Personal Holiness

No one can criticize my generation for lack of passion. So many of us see the glory of God as the greatest thing to be exalted, and we write a plethora of songs that would fill many new hymnbooks. We see the challenge of over 6000 unreached people groups left in our world, and we think "this is possible in my lifetime. We CAN reach the rest of the unreached." Many of us stand upon God's Word as the ONLY source of absolute truth and do not waver in our convictions about its commands. Many of us proclaim the gospel with integrity and do not apologize for its "foolishness" nor for it being a "stumbling block" (see 1 Cor 1-2).

These things are also my passion. They are also my motivation and my aim. But, we seem to lack in one issue of great importance. I've noticed this throughout my life, but it's always been hard to identify. This has been difficult primarily because many of my heroes, most of the people that I (even still) consider godly men have shown some inconsistency in this area. I, myself, seem to fluctuate violently at times with this as well.

The issue is that of personal holiness.

This blog is not written to identify specific sins that I see as common among God's people these days. The sins are obvious, not only to ourselves, but also to everyone around us.

My main goal in writing this entry is to simply encourage those who identify with what I am saying to allow yourself to be pressed and challenged by the Holy Spirit more each day to truly look like Christ.

Romans 8 says that is the will of God that we be conformed to Christ's image, yay, it is even a predestined reality for those of us who are His. But it seems that we have come to view this only as an eternal reality, as if it were something we could not grasp even now if we so desired.

Let us put away the selfish and foolish things of this world to obtain a higher calling.

The reason many of us have rejected practical, personal holiness is because we despise the "pharisaism" that so many in our faith have exhibited in recent and past days. Many of these so-called "holy men" seem only to have hurt the witness of the the church and the cause of the gospel. And so, in historical Christian fashion, we throw the baby out with the bath water. We try to live as close to the world as possible, thinking that this will help our effectiveness.

I do not come from the camp that says, "Don't dress like the world (within reason of course) or listen to secular music or watch movies or ____________ (fill in your vice)." These things have little to do with holiness in and of themselves. Holiness is truly an attitude of the heart. It is a kin to humility.

On a practical level: There are days when I truly can not listen to anything secular on the radio. This usually happens when I haven't spent necessary time with God OR when He is teaching me something so profound that my heart needs silence. In this case, music as a whole is absent.

Please don't hear me wrong, but I believe that holiness is one of the most exact and disciplined areas of the Christian life (at the "between-you-and-God" level) and one of the most relative elements of our Christian life (at the practical/application level). To judge another believer's level of personal holiness is almost always a grave error, but it seems that we can not judge our own enough.

"Be Holy as I am Holy" (Mt. 7).

In Christ,
Andy