For four years I was an Assemblies of God minister and a monk with the Brothers and Sisters of Charity at the Little Portion Hermitage. This is an excerpt from an unpublished book I’ve written called Talking Off My Comfortable Clothes, from the chapter on Holiness.
As I was sitting in a Starbucks going over this chapter, I kept thinking, “What is it I want to say to my readers?” Here are my final thoughts on Holiness.
- Be real with who you are. Accept and embrace your gifts and talents as well as your sins and limitations.
- Beware of succumbing to someone’s personal (or organizational) standards for holiness, especially if they have no Scriptural basis.
- Find people in your life that will hold you accountable for living a holy life — a life sacred to God and separate from the standards of the world — but who will also encourage you and your dreams at the same time.
- Run from every naysayer who will try to make your life conform to his or her mediocre box of fears.
- Holiness is not a matter of eating, drinking or dressing. It is living the character of Christ.
- Memorize this quote from Albert Einstein: “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Up until recently, I never had a need or an opportunity to apply these verses to my life. However, since I have been an unemployed minister for a while, I am starting to read Scripture differently, because I am starting to doubt my own resources.
I was sitting in church the other day when the pastor read this verse from John. Naturally, I respected his sermon by immediately tuning him out and writing my own notes. As most of you know, there are usually two sermons we hear on Sunday—the one the pastor preaches, and the one we preach to ourselves on the way home. For my own rude reasons, I didn’t even wait to get into the car before I was preaching to myself.
I like the word “meditation.” Although some Christians are truly scared to meditate – thinking it is something done by cultic Eastern religions while forgetting that Judaism and Christianity ARE Eastern religions! – Scripture is full of injunctions to meditate upon the Word and Law of God.
I must admit that when I read this sentence, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about possessions is my “stuff.” And I’d be correct. Jesus said this in reply to two brothers who were having a not-so-friendly family argument over an inheritance. He then went on to tell a parable about a rich man who built bigger barns to hold his crop, only to die and leave everything he had hoarded to someone else.
This is the scene: Some time after the betrothal of Joseph and Mary, but before they consummated the marriage, the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that God chose her to give birth to the long-awaited Messiah.
This passage in Job shows us there are times when, no matter which direction we go, we cannot find God or understand what He is doing. For some reason, there are times when He chooses to be elusive, evasive and evanescent. He answers to no one and refuses to ask permission to be Himself. Search for Him all you want, but if He chooses to hide Himself, there is no way to find Him.
Thinking Out Loud 