The temptation is ever before me to compartmentalize my life into spiritual and secular. I often use other polarized terms to describe reality. I may think of life in terms of the present word and the world to come, or I may describe life as a simultaneous experience of living on earth and heaven.

I want to resist the idea of living between two worlds. I don’t want to have to place labels on my actions as to whether they are secular or spiritual.  As a Jesus follower, I cannot live a divided life.

A more accurate concept is to think of my life as uniting everything in Jesus. Jesus is my reality. I live in the world of Jesus. Every action and every reaction of my life should reflect my Jesus reality.

I smile when I think back to my first church employment. When it came time for Vacation Bible School, I learned that cookies and Kool-Aid needed a separate funding donation from outside of the church treasury because church money was holy and cookies were secular. I find it sadly amusing when I attend a worship service where a prayer brings the sacred to a close before proceeding to the secular honor of Fire Department workers or Public School Teachers.

Does God not also care about Fire Department workers or Public School Teachers? The crucified life is a new reality. It is living the integral life.

On a raised cross near Jerusalem, perfect God died for sinful man through the God-man Jesus. The new reality emerged from the tomb.  Because of that historical act, I—a sinful man—have access to perfect God through Jesus. By my entrance into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, I now live in God’s world to honor him and to be a witness to others.

Since the crucified Jesus lives in me, I too live the crucified life 24/7. It matters neither where I am nor where I may be, my life has only one purpose.  I live the crucified life at the grocery store, at the ball game, on the freeway, and with others in corporate worship.

Living the crucified life, I don’t live simultaneously in the world and in the Kingdom. Rather I live in the garden of God working with him toward the time of its complete restoration.

With the blood of Jesus covering my mistakes and my lack of maturity, I experience eternity now. The crucified life no longer sees vocation as secular. The crucified life no longer views money as secular. The crucified life desires for the authenticity of Jesus to flow from the soul toward every relationship and every act.

As I move down the backstretch of my race on earth just as floaters race across my eyes, I want the cross ever before me.  For the sight of the cross allows me to live a focused and undivided life.

I want to declare with Paul the Apostle, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

What are your reflections? Stay tuned. – Gary Sorrells