Blog # 373 Growth in Holiness
Go out some time on one of those beautiful days when the sun is shining in a clear blue sky. Feel the warmth on your shoulders. Think for a moment this is the same sun that warmed Jesus.
What do you think was His response? Don't you think Jesus saw the sky as beautiful? Isn't it easy to imagine Jesus praising the Father for the beauty of the sky, and the warmth of the sun? When we do the same it is easy to see ourselves as doing exactly what Jesus did. Here is a way to grow in holiness.
Jesus is the model for all of our growth in holiness. His prayer should be our prayer. His love for the poor should be our love for the poor. His obedience to the Father must be our obedience to the Father.
God has nothing to gain from our service. It is because God loves us that God wants us to be good. It is because we love God that we want to be our best. God doesn't need anything we can give God or do for God in the sense the manager of a factory needs the work of his employees in order to show a profit for the Company, or in the sense a man needs his wife to avoid undue loneliness.
Yet, as Paul teaches (1 Thes. 4: 3), it is God's will that we grow in holiness. The only reason I can see for such a desire on the part of God is that God loves us, the great and the small among us. those who are struggling to believe, and those who are beginning to live directed by their faith as well as those who have already achieved a great deal. God knows and loves us all and desires that each of us grow in His likeness, merely because of God's love.
We are like Jesus in that we are warmed by the same sun that warmed Jesus. This is not our choice. We can be like Jesus in many other ways, in our prayer, in our praise of God, in or relationships with one another. As we grow in our likeness to Jesus we grow in fulfilling God's desire that we grow in holiness. And the more we grow in genuine holiness the easier it is for those who live around us to grow.
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