The outstanding characteristic of natural man is Selfishness. It has given to us every one of the major sins that are destroying the human race.
Selfishness is the parent of the liquor traffic, gambling, and every other sin.
The husband who comes home h
The outstanding characteristic of natural man is Selfishness. It has given to us every one of the major sins that are destroying the human race.
Selfishness is the parent of the liquor traffic, gambling, and every other sin. The husband who comes home half drunk doesn’t love his family as much as he loves himself. The mother who has taken on the unhappy habits of modern society, and dares display these habits in the presence of her growing children, loves herself and her appetites more than she loves her children .
The natural man cannot love his children as much as he loves himself. He cannot love his wife as much as he loves himself.
The natural human heart is a partaker of the Satanic nature, Selfishness; and when that Selfishness gains the ascendancy it makes the man a despot in his home, filling it with the spirit of tyranny.
I saw a couple who had lived very unhappily and had thought much about separating, but there were little children. The father had a godly background, and so had the mother, but neither of them had ever received Eternal Life.
After the children came along, the wife began to feel the irritations of bondage and said, “These children just rob me of my liberty.” The husband began to feel the same limitations. Selfishness began to grow apace.
The home was not a home. It was just a place where they quarreled and made up, found fault, and cursed the children.
Then one day my little book, “The New Kind of Love,” fell into the hands of the husband. He brought it home and started to read it. He became so engrossed in it that his wife wanted to know what he was reading.
You see, Selfishness is always jealous. The keener and richer your Selfishness is, the more sensitive you become. She became very curious as to what that little book was. Finally she said, “What is that you are reading?”He said, “It is the most wonderful book I have ever read.”
He laid it down on the table, and she began to read it. She hadn’t read half of it before she made her decision. She had seen things.
When he came into the house she said, “How far did you read in that book?”
“Nearly all of it. One of the men at the office gave it to me.” He responded. “What do you think of it?”
“I only wish we had gotten hold of it when we were first married and life would have been different,” she said.
He picked up one of his children and held it in his arms. “Wife,” he said, “would you like to go with me on this thing? I would like to have Eternal Life. I am sick of my selfishness.”
She looked into his face, and reached out her hand and said, “My dear, I will go the whole way with you .”
The two older children were not home when it happened, and the father and mother did not tell them about it .
Three or four days later the oldest girl said, “Mother, what has happened to you and Dad? You haven’t quarreled since last week.” Then the mother told the story to her, and the girl, in her mother’s arms whispered, “Mother, I want it too .”
And so, Love came to live in that house. After a bit every member of the household sought to give the other more than he received. Love’s rivalry began to develop. The husband and wife sought to out-do each other in love.
You see, when two New Creation people, Love filled, begin to practice Agapa, the very atmosphere of heaven is in that home.
Love’s slogan is, “I am not seeking my own, but your happiness.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have classes that would take up the study of Agape.
There has never been a chair of “Love” in any of our Colleges or Universities, and yet it is the most important thing in life.
You cannot adjust the labor and capital situation by law or by force. It can only be settled with Agape.
Oh, if there should arise in the labor world a great leader who could evangelize the labor world and prove to them that
Selfishness has never yet built anything that it did not destroy!
Sense Knowledge has built cities, but it always destroys them.
Few of us have recognized that there are two kinds of ambitions: one was born out of the desire to conquer and to reign, and to have and to hold, no matter what effect it had upon those who stand in the way;the other is the ambition to give, and to build, and to make happy, to educate and to train, and to make beautiful, glad homes.One is the Jesus kind, and the other is inspired by Satan.
EW Kenyon, ‘The Hidden Man’
KOINONIA ART 