God (Christianity) -- Worship and love; Spirituality
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 his
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 his head
sometimes to disturb his 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.
A concomitant of the error which we have been discussing is the
sacred-secular antithesis as applied to places. It is little short of
astonishing that we can read the New Testament and still believe in the
inherent sacredness of places as distinguished from other places. This
error is so widespread that one feels all alone when he tries to combat
it. It has acted as a kind of dye to color the thinking of religious
persons and has colored the eyes as well so that it is all but
impossible to detect its fallacy. In the face of every New Testament
teaching to the contrary it has been said and sung throughout the
centuries and accepted as a part of the Christian message, the which it
most surely is not. Only the Quakers, so far as my knowledge goes, have
had the perception to see the error and the courage to expose it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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