Christian Holiness Journal | Page 24 | a record of struggle and victory to know the mind of Christ

A Bridge Too Far?

August 6, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

The scene was one of the most heart-wrenching moments in all of Star Trek: The Original Series. Spock had used his “Vulcan death grip” on Captain Kirk. The determination in the face of the Vulcan as he gripped his captain’s head, the raw, unbridled emotions was terrifying. It was surpassed only by the over-wrought fear on the face of Captain Kirk as he lost consciousness and fell to the ground. “You’ve killed him, Spock,” said Dr. McCoy. Cut to commercial. The six year old me never forgot that scene. The Vulcan death grip was a wonderfully terrible thing.

I had done so much wrong in my life that I was convinced God could never forgive me. I had been such a wicked sinner I had feared that I had crossed a bridge too far. After all, I had been saved, I knew right from wrong, I knew what God expected. I just found that I didn’t want to do what was right. Doing right involved sacrifice, and I didn’t want to sacrifice. It involved giving up control, and I liked being in control. Because I couldn’t see anyway to fix my life, I could not understand how God could fix it. I had no faith. I had no self-discipline. I had no comprehension of the power of God. And I had no grasp of the depth of God’s love.

Here is what I thought I understand. I knew that Hebrews 6 talked about those who sin too much and lose their salvation, or that’s what I believed. I knew that Romans 1 spoke of those who sin so much that God gives them over to a “reprobate mind.” I had read, in Acts 7, the sermon by my namesake, Stephen, that God had once given up on the nation of Israel and turned them over to worship false gods. And, I knew that the psalmist had spoken of that same event in Psalm 81:12.

It was in the Bible. Those people had gone too far, and God had given up on them, turned His back on them, and let them reap the rewards of their sins. I feared I was in the same place as the People of Israel. I didn’t worship a golden calf, but I did worship the idol known as self. God was, I was convinced, angry at me.

Here are the two points that we will be looking at as we continue our study on bondage to sin and freedom from sin through the power of the Holy Spirit.

First, sin is a frightful thing. Its grip on the life of an unbeliever or a weak believer is nothing less than a Vulcan death grip. Sin latches on to your heart and your soul and squeezes you, harder, and harder, and harder, and is not happy until you collapse, dead. If you manage to resist and break the grip, it stalks you, and doesn’t give up until it possesses you once again. It never gives up. Paul describes the wages of sin in Romans 1 as a depraved mind. God – knowing that the people of Israel would not repent – turned them over to the wages of sin, to live with their own bad decisions and willful disobedience, and as a result their minds and souls grew dark, and filled with muck, and the only word to describe them is depraved.

It didn’t have to be that way, though. They had plenty of chances to repent.I had once been convinced that Hebrews 6 tells us that we can lose our salvation by sinning too much. A closer reading reveals that that is not at all the case. Instead it says that we may lose our salvation if we stop believing in Christ the Messiah. I had done many, many things wrong, but I had never stopped believing in Christ, and I had never once thought that there is any other route to heaven but through Him. He is the Way and the Truth and the life. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV).

Sin can take you down. But it is only if you stop believing that your salvation may be in jeopardy. Your good works didn’t earn you salvation (salvation is by faith), so your bad deeds will not lose it for you. Sorry, you are not more powerful than the grace of God.

That Vulcan death grip was a farce. It didn’t work. Dr. McCoy saved the day. Jim wasn’t really dead. Spock showed emotion at the recovery of his captain. And, guess what. There is a cure for the death grip that sin has on your life, too. Confess your sins. Repent of them. And trust in God. It is NOT TOO LATE.

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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.

My Sanctification – by Bud Robinson

August 5, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

While I was thinning corn and preaching to Bud Robinson I could hear my brothers a few hundred yards away as they were plowing cotton. I could hear the rattle of their cultivators, the braying of the mules and the boys driving the teams. But as long as I heard anything that was going on I did not get the blessing. I finally knelt and offered prayer. I tried to consecrate soul, spirit and body. I remember that I stood up and the last thing that I turned loose was my hoe handle. I saw everything I had: my farm, my mules wagons and plows, and the crib of corn, the ricks of hay, and the pen of black hogs, and everything else floating off on the clouds.

I had begun to seek this blessing in 1886 and this was now the second day of June, 1890. There were four years that I had struggled trying to get perfect victory. I had often consecrated all that I had; I would put my mules, cows, hogs, corn and barn, and everything else on the altar and climb up on the pile and ask God to take us all, but that did not bring the victory. Beloved, the blessed old Book says, “Whatsoever touches the altar is made holy,” and I had not touched the altar. There was a stack of hay, and a corn crib, and several big mules between me and the altar, but when I saw everything I had drift away and I was left alone with God in the cornfield it seemed to me I could hear the Lord say, “I will bring everything back and leave it here with you and I will go; or, if everything else goes then I will stay with you.” I said, “Lord, let everything else go.” Then I had that strange, peculiar feeling that God was so close to me that my soul trembled in God’s presence and it seemed that God kindled up a fire in the very bottom of my heart.

The only way that I can describe the feeling is that anger boiled up, and God skimmed it off, and pride boiled up, and God skimmed it off, and jealousy boiled up and God skimmed it off, and envy boiled up and God skimmed it off, until it seemed to me that my heart was perfectly empty. I said, “Lord, there won’t be anything left of me.” God seemed to say, “There will not be much left, but what little there is will be clean.”

When my heart was emptied, then it seemed that a river of peace broke loose in the clouds. It was as sweet as honey and the honeycomb. It flowed into my empty heart until a few minutes later my heart was full and overflowing and the waves of heaven became so great and grand and glorious that it seemed to me that I would die if God did not stay His hand. How little we know about the fullness of God and the greatness of God’s power. Not half an hour before God cleansed me and filled me I had told the Lord that I wanted Him to come with all the power that He had and sanctify me. Then I had told the Lord that very morning that I had read in His Book that if I would bring all the tithes into the storehouse and prove Him He would open the windows of heaven and pour me out a blessing that there would not be room enough to receive it. Out of a hungry heart I had said, “O Lord, you cannot satisfy me with the windows of heaven; you will have to open the doors of heaven to pour out a blessing big enough to satisfy my hungry heart and soul;” but beloved, I did not know how large God’s windows were and how small my heart was. God had never used that language but one time before and at that time God opened windows, of heaven and poured out a flood on the earth. If God’s windows are so large that He can pour out a flood through them, then you can see at a glance that God’s windows are large enough, to pour out a blessing into the heart of one of His believing children to the extent that he cannot receive but little of it. As the waves of heaven rolled over my soul I finally got down on the ground and stretched out and as wave after wave of glory rolled over me, told the Lord that if He didn’t hold up a bit there would be a dead man in the cornfield.
From that day to this I have been convinced that God can kill a man with His glory just as quick as He could kill him with lightning. On one occasion Moses said to the Lord, “Show me thy glory,” and the Lord said, “You cannot see my face and live.” That proves to me that to behold the glory of God would be to look upon His face and no man in the flesh could behold God’s face and His glory and live. Therefore, in order to keep company with God, we will have to be glorified and this mortal will have to put on immortality.
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Christ Has Not Come to Condemn

August 4, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

Re-Post: from 4/12/2017

I wondered something last night when studying Psalm 22. I know that the psalm was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that it is a prophecy of the crucifixion, yet I also realize that some truly horrific thing had happened in the life of its writer. So, I wonder…

…here is this thoroughly gut-wrenching psalm (22), and on the same page is one of the most inspiring psalms ever written (23). Same Bible. Same book. Same page. Same writer. Same God.

How is it that a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God can allow something so tragic to occur that His child begs Him not to be forsaken?

How can the same God that inspired the words, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” also inspire the writer to pen the following plea? “The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet… But you, O Lord, do not be far from me.”

The answer is that we live in a fallen world. To put it another way, we live in a world where sin runs rampant. David eventually learned not to fear what man could do to him in this life, and learned to only fear God.

That begs the question, “Why doesn’t God simply get rid of all the sin in the world? To do that, He would have to get rid of all the sinners. He could simply wipe them off the face of the earth. In that case, you and I should say, “So long,” for you and I are sinners. We would be gone.

Well, then, why can’t He just get rid of the sin? He has made provision to forgive us of our sins, and to cleanse our hearts of all unrighteousness. However, to fully get rid of all the sin in this world, He would have to remove our free-will, which would make us something like a robot, and not human. He can, however, sanctify believers, and strengthen us with the power of His love, giving us the means by which to resist the temptation of sin. That, though, is up to each and every individual.

The world will not be made new until the end of days. And until God creates a new heaven and a new earth, there will be tragedy, disasters, and sin and death. This is part of the human experience, the course which mankind has chosen and to which we are bound until Christ returns.

In the meanwhile, know this: every evil deed will, in the end, be punished, and every evil-doer will be brought to justice. Jesus will return someday to judge the sins of quick and the dead; He will judge those who do not repent of their sins.

Judgment, though, is at Christ’s second coming. Right now, He offers mercy.

“And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” – John 12:47

Yes, we serve a just God, One Who is righteous, and Who will someday judge all who hear His Word and do not believe.

But, He is a loving God, Who offers mercy to those who believe.

Yes, we find every human emotion in God’s Word, for it is a letter inspired by God written by humans for humans. The same writers who record their fear, also write about the God-given courage. They write about their joy and their disappointment. They write about tragedy and reward. They write so that we, who are made lower than the angels, can relate to the stories, and grasp the eternal truth.

Ultimately, we learn to

Fear Not, For the same Bible that tells us that Christ will judge the world, also assures us that God sent His Son to rescue those whom believe.

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