We all have a sacred calling

Two nights ago, I re-watched the movie "Amazing Grace" on DVD. It's an excellent film about William Wilburforce, and his crusade in Britain's Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. It was a fight that would take many years, and a toll on his health, because Britain and its empire flourished on the slave trade. But God used his man with his great oratory skills and sharp mind, who deeply believed that all man should be free, to accomplish a wondrous thing.

Today, I read about the Moravian Christians in Herrnhut. Herrnhut, Germany is the home of the renowned Hundred-Year-Long Prayer Meeting. In 1722, persecuted Christians from Moravia fled to Saxony and found protection in the domain of the regional Count Nicolas Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Initially, twenty-four people took one hour shifts during which they committed to pray – the Lord’s Watch. More joined the watch and this prayer watch went on unbroken until 1847.

Steve Hickey's website writes: "As Moravians at Herrnhut started to sense God’s missionary call to take the good news to the lost, they would hold funerals for the missionaries before they sent them off to places like Jamaica. (We found Moravian missionary graves when we were in Jamaica a couple years ago!) Imagine holding a funeral for someone who is about to leave because it was understood that the call of Jesus was to go give your life reaching lost people and that you’d not return in this life. To reach the slaves in Jamaica, the Moravian missionaries would sell themselves into slavery as it was the only way to gain access to Caribbean slaves. Stories of supernatural visitations and provision accompany each missionary account of the Moravians."

John Wesley wrote that he was led to Christ by a Moravian missionary from Herrnhut while sailing on a ship to America. When the ship was nearly overtaken by a storm, and he and the other passengers panicked, however the Moravian fellow on the ship was calm, had peace and prayed. In his revivals Welsey often talked about the “warming heart” moment of his born-again experience with the Moravian missionary."

I was deeply struck by this. God used lives given to Him to accomplish His purposes as the slave trade was going on. Moravian missionaries who were willing to sell themselves into slavery to reach the slaves. Full-time missionaries willing to give their all. And one William Wilberforce in government to eventually have slavery abolished altogether. His is not a secular pursuit either.

As Ravi Zacharias put it in "The Grand Weaver", "Because we are all priests before God, there is no such distinction as 'secular' or 'sacred'. In fact, the opposite of sacred is not secular; the opposite of sacred is profane. In short, no follower of Christ does secular work. We all have a sacred calling."