our Masters. We can serve these because their interests and aims are identical. But the interests and aims of God and Satan conflicting, we cannot serve both of them. For the same reason we cannot serve Christ and Antichrist, the flesh and the Spirit, this world and the next, and error and the Truth. The sooner we realize and act upon this principle the better for us as Christians—P '30, 183. Parallel passages: Gen. 39:9; Hos. 10:2; Dan. 1:8-16; 3:12-25; Luke 16:13; 1 Kings 18:21; Josh. 24:14-25; Matt. 4:8-10; 12:25; Mark 10:21-23; John 10:41, 42; 1 Cor. 10:21; Heb. 11:24-26; Jas. 1:8. Hymns: 8, 160, 191, 208, 224, 16, 109. Poems of Dawn, 42: Full Consecration. Tower Reading: Z '15, 109 (R 5666). Questions: Have I been single in my devotion this week? Whom did I serve? What helped or hindered singleness of devotion? What results did I achieve? |
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FULL CONSECRATION
O SACRED union with the Perfect Mind!
Transcendent bliss, which Thou alone canst
give,
How blest are they this Pearl of price who find,
And, dead to earth, have learned in Thee to live!
And thus, while dead to human hopes I lie,
Lost, and forever lost, to all but Thee,
My happy soul, since it has learned to die,
Has found new life in Thine infinity.
With joy we learn this lesson of the cross,
And tread the toilsome way which Jesus trod;
And counting present life and all things loss,
We find in death to self the life of God.
O SACRED union with the Perfect Mind!
Transcendent bliss, which Thou alone canst
give,
How blest are they this Pearl of price who find,
And, dead to earth, have learned in Thee to live!
And thus, while dead to human hopes I lie,
Lost, and forever lost, to all but Thee,
My happy soul, since it has learned to die,
Has found new life in Thine infinity.
With joy we learn this lesson of the cross,
And tread the toilsome way which Jesus trod;
And counting present life and all things loss,
We find in death to self the life of God.
