holiness, day 5

Come to Stillness:
Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:
Gracious and loving God, you know the deep inner patterns of my life that keep me from being totally yours. You know the misformed structures of my being that hold me in bondage to something less than your high purpose for my life. You also know my reluctance to let you have your way with me in these areas. Hear the deeper cry of my heart for wholeness and by your grace enable me to open to your transforming presence in this time. Lord, have mercy. (Invitation to a Journey by Robert Mulholland Jr.)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 99

Scripture for the Day: I Peter 1:13-16

Reading for Reflection:

The purpose of salvation is to make whole that which is broken.  The Christian spiritual journey settles for nothing less than such wholeness.  But genuine wholeness cannot occur apart from holiness.  In The Holiness of God R. C. Sproul notes that the pattern of God’s transforming encounters with humans is always the same.  God appears; humans respond in fear because of their sin; God forgives our sins and heals us (holiness and wholeness); God then sends us out to serve him.  This means that holiness and wholeness are the interrelated goals of the Christian spiritual journey.  Holiness is the goal of the spiritual journey because God is holy and commands that we be holy (Leviticus 11:44).

     Holiness involves taking on the life and character of a holy God by means of a restored relationship to him.  This relationship heals our most fundamental disease—our separation from our Source, our Redeemer, the Great Lover of our soul.  The relationship is therefore simultaneously the source of our holiness and of our wholeness.

     Human beings were designed for intimate relationship with God and cannot find fulfillment of their true and deepest self apart from that relationship.  Holiness does not involve the annihilation of our identity with a simple transplant of God’s identity.  Rather, it involves the transformation of our self, made possible by the work of God’s Spirit within us.  Holiness is becoming like the God with whom we live in intimate relationship.  It is acquiring his Spirit and allowing spirit to be transformed by Spirit.  It is finding and living our life in Christ, then discovering that Christ’s life and Spirit are our life and spirit.  This is the journey of Christian spiritual transformation.  This is the process of becoming whole and holy. (Sacred Companions by David G. Benner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Holy, Holy, Holy

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Which wert and art and evermore shalt be.

Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see,
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in power, in love, and purity.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Closing Prayer:
Thank you Lord, that you see me as holy because of the gift of your Son. Help me to celebrate the holiness you have given me by being wholly yours this day. Amen. (JLB)