Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.
Interpretation
True freedom comes from focusing on loving God and others.
This quote emphasizes that when individuals prioritize their devotion to God and extend love to all, including those who may be difficult to love, they find deep spiritual peace and freedom from worldly burdens. Embracing this path leads to tranquility in all situations, as the focus shifts from personal concerns to divine love and service.
In practice
In a sermon to inspire attendees to focus on love and service.
Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.
The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.
The church that can't worship must be entertained. And leaders who can't lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.
Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, ‘What is God like?’ and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind
People who are crucified with Christ have three distinct marks: 1. they are facing only one direction, 2. they can never turn back, and 3. they no longer have plans of their own.
Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded. His immutability guarantees this.
The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.
I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had.’ He turned to face the hall, that sea of pale faces. ‘I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here.
We stress humanity, and this is done at considerable cost. We can't have a lot of dramatics that other shows get away with - promiscuity, greed, jealousy. None of those have a place in 'Star Trek.'
In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.
Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
Any attempt at understanding humanity must include an explanation of the hold that supernatural belief continues to have on most of the human race.
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