This week’s letter of encouragement and growth is the letter “H”. The letter “H” stands for holy. If we are going to be the Christians and followers Christ calls us to be, we must be holy. This may sound a little bit impossible since we know that God is holy. Are we called to be like God? In a way, yes.

I think we need to break down the two holies”. First, the holiness of God is much different than our calling of being holy. The holiness of God is a level of holy no one will ever come close to understanding, much less reaching. When we think of God, we think of the one who is like no other. He created the world and all we have in it. We think of the word “perfect”. We think of someone who can do anything He wants to do at any time. That is God’s holiness. We are not called to God’s level of holiness. There is no one like God. However, there is an area where our holiness should be like God’s.

In the book of Leviticus, chapter 19 and verse 2, God gives Moses the following message to be shared with the Israelites as he is building His relationship with them. Here are his words to Moses. “Give the following instructions to the entire community of Israel. You must be holy because I, the Lord your God, are holy.” This is the command for the people of Israel and for us as well. They were to be holy. We are to be holy. Why? Because God is holy. The one thing that is the same about the holiness we are commanded live out is the idea of being different, or set apart.

As we think of God, we know there is, and never will be, anyone like Him. He is not like any other man or being. For us, we need to be different from the world around us. The people of Israel needed to live a different type of life than the neighboring communities around them. If others were going to recognize them as God’s people, they were going to need to be more like God and less like others. This is how we are to be holy like God. We are to be different than those who are non-believers. So how do we do this?

The first, and most important part of being holy is to have a relationship with God. We can’t be like God if we do not have a personal relationship with Him. Next, we have to work to keep in contact and relationship with God, as we have discussed in earlier articles. Staying in relationship with God is hard, given the world we live in. If we find ourselves living according to the world’s standards, we will find ourselves falling short of living up to God’s standards. We must keep our eyes on Christ and follow His leading. If we do, others will see we are different, and God will see that we are holy. Until next week…

Peace and Blessings…

Johnny