In order to truly understand the nature of God’s demand for holy living we must perceive the purpose for holy living. God yearns to lift people everywhere into a successful and powerful experience in life. He desires that His very own image be reflected in us so that His goodness can be shown to others in a greater measure. He has sent the Spirit of Holiness to live within us that we might be free from the things that prevent His nature from being revealed in and through us.
He calls us a “holy nation” born of His Holy Spirit. For that reason, it is our nature to be holy, just like God. Unknowingly, many people live in opposition to themselves. Although God’s holiness dwells within them, they quench the expression of this nature from coming out.
There are many different motives for not sinning. Some do not sin fearing the consequences. Others sin and are always confessing with the attitude that God will forgive them. Then there are those who seldom sin because they have a hatred for sin. The Bible describes the hatred of sin as the fear of the Lord. We need to ask God to develop in us a hatred for sin and then receive it by faith.
This kind of walk before God lifts us into a new dimension of fruitfulness and strength. We have a trust and confidence that God is pleased with us in an ever-increasing way.
Even when we don’t feel strong, we can know that the God of all strength dwells within us. Notice Isaiah 40:29-31:
“He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
In this passage the Lord said that He will give us power and increase our strength as we wait on Him. Waiting does not mean that we sit down passively. It actually means that we bind ourselves together with Him by twisting, as a string wrapped around a rope takes on the strength of the rope. When we allow God’s Word and nature to be supreme in us and to be expressed through us, we actually exchange our weaknesses for His strength.
As our lives become more and more governed by the Lord and His desires, we not only come to know Him more deeply and intimately, but we find that we more accurately and purely express His compassion and deep desires.
A life pleasing to God, revealing Him, that is our goal and our quest!
