Category: Holiness

Leap for Joy

August 28, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” – Luke 6:22-23.

The church to which I belong is part of the Holiness Movement, which at one time was dubbed “holy rollers” because of the emotion expressed in worship services. Please don’t get this confused with Pentecostals who practice speaking in tongues. The holiness churches of yesteryear dressed conservatively, worshiped liberally (with shouting, praising, marching, and much weeping). Churches within holiness denominations grew like wildfire a century ago because they were sincere, prayerful, loving, ministered to the poor, and they were bold in their praise of God.

While certainly not true of every church in the holiness movement, pastors would walk the aisles, preach at a shout, point fingers, raise their hands and emphasize the second work of grace, emphasize holy living, and emphasize “praying through.” Those who attended such services could rarely remain quiet. Shouts of “glory, praise be, amen, and hallelujah!” abounded.

Those upon whom the Spirit fell could be seen marching around the sanctuary like the children of Israel around Jericho, weeping at the altar for hours on end, and leaping for joy.

To cast a wide net, I assert that one would be hard pressed to identify a holiness church by the clothing of its congregation, the message of its pastor or the actions of those on attendance on Sunday mornings.

Today, many – though certainly not all – pastors give uplifting inspirational messages that rarely mention the holiness doctrines. Pastors are too sophisticated to walk the aisles and shout. They rarely get emotional. Experts teach them that things are not done that way today. Such behavior, according to the experts, turn people away. Preachers, then become lecturers, motivational speakers, and resist the leading of God.

Those in attendance rarely voice an amen or hallelujah for fear that others will stare and judge.

Yet, Christ tells us in the Beatitudes that if we follow him we will be persecuted. If we are persecuted, He continues, we should leap for joy, because we will be rewarded in heaven.

When was the last time you leaped for joy? I’m not talking about bouncing during a mind-numbing praise song, rather when did you last shout or leap for joy at the delivery of the Gospel.

I am not one to advocate emotions over worship, but Christ tells us to praise Him, so I encourage you to rejoice over all He has done for you. And if the Spirit moves, shout and leap for joy. Let them call us holy rollers.
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Holiness is, perhaps, the most misunderstood concept in Christianity. Anyone who has striven to follow the life of Christ can likely tell you that it is impossible to do. No one can match His love, His grace, or His compassion. For no one but Jesus is perfect. Once the believer is filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, though, he or she is filled to the brim with the love of Christ, and desires nothing more than to please God and follow in Christ’s steps. The love of sin is gone. In its place is a love and passion for others. That is Christian Holiness. This is Christian Holiness Daily.

Caution Christian Under Construction

August 23, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

Beverly Sinclair was a spinster heiress who lived in a mansion of enormous size during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is the main character in a short story I wrote a few years ago. She was considered eccentric by folks who knew her, a spooky old witch by children, and foolish by most. Foolish because she – who never married and had no close family – lived with her three cats alone in a 42-room palatial home.

What made her eccentric was that the home wasn’t always so big. When she inherited her fortune from her father, the home was a impressive Victorian-style home with five bedrooms, a parlor, kitchen, dining room, basement, and three bathrooms. Over the years, she added two more wings to the home, including a gymnasium, indoor pool, sunroom, library, two additional kitchens, three formal dining rooms, two more parlors, ten more bedrooms and eleven bathrooms. She would build something one year and tear it down the next. She was never happy with the work, and always improving on it.

It was said that old lady Sinclair, as she was known, kept the same general contractor employed her entire life and that she would never hire anyone else to do the work. She hired him first in 1889 and he was still working on the place when she died in 1943.

Long after she died a girl from the local historical society discovered in her journals that Sinclair had been in love with the contractor but had never told him because she was married. He was the reason she had never married. Hiring him to renovate the home was the only way she could see him. Renovations continued until the day she died.

I did not write the story as an analogy of the Christian life, but when I read Colossians 2:6 and thought of the word built this story came to mind. Our walk with Christ is much the same as this story. When Christ saves us he goes to work on us, tearing out the old and building the new, adding a room here and testing down a room there. He loves us too much to allow us to live a dark, putrid life and we love Him enough to let Him enough to keep working.

Colossians 2:6 reads this way:

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith

The word built in that verse is passive, we do not go build ourselves. Christ builds us and perfects us and does not stop working on us until death. Why? He is building and perfecting His body, His home, die He dwells in us, according to Acts 17:24. We are the temple not built by human hands. What then are we to do in this whole process? Allow Him to continue to work in us. Do not quench the Spirit of God (1 Thessalonians 5:19, Ephesians 6:30).

Besides, how can we, mere humans, expect to improve on what God builds?
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Holiness is, perhaps, the most misunderstood concept in Christianity. Anyone who has striven to follow the life of Christ can likely tell you that it is impossible to do. No one can match His love, His grace, or His compassion. For no one but Jesus is perfect. Once the believer is filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, though, he or she is filled to the brim with the love of Christ, and desires nothing more than to please God and follow in Christ’s steps. The love of sin is gone. In its place is a love and passion for others. That is Christian Holiness. This is Christian Holiness Daily.

Best of Christian Holiness Daily: Four Things Holiness Is Not

August 18, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

I hate the thought of trying to be holy. It is a tiresome thought. It brings back memories of my youth, when I was scolded when my hair grew too long, or I wanted to go to a movie theater, or – God forbid – take a girl to a dance. To be fair, it was not my parents who scolded me for such things; it was the church. Holiness is so misunderstood, even by those who preach it and practice it, and -because it is so misunderstood, the struggle to be holy has scared off many who seek Christ.

1. Christian holiness is not the following of the Ten Commandments. While I truly believe that the Ten Commandments are the basis of good government and holy living, I don’t believe that following those commandments make one holy. Obedience to those commandments may make one morally strong, it will not make one pure. Holiness is not a life full of “Thou Shalts” and “Thou Shalt Nots,” rather such commandments serve to chain us, enslave us.

2. Christian holiness is not about obeying church bylaws. Rules and regulations within the church are fluid, changing from denomination to denomination, from generation to generation. As a boy, I visited a revival service where the evangelist preached that if we had not spoken in tongues today, we had likely lost our salvation. I can list dozens of rules that were once written in church manuals that have now fallen by the wayside. I realize now that what passed for Christian holiness then was nothing more than a struggle to maintain cultural norms in a changing society.

3. Christian holiness is not about church attendance. I understand wanting to be at church at every opportunity. Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night services once were the norm for a Christian in American culture. But, being in church every time the door is open does not make one holy.

4. Christian holiness is not about serving or tithing. I believe in giving of both my money and my time, but neither of those make one holy. One cannot be holy by what one does. Holiness is not about service, actions, church attendance, tithing, or keeping the rules.

Face it, it is impossible for sinful, fallible humans live a life of Christian holiness. You may as well give up and stop trying.

It is simply impossible for a human to be holy. There is only one who is holy: Jesus Christ. It seems a paradox, but the first step to Christian holiness is the realization that you can never achieve it. The second step is the absolute surrender of your will to Christ. The next step is building a relationship with the one who created you, died for you, and was raised from the dead for you. Only an active, ongoing, daily walk with Christ can lead to holiness. Do you want to live the life of Christ? Then spend every moment that you can in prayer. Do you want others to see Christ through you? Then praise Him with every breath you take. Do you want to know what it means to really be Christ-like? Then devote your life to God’s Word.

Christ says in Luke 10.27 there are only two commandments that matter: “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”

Those two commandments will be the focus of this blog.
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