Exploring the Holy - 06/11/2019

WARNING PREACHY… 

Exploring the Holy -  06/11/2019

When I became a Christian I did so basically because I didn’t want to go to hell when I died.  I initially investigated God because I knew I was going to see Him sooner rather than later and I realized that God was the one area of my life that I had best not get wrong.  So, I simply cried out to Him and said that if He existed I needed to know who He was.  God then answered that prayer and within about a month I was face-to-face with the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  At that time I committed my life to Him and have struggled in my faith walk ever since.

There is a problem…

The problem is, that I started from a point of saving my own skin, getting out of going to hell when I die, and without even knowing it I have been the point of the Christian faith ever since.  I may have said things like “Jesus is the reason for the season” but the reality is that if Jesus does not answer all of my prayers in a timely fashion in the way I want those prayers answered then I tend to get gloomy and begin to doubt Him and His goodness.  It’s quite possible that I am unique in this; but I doubt it – just look at the Nation of Israel in the book of Exodus.

I’ve been a Christian for 25 years and just recently God has put it on my heart to press in and get to know Him in His Holiness, so this is what I have been doing for the past few months.  As I blog my thoughts here I don’t claim to know it all but I have been reading deeply and praying a lot; I pray you might find my thoughts helpful to inspire your own journey so that you might  Explore the Holy as well.

A Brief Description…

The topic of God’s Holiness is far beyond the human ability to describe as well as the limited area of this blog-space; however I believe a brief description is necessary.

The word holy means that something is separate from the other.  A holy people means that those people are different from the rest and a holy God means that that God is different from the others.  However, God is not just separate from other gods but He is described as Holy, Holy, Holy (Isaiah 6:3).  The emphasis with the three repetitious words is an indicator that God is a being unlike anything else and when He is examined it is learned that his infinitude is quite beyond my human ability to actually describe.  However, my human imperfection is all I have to work with and so this is what I work with.

However, as God is not limited by my inabilities, I press on and trust that by His Word and Spirit I will get a glimpse of the wealth of His innate and intrinsic essence.  By faith I trust Him to reveal Himself.

QUESTIONS:  

Why did you accept Jesus as your savior?  Was it to avoid hell and go to heaven when you die?  Was it because you had problems in your life and God offered a solution?  Was it because God is Holy and you recognized His innate beauty and sovereignty in your life?  Too often we accept Jesus like we vote for the President of the United States of America: we tend to vote for the person who we think will make our lives better or we vote for the lesser of two evils; our American culture has prepped us to always consider what’s in it for us individually.