PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE: TIMELY & STUNNINGLY INSIGHTFUL: I STAND CORRECTED. O my, Here I was engaged in trying to do something special for Lent, a period I largely ignored in the past. But A.W. Tozer, Dad's favorite author, set me straight in this (click here) - he chided me about heretical separation of the secular and spiritual. While God had to teach His people about sacrifices and feasts to teach them about His holiness, when Jesus fulfilled the Law, He did away with special days. Paul expands this in Colossians and elsewhere, and Andrew Murray confirms this with his teaching on "abide with Christ moment by moment." We know of Bill Clinton, who compartmentalized his life between Bible-carrying and Monica. Separation of secular and spiritual is sin. Tozer enlightened me. Every activity I do can be worship:
"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.
"The essential spirituality of worship remained the possession of the Church until it was slowly lost with the passing of the years. Then the natural legality of the fallen hearts of men began to introduce the old distinctions. The Church came to observe again days and seasons and times. Certain places were chosen and marked out as holy in a special sense. Differences were observed between one and another day or place or person, "The sacraments" were first two, then three, then four until with the triumph of Romanism they were fixed at seven.
"I would point out that the Roman Catholic church represents today the sacred-secular heresy carried to its logical conclusion. Its deadliest effect is the complete cleavage it introduces between religion and life. Its teachers attempt to avoid this snare by many footnotes and multitudinous explanations, but the mind's instinct for logic is too strong. In practical living the cleavage is a fact.
"From this bondage reformers and puritans and mystics have labored to free us. Today the trend in conservative circles is back toward that bondage again. It is said that a horse after it has been led out of a burning building will sometimes by a strange obstinacy break loose from its rescuer and dash back into the building again to perish in the flame. By some such stubborn tendency toward error Fundamentalism in our day is moving back toward spiritual slavery. The observation of days and times is becoming more and more prominent among us. "Lent" and "holy week" and 'good' Friday are words heard more and more frequently upon the lips of gospel Christians. We do not know when we are well off.
"The 'layman' need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never so simple task he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.'"
No comments:
Post a Comment