Act Like a Believer

It has recently been brought to my attention that my blog is called "LiveHoly" and I am yet to actually talk about living holy! Let me start now:

Do you know that our God is a holy and righteous God? And do know that One who is holy and righteous will not reward another with things that are not holy and righteous? So you can be assured that God will not reward us with impure and unholy things. So, the sin and lust which some believe they will inherit if they blow themselves up for their god would contradict a true and holy God. Needless to say, they will be surprised when they meet the Uncreated, Holy, Righteous, Judge of the Universe.

I got a little sidetracked there, but if we don't first understand that we are serving a Pure and Holy God, we will never desire a pure and holy lifestyle for ourselves.

I feel compeled to give you a lot of Scripture here, I emplore you to look this up for yourself.

First, when you come to Christ, you are a new creation (Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 2:4-6). Therefore you ought not continue to live in sin, the way you did when you didn't know any better. (Galatians 5:16-26, Romans 6:1-2) Now you are born again, with new life from the Living and Eternal God through His One and Only Holy Spirit (Romans 8:2,11, Ephesians 4:24). And you are to live by that Spirit as a child of God (Romans 8:14-16, 1 John 5:1-4).

That does not mean it's ok to sin as long as you don't think it's that bad! It's not ok to make up your own rules as you go along. If you are going to label yourself as a Christian, you should be ready to walk the same path Christ walked. Too often, we want to change the rules to most benefit us. That's not how His kingdom works. Sin is still spelt SIN, and ironically enough I is right in the middle of it. We can no longer continue to indulge in the things of this world if we are ever going to make a difference in it. Remember; God's grace is not our license to sin (Romans 6:1-2)

So, now that you know that you are a child of God (a new creation) and you know that you aren't supposed to live an ungodly lifestyle, you are now what I like to call; accountable. You have heard the truth and now have the opportunity to obey it or not. I heard a pastor say once, "Our problem isn't understanding what the Bible means, it's doing what it says". Everyday you have the choice to choose Him or to choose the world. You can't have both, unless you would like to be known as "lukewarm" (Revelation 3:16). Dr. Vernon McGee put it like this, "There is something wrong if a Christian is too popular in the world". That may be a little hard to take for a culture who is so concerned with pleasing everybody and not making anyone feel uncomfortable but we as the body of Christ must take a stand for the Truth and not be ashamed to defend it! (Luke 9:26, Romans 1:16, 2 Timothy 2:15)

Of course we can't do any of this without God's grace but I am only talking about our part, which God will not do. If we first, voluntarily choose to follow and obey Him, His grace will abound in our lives. However, He will not force us to love and/or follow Him. We must first choose Him, only then will His grace be available to us whenever we need it.

For more Scripture on this topic:

• Matthew 5-7 (Christianity 101)
  
• Ephesians 2:1-10, 4:17-32
• Galatians 5:16-25
• 1 Corinthians 6:9-20
• 2 Corinthians 5:1-21
• Romans 7:14-25, 8:1-17

And there are many more, but this will give you an idea.