“I used to chafe and fret when interrupted in favorite pursuits, but I have learned that my time all belongs to God, and I just leave it in his hands. It is very sweet to use it for him when he has anything for me to do, and pleasant to use it for myself when he has not.” – Mrs. Prentiss
A great deal of our talk about consecration is very vague and visionary. We are told that we should make an unreserved transfer of ourselves to Christ, and we want to do it. We wish to keep nothing back from him. We adopt the formula of consecration when we connect ourselves with the church. We use the liturgy of consecration continually in our prayers, saying over and over again – sincerely enough, too – that we give ourselves wholly to Christ. We sing with glowing heart and flowing tears the rapturous hymns of consecration, and yet, somehow, we are not wholly consecrated to Christ. Saying it, praying it, singing it, ever so honestly and with ever so endless repetition, we are still painfully conscious of failure in fact, and we become discouraged, sometimes even doubting altogether the reality of our conversion because we cannot consciously keep ourselves on the altar.
One trouble is that the consecration we aim at is emotional rather than practical. Then another is that we try to accomplish too much at once. We attempt to make over all our life, in its endlessly varied relations, and all our present and future, once for all in a single offering, and then it seems to our limited experience that that should be final. The spirit and intention are right enough, but the fact is that in actual life such consecration is quite impracticable. Theoretically it is correct, but in experience it will always be found vague and unsatisfactory. The only truly practical consecration is that which seeks to cover the actual present. However fully we may have given ourselves to Christ at conversion, it will avail nothing unless we renew it with each separate act and duty as it presents itself to us.
Consecration may be greatly simplified and may be made intensely practical if we bring it down to a daily matter, attempting to cover no more than the one day, and if we each morning formally give the day to the Lord, to be occupied as he may wish, surrendering all our plans to him, to be set aside or affirmed by him as he may choose.
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