I finished the book....."The pursuit of Holiness" by Jerry Bridges the other day. I want to give my thoughts on the second half of this awesome book. I read this book in a few days time.....and I intend to read it again. It is jam packed with ways to live a holy life before a holy God.
The author goes over sin a lot in this book. The severity of it....the causes of it.....the way it grieves our God.....etc. He also talks of conviction. Conviction is a belief or opinion that is held firmly. It can also be a means of being proven guilty. I know for myself I feel conviction during my Bible study time. When God reveals something to me through His word that I'm not doing, I feel guilty. I know I need to be doing it, and feel bad because I've been disobedient. For us to be holy, we must first acknowledge our sin through conviction. God wants obedience from His children. He wants us to obey his word because we love Him and respect him that much.
1 John 5:3 says " this is love for God: to obey His commands. And his commands are not burdensome." I'll say that again.... We obey because we love Him and his commands aren't hard for us to obey because we want to please Him.
Temptation in itself is not sin.....however when we give in to it....it is now full blown sin. The author of this book explains that years ago we would call some things sin, but today we call them habits. This is scary to me in that we tend to sugar coat sin and the severity of it and claim we just have a bad habit or two that need dealt with. I am guilty of this. I want my cake and I want to eat it too......but true obedience to God means we can't have it both ways. We can't have a holy life if we "ride the fence" and want the best of it all without sacrificing anything. The author states "every time we say yes to temptation, we make it harder to say no the next time". Wow......this is a powerful set of words and truth. How many times do we say...."just once more and I'll stop".....too many. We've become accustomed to getting what we want when we want it. We need commitment to say "no" to the things that take us into disobedience. We need God......all there is to it. We need discipline to break the
habits. This is hard work. Our natural state wants to satisfy the flesh with sin.
So we need to regularly get into Gods word so we can ward off temptation before it becomes sin patterns or habits we can't seem to get out of. Ways we can get Gods word into our life?
Reading it
Studying it
Hearing it through true Bible preaching/teaching
Memorizing it
All these ways are beneficial to us being holy.
The author talks also of perseverance......and how as believers we will fail and fall, but true discipline in God and His holiness lead us as sinners to recognize that we can persevere despite the sin and habits we have.
The author states this...."the person who is disciplining himself toward holiness falls many times, but he doesn't quit. After each failure he gets up and continues the struggle. Not so with the unrighteous.
He stumbles in his sin and gives up. He has no power to overcome because he does not have the Spirit of God at work in him"
These lines made me think. Do I persevere? Do I fall and get up, dust my self off and keep going? I tend to think I do, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes I want to pity myself and give up. Then I think of the lasting effects of giving up and snap out of it. Get back to reality so to speak. We have a God who understands our struggles in this life And is there when we call on him. He is there waiting for us to return to him and keep going for his name sake. To love him more than our sin.....to love him more than this world......to love him more than self.
Just as we say "yes" to temptations and the easier it is to say "yes" the next time around, the same is true if we resist and say "no". The more we say "no", the easier it will get to say "no" the next time. Staying in the word and hiding it in our hearts is a way to ward off temptations.
Our faith is what keeps us going toward a holy life. The author tells us that "faith and holiness are
inextricably linked. Obeying the commands of God usually involves believing the promises of God".
Where do we find the promises of God? In His word. Just another reason we need to be spending
time with him in his book. We need to meditate on the teaching and words of the Bible to keep holy. We keep our minds clean when we have the word imbetted in there. This is why it's so important to read things that will increase our faith and understanding of our God. There is a lot of false teachings out there and we have to be careful what we listen to, and what we spend our time reading. IT is so vital to our christian life to be careful what we fill our mind with.
We can have pure joy in our fellowship with our God. The choice is ours.
Another great post.... wow I can't believe these two post you put out on sin and be Holy.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I have had on my mind lately and something I have talked to my wife about. She said just what you said in slightly different words. But it comes down to perseverance... When I fall I just have to pray and keep trying to be better. She reminded me that I have made progress in reducing my sin over the past year or so. She also tells me to keep praying, keep reading his word and keep focused on God. I am glad I can share my faith with her and how her powerful faith helps strengthen me.
Just another amazing way God is at work in my life. At a time when I'm struggling some, I hear encouraging words.. Pretty cool how he loves me even when I am not at my best.
He has and will always love you even when you are not at your best. Think about your life before you knew Jesus. I know I was not ever at my best for God, yet he chose to save me. He did the same for you. He knows all you've done to offend Him and He knows your heart better than anyone else.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great book and I recommend it to anyone that is trying to become more holy. We are commanded to be holy which isn't something I knew much about.....until now.
One of the best lines in it is the comparison of the righteous and unrighteous. About how the righteous falls, but will get back up and keep going, where the unrighteous give up. This line gave me so much peace. It's real easy to give up the Christian life. This life is not easy, as you know, but to know that when we get back up and persevere, we are doing the right thing before God. Giving up is not an option for the child of God as we know he has great plans. All we can do is recognize we are sinners and repent when we screw up.
Your wife is amazing and has great wisdom. She knows what she is talking about and is an encourager to you. You are very blessed to have her help you and be by your side as you grow and learn.
Check out these verses:
Romans 5:8
1 John 1:9
Ephesians 1:4-6
By chance I opened my bible and I read Hebrews Chapter 11. (Faith in action). It talks about faith in God from people like Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others. There are a few verses that I like. Verse 13: All these people were still living in faith when they died. They did not receive the things they promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on Earth.... What this verse is saying is, these people all knew this life and things they had while on earth were just temporary. That they didn't matter. They knew that by obeying God they would be with him in his Holy kingdom and they themselves would then be Holy. Verse 27: By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.... This verse is talking about Moses and how because of his faith, he knew God and could see what others around him could not. When I read this verse the word persevered jumped out at me, because you mentioned it and how by not giving up on our faith in Christ even when we sin, that if we persevere it pleases God.
ReplyDeleteI am blessed to have her in my life. She is a person that lives how Jesus commands us to live. ( love they neighbor as you love yourself ). She has always lived that way, from the time we were dating over 30 plus years ago. I admire her for that and wish I could live more like she does. I have thought about how she has her place in heaven secured and I'm grateful she does. I'm also grateful she helps in securing my place as well.
Perseverence is a great word. To keep going even when it's hard and we don't understand. I've been wondering.....why do we always have to understand everything that happens to us or question Gods plan? Why do we always have to know it all? I really believe we need to get to a point in life where trusting God is ok.....where we trust his ways even when they make no sense. And we have to reach a point where pleasing Him means more to us than pleasing self. That's what I've learned.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes think we dig a little deeper than we should. The bible teaches us how we should live and act in the world. All we need to do is obey God's/Jesus's commands. We don't need to dig for what the meaning is behind things like love your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul. It's simple, because he so... That's why we should do it. And if we need to know why... again it's simple, because it's about him getting the glory he deserves...
ReplyDeleteYou mean by questioning God about things that happen in our life? Or digging deep in His word through study?
ReplyDeleteYes we make things harder than they have to be sometimes....because we are people and we need reasons for it all. God does what he sees fit and we can have peace in knowing he's in full control.
Yes I agree.... it's always about Him getting his due glory! Amen!!
Digging deep into study.... I see people that dig into studying what the word means, however in looking for that answer they miss the simple fact of it's God's word. We should do what he says for no other reason than he said so...
ReplyDeleteWe should not worry why he said ( love your neighbor as you love yourself ). Plain and simple love your neighbor as you love yourself.
As for questing things that happen in our lives... Not sure if we should question that or not. I saw a sermon one time and the preacher said it is ok to ask God why things happen to us. He also said we should then wait for our answer, even if it takes time for God to reveal it us. He also said, God does allow things to happen in our lives for a reason. I can certainly attest to that. For me it brought me much closer to him than I ever been. But I was thought that you should never question God about anything.
Well.....as far as studying goes....I have learned that in order to teach others, grow, learn, delight in God....we have to be in His word and going deep in it is amazing. I'm finding that there is so much more meaning in His words when we do study it and realize Jesus is there in it. Like all the OT he's there, we just have to look for Him. But finding the meaning of words and how God made them all fit together is even more amazing. I have alot to learn. I have so much room to grow. I ask a ton of questions. But at the same time we need each other to learn. God expects us to know his word inside and out. He expects us to know so we can spot the false teachers. If we don't know what his words mean or what he says how can we have our guard up against falseness?
ReplyDeleteI'm not disagreeing with you totally on the studying thing....and I get you say that cause some get hung up in that and don't serve as they should. They read and learn all about God yet don't put it into practice. Like you said before.....we need a balance. I agree with that....but at the same time agree we need to understand what we are reading. A lot of verses are used out of context. We need right understanding of them.
As far as questioning God.....I've heard it's ok to do that. It's ok we ask him if we don't understand. It's ok if we want to know. For me......I'm content taking life as it comes and letting him work out the details I don't know how to.
And I've come to realize the only reason things happen at all to us Is for God to get his due glory from us. Regardless if it's good or bad.......all for his glory. It took me a long time to understand this and realize this.....but it's truth.