There are many things to love in the world, but God should have our hearts.   #theloriclineshow   Interested in learning more about becoming a devoted follower of Christ? Go to follow.lifeword.org!   ~~~   LOVE is in the air! Your response to that may be, ‘oh no it’s not’! OK, you may not be IN love at the moment, BUT we all have objects of affection in our life. So then the question is, what or WHO is the object of your affection? My forever valentine is my husband, so his cute face comes to my mind. I adore my two miracle girls. I pour my love, care and attention on them daily. You may really LOVE your car or truck, so maybe that’s what comes to your mind. Those strong feelings of affection and adoration for whatever we love, are powerful. We love so much we will spend billions of dollars showing it over the next few weeks, and I know many of you will spend a good bit of that on your pets! We love our family. We love our friends. I love my dogs, Roxy and Ruby. My husband loves his 1959 Gibson acoustic guitar.  The objects of our affection and love direct our attention, care, time, passion and often our life. This CAN get out of hand. Remember ‘The Lord Of The Rings’? Tolkien, the English author and scholar, imagined a world where the story revolved around one object, a very powerful ring. It became ‘the precious’ object of affection for anyone who possessed it, but its power was so strong it could NOT be controlled, so it had to be destroyed.  The story of that ring is a good reminder as we consider where our hearts attention may be. Is it healthy? Is it out of balance? Are the objects of our affection honoring to God? What about God? Where is He in the mix? Here’s what I have come to learn over and over in my life. When God is NOT the primary object of my affection and focus of my heart, I AM out of balance. I’m going to repeat that for me one more time. When God is NOT the primary object of my affection and focus of my heart, I AM out of balance. Life becomes more and more about ME. All the things, all the desires of my heart, all the objects of my affection, end up serving ME, not God.  God knows our hearts are prone to wander. That’s why Jesus in Mark 12 boils all the commandments down to the greatest with the first and foremost one being to, ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ He’s reminding us to keep God as the primary object of our affection! God first. His way and have no OTHER gods before Him.  Yet our hearts wander. Our eyes and desires shift from God to self. WE become the object of our affection, so much so that we are blind to what is true.  Paul wrote very clearly to this LOVE of SELF and the fruit that is produced as a result.  2 Timothy 3:2-5 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. Look around and you see that kind of behavior everywhere. What happens is when we love ourselves and our pleasures MORE than we love God, we naturally live out of a narcissistic worldview. We filter God’s word and truth in a ‘narcigesis’ way, in which we bend it to our selfish, self pleasing, boastful and proud liking. SELF becomes the center of the story and God is further and further removed from it or put in His place according to our liking. This is the danger of making SELF the object of our affection. Paul warns against it and calls it like he sees it. Either God is first or I am.  What has our heart? Where is our devotion? What matters most? Take an honest look at the characteristics and fruit of your life. Do they resemble what Paul described in 2 Timothy 3? Only when our heart is set first on loving God, is everything else in our life set into its proper place.  That’s the truth.  I pray we seek God first today. Take SELF out of the picture. As we do the desires of our heart actually come more and more into view.  I’m Lori Cline.