Did you ever have one of those moments or thoughts that really sends your head spinning? I had one of those the other night. I was laying in my bed, thinking back on my day as I waited to fall a sleep.
Did I pray? Yep.
Read the Bible? Check.
Did I live as a Christian? Sure.
Pretty routine, nothing too unusual. But as I was laying there I had to ask myself about that last question. If I switched up the question a bit and asked other people to answer for me, I wasn’t sure how’d they answer. Laying there that night it felt like I got punched in the soul. I realized it is really easy for me to say I lived my day out as a Christian, but the question I should be asking is: would the people who I encountered would agree with me? Some days, I am not too sure they would.
I typically try not care about what people think or say of me; however, this is a little different. I don’t care so much if a person in the grocery store or at the post office recognizes and labels me as a Christian, but I do want to look at my life and think, “there is something different with him”. I want the love and peace and joy I experience from my relationship with Christ to penetrate my whole life, not just when I am at church or in a Christian environment. My entire life! My every thought. Every interaction. Every conversation. Everything! And isn’t that what we are called to as Christians?
In fact, this call to holiness has been around for thousands of years…That shouldn’t be huge news for any of you; hopefully you’ve heard it before. Check out 1 Peter 1:15-16, it states, “but, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, ‘Be holy because I (am) holy’.” You’re supposed to be holy. Again, I’m guessing you already knew that. What you may not know is that if you trace the word “holy” back to its Greek root, which is “hagios”, it can be translated to mean “set apart”.
Set apart? To be holy means to be set apart! I learned about the whole “hagios” thing a couple years ago when I was in school. I thought it was a cool fact, but the reality of this truth is affecting my life in a new way. I don’t want to live an average life. I don’t want to live like everyone else. I want my life to be meaningful, intentional, and set apart from the rest of the world; I want my life to only be explainable by the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to be holy and I want other people to be able to recognize that desire within me from the way I think, speak and act.
So the question I leave you with today is, “How do you want to live your life?”
