Author: Adam

Holiness is being set apart.
Christians are to be holy and set apart.
How do we do this?

The most common (and most immature) answer to this would be to show everyone else how holy we are. This is projected holiness. This is when we take the things that sets us apart (makes us holy) and project them towards everyone else. The attitude becomes more like, “I don’t [insert questionable behavior here]! Do you see how holy I am?” This works in the opposite direction as well, “I am [insert GOOD behavior, i.e. fasting]! Do you see how holy I am?” I think if we stop here and think, most of us have had this attitude . . . many of us still have it. This is projected holiness.

Or worse yet — we take personal convictions and project our holiness towards others in a legalistic manner. For example, “Due to my personal conviction, I don’t [insert questionable behavior]. You shouldn’t either!” That’s projected holiness.

Jesus taught us that our holiness is not a “projection” issue. It is an internal issue. In Matthew 5, Jesus took several outward actions (projected holiness), and explained how the heart was much more important. Murder and adultery are both wrong actions. But Jesus says that if someone is angry or looks lustfully at another they have murdered or committed adultery in God’s eyes.

Christians, let’s stop focusing on projecting our holiness towards others.

Our focus needs to be our internal holiness.

When we are internally holy, the holiness on the inside of us will ooze out. You won’t be able to help it. The oozing of our internal holiness is what will shine out among the world. Our internal holiness will be evangelistic and through the Holy Spirit, it will convict others. We don’t need to make it that way.

Be internally holy.

My Pastor in Tulsa was kind enough to share this with me and gave me permission to share it with you on my blog. This is an audio recording of his son, Michael, telling the Christmas story at the age of 4. Click here to listen to this Christmas blog.

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with a retired minister who had invested his life as a pastor in Waterloo. He’s now pretty old, has what seems to be Parkinson’s (his hands shake a lot) and some sort of Alzheimer’s (he told me so), although he remembered me between my two visits. He’s at Betz Nursing Home. Being a young pastor, I love hearing what he has to say. He’s imparted so much wisdom in the two times I’ve spoken with him, I wanted to record it so I’d never forget it. This is a personal log for myself, but I thought my readers might like to hear them as well. Here are the highlights:

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I needed to get back to the church office to finish up some stuff and get ready for other folks who would be meeting me there. I told him that I needed to get back to work. He looked and spoke to me very sternly as if to correct me. “You are at work!” he said. I’ll never forget that. The full-time minister is never “off-the-clock.” I’m always at work. The office is just one of the facets.

***

I told him that I was meeting people at the church. He said, “They will be there to meet you there.” I didn’t know what he meant so I asked, “Why?” He responded, “Because they trust you [as a leader]. Don’t ever let them down. Never let them down.” I asked, “Well, what if I do [let them down]?” He responded with words that cut deep into me, “Then you get down on your knees so fast that it tears the cloth of your pants and ask God for mercy so that God won’t let you down.” (God will never forsake me, but His anointing can leave).

***

This man had preached for years and years. I will record his words as accurately as I can recall: “Adam, I’m going to tell you something that I’ve hardly told anyone my whole life. All the sermons I ever preached – I never planned them. I only planned and wrote an outline for one sermon ever, and you know what? — it was the worst message I ever preached. When you get up there and listen to the Spirit of God . . . he’ll tell you what to say. The Holy Spirit wrote all my sermons – and He comes up with some good ones.” As I understand it, this man pastored churches which belonged to denominations which generally do not encourage direct divine revelation which he experienced.

***

He told me his wife died in April 2003. He told me how much he missed her. I remember him saying, “The love I had for her came straight down from heaven. There was never any lust or anything – it was pure love. And boy did I love her.” He spoke of how excited he was to be in heaven soon because he would get to see his wife again.

***

He was so passionate about his faith. He was sickened when another old guy in the hallway would say a swear word (which I didn’t even hear). He never let me leave his room without praying for me. He would speak of witnessing Jesus Christ to another woman in the nursing home who spent her life practicing (and still practiced) another religion.

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Every Thursday afternoon my church does a little service at the nursing home. Today I was asked to share the message and preach. I ended 5 minutes early, to which I was upset about. This man shared wisdom with me, “Just because you stopped talking 5 minutes early doesn’t mean your message ended too early. Your message doesn’t stop until the people stop thinking about. The length doesn’t matter as much as the depth does.”

***

I will recall his words to the best of my memory: “People always say that God never leaves us and never forsakes us. That’s in the Bible, and I always heard it. And I’ve been through a lot in my life and it’s about over, and you know what? — it’s true. He never left me and He never forsook me. God’s been faithful. He’s been so faithful.”

I can be doing all the right stuff, and someone will get mad at me. Ugh. I hate that. Sometimes I know I am following God’s specific direction, yet people get mad at me. I know that what people think shouldn’t change what I do, but what people think changes how I feel. Do you know what I’m saying? Whether we’re at work, church, school, or just “around” . . . people sometimes get mad at us for doing what we’re supposed to do. And that bugs us, it causes us to get all closed up inside and sort of shut down.

I think God knew we’d feel this way when he inspired the Apostle Paul to write, “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary” (Galatians 6:9 NASB). When we are doing what we’re supposed to do, we should stay focused. We should keep our courage and not be fainthearted.

The end of this verse it says, “if we do not grow weary.” In the original language, this had more of a connotation of meaning, “we will reap a harvest if we do not get relaxed in our faith.” That says to me that there is a certain amount of tension in our lives that God wants us to have, but we can’t let that tension wear us down.

When someone gets mad at us while we’re doing the right thing, let’s not lose heart. Let’s just keep going.

I came into a front side door of my church’s auditorium awhile ago. It was pitch black. I couldn’t really see anything at all, but since I am so familiar with the facility that I was able to easily walk around all the obstacles between me and the back of the room. Let me say that again: because of my familiarity, I could walk around my church while in complete darkness.

Is it possible to become so familiar with our Christianity that we can walk around just fine yet still be in the darkness? I think so.

Satan knows that he can’t stop most of us from going to church or following Christ, and I think he knows it. So instead of blatantly lying to us (we’re expecting that), he tries to trick us by allowing us to do all the right “steps” . . . but keeps us walking in the dark. If he can keep us from actually doing something for Jesus, then the Kingdom of God will not advance any further. If he can get us to put our relationship with Christ on “maintenance mode” instead of us passionately seeking God’s voice, then the Kingdom of God will not advance.

But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. (James 1:22). Let’s do it!

Several years ago I worked in the office of a temporary employment agency. Part of my job included helping with scheduling people for temporary jobs. There was a whole set of abbreviations we used to keep records. “NCNS” was used when someone failed to show up at a job assignment without reason; “No Call, No Show.” “NER” notated someone who was “Not Eligible for Rehire.” “LPM” was used all the time to notate that someone in the office had “Left a Phone Message.”

Now I oversee the worship arts department at New Hope, which includes making sure that there is a full worship team for all the services. Today I called someone to fill-in for someone else on the worship team one week. I left a voicemail for them and then for my record I made a note with their name and “LPM” next to it. I make this notation all the time, but it wasn’t until today that I realized where it originally came from.

Just exactly how much of my today is influenced by my past? Hmm. I wager to say close to all of it, in one way or another. So if my today is influenced by my past, then it only makes sense that all of my future will be influenced by my today.