I recently finished A.W. Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God”. There are too many dog-earred pages and underlined sentences to recall in a single post or even in multiple posts. However, I did want to mention one passage of his book that has been on my mind the past week.
In the last pages of his book, Tozer addresses the all too common divide we have created between “sacred” and “secular”. I find myself constantly trying to separate my life into these two categories. The Spirit encouraged me through Tozer’s words, which I have typed out below:
“If we would escape from the toils of the sacred-secular dilemma, the truth (that all of life was meant for the glory of God) must run in our blood and condition the complex of our thoughts. We must practice living to the glory of God, actually and determinedly. By meditation upon this truth, by talking it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling it to our minds frequently as we move about among men, a sense of its wondrous meaning will take hold of us. The old painful duality will go down before a restful unity of life. The knowledge that we are all God’s, that He has received all and rejected nothing, will unify our inner lives and make everything sacred to us.
This is not quite all. Long-held habits do not die easily. It will take intelligent thought and a great deal of reverent prayer to escape completely from the sacred-secular psychology. For instance, it may be difficult for the average Christian to get hold of the idea that her daily labors can be performed as acts of worship acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. The old antithesis will crop up in the back of her head sometimes to disturb her peace of mind. Nor will that old serpent, the devil, take all this lying down. He will be there in the cab or at the desk or in the field to remind the Christian that he is giving the better part of his day to the things of this world and allotting to his religious duties only a trifling portion of his time. And unless great care is taken, this will create confusion and bring discouragement and heaviness of heart.
We can meet this successfully only by the exercise of an aggressive faith. We must offer all our acts to God and believe that He accepts them. Then hold firmly to that position and keep insisting that every act of every hour of the day and night be included in the transaction. Keep reminding God in our times of private prayer that we mean every act for His glory; then supplement those times by a thousand thought-prayers as we go about the job of living. Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.”
