John Wesley said it best that our greatest duty is to: “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.” If all were living to this creed, this world, and the people that reside in it, would be a glorious place indeed. However, even if our fellow man as well as we falls short in this noble goal, these words of wisdom, if lived by those of true faith, will do more than anything else to make this world a better place. The change that we so often clamor for, must first start within ourselves, and to demonstrate that we are sincere, we prove that sincerity in our actions towards our fellow man and the respect that we show towards our Creator.
God does not need our prayer, nor even does God necessarily need our love, neither does God need or demand animal sacrifices, or other rituals of long standing tradition. God does not ask of anything of those he has created, for he has given us free will to do as we like, subject to man's law, but God is pleased when we do good to others, when we treat others with the same respect as we wish ourselves to be respected, when we help those that need help, aid those who need aid, mentor does that need mentoring, guide those that need guiding, because in the end when we leave this world, the riches that have been accounted for us, come from our good advice, our actions that have been activated and implemented by others, and our example, lived by others in their words and their deeds.
None of us live onto just ourselves, as each of us, no matter our status, no matter our intelligence, no matter our circumstances; interacts with other people, for better or for worse, each and every day. Each day we are each given the opportunity to do good, to be good, and to accomplish good, should we so be inclined. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't care about ourselves and our personal circumstances, we too have the same obligation to do well to ourselves, but we must also recognize that self-justification is the easiest lie that we can say to ourselves.
Each and every day, we decide who that is that we will serve, and who that it is that we will glorify. If we decide that we will endeavor to serve and to glorify God, we will find that our decisions and our actions will be different, probably diametrically different than if we decide to serve and to glorify ourselves, mammon, and our material aspirations. The decisions that we make and the actions that we take are our own, but he is a foolish man, that believes it is wiser to feed at the trough of temporal glory, because that treasure will be left behind upon their material demise, while the eternal treasure that could have been theirs, will be far from their grasp.