An ABC of Faith

Holiness

There was a simple peasant, a good father of a family, an unlettered husbandman, whose fervent piety was the Joy of his pastor’s heart. Whether going to his work or returning from it, never did that good man pass the church-door without entering it to adore his Lord. He would leave his tools, his spade, hoe, and pickaxe, at the door, and remain for hours together sitting or kneeling before the tabernacle.

The pastor who watched him with great delight could never perceive the slightest movement of the lips. Being surprised at this circumstance, he said to him one day, ‘My good father, what do you say to our Lord in these long visits you pay every day and many 

times a day?’  ‘I say nothing to him,’ was the reply; ‘I look at him, and he looks at me.’ ‘A beautiful and sublime answer,’  

He said nothing, he opened no book, he could not read; but he had eyes — eyes of the body and eyes of the soul — and he opened them, those of the soul especially, and fixed them on our Lord. ‘I look at him.’ He fastened upon him his whole mind, his whole heart; all his sense, and all his faculties. There was an interchange of ineffable thought in those glances which came and went between the heart of the servant and the heart of the Master. Surely this is the secret, the great secret, of attaining sanctity; holiness.

Samuel Logan Brengle, that great holiness teacher of the early 20th Century wrote, “Holiness is not some lofty experience, unattainable except to those who can leap the stars, but it is rather a lowly experience, which lowly people in the lowly walks of life can share with Jesus, by letting His mind be in them.”

Dear Heavenly Father, You are a holy God and I desire to be holy too. Set apart for You, and living my life in a manner that is worthy of You and pleasing to You.

 

Search my heart I pray, and if there is any cherished sin lurking within, I ask that You would search it out and destroy it, for I know that only the one that has clean hands and a pure heart may stand in Your presence.

 

Purify my heart, cleanse my inner thoughts and examine the very motives behind my acts and attitudes, for I desire to live in holiness of heart. If there is anything that is displeasing to You in my life, I ask that in Your grace You would root it out, so that I may live in godly holiness all the days of my life, clothed in Christ’s righteousness, separated to you You and walking in godly love. This I ask in Jesus' name,

 

Amen.