Pursuing holiness

1 Peter 1:16 “Be Holy for I am Holy”.

Desiring to be holy is imperative for every Christian. Being born again serves as the first step on this highway of holiness. Lately, the Lord has been pushing me to be more intentional in being pursuing holiness.

Why is it so important to be holy, first of all?

The obvious reason is the Lord has commanded us to be holy because He is holy. God’s commands are not to be questioned but obeyed. Therefore, this alone is a solid reason to desire holiness.

Nevertheless, as with many commandments in the Bible, there is a deeper reasoning behind this command to be holy.

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In John 14:16, Jesus promises a Helper and He is the ‘Holy' Spirit. The Holy Spirit desires to dwell and make holy vessels His home. So essentially, for this Helper to help you, you need to be holy or at least have the desire so that He may work in and through you. In Leviticus 11:44, the Lord admonishes the Israelites to be holy for He is holy. The Hebrew word for holy used here is ‘Kadosh’. This word can be translated as Holy One or Saint. In 1 Peter 1:16, Peter references Leviticus 11:44. Essentially, the Lord asks us to be ‘Kadosh’. Kadosh literally means to be consecrated, made sacred, dedicated or separated. Holiness means to be set apart for the purposes of God.

The main reason we must be holy is to allow the Holy Spirit to move in us freely. When we ‘cripple’ or prevent the Holy Spirit from actively moving in us, we grieve Him and it is commanded that thou shall not grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30).

The Holy Spirit has been pushing me to actively pursue holiness because I feel like sometimes as Christians we neglect this, despite it being a fundamental pillar in our relationship with God.

Actively pursuing holiness means spending more time with the Holy God. It means intentionally cutting off certain tv shows, songs and lifestyles. It means asking the Lord to reveal your nasty habits and asking Him to perform a 'spiritual surgery' on you.

So desire to be holy🫶🏾

a laid down life

Luke 9:23
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

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Christianity is not about conveniences, it is about sacrifice. Our love is only tested to be true when we lose something and still remain.

Sometimes, the sacrifices may seem “a lot” but this is the bare minimum we can do for someone who gave His all for us. I would rather go all out for someone who is madly in love with me than go all out for someone who pretends to love me and just waits to destroy me at the end.

If we think about it, those in the world are also going all out for Satan. They party hard, drink in abundance and do what they do to extreme levels. They go all out.

Why can’t we do the same for Christ, the very lover of our souls?

I believe we can’t do so because it is not the flesh that leads men to die for the sake of Christ or lay down their lives for His sake. The flesh would never want that. It is by the Spirit of God living in us that we are able to accomplish such.

Unfortunately, Christians are not feeding their inner man and not making the Holy Spirit comfortable. We are not going the extra mile to satisfy the Spirit but we are going the extra mile for the flesh. In the verse above, Jesus makes it clear that to follow Him, your life must be laid down and in order to do this, the inner man must be fed. Feeding the inner man consists of, but is not limited to, prayer, fellowship with the Holy Spirit and studying and meditating on the Word of God.

Dear Lord,
I want to be completely consumed by Your Spirit so that I will live the laid down life You have called me to live.

🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌

i n t e n t i o n a l

Wow hmm

It’s been a while but ktl-lge is definitely back now and I’m praying that the Lord gives me the grace to be consistent. Somebody shout amen

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In the month of May, I was reading the book of Joshua and one thing really stood out to me. In Joshua 7, a man named Achan did something bad. Basically, God had given Jericho to the Israelites but He told them explicitly and clearly not to take any accursed item from Jericho. Achan did exactly the opposite. Achan’s sin separated the entire Israelite community from God.

Why?

The item Achan picked up was accursed (carried a curse) so it rendered the people impure. God is pure and holy and He can only dwell and move in the midst of holiness. Moving forward, when the Israelites found out that Achan had this item, they stoned him and his family and burnt both the people and all his possessions.

Someone might think this is extreme and what about the mercy of God and so on.

Okay, God is merciful, yes, but the Israelites were bound by a covenant to the Lord and God had explicitly stated what to do and what not to do. When you’re in a covenant there’s a greater responsibility to remain faithful. There’s much more to understanding covenants and why sometimes people have “greater” punishments but that’ll be for a later message.

Anyways back to our main focus for today, just like Achan, many of us have blatantly done what God frowns upon but we do not term these as “sins” or “ disobedience to God” so we ignore them. But God doesn’t and what this does is that it prevents the Holy Spirit of God from dwelling in us. As a Christian, the Holy Spirit must dwell within us to be our ultimate helper. Therefore, we must make an intentional effort to make Him comfortable. Just like the Israelites, we must aggressively (lol might be too harsh of a word but you get it) rid ourselves of impurities. We must intentionally say no to sin and no to the flesh because we cannot afford to lose the Holy Spirit. We cannot afford to lose intimacy with the Holy Ghost. In the same way a fish needs water to survive, you need fellowship with the Holy Spirit. You are a Christian, a follower of Christ. The Holy Spirit completely consumed Christ and so He should do the same with you and me.

From today, let’s kindly make the effort to make the Holy Spirit comfortable by aggressively taking away those impure parts that prevent us from going deeper in the realms of the spirit. If you do not know what might make you impure, ask the Lord to reveal it to you :)