Displacing God

John's 3 Epistles speak much about the issue of love and God's calling for His people to be lovers of God, lovers of light, lovers of each other and lovers of living to please God.  But I think a major point John is driving home is the call to live as people who are led by their God.  He sums up this life at the end of 1st John by reminding his beloved people to make sure they do not allow things into their lives that displace God.  What a challenge for us.  Every week we have people in our church that 'decide' whether they will go to God's house that week.  This is a decision that should have been made when they became a Christian.  Maybe comfort, tiredness, lives filled with the 'urgent' (but not eternal), football, recreation or something else have caused them to forget ... ignore ... displace God's clear call to his community, the Church.  Every week some of us have chances to make God-centered decisions, do God-centered activities, read God's Word or seek God's path ... but choose something else.  They displace God with things that they have deemed more important.  They come to God's house filled with the stuff of this present darkness and expecting what they want.  God is shouting, "empty yourself so I can fill you with my good things."  Let it be so!  AMEN