If you and I love the world, it is incompatible with love to the Father. (1 John 2:1515Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15).) The Father's love cannot beam on a heart where the things have a place. Many would make, as it were, an inventory of certain things answering in their minds to worldliness; but that is not what God does; He does not say, " Fine houses, costly furniture," &c., but, " The lust of the flesh and of the eye," and the child of God cannot detect this lust save when he is in the presence of God, and with the savor of the full acceptance in the Beloved.. Out of His presence there is entire inability to form an idea of what lust really is; it is not in circumstances, but lies down in the depths of the heart alike in poor and in rich.
Ah! let not those passing things which Satan has in his hands, and whereby he keeps souls at a distance from the Father, be allowed a place in your heart.