"Oh, God,
show me more of Your holiness.
Show me more of my sinfulness.
Help me to hate sin and to love righteousness as You do.
Grant me a deeper conviction of sin
and a more thorough spirit of repentance.
And make me holy as You are holy."
Thus begins Nancy Leigh DeMoss' book on holiness. Reading through this book gives each of us an excellent opportunity to honestly examine ourselves. (1Cor.11:28; 2Cor.13:5) Our sin nature makes us naturally good at examining others, but few are consistently good at pointing their finger where God wants it to be ... evaluating ourselves in light of who God is, what He HAS done and what He IS doing in our life. He demanded holiness in the lives of His people Israel, those whom He had redeemed from bondage in Egypt (Lev.11:45) and He demands the same of Christians, those whom He has redeemed from bondage to sin (Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:15-16). By the end of this book, may we realize with DeMoss that "holiness and sin both matter"- more than we can imagine. They matter to God, and the more we comprehend their true nature, the more they will matter to us." For one who is spiritually united with Christ, to be holy is "to be wholly satisfied with Christ ... to reflect the beauty and the splendor of our holy Lord in this dark world."
The realization that holiness and true joy are inseparably bound to each other provides powerful motivation for the believer. The pleasures of sin are fleeting (Heb.11:25). Sin is deceitful. IT is the real burden in life, yet it seeks to promote itself as something attractive (Gen.3:1-5). J.C. Ryle defines sin as, "doing, saying, thinking or imagining anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God. ... Men try to cheat themselves into the belief that sin is not quite so sinful as God says it is, and that they are not so bad as they really are. ... Sin rarely seems sin at first beginnings."
"True holiness is cultivated in the context of a relationship with God." But God doesn't stop with the demand that His people be holy, set apart TO Him and FOR Him, He also empowers them to become progressively holy in practice through the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And He provides the means, the graces, by which the Holy Spirit conforms each believer to the image of His beloved Son (Romans 8:29). Our appropriation of these graces (e.g. knowing & obeying His Word, prayer, sitting under godly preaching & teaching, meeting together to encourage one another to godliness) affects the rate of our individual spiritual growth. Having a heart tender to the commands of God, a "soft heart" sensitive to Him, one that is quick to repent, quick to forsake sin, quick to obey, also impacts the rate of our spiritual growth. Holiness starts with our heart attitude, then manifests itself in our actions. Just like sin, holiness is rooted in the heart. Any attempt to change our outer actions without first changing our inner heart attitude is not holiness at all and is doomed to failure, nor does it bring any pleasure to God. One need only observe Christ's attitude towards the scribes and Pharisees.
"True holiness starts on the inside - with our thoughts, attitudes, values and motives - those innermost parts of our hearts that only God can see." I would add to that list our "inward expectations". An honest evaluation to make sure our expectations in life are, in fact, biblical, goes far towards helping us to "be renewed in the spirit of your mind and to put on the new man who has been created in God's image — in righteousness and holiness that comes from truth." (Eph.4:22-24)
My prayer for all of us, as we read through this book, would be that we would develop an honest hunger for holiness, that we would appropriate the God-given means/graces to reject anything less and that each of us would respond in humility of mind, which would allow us to honestly evaluate ourselves in the light of God's truth. May our motivation for doing so be a sincere and overwhelming desire to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind.
[Based upon the book, Holiness: The Heart God Purifies, Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Week #2 (Chapters 3&4) may be found here. Related Post: Expectations]
[Based upon the book, Holiness: The Heart God Purifies, Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Week #2 (Chapters 3&4) may be found here. Related Post: Expectations]
3 comments:
This first reading made me think more about how I deceive myself, but not God. Searching, listening to the answers deep in the heart is the issue. I choose to think so much is ok, but I know the sinfullness of my actions and need to recognize them. The less they affect others is even more the problem, since it is easier to ignore. I look forward to discovering more about myself and how to honor God in my journey.
Comments, Ladies? We have over 40 women reading the book (that I know of) and according to my stats, 26 of you have read the review. Share a favorite quote or verse with us... comment on something you found significant... Just pretend we're sitting around with a cup of coffee in hand, chatting. [You don't even need to ID yourself if you don't want to.]
Debi, your wise words "holiness starts with our heart attitude, then manifests itself in our actions" really struck home for me. I spent 30 years of my life doing all of the external "Christian" things I thought were necessary to please God. But when I was truly saved, it becme clear to me through God's Word that all of these things were dung destined for the rubblish heap. There is a sense in which God does not care about our external actions, rather He cares about the motivations of our heart. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” But, as sinful human beings, it is so much easier to try to “clean up our act” by focusing on what we do and don’t do than on doing the much more difficult work of letting God change our heart’s attitudes to make us holy in His sight.
I was struck by the quote on page 23 by C.S. Lewis: “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing…it is irrestible.” When you think about who you would like to hang out with, whether you are a Christian or not, wouldn’t you be drawn to people who are holy? For example, who wouldn’t want to have business dealings with someone who ran their business on biblical principles and strived to be holy in every business transaction? Who wouldn’t want to have friends or family who strived to always be there for you? Who put you above themselves? Then of course, thinking about how I’d like to hang out with people like that, begs the question - am I also willing to work at becoming that kind of holy person by God’s grace??
-SPB
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