Thursday, September 1, 2016

Trying Harder Will Not Make You More Holy

My Utmost For His Highest
 
…it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy." —1 Peter 1:16
 
“Do I believe I need to be holy? Do I believe that God can come into me and make me holy? If through your preaching you convince me that I am unholy, I then resent your preaching. The preaching of the gospel awakens an intense resentment because it is designed to reveal my unholiness, but it also awakens an intense yearning and desire within me. God has only one intended destiny for mankind— holiness. His only goal is to produce saints. God is not some eternal blessing-machine for people to use, and He did not come to save us out of pity— He came to save us because He created us to be holy. […] Never tolerate, because of sympathy for yourself or for others, any practice that is not in keeping with a holy God. Holiness means absolute purity of your walk before God, the words coming from your mouth, and every thought in your mind— placing every detail of your life under the scrutiny of God Himself.”  CHAMBERS
 
(Genesis 1:26) “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”  That is how it started.  A life of holiness, and then sin entered in.  Jesus came to restore us back to the our original condition.  First was to set us apart with His Spirit.  Through Adam we are dead toward God.  Through Jesus (the second Adam) we are restored and given new life. (Galatians 2:20)  “And the life that I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave himself up for me.” (Romans 6:4) “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life”  We are to walk in holiness, separate from the world.  But you know that already don’t you.  But as you already know, the problem is not in the knowing it is in the doing.  Jesus said (Matthew 5:16) “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”  The light is the glory of God produced by the Spirit and your will being in harmony with one another.
 
It may be that you have resolved yourself to a live that falls short of God’s intent.  It is a level of apparent holiness that is sustained by human effort, by works, and not sourced by the Holy Spirit through faith.  You may be living a life characterized by trying harder.  That was a motto used by Hertz car rentals for years “We try harder”  There may have been merit in the business world, but there is no merit in trying harder in your new life in Christ.  Holiness is a result of relationship not effort.  Are you struggling with sin? Are you trying not to think about the fact that your life is more carnal than spiritual?  That reality bothers you, but try not to think about it. That is until the Spirit reminds you.  You are a child of the King.  As they say in the Celebrate Recovery Ministry, “Denial is not a river in Egypt.”  (1 John 1:6-8) “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”  ELGIN

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