“The care of the age is not alone worry and the trouble and anxiety of making a living. It is the entire spirit which characterizes This Age: worry and anxiety about one’s physical life to be sure, but also the pressure, the drive of ambition for wealth, success, prosperity, and power. All of this is involved in the care, the burden, of This Age.
The point is this: it is the character of This Age to choke the working of the Word of God. The spirit of the Age is hostile to the Gospel. When the Gospel is preached, it often seems to lodge in the hearts of men and women. They hear it, they seem to receive it, they make a response to it. And yet it is often only a superficial response. There is no fruit. As the care, the concern of the Age presses in upon them, they are not willing to pay the price of following Christ. The Word of God is choked and is unfruitful. This Age is hostile to the Gospel, and men often yield to conformity to This Age rather than surrender to the claims of the Gospel. There is a conflict between the Age and the Gospel of the Kingdom.”
George Eldon Ladd in The Gospel of the Kingdom
Even the best of us has to admit that this is a constant battle. We love God and seek to do his will, but the daily grind can pull us away from that love. We forget that we have been promised “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 1:3 ESV).