It’s a New Year folks. Everyone is talking about New Year’s resolutions. I’m really bad at those so I usually don’t make them. However, this year is different.
The other day I read a passage from Psalms that caught my attention. It’s Psalm 96:9 where it says, “O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness:”
It stopped me right in my tracks. I’m not sure I interpreted it the way it is meant in the Hebrew but like my Daddy always said, “If the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.” So, what God said to Miriam that day was this. . .
God thinks holy living is beautiful.
Wow!
I’ve heard a lot of talk lately about the evil of too many rules. The label “legalistic” has been thrown around a lot. And, I’m sure sometimes rightly. Of course the danger is in swinging too far the other way where “everyone does right in his own eyes.”
So, what is the truth? Where should we land on this? How do we find balance? There are many passages in the Bible showing that legalism and rules are not good in and of themselves. But, obviously God wants us to live a holy life. He says it right out loud, “Be ye holy for I am holy.”
And here it was, right there in my Bible. God thinks holiness is beautiful and a form of worship.
So—my question—the one I asked myself was, “What does holiness look like to God?” Or, maybe even more specific to me, “What would the holiness God desires in my life look like?”
As I sorted through my head for the basis of the “rules” I had been taught as a child it seemed that they were all based in some part of God’s person. His love—be ye kind one to another, his holiness—don’t lie or cheat, you get the idea.
Then this morning on facebook I saw this status. “Right and wrong are determined by God, who is the original, the universal, the absolute standard for everything that is good and right. For example, lying is wrong because God is true. Stealing is wrong because God is just. Hatred is wrong because God is love.” (Josh McDowell devotional for teens.)
So, I determined that this year my New Year’s resolution is to find what Holiness looks like to God. My husband pointed out that God sent his son Jesus to earth to be our perfect example. So, basically it’s a “What would Jesus do” thing?
Maybe, but I think it is much more. I think it’s a “WHO is JESUS thing.”
That’s why my goal this year isn’t to be more honest, more self disciplined, more faithful, control my tongue better, or more rules oriented. My goal is to know God better. I want to know all there is to know about Him. Then I will see Him as He is, see myself as I am (yikes) and in the process I will be changed more into His likeness.
And, best of all, what God will see is an act of worship, the beautiful holiness He desires for my life.
January 3, 2012 at 12:33 pm |
Awesome words….really encouraged me as well…
January 3, 2012 at 8:58 pm |
In a sense, that’s what Paul is saying in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
We are to be holy, which is also acceptable unto God, and — this is the shocker for modern Americans (and probably most Western Christians) — it’s also REASONABLE. We are, after all, not our own, but have been “bought with a price”.