Let go, but be single minded in your pursuit of God

I was rereading Frank Laubach's comments about practicing God's presence and saw a wonderful passage about one of the weeks when he had a struggle in this discipline. He said,

Yet strain does not seem to do good. At the moment I feel something "let go" inside, lo, God is here! It is a heart-melting "here-ness," a lovely whispering of father to child, and the reason I did not have it before, was because I had failed to let go.


Fellowship with God is something one dare not cover, for it smothers to death. It is like a tender infant or a delicate little plant, for long nurturing is the price of having it, while it vanishes in a second of time, the very moment indeed, one's eye ceases to be "single." One cannot worship God and Mammon for the reason that God slips out and is gone as soon as we try to seat some other unworthy affection beside Him. The other idol stays and God vanishes. Not because God is "a jealous God" but because sincerity and insincerity are contradictions and cannot exist at the same time in the same place.

How often do we walk away from God because we have put some other lesser desire in the place of honor in our heart? Have we placed work or money or things or the praise of men in first place in our heart? When we do so for even a moment, we are rejecting the ultimate gift, the only truly valuable gift, the presence and worship of God.