As a believer, have we slipped? Have worldly things become too important to us? This is not necessarily about things that are morally corrupt in themselves. We can start needing ordinary things too much, and become reliant on them. ‘I have to be well-known or to be famous, or to have plenty of money, or to have children that do far better than anybody else’s children.’ Why do our minds fix on these on things for comfort and for succour? It may well be because we have not been valuing our faith and we are not close to the Lord. We do not admire him and wonder at him and our souls are not currently thrilled by Christ the Lord and all that he is. We have lost our sense of the power and goodness of our faith, and what God is doing, and the calling that he has for us, and so worldly things become too important.
It is then not surprising that you find that in some churches there is not much Christian service organised. There is not much going on, and so the people lack the assurance and the excitement of answered prayer for lost souls, and the accomplishment of hard tasks that can only be achieved by the strengthening of the Lord. Without these things life is dull, life is flat, and so they drift into earthly satisfaction.
To the one who still belongs to the world Christ says, ‘Do not be someone who cannot function without a storehouse of things on earth. That is pointless, powerless.’ It is not that money is unimportant. He later says that our heavenly Father knows we have needs. But these things are only of value on earth, and only of limited value anyway. We cannot take them with us into the next life. We are spiritual beings with a soul, the organ of worship. None of the things we acquire on earth are use of use to the soul, or to the mind or the character. They are not deep things. How can we nourish the soul and see life in perspective if we have no knowledge of why we are here? No knowledge of our Creator? Earthly things are very costly. They often cost character as well as time and effort, because we have to cut corners to get them. They may also involve cruel disappointment. Earthly things lose their value. We go after a costly objective which soon becomes out of date, out of fashion. We also go off things. Once we acquire something, we soon get bored with it and are seeking something else. So the treadmill continues without end. Simple things excite children, but they soon grow out of them and want more sophisticated things. We are like children in the way we pursue earthly pleasures.