You tell your friends that your main focus for 2018 is to make holiness more a part of your lifestyle. It would not be surprising for the response to be, even from your Christian friends, “how boring is that!”
Boring?
This is the way the enemy of your soul wants holiness to be understood – as drab, boring, and uneventful. Our culture has totally bought into this lie. If you are holy:
you can’t enjoy life,
you can’t enjoy sex,
you can’t have fun,
you will be intolerant and self-righteous,
you won’t have any friends,
your life will be boring!
It is no wonder holiness is not an appealing character quality. Even if you don’t believe these things, don’t be surprised if your kids do. Don’t believe the lies. The truth is that being holy is anything but boring. Being holy means to actively pursue a relationship with the most powerful person in the universe. Being holy requires boldness, courage, and a huge sense of adventure. Being holy means to be live in a way that changes lives and confronts evil. Being holy is flat-out dangerous!
The awesome God who rules the universe is the model for holiness.
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” I Peter 1:15-16
God is anything but boring. To those that don’t know him, he is terrifying, hated, despised and yes, boring. To those who do know him he is the source of all power, beauty, wonder and love. He is a consuming fire and ruler of the wind and waves. Boring? Hardly! If we are to love God we must be constantly aware that he is holy. He is different. This is what we are to model for our children as we nourish them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Today, the prevailing mood of our politically correct culture is that we should not be defined by our differences. We must all be tolerant of our differences.
But a Christian must be defined by his differences, by holiness. A Christian is to be chaste and pure. A Christian is to return good for evil. A Christian is to follow the teaching of Scripture and not the teaching of human tradition and philosophy. A Christian is to be sensitive, not sensual. A Christian is to see Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the light, not a way, a truth, and a light. In short a Christian is to be holy.
How do you present holiness to your children? Do they think being holy is boring? Being holy is what makes life worth living. Being holy means that you take hold of life that is truly life. Nothing that our culture has to offer can compete with awesome power of living a life that is holy.