Holiness: The Heart God Purifies - Week #4 [Ch.7-8]

"People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, and obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.  We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated."  [D.A. Carson, For the Love of God]

I'll let you in on a secret.  When your child is in my SS class, I can tell  whether or not you're doing family Quiet Time with them at home.  I can tell if you've made it a priority to open up Scripture daily and reveal the beauty and wonder of God to your child.  I can tell if your child prays regularly and hears prayer regularly at home.  I can tell if they have been trained to look at life through the truth of Scripture.  When I see your child routinely skip worship service in order to participate in some activity or sport, I can tell what is and what is not a priority in your home.  When I never see you and your children at Evening Service, I can tell other things are more important to you than worship and Christian fellowship.  So can your child.

When you complain to me about someone, when you make disparaging comments, when you murmur and grumble, when you magnify the trivial and ignore the eternal, when you focus on the sin of others and not on your own heart, it tells me about your heart condition.   When I never hear you talk about serving others or what you're studying in Scripture or what you just discovered about God or how you see Him working, it tells me much about your spiritual condition.  You can tell the same kind of things about me.

Christianity is meant to be more than an outer veneer of morality.  It's meant to be more than the repetition of Christian "catch phrases" and putting a bumper sticker on your car.  It's meant to be more than having a group of friends to socialize with or a social cause to support.  It's meant to be a vital, abiding relationship with Jesus Christ, a continual renewing of our minds with Scriptural truth.  It means developing a humble and submissive Christ-centered spirit ... it means a life lived for God.  We as believers must realize that our heart condition manifests itself in our outward behavior ... and all can see it.  If our lives don't match up with our talk, it hinders our ministry to each other and to a lost world, and it hinders our spiritual growth.  More importantly, God can see it, even when others do not.  Unfortunately, saying we believe the Bible is God's revealed truth to us and living out our lives in obedience to it do not always match up.  We all struggle at times, which is why God has given us a local body of believers to encourage us on to godliness, to keep us on the path of righteousness, to help us persevere to the end.

In Chapter 7, "The Heart of Holiness", DeMoss leads us through a series of challenging questions based upon Ephesians, chapter 4.  She writes, "The New Testament authors challenge believers to recognize their position in Christ - justified, redeemed, chosen by God, set apart for His purposes. Then we are exhorted to live a life - inside and out - that is consistent with our position."  It's a process rooted in our spiritual union with Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, fed by God's revelation and manifested in our actions.

In Chapter 8, "A Passion for Holiness," she warns against a trend prevalent in the modern American church. "We have accommodated to the world rather than calling the world to accommodate to Christ. When will we realize that the world is not impressed with a religious version of itself?  Our greatest effectiveness is not to be found in being like the world; it is to be found in being distinct from the world, in being like Jesus."  I see another trend hindering our witness and spiritual growth.  How often do we view Christianity as a source of personal benefit, rather than as a living-out of the ministry of reconciliation God has assigned us to? (2Cor.5:18-20)  Too often a desire for personal blessing, for a fulfillment of all our "felt needs", rather than the pursuit and application of God's truth becomes our primary focus.  How is that any different than the followers of Jesus who sought the benefits of His miracles, but not Him. [John 2:23-24]?  Blessing does come from our union with Christ, but it's a result, not a goal.  And the pathway to "blessing" is really quite different from the ideas that might pop into our heads when we hear the English word "blessing". [Matthew 5:3-12]

These are hard things, but they are well worth thinking about, contemplating, examining in ourselves.  The Christian walk is not something we cut and paste onto our lives along with all our other interests and hobbies.  It IS our life if we're a believer.  "I ... urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." [Eph.4:1-3]

[Based upon the book Holiness: The Heart God Purifies, Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Week #1; Week #2; Week #3; Week #5]