Chasing Holiness
Like some people can chase after money, I have chased after holiness. It has always eluded me to an extent. I never “get there” and it is always just out of my reach.
As I have read Psalm 15 where David asks, ‘Who can abide with You?’ and then starts his answer with, ‘Those who walk uprightly, speak the truth in the heart and never slander with their tongue, do no evil to their neighbor and never expresses disapproval of their friends.’
Wow, if that is not a list to start with. I wish I could be a little more like the rich young ruler who could say to Jesus, all these things I have kept since my youth, what else do you want? Desiring this, I have tried. But knowing even if I could do all these things, I would walk away sad.
On the other side, after trying really hard and continually failing, one could go the other direction and say forget it, no one can abide with God. In my own abilities, this is true. There is only One who can abide in God – Jesus Christ. He is holiness.
In John 14:20, He tells us He is the way to the Father. He says, “When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”
This is why He can invite us into this place of abiding with God. In John 15:4, He says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
As we desire to abide in Him, we can relax because it is not about working super hard to become holy. Rather it is about holding the hand of the One who is holy and holding onto us. Jesus is the source of holiness and all that He touches turns becomes holy.
Jesus made the impossible possible. He gave us eternal life. But that is not just life for one day when we die, this is eternal life now. He is the Life. He is the way to eternal life right now. As we seek Him and follow Him, we find a rich and satisfying life.
John 10:10 says that the thief’s plan is to steal, kill and destroy but His whole purpose is to give life in all it’s fullness. In John 6:35 Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life. No one coming to me will ever be hungry again. Those believing in me will never thirst.” There is only one path to a rich and satisfying life, and it is Jesus.
Jesus went on to say in John 6:36, the trouble is that many wouldn’t believe and receive from Him. They couldn’t see their need so they didn’t want to receive what He has to give them. In Revelation 3:17, John writes to the church in Laodicea, “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”
Matthew 5:3 says, "God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for Him. For the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs." Our access to the Kingdom does not come from our getting it right. We move the heart of God by our commitment to Him.
In 2 Chronicles 16:9 it says, “For the eyes of the LORD roam to and fro over all the earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him.”
Our pursuit is one of devotion. The more we pursue Him in devotion, the more we grow in holiness from being with the One who is holy. As we hold the hand of the One who is holy, we grow into holiness as we grow into Him.
David Wilkerson says in a sermon that, “A perfect heart is a responsive heart. It quickly and totally answers the Lord's wooings, whisperings and warnings. This heart says at all times, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant heareth. Show me the path and I will walk in it.’”[1]
This is not a stand above others and judge them holiness because we work hard to get everything right, but a sit on the ground and meet people where they are at holiness that humbly listens and serves others.
This is the holiness Jesus displayed. He came in and sat with those no one else would eat with. He sat on the ground as He asked the woman at the well for a drink. When no other Jew would dare have a Samaritan serve them water because they were considered beneath them; But, He asked while offering her His living waters at the same time.
When we pursue being holy in our acts, what happens is that we look down on others who are in sin out of self-righteousness. We see it in the way Christians talk about the woman at the well – not as a woman who encountered Jesus and was called into evangelism with an incredible ministry but as a woman with five husbands and now living with someone.
Some of the greatest wounds in the body of Christ is because we want to throw stones rather than get down on the ground and help people up. I know I struggle with this. I had a dream that I was part of a procession that was leading forward some Kingdom purposes. And this one truck tried to join that was a mess. It was filled with junk and no good at all. I would let this truck in to join the procession, but only if it was willing to help carry the weight. I realized when I woke up, who am I to determine who carries the weight when my weights that were so heavy were taken off of me? Jesus took them for me.
For myself, there are lots of areas that I did not get it right. My husband and I had our biological son before we were ever married. Then we divorced and remarried each other as we became more mature. I can go on and on about all the things that I didn't get "right" and earn my badge of honor.
Here is the truth on this: When all the religious folks (like us) were ready to stone a woman for adultery and Jesus told them that the one without sin should throw the first stone, everyone walked away. Not one was left standing with a stone. Jesus is the ONLY one worthy to break the seal. We all do not fulfill the law and why we need a Savior.
The religious leaders looked down on her (notice their position) as they stood above her. They put themselves as above her. As they were ready to stone this woman for adultery, Jesus, sitting on the ground (notice His position), looked up, probably writing the names of their sin in the sand as He said that the one who had not sinned should throw the first stone -- and everyone walked away. Not one was left standing with a stone in hand.
He didn't send the woman away indignant with her like she should have done better. He never judged her based upon sin. He saw her true beauty and called her into freedom. He qualified her to follow Him. Jesus is the ONLY one worthy and He qualifies us all by His sacrifice for us.
As Peter was talking to people called to be followers who were sinning in 1 Peter 2:9, I imagine Peter had someone like her in mind when he spoke, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light."
Being divorced does not disqualify someone. Being divorced multiple times does not disqualify someone. It makes us human sinners in a fallen world and the ones that Jesus gave His life for. When Jesus was in Samaria, He sought out the woman who was married five times and living with someone to call her into a ministry of evangelism. And when He was raised from the dead, it was a woman who had been delivered from demons and had been a prostitute that He showed Himself to first.
Having an abortion in your past or having a child out of wedlock does not disqualify someone. Your disqualifications are exactly what qualifies you! You are with the rest of us fallen folk who ate from the fruit of the wrong tree and have made some broken decisions. And it is exactly why we can be so incredibly grateful salvation is free and for us! We all need it!
In 2 Chronicles 3-4 in the documentation of Solomon building this incredible dwelling place for God on earth that would be the place where people could pray towards and be forgiven of even grave sin (their intermediary), we see a shadow of Jesus at every turn. It was to be the place where God would dwell among them and the people would not die but talk to God under wings of mercy.
Jesus is the temple, and He is in every feature of the temple from the gold covering the inner walls to the place of sacrifice, washbasins, sea carried by twelve bronze oxen to the pomegranates that hung from the chains on the capitals. He is the gold altar, the Bread of the Presence, and incense with a sweet aroma that burns. He is in the sprinkled blood that covers all and makes them holy.
Because of this intermediary between God and men that is a shadow of Jesus, God no longer had to be far off. The thick, dark cloud of His presence that was seen on the top of Mount Sinai, filled the Temple of the Lord so that the people could not continue service (2 Chronicles 5:14). God was in their midst.
As in Hebrews 12:18-24, “You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.’ The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, ‘I am trembling with fear.’
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”
It is in Jesus that we find eternal life. Revelation 21: 22-25, “But I saw no temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its lamp. By its light the nations will walk, and into it the kings of the earth will bring their glory. Its gates will never be shut at the end of the day, because there will be no night there.”
Jesus, it is in You that we live and move and have our being. You are the Way. There is only one thing worth being concerned about. As Mary found this, help us to live in this too! Help us to walk in genuine holiness, hand to hand with You as You fulfill the law for us. Because of this, let us not stand above others but get down on the ground and serve others like You did. Give us humble hearts that are responsive, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and go along with You wherever You are taking us.
1. Wilkerson, David. A Perfect Heart. World Challenge Pulpit Series. October 2nd, 1989. Located at: A Perfect Heart by David Wilkerson October 2, 1989 (tscpulpitseries.org). Last Accessed: 5/30/2022.
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