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Power of Blazing Holiness:
Key Scripture: “Be holy because I am holy.” I Peter 1:16
Power Point:
We
come running to meet Jesus with amazing enthusiasm don’t we? We offer Him the
gift of our poor, tattered hearts and He offers us the gift of His perfect
love, wholeness and peace.
We
have a ‘honeymoon” period where we freely give to Him all the “ick” in our
lives in exchange for the opportunity to see ourselves cleansed and made
perfectly whole by His love and kindness. Ah. Lovely.
Then
He begins to gently tug at those things that are still in our soul that are hostile to His presence, and in fact, they
fight back. Hard! Our emotions fight back, protecting the
soul’s right to be wrong.
The word “holy” has been popping up in my mind lately. As a pre-Christian and even as a new Christian, I thought it meant “perfect”. If I was “holy” I thought it meant that you could never do anything wrong. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In both the Old and New Testaments the word for “holy” means something that is set-apart, something consecrated to someone or something. In other words, as Peter puts it in I Peter 1:16, “as obedient children let yourselves be pulled into into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”
Beloved, “holy” means that you set aside and consecrate your mind, your will and emotionsto the Spirit of God in you. You give Him room to grow, and room to SHOW! It will be a battle, but we have the perfect example for us when we look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He didn’t want to be a sacrifice. If there was a Plan B, He was all for it. But His spirit, so connected to Holy Spirit, went back to the place where He was anchored. In the most difficult place, He stayed consecrated and set apart to His Father and His destiny. That’s really an awesome picture of what can happen when we do that too, don’t you think? Other people’s lives are blessed as we stay consecrated and committed to Him.
The word “holy” has been popping up in my mind lately. As a pre-Christian and even as a new Christian, I thought it meant “perfect”. If I was “holy” I thought it meant that you could never do anything wrong. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In both the Old and New Testaments the word for “holy” means something that is set-apart, something consecrated to someone or something. In other words, as Peter puts it in I Peter 1:16, “as obedient children let yourselves be pulled into into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”
Beloved, “holy” means that you set aside and consecrate your mind, your will and emotionsto the Spirit of God in you. You give Him room to grow, and room to SHOW! It will be a battle, but we have the perfect example for us when we look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He didn’t want to be a sacrifice. If there was a Plan B, He was all for it. But His spirit, so connected to Holy Spirit, went back to the place where He was anchored. In the most difficult place, He stayed consecrated and set apart to His Father and His destiny. That’s really an awesome picture of what can happen when we do that too, don’t you think? Other people’s lives are blessed as we stay consecrated and committed to Him.
And
this is the lovely revelation I can give you today. We know that God’s Spirit
in us is called “Holy”. If you
think about that, what God is telling us is that His Spirit is always
consecrated and committed to us and set apart for us-to fight our battles in
us, to fight the battles around us and to fight the battles for others through
us. That makes us not only
winners, but more than winners. We always have heavenly “back-up”.
Don’t
ever doubt or question His Holiness. It’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean you’re
separated from Him, it means you’re
separated to him. It means that God
loves us so much that He has moved heaven and earth to be there for us, with
everything He’s got.
Well Power UP!
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