Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.
1 Peter 1:13-16 (NLT)
So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”
We’re talking about holiness. The scripture above lays out some basic principles in regards to holiness that we’re going to spend a few days diving into. The first is thinking clearly.
If we’re going to be a holy people, we must have clear minds.
So how do we make sure our minds are clear? There are three ways that we’re going to discuss here:
- Take care of yourself physically.
- Take care of yourself spiritually.
- Let God take care of the rest.
Check out what Paul tells us about taking care of ourselves physically:
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NLT)
Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
Wow. There is much being said in this verse that we could dive into but we’re going to simply study the surface of it today. The most important thing that Paul tells us is this: “You do not belong to yourself.” When we accept Christ and His call on our life, we give up our right to destroy ourselves. We give up our right to put on beer-goggles this Friday night. We give up our right to eat 16 plates at the buffet. We give up our right to destroy our lungs with cigarettes. We give all of these rights up!
Furthermore, if we’ve given God our whole lives, we cannot just give Him the easy things. We must give Him those things it would be impossible for us to give Him apart from the Holy Spirit’s working in our hearts.
There’s a line in a song that haunts me whenever I hear or think about it:
“I want the things you just can’t give me.”
Jesus knows us intimately. He knows how much we struggle with these things. But He also knows that He is all-powerful and that through Him, there is nothing that we can’t do (or give up).
Give God some of those things this weekend and pray for a clear mind!
We’ll continue this conversation next week.
