The answer to the cry for Holiness

The answer to the cry for Holiness

I have been inundated lately by a cry from the people of God for a means to holiness. “How do we teach people how to be holy?” they say. “yeah but what way can we make them be holy?” they ask. In my role as youth pastor I am confronted with this question on a daily basis. How do I, as a minister to young people, convince them to leave sin alone or leave sin behind and live out a life of purity and holiness?

The reality is that I know the answer to that question. There is only one, but any time I start talking to people about that one answer, people give me looks of bewilderment and ask me the same question again in another way as if I didn’t hear them the first time! “well, yeah, but how do we make them holy?”. I have to say that when this question has come up lately I have pretended to not know. I start rubbing my chin and shaking my head, because I know my answer is not going to satisfy their question. I know that it won’t satisfy them because it is deeply simple and uncomplicated and it looks NOTHING like religion!

I am tired of being ashamed of the only biblical answer to that question. The answer to the question of holiness is an SIMPLE answer but not an EASY answer! The answer to the cry for holiness is love.

This is the truth. What did Jesus say? Mat 22:37-40 And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (38) This is the great and first commandment. (39) And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (40) On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Why don’t we understand this? When we love God when the First Commandment is ALIVE IN OUR HEARTS for REAL the holiness question will be no more.

I want this to be a reality alive in me. A reality that marks me, brands me. I don’t want to live by a set of rules, I will never remember them all! I want to live out of my passion for Jesus. I want to allow my love for Him to guide and guard my way.

Church we must return to our First Love. We must burn with the First Commandment in the First Place of our hearts, only then will holiness be our way of life.