EARTHLY
LOVES; DEEPER LIFE

For the Spirit-filled Christian life means that I am delivered from earthly loves to a point where there is no love that I would not allow Jesus Christ to take away. Be it money, reputation, my home, my friends, my family or whatever it may be. The love of Jesus Christ has come in and swallowed up all other loves and sanctified them, purified them, made them holy and put them in their right relationship to that all-consuming love of God so that they’re secondary and never primary.

I want to ask you this question: Is there anything or anyone on Earth that you love so much that you’d fight God if He wanted to take them? Then you are not where you should be and you might as well face up to it and not pretend to be something you’re not. Complete freedom means that I want the will of God only. And if it is the will of God for me to have these things, then I love them for His sake, but I love them with a tentative and relative love and not an all-poured-out love that makes me a slave. It means that I love nothing outside the will of God and that I love only what and who He wills that I should love.…

If you love anything enough that there’s any question about whether God can have it or not, you know nothing about the deeper life.

Matthew 10:37–39; Luke 14:26–27; Philippians 3:6–8

Success and the Christian, 78, 79.