Spiritual Blessings 3

These spiritual blessings are not limited to the spiritual realm.  God wants us to receive these gifts and incorporate them in our lives on earth.  What we have naturally in this world is the result of what we have in our spirit.  

            Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes.

                              Eph. 1:4 NLT

God is entirely holy.  He gives selflessly to us so that we can reveal the exquisite beauty of His character.  That is why He made us holy.  God wants us to reveal to the world around us who He is and what He is like but we cannot do this alone. 

Our sin prevents us from being holy.  Knowing this, God made a plan, before the start of creation, to make us pure and blameless before Him so that we could be holy like He is holy (Lev. 19:2).  The plan was Jesus Christ, Who through the shedding of His blood and the sacrifice of His life has removed all the evidence of our sin thus making us holy and blameless and right with God.  He has made us to be without fault, pure, in the eyes of God.  What a gift!

In addition to being made holy, God calls us to live holy lives.  A holy life is dedicated to the determined purpose of letting God be God through us while letting go of all competing affections.

Holiness is so much more than being set apart for service to God.  It is a total devotion to all that is pure and holy while at the same time it is a complete separation from anything profane or defiling. 

The pursuit of holiness releases from our affections all the things of this world and replaces them with a hunger and thirst for God. 
Heidirn