Personal Holiness

Ask anyone on the street if he or she's going to heaven and chances are that person will say yes because they believe that the good things they've done in their life will earn them a one-way ticket to heaven. Unbelievers and, sadly, even many church goers can't understand why their works are inadequate for redemption purposes. In fact, many people don't recognize a need for redemption at all.

The average man on the street believes as long as he doesn't cheat on his wife, steal from his boss, and is a good father to his children, he's good enough for heaven. I mean, after all, there are so many men out there who do cheat on their wives, steal from their bosses and are horrible fathers. He doesn't recognize the fact that his sin has separated him from God. He thinks he can earn a way to heaven by his own human efforts. Such is the fallacy of legalism. Good works. Conduct. Legalism totally misses the fact that we are sinners by nature first, and then, as a result of that, we sin by our actions. The trap of legalism is that I think as long as I do all the right things I don't have a problem and heaven is my destiny. That's why it's so critical to understand that our nature ... not our conduct ... is the very foundation of our problem. Oh but legalism sounds so good and makes us feel even better. We can make ourselves look so righteous in our own eyes. We can let ourselves be fooled into thinking we can make ourselves holy by our conduct. I'm a good person. I keep the Ten Commandments. Yes, as well I should but that doesn't change my nature and my nature is the problem! The deceit of legalism is thinking of ourselves as "good enough" by our conduct. It is imperative that we understand that our conduct can never make us good enough. Absolutely nothing we can possibly ever do can make us holy and holiness is a requirement. We aren't told to try to be holy. No, God says we must, "be holy, because I am holy." (1Pe 1:16, italics, mine) Legalism, our conduct, can never make us holy because God is talking about our nature and nothing we do by our own efforts can affect our nature. That's why Christ's sacrifice was so important. Christ is the only holy person to be born since the Fall and He passes His holiness on to us when we accept Him as our Lord. That is what makes us holy. That is the only thing that makes us holy. Romans 11:16 says: "... if the root is holy so are the branches." Christ is our root and His holiness is given to us, the branches, when we accept him as our Savior. That is the only way we can be holy. We, of ourselves, our conduct, all our rules and regulations designed to make us holy ... legalism ... only fools us into thinking we can be holy by our good works. We are mistakenly lulled into thinking we can do it ourselves.

The trap for unbelievers (and, sadly, some who believe as well) is that they fail to realize the Lord is the only One who is holy and can do something about our estranged state of sin that keeps us separated from true fellowship with our Creator. Think about it, most of us look pretty good in our own eyes because, using others as the standard for comparison, we can always find someone who will make us look and feel better. But the truth of the matter is that when measured against God's perfect holiness, all of humankind stands deficient. Everyone is lacking. Everyone is separated from holy God and needs redemption. There are no exceptions and there is nothing that we can do to make ourselves acceptable to the Father. Outside of Christ, humankind is totally and eternally lost. Outside of the blood of Christ, is total failure and condemnation. Outside of Christ, we are alienated and utterly empty of all holiness. But, take heart, we are not without hope in the world!

The Savior died for all humankind's sin and rose to life again so that we, the unholy, could be made holy just as God is holy. The disciple John explained how sin is washed away from the true believer by Christ's death at Golgotha: "...the blood of Jesus [God's] Son cleanses us all from sin." (1Jn 1:7) Good works mean absolutely nothing unless they are the direct result of the Holy Spirit's work within us. We can have personal holiness only by receiving the Lord Jesus Christ's gift of salvation that He makes readily available to everyone. Once we come to the point of saying that all our efforts and works are but dirty rags we are in the position to accept Christ's holiness as our own. Once we realize that we are nothing in and of ourselves, and never will be, we can receive the righteousness of Christ and can be made holy in God's sight. We must come to that realization before we will recognize our great need for Christ's sacrifice. For as long as we think we can do it ourselves, the blood of Christ will remain beyond our reach and it's only the blood of Christ that can make us holy. Once we accept His sacrifice for ourselves, then, and only then, can we stand before the Father, holy and righteous in His sight. From start to finish, it is all of Christ.

Looks like it's going to be a scorcher again today. Oh, I'm so tired of this heat. It's oppressive and uncomfortable day after day. I could definitely use a break. A rain would be so nice right about now. Seems like I complain about the heat every day, doesn't it? Sorry I'll try not to do that again. I get into habits without realizing it and can become a drag. At least I can go outside without having to bundle up first. (See, I'm trying! There is an upside to most everything.)

My son installed a new hard drive in my computer yesterday and it's so incredibly fast now. Takes no time at all to boot up or change programs or search the web. The difference is wonderful. But I also found out from him that I won't be able to do the things Rita had asked me to do for the 40 Days of Purpose campaign. My computer (and my computer illiteracy) won't let me do all that has to be done so I'm going to have to tell her when she gets back from her vacation that I won't be able to help out in that area. I was afraid from the very beginning that it was beyond me and it is. For some reason he was unable to solve, my computer won't cut documents from the cd rom and paste them into my Words program. He said he could probably manage to do it but it would be way beyond my ability to do. He's a computer whiz, builds them and overhauls them, and when I saw him having problems I knew I was in trouble. But I did get a new hard drive out of the deal. Yea!! He said my old drive was just about ready to crash anyway so it was a good thing I had him come over to check things out for the campaign. He was able to prevent that from happening. Prevented me from losing everything I have on my computer.

Skatemama's MRI showed some inflammation of her brain and now she has to see a specialist, so please keep praying for her. You can read all about it on her blog: http://skatemama.blogspot.com/. She has a really fun blog. I just write, she includes wonderful pictures of her children and always has so much to talk about. And on top of everything else she does, she homeschools her three children.

I think I'll try to finish the book I've been reading this afternoon. It isn't written very well and I don't know why I've stuck to it except just that it's something I started and part of my new, more disciplined self, is trying to finish the things I start. It's probably the worst written book I've ever read but the story line has caught me up in it a bit. Although I think it's going to be so far-fetched as to be unrealistic when all is said and done. Oh well, I'm 3/4 the way through it so I've devoted enough time to the point where I feel it's worth the effort to just keep reading until I finish it. The thing is, this woman has written a whole series of books with her childish writing and I'm jealous, can you tell? It's awful to be a frustrated writer. My problem has always been that I lacked the discipline to actually write a book. The ideas came easily, it was the hard work and discipline required to physically write the book that always tripped me up.

I just stopped and helped Michael gather up all the trash. Our trash pick-up day changes tomorrow and it's going to be difficult for us to learn a new day. It's always been Fridays since moving here and that was always like the conclusion of our week. Now it falls right in the middle. I know we'll forget a few times but with it just being the two of us now it really won't matter much. We could go two weeks between pick-ups and still not fill the barrel most of the time. I just hate change, that's all. Habits get so deeply ingrained in me that it's hard to change them.

I'm looking forward to our shopping day on Friday. I'm dreading the heat but looking forward to getting out of the house and actually going somewhere for a change and doing something besides hang out around the house. I should go to the Post Office today and pick up the mail but I think I'll put it off until tomorrow. I mean, after all, why do something today that you can put off until tomorrow? LOL. Oops, I'm slipping back into the old me again. Better be careful.

Michael and I have plans to clean off our deck this evening after the sun sets and it cools down. We've needed to do that for years. It's just been pure laziness on our part. It's so much easier to put things off. But we really want to get it cleaned off before his kids come up later in September. We have all those tubs out there now and planters with dead plants and just clutter scattered around. It's not exactly what you could call inviting. So we thought we could clear everything off and bring a couple chairs up onto the deck, put a small table between them and make a nice seating area out there. John and Cathie love to sit out in the evenings when they're up so we'll try to make it a little nicer for them. Besides that, we're tired of looking at our deck the way it is.

Well, I'm late publishing this post so I guess I'll let this be it for today. Hope to see all of you here again tomorrow at godlover and I hope you enjoyed my blog. I wish I had more interesting things to write about and include. Skatamama's blog is so much more fun than mine is to read! I'm jealous. I think I'm almost ready (but not quite) to incorporate pictures into my blog and I think that will help. We just don't go places or do interesting things. We're old. LOL But I really do have fun blogging. Take care and see you tomorrow!