HOLINESS IN 2018
I am sure I will be thanking God throughout eternity that I came in contact with a church as a ten year old, and I found out I needed a Saviour. It was a church that regularly preached the Gospel and expected to see people come to faith, I was one of those who knelt at the “Mercy Seat” and was soundly born again.
The church also taught very strongly that a person could live a holy life, and this soon became a strong desire in my life, whether the information ever became revelation I am not sure. Sadly, the teen years with all its pressures seemed to win the day over and over and over again. Much of my Christian life I have been so aware of my “deceitful depraved” heart Jer. 17:9 and my walk seems to have been (at times) 2 steps forward and one step back.
When I went to Bible College I learnt there were various “schools” of belief when it came to the doctrine of “Entire Sanctification” a truth that men like John Wesley an Zwingli were used to restore to the Church in their generation.
What saddens me more we now seem to live in a generation where many are more concerned about dotting every I and crossing every T and can react quite unrighteously if you don’t belong to their particular “school”. I really don’t think God is very concerned about what “school” we belong too, but that we desire to live a holy life.
We now live in a world that seems like it could be called Sodom and Gommorah. There is wickedness and depravity and ungodliness on every hand. There has hardly been a generation like the one in which we live, but I am reminded that as in the “Days of Noah so it will also be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man,”. The Lord’s return is ever nearer, what is the answer?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO LIVE A HOLY LIFE IN 2018?
The Old Testament is replete with commands to God’s people TO BE HOLY, yet over and over again, the Jews failed. Is it any easier under the New Covenant YES YES YES YES.
The Bible clearly tells us that Jesus dealt with the “sin question” not only taking mankind’s sins upon Himself and carrying them right away, His death and resurrection BROKE the very power of sin. The day we were born again, we received the incorruptible seed of the Word of God, (His divine sperma) His DNA plus the HOLY SPIRIT came into our life, The third person of the Godhead’s very name is HOLY and he indwells us. As we learn to ” continually present our bodies in surrender” Rom.12:1 His very nature begins to permeate into every part of our being.
2 Peter 1:3-4 –By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. NLT
Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust. MESSAGE
You don’t need a Theological degree to interpret the word EVERYTHING MEANS EVERYTHING. The challenge is for every believer to meditate constantly on the EVERYTHING, until the INFORMATION becomes REVELATION, the Logos become the rhema word.
WE DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE EXCUSE!
Then you add in so many other things we find in the Word of God for the new Covenant Believer:
Our complete inheritance in Christ NOW,
The whole armour of God
Praying in the Spirit.
The “Dealings of God” Hebrews 12: 5-11 tells us
My dear child, don’t shrug off God’s discipline,
but don’t be crushed by it either.
It’s the child he loves that he disciplines;
the child he embraces, he also corrects.
God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God Message
.“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
For whom the Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges every son whom He receives.”
If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. NKJV
Verse 10 tells us if we RESPOND to God’s dealings (and these could be a million different things) remember God is sovereign, and anything that touches our life is either from the Lord or with His permission. There is always a purpose and the writer says if we respond it will cause us to be PARTAKERS OF HIS HOLINESS, and verse 11 tells us that the result of responding is the PEACEABLE FRUITS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
And the list goes on and on. Please do not have the mentality that you can’t have any fun, if you decide to live the holy life. Simply speaking, holiness is not a set of “thou shalt nots” or thou shall, it is letting Jesus be Lord of your life 24/7 and letting Him live His life through every part of you. Of course it is a learning process, and an “unlearning” process, You will find it is the most satisfying fulfilling life that you could ever have. Be prepared to lose friends as they will think you are weird, I want the Father’s smile, over my life, not the commendations of man.
God never asks us to do anything we cannot do. He has said:
BE HOLY EVEN AS I AM HOLY
T
