Is the love of pleasure and amusement growing on you--gaining the power and authority over you?
Is it dulling the keenness of your zest for spiritual pleasures?
Is it making Bible study, prayer, communion with Christ, and meditation upon holy themes less sweet enjoyments than they once were?
Is it making your hunger and thirst for righteousness and for Godless intense?
Is it interfering with the comfort and blessing which you used to find in church services, or in Christ's work?
If so, there is only one thing to do hurry to return to God, to abandon the pleasure or amusement which is imperiling your soul, and to find in Christ, the joy which the world cannot give, and which never harms any aspect of life.
We must test all our pleasures and amusements by this rule: Are they helping us to grow into Christ-likeness and spiritual beauty?
[J. C. Ryle]
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1 Corinthians 10:23 ... All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.
1 John 4:1 ... Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
1 John 4:1 ... Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 ... This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.❤
