What does it mean to be holy?

1 Peter 1:13-16

Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy." (NKJV)

What does it mean to be holy?

Recently two churches came under criticism for allowing Muslims to worship in their buildings. No, I’m not talking about allowing Muslims to come in and participate in their Christian worship services. These churches allowed Muslims to come in and use their buildings for Muslims prayer services: Christian churches allowing Muslim prayer services in their church buildings (http://www.abc24.com/news/local/story/Memphis-Area-Muslims-Worshiping-At-Christian/F5CZgzul4EegYgk_L9evNg.cspx).

To be honest, when I first read the news articles, I was confused. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to act or feel. After all, the pastors who were involved were honest and sincere in their belief that what they were doing was not only okay, but was approved of by the Lord. Steve Stone, the pastor from Heartsong Church in Memphis (one of the two churches reported), wrote in his blog: “Jesus said that people would know we are his disciples by our love” (from http://stevestonesr.wordpress.com/, August 12). It sounded so good.

So I began to ask myself why I was so bothered by it all. And I began to search the scriptures.

First, it’s important to know that Pastor Stone quotes the scripture wrongly. He begins quoting John 13:35, but fails to quote it in its entirely: “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (NKJV). The “one another” refers to believers. The world will know that we are His disciples by our love for each other. The fact that he is wrongly quoting scripture is probably the first problem.

The second problem is to deal with how we are to witness. Many people think that we are given the liberty to become anything we need to be to compel people to the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul talks about becoming “as without the law” (v. 21) in order to win those around him. However, again, it’s important to look at the passage in its entirety. Some people have used this phrase—be come anything---to justify sinning in order to witness. However, in verse 21, Paul says, as a parenthetical phrase: “though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law.” In other words, he remains under the law not to sin.

When we allow Muslims to use our churches are we sinning?

Well, first of all, a church is simply a building. It’s not the Church. We are the Church, believers coming together. So, a church building is simply a building. Are we sinning when we allow Muslims to worship in our buildings?

Let me expand the situation. If we feel okay with Muslims using our buildings for worship, how about Wiccans? Or Hindus (who worship idols)? Or Satanists? The fact is, opening our buildings to worship by other religions delivers a false message both to those worshipers and to the unbelievers around us. What it says that we approve of what happens in those services. I believe that every pastor—including these two pastors—would draw the line at allowing certain worship behaviors (e.g. sacrificing children on an altar) within a Christian church building. Thus, if they allow some religions to use the buildings and not others, they are tacitly approving of those religions. They are tacitly giving their approval of Islam when they allow Muslim prayer services in their churches. They are saying that Islamic worship is valid and that it deserves a place to happen.

Is that what we should say as Christians? No, of course not. And it becomes easy to criticize these pastors until we personalize this situation by examining our own attitudes and behavior. Of course, most of us don’t have the authority to allow Muslims to worship in our church buildings. But we do have the authority to allow “worship” in the Church of our hearts. After all, we are the Church. What are we allowing in our own lives? And what is that saying to the world around us about what we tacitly approve of?

Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Paul tells us to shun fornication and adultery because of that. But we are also to shun any kind of sin, to live holy lives, to be holy as God is holy. And to be holy means to be without sin. What kind of sin do we welcome, embrace, enjoy? What idols do we allow in our lives and, as a consequence, tell those around us that these idols are okay? Do we embrace lewd pictures and language? Do we enjoy gossip and gluttony? Do we cling to our possessions and envy those who have more than we do? Do we wallow in anger and self-pity?

It’s easy to criticize the pastors of the churches who approve of Islam (and if you read the comments on Pastors Stone’s blog, you will see eventually that he does approve of Islam). But when I began to pray about this, I realized that I’m as guilty as he is of approving of sin within the Church when I fail to root out the sin in my own life. It’s just that my sin is more familiar, more personal. If I am going to be a true light to the world, it’s important that I allow the Holy Spirit to shine His light of revelation in my life, to reveal my sin, and then for me to confess and repent of it. The sin in my life doesn’t deserve a place to exist, doesn’t need to be protected. Rather, I need to choose to live a life that is holy, just as God is holy, and to shine that light to everyone around me.

© 2011 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

Adoption

Ephesians 1:3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (NKJV)

Everyone wants to belong to someone or something. It’s why some people identify with their ethnicity or the country of their ancestors: “I’m Hispanic” or “I’m African-American” or “I’m Irish.” It’s why some people identify with a certain sports team: “I’m a 49ers fan” or “I’m a Yankees fan.” It’s why others identify with their generation: “I’m a Gen Xer” or “I’m a Boomer.”

Everyone wants to belong.

Another way to look at belonging is to look at one’s ancestry. Our first grandchild is due this summer and our daughter-in-law is building the baby’s family tree. She asked my help and I’m doing as much as I can, considering that much of what I know is still in storage (from when we lost our house). But as I was working on the family tree, I realized something.

I don’t know where I belong.

You see, I’m adopted. So I can do the family trees of my adopted parents, but because the adoption was closed, I can’t do the adoption of my blood parents.

I don’t know where I belong . . . as far as this life goes. But it doesn’t matter, because I know where I belong for eternity. You see, I’ve been adopted twice! And while my first adoption gave me a wonderful mom and dad, it’s that second adoption that really matters because it’s that second adoption that brought me into the family of God.

We often, mistakenly, talk in America about how everybody is our brother or sister, how we are all children of God. The Bible doesn’t teach that. What the Bible does teach is that each person is a creation of God, beloved to the point that He gave His Son for each one’s salvation (if only they accept Him). But only those who believe become His sons and daughters! Only those who believe are adopted according to His good pleasure.

So, it doesn’t matter that I can’t actually trace my ancestral roots. In a family tree, I actually exist without a mother or father . . . and it’s not important. Because the family that does matter, the Father Who matters above everyone else, has already adopted me and placed me in His family!

I’m adopted . . . and I know to Whom I belong!

© 2011 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

Do I Love Well?

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.” (Romans 12:9-11 NRS)

I’ve been reading The Colors of His Love by Dee Brestin and Kathy Troccoli. One theme repeats itself over and over again: Do I love well? The Lord Jesus, on that final night with His disciples, told them this:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35 NKJV).

I think that we often don’t love well. We argue well. We defend ourselves and our desires well. We sin well. But we don’t love well. I know that I don’t love as I ought.

There are a couple of ways to read this passage, particularly verse 9. The first way would be to understand “hate what is evil” as a command to look at others and hate the evil that we see in them, the sin in their lives. But what if we looked at this phrase as a couplet with the first phrase? “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil.” Hate what is evil in me . . . love that isn’t genuine. What if the point Paul was trying to make was that we are to so hate sin in our own lives that we learn to love well? And how would we do that? By holding fast to what is good (loving well). By loving one another (loving well). By outdoing one another in showing honor (loving well). By not lagging in zeal (energy) and being ardent in the Spirit (by loving well). Serving the Lord (by loving well).

How well do I love? How well do you love?

In Philippians, Paul writes:

“Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (2:3-4 NKJV).

We are to esteem others as better than ourselves, to look out for their interests. We are to learn how to love well, to outdo each other in showing honor to them.

Do I love well?

I know that it’s past the first of the year, but I’ve put off setting New Year resolutions. I think that my resolution for this year will be to learn how to love well.

© 2011 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

Galatians 1:3-4

“Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father” (NKJV).

Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every life, though, has a beginning, a middle, an end, and an ever after, an eternity. Paul here talks about the end of the Christ’s life and the ever after of ours as believers.

Just after the Lord Jesus’ birth, the angels announced His birth to the some shepherds in the neighboring fields: "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10b-11 NKJV). The Lord Jesus suffered and died and that is the good tidings of great joy. He became the Savior that we needed and, in order to become that Savior, He had to give Himself completely which meant He had to die. More than dying even, He had to become sin, to have our sins laid upon Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). He not only died. He took our punishment so that He might deliver us.

I wonder how many of us actually want to be delivered? How many of us are looking for the “ever after?”

Phoebe Cary (1852) wrote:

One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o’er and o’er;
Near’r to my home today am I
Than e’er I’ve been before.

I wonder if being one day nearer to heaven is actually a sweet thought for me? The Lord Jesus suffered and died to deliver me from this present evil age. And even if I don’t go Home today, He has also delivered me from feeling tied to this world. In the words of the old hymn, “This world is not my home. I’m just a-passin’ through.”

I think I need to be more focused on passing, and less focused on homesteading.

© 2010 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

Psalm 23:1-2

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.” (NKJV)

He leads me. I wonder? Do I follow? Or do I expect the Lord Jesus to follow me and bless the things that I choose?

We got an opportunity to see a flock of sheep alongside the road the other day. The little ones were running after their mothers and all the sheep were quietly eating under the watchful eye of their shepherd. They had complete trust that they were fine and that the grass provided was good for them.

They trusted their shepherd. Do I?

There is something very simple and yet very difficult in the statement: The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. It is almost an if-then statement. If I allow the Lord to be my Shepherd, I shall not want. So, if I don’t allow the Lord to be my Shepherd, what then? I think about the many times that I’ve gotten myself into a bigger mess than I can deal with. Suddenly I find myself crying out for God to save me. Likely He’s shaking His head, wondering why I didn’t follow Him long ago. How many times has He bailed me out, only to find that I’m too stubborn to learn from my own mistakes and choosing my own way again?

He leads me beside the still waters.

There are so many times in my life that I’ve been attracted to that which is turbulent and frenetic, only to find that I’m unhappy and discontented. Then I long for the stillness, the quietness of peace. And I go back seeking for the Shepherd. How old will I be before I learn to simply seek His way rather than my own?

I shall not want.

So much of my discontent is about what I don’t have, much of which I likely don’t need. As my husband and I have—like many in America—learned to readjust our lives as a result of downsizing, outsourcing, and reduced lifestyles, I’m learning that there is so little that I really need: His love, His salvation, His presence. Everything else is so little and often so unnecessary. If only I could learn to be content with what is important and leave everything else behind.

This year, as I look toward Advent, I want to learn how to be content with the treasures in heaven that last.

© 2010 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

1 Corinthians 3:16

“Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (NKJV)

Almighty God has many titles and descriptions. He is Creator of the universe which means, that while He can exist within our universe, He also exists outside of it and apart from it. We cannot, at least in these present forms, separate ourselves from the universe and its laws. We cannot ignore gravity and fly through the air or ignore time and travel to distant pasts. We cannot stop breathing and continue to live nor separate our atoms and continue to exist. But God is separate from all these things. He is God and as Creator is apart from creation.

He is Master of the universe. He controls all, rules all, oversees all.

By awesome deeds in righteousness You will answer us,
O God of our salvation,
You who are the confidence of all the ends of the earth,
And of the far-off seas;
Who established the mountains by His strength,
Being clothed with power;
You who still the noise of the seas,
The noise of their waves,
And the tumult of the peoples.
They also who dwell in the farthest parts are afraid of Your signs;
You make the outgoings of the morning and evening rejoice. (Psalm 65:5-8 NKJV)

And yet, the God Who is Creator and Master has also deemed it not only possible but needful for His very Spirit to live within us who are believers. It’s an amazing thing to me, something that continues to confound and surprise me.

I know that I often become so preoccupied with the things around me that I forget that God Himself lives within me and has a plan for me that is far better than anything I could imagine. I’m so busy trying to fix things and organize things and simply “do” that I forget that He has already done it all, has already worked it all out, and as a seal of His love for me placed His very Spirit within me. I don’t have to rely on a priest in Jerusalem to go into the Holy of Holies to approach Him for me. I can drop to my knees—literally or figuratively—and meet Him at the Throne with any request, any need, any plea and He is there. God with men. God with me!

This Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent. The day the Church celebrates the angel visiting Mary with the news that she would be the mother of the King, the One named Emmanuel, God with us. But today—and everyday—I can celebrate the fact that Emmanuel lives within me, desiring to change me into His image, saving me, keeping me, loving me. I am but a simple woman and often wrong in many of the things I decide and do. But God continues to love me and continues to pour His Spirit into me.

It’s simply amazing.

© 2010 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

1 Timothy 1:2

To Timothy, a true son in the faith (NKJV)

Paul talks about “a true son in the faith.” Timothy wasn’t his genetic son, but he was his spiritual son. How many spiritual children do we have?

We don’t talk much in churches these days about discipleship, though we should. And I think that’s the kind of “sonship” to which Paul was referring. Paul, previous to his conversion, had been trained as a rabbi. There was a unique relationship between rabbis and their followers (or disciples). The Hebrew word is talmid and carries with it the idea of completely imitating one’s rabbi. The rabbi lived in such a way that his life was worth imitating and the talmid lived in such a way to completely imitate the rabbi, even to the matters of what to eat and what to wear.

Twice in 1 Corinthians (4:16 and 11:1), Paul urged the Christians to imitate him (as he imitated Christ). This is a true sense of discipleship, much more than intellectual learning. And through this “imitation,” the disciple (or talmid) would become like Paul who himself was striving to become like Christ. In a very real sense, Paul was creating a spiritual genetic bond that mirrored the physical genetic bond of blood families.

How many spiritual children do we have? Are our lives such that another (younger) Christian would be safe to imitate us? Would they even want to?

The Lord Jesus described false teachers as ravenous wolves (Matthew 7:15) and told us that we could discern them by their fruits. These “fruits” are the fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (v. 22-23). Paul confirms that those who have crucified the flesh and its desires will walk in the Spirit and manifest this fruit.

We need to strive to become mature believers who are worthy of being followed. That means crucifying the desires of the flesh, regardless of its enticement in order to manifest the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. The Church is, first and foremost, a family. We should be “birthing” new babes in the Lord and then raising them through discipleship as our spiritual sons and daughters. Do we get excited when new souls come into the Kingdom? I would hope that would be what we long for . . . more than anything else.

© 2010 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.