The Chase Chapter One: Holiness is for you.

After reading this first chapter this book really felt like God was laying the words directly on my heart. This was totally my story. I went to the first XLR:8 and actually did obey to what God asked of me, but then the idea of holiness (before I even read this book) showed me how unholy I truely was, and how hypocritical my attitude towards others was. I let it trip be up.

I love the line in this first chapter
"All too often, though, sin gets the upper hand. Obedience, along with holiness, goes out the window."

Seriously, how awesome is that, thats totally for me. I started to let my sin push me away from a life striving for holiness (for my birthright) and fell into a life playing Maple Story all day and everyday.

God expects us to live a holy life, ya I know that first hand, it's something God hit me with hard when I was pursuing his goal for my life and the lives around, we had to work on my character, it had to be more Christ like, and I had and still have real problems with holiness.

But since only God can tell me how to live my life (the right way) sin no longer has command over this vessal for the lord.

I love how the book points out, that we have to make ourselves humble throughout this chase, indicated in the part about the "holier than thou" attitude.

Holiness may seem impossible, in fact it is without God, so therefore I know that I can't say that after achieving it, that I accomplished anything, it was only with God's help that one can acheive holiness, and holiness then can definitly be used as a witness to everyone. It stregthens the body as well as evanglises, it's definitly worth chasing for.

This book is awesome and I'm not even done the first chapter yet.

Then the book talks about how this seemingly impossible task can give you excuses to not even pursue it anymore, haha, I get it God, you can stop now... As you can see that talks to me as well, I let myself fall into that trap first hand.

But this first chapter answers a great question:

What exactly is holiness?
"To be holy is to be morally blamless. It's being separated from sin and set apart for God."

Then they start quoting scripture in this chapter about holiness, a few of these verses I memorized in some of my earlier blogs, neat eh? Anyway I'm going to pull one that really speaks to me;

"Don't lazily slip back into these old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing."

Oh crap... now that definitly is for me, and yes I used crap in a sentence.

Holiness requires not conforming to the world, well thats one thing I'm good at, you ask anyone if I'm normal, and they'll probably laugh in your face, but at least I have good practice of being able to stand out, and how to coupe with people persecution for it and such. Heck I've dealt with it b/c of faith before as well, but what I really need to work on is the humility factor behind that as well.

Then we go into addressing our problems with experiencing holiness.

-Sin hurts God (We don't see sin from God's view but more from our own)
-We've misunderstood living by faith( accepting personal responsibilty for our sin as well)
-Not taking all sin seriously (catagorizing sin)

The first one and third one I have problems with, but mostly the first one, for example giving into temptation feels good for the flesh ( I mean why would we do it in the first place if it didn't make our flesh feel good) but I always seem to forget at the moment of how my sin makes God feel, I always go crap, and apologize, but I take my eyes off the fact of how God took to me sining. If that last sentence made sense then the rest of my blogs will be your friends.

Anyway, this chase for holiness is something I really want to pursue, and need to be held accountable by you all, to keep it up, and please feel free to point out anything I'm doing that would be unholy, I mean I don't want to be walking around wearing a stained shirt all day without knowing it right?

-Brent