O.K., God is so cool! Yesterday morning I walk into Sunday School class and on the white board there is written, "Holy, Holy, Holy". Didn't think too much of it. As class opens, our leader refers back to the discussion from last week and how it ties into this week. I had no remembrance of a lively discussion last week, but then remembered I was in the nursery last week!
Our first verse we turned to was Hebrews 12:14-"Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord." and I like how vs15 goes on to say, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many."
My husband and I just turned to each and grinned. Here were my answers! When I was writing my blog Saturday night with the AC/DC question I was reluctant to post it because I knew there were verses to back up what I was saying, I just couldn't think of them. Here they were! The rest of this will come from what we discussed in class.
What does holy mean? Can only God be holy? My bible defines holy as "
separated or set apart for God". Another Bible defined it as "worthy of worship, sacred". I liked mine better as I feel it pertains to the discussion at hand. Someone else had their son's
FCA Bible and I got part of the quote, just not all. I have written down, "faith without holiness is just intellectual ascent, holiness without faith is just ....." I'll have to see if I can find out what the rest is because I feel that's really getting to the heart of the matter.
We could get into a whole discussion of
should a Christian do this or
should a Christian not do that, but that 's just a bunch of rules made up to
separate the "dedicated" from the "
wishy-washy", the "good" from the "bad". Which is no different from what the Pharisees did. As my son likes to say, "The
Sadducee's were very sad you see, and the Pharisees were very fair you see".
The real crux of the matter is
how do you become holy or set apart for God? 1 Peter 1:13-16 says, "Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
I love that both this section and the Hebrews selection talk about grace. Without grace, would any of us ever be holy or would we just be following a bunch of rules? Grace is what enables us to mess up one day, ask Jesus for forgiveness and get up the next day and continue to set ourselves apart for God. Without grace we would either be walking around on eggshells all the time, worrying ourselves sick about never being good enough or just give it up and go back to our old lives. Saved from hell, but not much else.
My husband and I have been married for over 13 years and I knew that he still was wracked by horrible guilt over things he had done in his 20's. No matter how much we talked about sins being forgiven and moving on, he never felt good enough. Yesterday, he came home and said, "You know that talk about the rules? I think that's what I do. I try to live by the
do's and
don'ts and then feel like a failure when I can't keep the rules!" That was such a breakthrough thought for him.
But, that shows the other kind of bondage we can be in. The Devil likes us to think that we will never be good enough for God. If we aren't good enough for Him we can't do His work and bring other people to a saving knowledge of Him.
The other part of 1 Peter I like, is that it says "do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance." If we are to be holy or set apart for God, we need to do 180 degree turn from our old ways. We can't keep doing a 360 through them. Go out get drunk, ask for forgiveness, live holy for a while, go get drunk, ask for forgiveness, live holy a while, go out get drunk, ask for forgiveness, live holy a while....... Do you see my point? It's a revolving door and sooner or later you're going to get tripped and hit in the butt! I know, I tried it.
There is a reason God calls us to be holy, Matthew 6:24 says, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Even though it says money here, it could be sex, drugs, alcohol, music that is raw and contrary to God, TV shows that teach the opposite of the Bible.....etc.
But only
you know where
your heart is at when you do what you do in a day. That was the point of the AC/DC post. Do you know what I discovered when I went on an AC/DC website to check an album title? I actually know very few AC/DC songs! And some of those song titles really make me not want to hear the albums they are on. I probably got more caught up in the old memories that the songs brought back than anything. But, the discussions and the thought processes I went through the past two days were a really good examination of where I am in my relationship with God. And everyone needs a check-up once in a while.
So, for those of you from the Class of '92 at
BHS, we salute you! ;)
