The Sacrament of Living

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:31

The Pursuit of God ends not in the prayer closet but in the kitchen, the office and the field. Its last chapter takes up a question that every earnest Christian eventually faces. If the pursuit of God is the great business of life, what are we to make of all the rest of life — the eating and sleeping, the work and the shopping, the long hours spent on tasks that seem to have nothing to do with God at all? Tozer’s answer was that the division itself is the problem, and that the believer who learns to overcome it will find the whole of his life becoming a kind of sacrament.

The great divide

He observed that most Christians live, without ever quite deciding to, with their lives cut in two. On one side are the sacred things: prayer, Bible reading, church, giving, witnessing. On the other side are the secular things: work, meals, rest, family business, recreation. The sacred things are felt to please God; the secular things are tolerated as necessities. And since the secular side of life takes up by far the greater part of the day, the believer comes to feel that most of his time is spent away from God, and that only in brief, snatched moments is he really living as a Christian.

Tozer believed that this division caused a great deal of quiet misery. It left believers feeling guilty for the hours they could not avoid and strained by the effort of squeezing spiritual life into the margins. Worse, it had no foundation in Scripture. The New Testament knows nothing of a Christian life divided into holy and unholy compartments.

And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. COLOSSIANS 3:17

The example of Christ

He pointed to the life of Christ Himself. The Lord did not divide His days into sacred and secular. He prayed on the mountain and ate with tax collectors; He taught in the temple and worked at a carpenter’s bench; He wept at a grave and turned water into wine at a wedding. All of it was done in perfect fellowship with the Father, and all of it was equally pleasing to Him.

And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. JOHN 8:29

The same was true of Paul, who could make tents and preach the gospel in the same week without any sense that the one was less holy than the other. What made the difference, Tozer argued, was not the nature of the act but the motive and the fellowship in which it was done.

It is the motive that sanctifies

This was the heart of the chapter. An act is not sacred or secular in itself. It becomes sacred when it is done by a child of God, in dependence on God, for the glory of God. The same work — a meal cooked, a field ploughed, a letter written, a sale made — may be common or holy depending on the heart of the one who does it. The believer, therefore, need not change his occupation to become spiritual. He needs to change the spirit in which he pursues it.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. COLOSSIANS 3:23

Tozer found this truth beautifully foreshadowed in one of the last visions of the Old Testament prophets, where the inscription that was once engraved on the golden plate of the high priest’s mitre is written on the most ordinary objects of daily life.

In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD; and the pots in the Lord’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar. ZECHARIAH 14:20

In the kingdom of God, the pots and pans are as holy as the temple vessels. That, he believed, is the calling of every Christian now.

Learning the habit

How does a believer move from a divided life to a unified one? Tozer did not suggest that it happens at once. He counselled a simple practice: begin to offer each ordinary act to God as it is done, deliberately and inwardly, until the habit of doing so becomes second nature. At first the effort will feel artificial and will often be forgotten. But over time the heart learns to live in a steady awareness that all its work is for God, and the feeling that God is absent from most of the day begins to fade. He commended once again the example of Brother Lawrence, whose pots and pans in the monastery kitchen became the place of his communion with God.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. ROMANS 12:1

He added one caution of his own. This teaching does not mean that the believer may stop setting apart times for prayer and worship. Rather, it is those set times, faithfully kept, that give the rest of the day its savour. The hour of prayer and the hours of work are not rivals; each feeds the other.

Weighing it

This is one of the most liberating things Tozer wrote, and it recovers a truth the Reformers held dear: that the calling of the farmer and the housewife is as truly a calling from God as the calling of the minister. Two notes may be added.

First, the principle sanctifies only what is lawful. It does not make sin holy by attaching a pious intention to it. The motive that sanctifies an act must include a willingness to have the act itself judged by the Word of God.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. ECCLESIASTES 9:10

Second, the ordinary life that Tozer invites us to offer to God includes, most ordinary of all, our life at home. The sacrament of living is celebrated not only at the desk and the bench but at the dinner table, in the conversation with a spouse, in the time given to a child. It is a sad irony that Tozer’s own family, by the account of his biographers, found him more present to God than to them. His teaching here is better than his practice, and it condemns the failure. A believer who takes this chapter seriously will find that the first place it sends him is home.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Make two lists: the parts of your day you consider sacred, and those you consider secular. Look at the second list and ask how each item might be offered to God.

2. Choose one ordinary task you do every day. For one week, offer it consciously to God each time you begin it.

3. Read Colossians 3:17–24 slowly, noticing how Paul applies it to husbands, wives, children and servants.

4. Keep your set time of prayer faithfully this week, and notice whether it colours the rest of the day.

5. Ask whether your family would say you are present to them. Offer them some of your attention this week as an act of worship.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have divided my life into Yours and mine, and I have given You the smaller part.

Forgive me. Take the whole of it — my work and my rest, my meals and my conversations, my duties and my pleasures.

Teach me to do everything in Your name and for Your glory, until there is no corner of my day where You are not.

Let holiness to the Lord be written on the ordinary things of my life, and let it begin at home. Amen.