Hello… Trust you are well and resting in our Savior’s love!!

Last week we talked about submiting to the Lord before we resist the devil and that our striving
for “holiness” is just that, Our striving.
I’m sure we all want to be holy as the admonition says in 1Peter 1:16 NSAB “You shall be holy, as I am
holy.” Maybe your are a bit like I am in thinking, if I would just try harder, I could do it. Certainly
our obedience and behavior is important as the previous verse says, “but like the Holy One who called
you, be holy yourseves also in all your behavior;” 1Peter 1:15 NSAB Yet, it’s not in “my” striving that will
make me holy. It’s in the surrender to theLord in this love relationship which leads to a willing
obedience, whereby Christ lives in me and transforms me into the likeness of Christ. 2Cor.5:14
“For the love of Christ controls us…” The KJV uses the term “constrains me”. The meaning here is, it
hedges or boxes me in, so would be a “normal” to respond willingly out of a heart of love. It is so
humbling and comforting to know God is at work and will complete what He has started in my
life and in your’s at “…the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:6) This coinsides with Ephesians 5:27 where
Paul describes the relationship between Christ & His church. “that He might present to Himself the
church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.”
WOW! Not maybe this will happen, this is what Christ is doing in the life of each believer who
makes up the church of the Living God, so that we might be HOLY!!!
Certainly one of the basic ingredients in transforming us is the Word of God. Not just reading it
but rather having it read us. A dear friend of our’s, Esther Brouwer, use to attend our church
back in the States and each year she would come up and say, I’ve read through the complete
Bible again this year, but it’s not how many times I been through the Bible but how much of the
Bible is seen through me. I invite you to look up a few of these passages that will confirm this
truth. Psalm 1 - the importance of mediating on the word of God, Psalm 119:11- keeps us from
sin, John 17:17 the Word’s sanctifing power… and the list could go on.
So as you walk through this week, I trust you desire to be holy! Are you regularly spending time in
God’s word allowing it to be seen in you? Ask the Lord to make it so as you approach His word
daily.
Dwight Hostetler
01/11/18