Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life

Each year, we have a theme for the year. This devotion looks at our 2023 theme of habitual holiness of heart and life.

Nuggets

  • We should want to be intentional about glorifying God because our bodies are a temple to Him.
  • We are not our own because the God Who created us paid the price to redeem us after we became corrupted.
  • God calls us to do two things to glorify Him: believe and do.

To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.

For the last two years, we have talked about having a redo for godliness and getting it down to the heart level. What I want to do this year is to try to get more practical about doing that.

Last year, we focused on the heart. This year, we are going to focus on the life.

At first, I was going with intentional holiness. It is our choice. But if we are really going to get it to the heart level, it has to be habitual.

I like the term that Stark used: holiness of heart and life. As James said, we can’t just say we have faith (Jas. 2: 14). We have to live it. We live it by our works.

Resource

So, I think we are going to put it all together. Our theme is habitual holiness of heart and life.

First, let’s talk about why we want to make it habitual and intentional. We want to glorify God.

Temple of God

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? …” (I Cor. 6: 19 ESV)

We should want to be intentional about glorifying God because our bodies are a temple to Him.

Our job description as a disciple says that we are to be a living sacrifice to God. One way we do that is to make our bodies a temple of the Holy Spirit.

To read a related devotion, click the button below.

The Disciple’s Job Description

Complete Job Description

Individual Description

Job Duty #1
Be a Living Sacrifice (Romans 12: 1-2)

How do we do that?

We have to realize that, when God redeemed us, He took possession of our bodies. Garbett put it this way. He wrote, “The body of a Christian man is claimed and taken possession of by the God who has redeemed it — and therefore to be treated with the same respect with which a heathen would regard the temple of his idol, or a Jew the holy of holies.”

Resource

Our bodies are not to be idolized because they are our bodies. It has nothing to do with our looks or intellect – or anything else of a physical nature.

It has to do with Who dwells within us. We are to glorify God Who is with us.

When Paul talked about our bodies being temples, he was talking about our whole body, not just parts of it. That makes sense.

God wants us to submit our whole beings to Him – our hearts, our minds, our lives – everything. We submit to Him with the goal of purifying our hearts to become more spiritual.

Since the body is described as a temple, it is a place of worship. God lives in a regenerated heart. Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit.

  • Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
    • The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.

The ABCDs of Salvation

If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.

A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord

D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us

The Disciple’s Job Description

Glossary

That makes us saints. Saint means holy one who has been set apart.

  • Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
    • Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
      • Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
      • Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
      • Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
    • Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin. 
    • Virtues are standards of moral excellence.

Glossary

If we are set apart, we need to consider ourselves temples unto God.

Not Our Own

“… You are not your own, for you were bought with a price …” (I Cor. 6: 19-20 ESV)

We are not our own because the God Who created us paid the price to redeem us after we became corrupted.

The worldview likes to stress that we are our own person. We make our own decisions. No one has to have control over us.

That is wrong.

God created us. “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1: 5 NLT).

Who we are and what we are isn’t the most important thing about us. It should be about Who redeemed us.

The sermon by the Weekly Pulpit said it this way. It was written, “Our [endeavor] will be to consider the sacredness and preciousness of the persons of the saints in the light of the price of our redemption.”

Resource

Our worship should be about Who redeemed us, not ourselves. Redemption is where God bestows His gift of grace on us in order to deliver us from sin.

  • Grace is a free and unmerited gift of love from the Heavenly Father, given through His Son, Jesus Christ, that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
  • Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.

Glossary

Bottom line is we sinned, and God saved us. He sent His only Son to die to offer us salvation. Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.

  • Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
    • Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.

Glossary

That was the whole reason Jesus came to earth — to offer us salvation. We could say that was the purpose of His life.

Think about it. When we have a purpose, we do things intentionally and habitually.

There is a great verse in Luke. “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Lk. 9: 51 NIV).

No, this isn’t after the resurrection. This is before — before the pain and humiliation.

Yet, Jesus still heads toward Jerusalem. He doesn’t just meander towards it.

Jesus resolutely goes there. He is purposeful and determined. He doesn’t take the scenic route.

He headed straight there.

We have to be that way in living our lives for God. We have to be as laser focused as Jesus was. We have to think God before any other thought or action.

What? You are still tripping over we are not our own?

That is true. If we aren’t submitting to God, we are submitting to Satan.

It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a set time to go to some building and sing and praise Satan. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t made a conscious decision to serve Satan.

“The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 Jn. 3: 8 NIV).

So, if we are not following One, we are following the other.

We get to choose who we are going to follow because we have free will. Free will is the ability within us to make decisions, which determine actions that produce character.

True, we have a sinful nature because Adam and Eve chose to sin. But we have to choose whether we are going to allow Jesus to redeem us or not.

Only choosing to follow God will bring us true happiness.

Following God means we will have to be rebuilt. Our temples/bodies have been corrupted by sin.

The process to do the rebuilding is called sanctification. Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.

Glossary

We have to consecrate our lives for the purpose to which God calls us. Consecration is the process of being set apart.

Being set apart doesn’t mean we are in a partnership with God. Vaughan nailed it describing that. He wrote, “This claim of God’s proprietorship is not perfectly [recognized]. We may assign Him a part of our lives — a part of our money — a part of our time — a part of our energies — a part of our affections, but God will have no partnerships. He is too great to be a partner, He requires all of us. God is worthy of everything — yield all yourself to Him.”

Resource

We are not God’s equal any more than we can live without Him.

But don’t shortchange that. We are not our own because God purchased us.

Yes, we are His because He created us, but we aren’t because we were corrupted.

God had to purchase us to restore us. It cost Him big time to do that. He really wants us restored to Him.

Glorifying God

“…. So glorify God in your body” (I Cor. 6: 20 ESV)

“… therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (I Cor. 6: 20 KJV)

God calls us to do two things to glorify Him: believe and do.

We can’t do one without the other. Oh, we can believe, but unless we make it intentional and habitual, they are mere words.

If we do without believing, we aren’t doing for God. We are doing for ourselves or because it may be the right thing to do.

Believing and doing has to be done to glorify God. We do this with our bodies and spirits.

What is our spirit? Our spirit is our renewed mind: God’s law has been written within us at the heart-level, so it has changed our character.

Alexander said that our spirits is our rational souls. He told us how our spirits can be rational so that we glorify God.

  • Use reason to contemplate God’s character.
  • Relying on what He says to show we believe it.
  • Living our lives to show our love for Him.
  • Living out His purpose for us.
  • Submitting to Him.
  • Habitually glorifying Him.

Resource

No, it doesn’t start out as a dictatorship. He wants us to use our noodles to determine Who He is. He doesn’t ask us to understand everything — because we won’t be able to do so.

God wants us to have faith in the unseen and unknown when it comes to Him.

We don’t want to get the mistaken impression that God needs our glory to be God. He is God whether or not we worship Him.

The main point is God wants us to worship Him. We worship Him because of His greatness.

Bradley put it this way. He wrote, “Now the glory of God is not such a glory as results to a man from the circumstances in which he is placed; its source is to be found in God’s intrinsic excellences. To glorify Him, therefore, is to bring these excellences into light. And the redeemed sinner does this.”

Resource

We are to act in a way that others see God within us. Garbett said to do that, we have to guard our habits to make sure they are in God’s Will.

Resource

Godet made a good point. Glorifying God isn’t just about not doing the don’ts. It is about doing the do’s.

Resource

We can say we will be fine because we don’t steal or murder. We may even say we are okay because we love our neighbors.

That isn’t enough. We have to love God. Stopping the focus on sin is good, but we have to switch that focus to God. If we don’t, we haven’t gained salvation.

We glorify God when we understand His character. That means we have read His Word enough to know Who He is.

habitual-holiness-of-heart-and-lifeFB

Making the Connections #1

We are not our own. We are God’s.

Because we are God’s, we are part of the Church. That means we need to be part of a church.

The Church is the family of believers — God’s elect — regardless of number, who have professed belief that Jesus is our Savior and confess God as Sovereign God and with mutual agreement to gather in worship and work together to proclaim His gospel and make disciples through His ordinances.

Being a church is more than unlocking a door, turning on a light switch, and singing a few songs. Our hearts have to be changed every time we enter those doors. We have to work together to spread the gospel outside of those doors.

We just talked about how we go to worship but don’t truly worship. We’re going to dive deeper into that this year.

Making the Connections #2

Whoa! There was another great concept from the Weekly Pulpit. It was also written, “There are two steps in entire consecration — the Spirit of God must sanctify the soul, and the soul must sanctify the body.”

Resource

We’ll have to dig deeper into that later.

How Do We Apply This?

  • Submit our whole being to God – bodies, senses, minds, hearts, and souls.
  • Guard our temples/bodies from sin.
  • Keep all of God’s laws and commandments.
  • Seek God.
  • Guard our habits to make sure they are in God’s Will.
  • Worship with our hearts, not our bodies.
  • Becoming new creations.
  • Surrender to God’s correction.

Searching for and Seeking God

Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).

Glossary

Resource

Father God. We want to be holy in our hearts and lives. To do that we have to be habitual in our intent. Help us grow to be more consistent in our walk with You. Amen.

What do you think?

Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.

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