The Religion of Daily Life
I. These are the words of the greatest man that ever lived; of the founder of our religion, even of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They were spoken the night before His death, concerning His followers on earth; and, I presume, He knew what He was saying. But those words are not what many persons would have expected. They would fancy that our Lord's prayer would have been rather after this fashion: "I pray that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, that they may be kept from the evil." But so prayed not Christ. Such persons would fancy that our Lord would rather have bid His followers retire into a desert, and there, amid the solitude of nature, to meditate on spiritual things; to prepare their souls for heaven. But so commanded not Christ. We cannot be thankful enough that Christ came, not to call men out of the world, but to teach them how to live in the world; not to proscribe work and business as irreligious, but to sanctify and ennoble it.
II. And that is what Christ did, by His example and by His words, during His whole life on earth. He never, by any act of His, gave encouragement to those who would separate religion from the common acts of daily life. We know how Christ spent His time before He began His ministry; that He spent it, not away from His fellowmen, in some desolate retirement, in some lonely wilderness; but that He worked, as other men work, with His own hands, as a carpenter in the village of Nazareth. By His example He taught us that, if we would live Christian lives, we must live useful ones; if we would follow Him and His religion, we must not take ourselves out of the world, but do our duty in the world.
III. Never think that your work, whatever it is, need be a hindrance to religious life. It ought to be a help to you, not a hindrance. And it will be a help to you, if only you bear in mind that by doing your duty faithfully you are serving Him who said of old, "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 4.
References: John 17:25-26. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 75.John 18:26. Homiletic Magazine,vol. vii., p. 148; W. M. Taylor, Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 100. John 17:25; John 17:26. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiii., No. 1378.