Holiness part 3
I want to start today's Rant with a passage of Scripture from the Old Testament. Isaiah 6:1-3 in the New Living Translation, to be exact. And I want to show something that I think is both very simple and very powerful."It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their face, with two they covered the feet, and wtih two they flew. They were calling out to each other, "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of Heaven's Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!" Very cool, right? A couple of things here. First off, even in the Old Testament where a lot of the time God looked more like man instead of the other way around (because of man's imperfect perception of God), one thing that man knew was that God was holy. Heard here from the mouths of the seraphim. You see God on His throne and you hear him being declared to be holy. That tracks. Pretty much everybody agrees that God is holy. Holy holy holy, in fact. We've made songs about it, haven't we? So even without necessarily having a proper understanding of what holiness IS... we know that it's God. "I don't know what IT is, but He's got it." Like that. Which is why later on, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, with the Revelation that came to John (the disicple that Jesus loved) when he put his head on Jesus' breast and heard the heartbeat of God, we see things like this: "We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them" (1 John 4:16 NLT). God is holy. God is love. See what I'm getting at? Be ye holy as your Father in heaven is holy. Love one another as Jesus loves you. It's all the same idea. The same commandment. The same thing. And that's the whole point of this Rant series-- what is holiness? Letting God love you and loving Him back by loving the people you come into contact with! Love is the most holy (and perhaps the only holy) thing you can do. Man, it drives me crazy when I see religious folk refuse to help people because they are too busy "serving God." "Sorry, I can't do that, I have to go to church." Buddy, you just churched your way right out of love. And, as always, I'm not against a church building. I simply think it's more important, and more effective, to BE the church than to "go" to church. And we BE the church by loving people. By helping people. By being there for people. Letting people know we care and showing them who God is by showing them what love is! Look, it's not about cerimonal washings and fasting and some of those things that people put so much stock in. And I'm not against washings and fasting. I'm simply saying... if you're choice is to fast, or to share a meal with someone who is hungry? To me the most holy thing you can do is to share that meal! Don't be religious about being holy! Just love people, and be sure that that's as holy as you can be! Guys, I say it almost every day: It's all about love. Giving what you've got (what God has given you) by knowing and believing you have it. By receiving it and releasing it. By filling yourself to overflowing with what you've already been filled with in order to let it come out of you... naturally. You don't have to strive for holiness. You are holy, as He is holy, because He is holy in you, and through you, and as you! When you understand what holiness is, and where it comes from, that's when you can BE who, and what, you already are!