A Holy Patience
His holiness and patience. God's holiness and patience are unmatched. He is holy, holy, holy. He has a holy kind of patience. No evil thought comes to His mind. His patience isn't out of spite, or manipulation; it isn't false. It comes from His holiness, it comes from His love. I've been inspired and awed by God's holiness and patience, these past few months especially. When He calls me to be patient, I feel His holy weight of encouragement. When He reminds me to be patient, I remember He knows all things, and I can trust Him while I wait.
After reading Jackie Hill Perry's "Holier Than Thou: How God's Holiness Helps Us Trust Him" and listening to her teaching from Passion 2022 my mind and heart opened up to grasp God as holy, and to look at scripture with the lens of "He is holy." Holy as in set apart, none like Him, pure, genuine.
In following Christ and committing to walk with Him as a Christian, there is a lot of dying to self. There are sacrifices we need to make in order to live like Christ did on this earth. Sacrifices like giving up our comfort, selfish desires, or our time. Serving a Holy God is humbling. I can't imagine my life without praising God or without following the Lord. I am just a person, He is God, I can't do everything alone. I can't will my own peace to calm my anxious heart, I can't naturally be selfless when serving others. It's His peace that calms my anxious heart and His example that teaches me how to be selfless.
If you're timidly deciding if you want to follow Christ as Lord, I say don't waste time. Make a decision, it is your decision to make. I see you, unsure, not wanting to let go of your own desires. But if you're not following Christ, and you're not serving Him, you are serving something else.
Romans 6:17-21 says, "But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness....just as you once presented your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your bodies as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness."
These verses show the difference between living a life where you follow the Lord, and living a life where you follow wickedness and impurity. There is a clear difference. And this freedom we may believe we have when don't follow Christ is just a tie to something else, something we don't have control over even if we think we do.
"God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all." 1 John 1:5.
There is no darkness in God. "...because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." Luke 1:78-79.
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