Its Time to End Our Double Lives

I don't know when or where it happened, what led to the place we find ourselves now. We are tired, stretched thin and always busy with stuff...
Our life is full - dating, school, spouse, children, sports, hobbies, WORK.
There is hardly enough time for it all. It is really exhausting. By the end of the week we just really need some rest - some "me" time, some family time.
Still we find time for our religious life - we carve out time - a Sunday morning here and there, a week night for our "small group," some occasional reading. It is tough to balance our religious life when there is so much of the rest of our lives.

Life was never meant to be like this and yet it is. We find ourselves exhausted and we struggle to find the time to "do" the Christian life. 
We want to.  We hear the call to serve, the call to be a part of God's great mission.
We feel certain that we should.
But when?  How? We can't possibly add another thing to our already chaotic life.
We find ourselves divided. And this is no small divide, the sacred and the secular.
The sacred is our religious life, the secular is everything else - work, school, friends, kids...

Somewhere along the way of Christianity we lost our way. The problem isn't that we somewhere got too busy. It isn't that we necessarily do too much. In fact we were meant to work hard, play hard and enjoy much! We were meant to live full lives - the kind of life that calls for rest. That's not the problem.
No, the problem is not the busyness. The problem is the divide.  God never intended for our lives to be divided. He never intended us to have sacred lives disconnected from our secular lives. We are meant for both - not individually - but inseparably, both as one.

In practice, we have divided life into all sorts of segments - our 9 to 5 job, our home life with spouse and kids, our "me" time, and Sunday is for our Christian life. This is the problem! We are not doctors who are Christian or mechanics who are Christian or moms and dads who are Christian, as though we are first and foremost something plus Christian.
No, we are Christians who are doctors, mechanics, moms, dads, students... We don't stop being Christian when we go to our job or gather with friends - we are Christians, if we are followers of Christ, always. In fact, the apostle Paul says in II Corinthians 5 that when we come to believe in Jesus, we are not just forgiven of sin, we are made new creations - the old is gone and we are new. He calls us, in this new life, Ambassadors of Christ.  An Ambassador is someone who represents another person. We represent Jesus. So we are Ambassadors of Christ as we go to work or to school or play ball with the kids. We are ambassadors of Christ when we hang out with friends or serve in the community.
This new identity isn't simply something that we add to our already busy (secular) life - it is who we are in Christ (sacred). 

The truth is that there is no divide for us as followers of Christ. All of our life is meant to be sacred. This means we don't add religious things to an already busy life, but that all of our busy life is religious. Sunday is really no more sacred than Monday!  And Monday through Friday are equally sacred as we live like Christ in the places we work, study and play. We don't add mission to our life, mission is the life we are called to "as we go" about our sacred everyday life. We don't add religious works and duties to our post-work life; they are every part of our everyday life as we do all things for the glory of God and work as unto the Lord.

This is freeing, if you stop for a moment to think about it.
Its freeing in the sense that God isn't expecting me to add a bunch of stuff to my life. God isn't requiring me to give up all of my kids' sporting activities nor is He angry because I play golf every now and then. Its freeing because I don't have to try to balance life - the sacred and the secular. I'm free to live - to work, to play, to enjoy life to its fullest - only with intention. I live it all as an ambassador of Christ. I live it all as a missionary. I live it all for His glory.
No more confusion.
No more double life.
I am a Christian pastor, a Christian crossfitter, a Christian biker, a Christian friend, a Christian community leader, a Christian dad, a Christian husband - for the glory of God and the good of people, always.