The Whole World a Sanctuary

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” — 1 Corinthians 10:31 (KJV)

Tozer's last chapter tackles a hidden problem. We split life into two boxes. One box is “sacred”: praying, reading the Bible, singing, going to church. The other box is “secular”: “eating, sleeping, working, looking after the needs of the body.” The second we do “reluctantly,” sometimes “apologizing to God for what we consider a waste of time and strength.” The result? People “try to walk the tight rope between two kingdoms and they find no peace in either.”

Tozer thinks the split is false. Jesus said, “I do always the things that please him.” Paul told Christians to do everything to the glory of God, and he deliberately mentioned eating and drinking, the most ordinary things there are. “If these lowly animal acts can be so performed as to honor God, then it becomes difficult to conceive of one that cannot.” (Sin, Tozer is clear, can never honour God; he means ordinary, good things.)

So for someone who has given their life to God, “every act of his life is or can be as truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord's Supper.” Everything is lifted up. The answer, when old habits nag, is to offer every part of the day to God and believe he accepts it, with “a thousand thought-prayers as we go about the job of living.”

The same goes for places. God once taught Israel holiness through holy days and a holy tent, but Jesus said true worshippers would worship “in spirit and in truth.” Tozer then criticises the Roman Catholic church, and his own Fundamentalist circles too, for treating certain days and places as holier than others, such as “Lent” and “holy week.” He says he speaks “in all charity.” Many sincere Christians, Catholic and Protestant, keep those seasons gladly, and you don't have to agree with him there to take his main point: God can be met anywhere.

Not everything is equally important. “Paul's sewing of tents was not equal to his writing of an Epistle to the Romans, but both were accepted of God.” And: “the planting of the garden can be as holy an act as the winning of a soul.” What makes the difference? “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.” For such a person, “living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary.”

His final prayer gathers the whole book together: trust, surrender, possessing nothing, the Presence, the Voice, rest, and every act as worship:

“Lord, I would trust Thee completely; I would be altogether Thine; I would exalt Thee above all. I desire that I may feel no sense of possessing anything outside of Thee. I want constantly to be aware of Thy overshadowing Presence and to hear Thy speaking Voice. I long to live in restful sincerity of heart. I want to live so fully in the Spirit that all my thought may be as sweet incense ascending to Thee and every act of my life may be an act of worship.”

One honest word about Tozer himself. His biographers do not hide that his hunger for God made him distant from his wife and seven children. His own last chapter points the better way: time with your family is not a distraction from God but part of worshipping him. Tozer died in Toronto on 12 May 1963 and was buried in Akron, Ohio, under a simple stone that calls him A Man of God. That is a good thing to be called. Be one at the dinner table too.

Your Tuesday counts. Homework, training, washing up, listening to a friend who is struggling: done for God, it is as holy as anything you do on a Sunday. God is waiting in the middle of your ordinary life.

One thing to do this week: pick the most boring task you have this week, like a chore, a revision session or a long journey. Before you start, say to God, This is for you. Then do it well. Afterwards, go back to the sentence you wrote at the start of this book and see whether it has changed.