So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2 The Message
Holiness. OKAY now. Don’t run away from the screen screaming. It is not what you think. Did you read the scripture in the header? Holiness is not what we’ve been taught to expect or see. “The state of growing in divine grace.” That is one definition of holiness. Wait. Did you hear that? The operative words in that sentence are “growing” and “grace”. How many of us have equated holiness with the way one looks rather than the way one acts? Holiness is not the exclusive property of a certain demographic or denomination of church. Rather it’s a demonstration of maturity in the grace of God operating in your life.
When I was growing up, I had a friend who’s mother was in a denomination of Christianity called the Holiness Church. As a consequence of her mother’s affiliation with this church, her daughter, my friend was not allowed to wear pants, earrings, makeup or nail polish. She wore very long skirts and long sleeves. Imagine being a young teenage girl growing up on the South Side of Chicago during the 80s period of preppy, flash dance and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans styles and having to adhere to the “Holiness” way of dress. Even when we had ten weeks of swim class in gym, she was given an exemption from the school to wear baggy t-shirts over the required school swim uniform. Her outward appearance made her a target for teasing, bullying and generally mean types of behavior from our classmates. But if they had taken the time to get to know her, as I did, they would have known she was (and still is) one of the nicest people around. As I got to know her, I realized that her outward appearance may have been different but she also carried the Spirit of God within her that made her love those that mocked and teased her. Rather than retaliate, she would pray for them during our lunch period. For her, holiness wasn’t just a way of dress, it was a state of the heart. I’m truly happy to say that though she honors the memory of her dearly departed mother, she has moved from the religious shackles of rigorous traditions and credo. She wears pants, make up and keeps her nails cute at all times. But her heart is still one that radiates the purity, love and holiness God has developed in her over the years.
Holiness is being set apart from the ways of this world. It is a marked difference from the thoughts, behavior and characteristics of carnal and fleshly mindedness. Romans 8:6 says “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (NKJV) I truly believe that being righteous and holy, doing things God’s way and not our own or the world’s way brings us life and that more abundantly. I mean, a true sense of peace begins to permeate your soul when you walk in God’s holiness. You have an assurance, a deep joy in your heart that pleasing God, in spite of the persecution of the world, will bring eternal life spent with Him.
Setting holiness as an option before us is not a punishment from God, but it is a key we choose to use to unlock us from the prison of death and execution that sin holds us in. Like Romans 12 tells us, it is the best thing we can do for Him, when we sacrifice ourselves and give Him rule and reign over every part of our lives. Our ordinary lives become extraordinary when we trust God and do things His way. It’s as simple as that. And as hard…
This month’s S. O. A. K. calendar is made with scriptures that will help you to make your flesh sit down and God’s holiness rise up in your spirit. As you write, study, observe, apply and kneel in prayer about holiness, ask God to retrain your brain to have the mind of Christ. The old adage “What would Jesus do?” applies here. It’s not just what He would do, but how would he think? Our lives, our ideas, thoughts and actions should be based upon what God wants us to do and not what the world expects us to do. By reading the Word of God concerning holiness, you will reinforce your will to do what is right in His eyes and not care at all what the world thinks about you.
WE all need to take this month to seek God’s wisdom concerning walking in His ways and not in our own. The world is seemingly falling apart all around us but being “holy for I am Holy.” is what is going to give us what the world so desperately craves: PEACE. As you SOAK in holiness, know that I am praying for and with you as we seek being changed from the inside rather than looking like a dying world on the outside.
Leave a Reply