Leviticus 11:44a NIV "I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy."
Hebrews 7:26 NIV "Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens."
Girlfriends, I can't seem to get this off of my mind, once again. I know that I know that God is SPEAKING TO ME, but perhaps, this may also resonate in your own spirits and confirm what the Holy Spirit has been speaking to you also. When God truly spoke to my heart that it was time to step out and teach FOR Him and OF Him, I knew that there would be times of "tough love" to share with each one of you, because these were things that I myself would be working through.
God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit never ever asks something of us, or commands, that they don't provide The Way. So with these two scriptures that we just read, you and I KNOW that God and Jesus Christ ARE OUR EXAMPLES to live this earthly journey.
If God is holy, and Jesus Christ our High Priest is holy and blameless, how would you and I step into that? First of all, by becoming an heir and co-heir by accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Romans 8:17 confirms this by stating: "Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."
Perhaps the next step would and should then begin the sanctification process. By praying, being in God's word and applying The Word of God to our lives and obeying the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I can just sense someone might be in the process of saying, whoa Yolanda, aren't you being just a little bit like the Pharisee's? Don't we live under Grace and not the Law? Sorry.....we do live under grace, but grace....G-R-A-C-E does not give us the freedom to live sloppy lives. Living sloppy doesn't make us any different than the world, and doesn't that put the BIG H on our chests?
We had both an Old Testament scripture and a New Testament scripture at the beginning of this Higher Grounds of the Character of God, and then we have two New Testament scriptures of how we are to be living.
Ephesians 1:3-4 NIV "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight."
1 Thessalonians 3:13 NIV "May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones."
I pray, honestly, that you and I will arise to this challenge. To begin purifying our lives to be HOLY and BLAMELESS before Our God, Lord & Savior, and the Holy Spirit. I looked up the definition of pure: Free from impurities; free of dirt, defilement or pollution; free of foreign elements; containing nothing inappropriate; having no faults, sinless. We all know that we have faults and that on this earth we will sin....but God still calls us to be pure and set apart.
1 Cor 15:57 NIV "But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." We can't get into works, we have to allow God and Jesus Christ to change our want to, into obedience. Romans 6:13 NIV "Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness."
For Yolanda, it's time to allow God's Word to wash me, how about you?
Father, Cleanse me, mold me, and may I be seeking You in the way You would have for me to go and to be. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Holy and blameless. That's a tough one. The harder I try the more I fail. But I refuse to stop trying. It's putting on those spiritual glasses and looking at life as God would. It's praying and reading His word as you mentioned. It's meditating on spiritual songs and words. It's walking in faith. I agree with you on GRACE. It's is there when we fall but it's not a crutch for purposfully sinning.
Love you girl!!
In His Graces~Pamela
I'm right there with Pamela! All I can do is to be aware that I am striving to be holy and blameless in a world of sin. Reading His Word, worshiping with other believers, praying,and being involved in a Bible study help me stay on track, but...there are those rocks on the trails!
Thanks so much for your post!I receive such a blessing from it.
Love you!
Susan
Yolanda,
You know we have talked about this and GOD is working this into me!
I probably told you in studying the early Christians - there was never a thought they would act just like those around them. They were persecuted because people knew they were Christians by how they lived and acted....different from the heathen around them.
Grace...alone for salvation...no works...but they knew and took to heart what the apostle Paul said under the inspiration - "Should we go on sinning so that grace may abound? By no means!"
We need to pursue righteousness and holiness because it says without which you will not see GOD...doesn't it.
Thank you for these thoughts today. You've touched my heart once again:)
Yolanda,
I hope and pray for your strength and boldness. I think that God is speaking to those that Love him with in their heart and not just with their mouths. I think that he is prepairing us for what is yet to come, to make us stronger, and to be more obident, so that we can witness the word in his will. We have to seperate ourselves from the world, but we still have to be in this world.
John 17:13-26 (KJV)
"13": And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
"14": I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
"15": I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
"16": They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
"17": Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
"18": As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
"19": And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
"20": Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
"21": That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
"22": And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
"23": I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
"24": Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
"25": O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.
"26": And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Sorry for being long winded, and excuse the spelling, I'm not the best at it.
Tess
"Free from foreign elements"
This brings me right back to No Other Gods. We've got to purge the foreign stuff that we were never meant to house and use the boundaries of scripture to keep it out.
Holy and Blameless. "Other god"-less. Sounds like a might fine way to live. Sounds like to ONLY way to live!
Love ya!
Melinda
Oh, I'm not sure if I'll ever do these two things on the same day! ;) With God all things are possible, right?
I'm such a project for Him, I tell ya!
Love you much,
Lelia
Post a Comment