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Devotion

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California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Jan 28, 1875

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 1, No. 14.

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Devotion

By William Law

Devotion.
DEVOTION signifies a life given or devoted to God. He, therefore, is the devout man who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God in everything; who serves God in everything; who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to his glory.
Devotion implies not any particular form of prayer, but a certain form of life, that is offered to God, not at any particular times or places, but everywhere, and in everything. As a good Christian should consider every place as holy, because God is there, so he should look upon every part of his life as a matter of holiness, because it is to be offered to God. Devotion, we thus see, is an earnest application of the soul to God as its only happiness. That soul is devoted to God which constantly rises and tends towards God in habitual love, desire, faith, hope, joy, and truth.
Our blessed Saviour and his apostles are wholly taken up in doctrines that relate to common life. They call us to renounce the world, and differ in every temper and way of life from the spirit and way of the world; to renounce all its goods, to fear none of its evils, to reject its joys, and have no value for its happiness; to be as new-born babes that are born into a new state of things; to live as pilgrims in spiritual watching, in holy fear, and heavenly aspirations after another life; to take up our daily cross; to deny ourselves; to profess the blessedness of mourning; to seek the blessedness of poverty of spirit; to forsake the pride and vanity of riches; to take no thought for the morrow; to live in the profoundest state of humility; to rejoice in worldly sufferings; to reject the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life; to bear injuries, to forgive and bless our enemies, and to love mankind as God loveth them; to give up our whole hearts and affections to God, and strive to enter through the strait gate into a life of eternal glory.—William Law.