735 Holiness Makes Jesus Visible - Hebrews 12:14

Are you holy? Do you consider yourself holy?

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One podcast. We touched on Hebrews 12:14 yesterday, but I want to touch on it a little more today because I think I'll probably step on some toes. Let's read this passage from the English Standard Version. "Strive for peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." 

I talk about how we make Jesus visible, and what we learn in this verse is that our holiness does that. But maybe you don't consider yourself holy. Maybe you're not looking forward to being holy. I thought about a couple of things related to holiness as I started yesterday's podcast and came to this verse and I felt like we might want to talk about it a little more today. First, we need to strive for peace with everyone. This is the first caution the author of Hebrews gives us. We strive for peace with everyone and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

We need to have peace with everyone first. Peace is what we're going for, and also this holiness is an interesting word. In the New American Standard, it says sanctification. These are both big words for being something that is used by God. When something is set apart for God's use, it is considered holy and we are called to be holy. In Leviticus, the Jews were challenged to be holy because God was holy. He said, "I am holy, you should be holy because I am holy." And first Peter even quotes the same passage. This was a key passage for the nation of Israel. 

Our call is to be holy, to be dedicated to God's purpose. God is working towards God's purpose and we are called to work towards God's purpose, that's what holiness and sanctification are. When we're doing what God has for us to do, we're holy. That doesn't mean that we wear robes, I talked about this in the previous episode. This is not about having something that's only used on Sundays in the church necessarily, but that's kind of the way that it became interpreted in the church when I was growing up. Holy things were those things that were special and only used on Sunday and they were only used in the church. 

We are people of God. And when we do God's work, we're holy and if we strive for peace with everyone and we are listening to and obeying God, then we are this holiness that the author of Hebrews talks about in this verse.  Therefore the people around us see the Lord. I keep using the phrase. I wanna make Jesus visible. I don't have the power to make Jesus visible. However, he shows up when I obey Him and other people see my life being different when I obey Him, and I believe that's the calling that we have in the workplace.

When we live as instruments of God in the marketplace or in the workplace or wherever we are every day, other people get to see Jesus. People will see the Lord when we're doing what Jesus would have us do. That's his strategy and his plan. That's the whole reason why I believe we're still here. Otherwise, why wouldn't God just save us and take us to heaven? I believe He saves us and He leaves us here so that we can strive for peace with everyone and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. That's our calling. 

Today, I want to challenge us. Let's listen to God and do what He says. Often we tell ourselves that we don't have time. I can only do some of these things because I also have to work. Well, the way that I work is another effort at holiness. Maybe that's even another podcast today. Let's go into our marketplaces listening to God, doing what He would have us do in our workplace so that He might become visible to the people that we interact with every day. 

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for making a difference with your faith in the world. Simply obeying God and being His weapon in the world makes us holy and therefore we can become part of His strategy so that the world might see Him. If you wanna be part of a community that considers this regularly, check out https://followerofone.org. You can join our community at https://community.Followerofone.org. 

Thanks very much.