Free to Live: The Utter Relief of Holiness (11 page)

Healing doesn’t necessarily have to be dramatic. Oftentimes it is very quiet. Jesus simply comes as we invite him to, and though we may not “see” him or “hear” him, he comes, and we sense a new peace or quietness in our soul. Our heart
feels
better somehow. The important thing is for us to give him permission to these wounded places, invite his healing love, and wait in prayer for him to come. Do this with each memory of wounding, with each event (ask the Holy Spirit to guide you). Often I will pray Isaiah 61 as I do this:

Many times Jesus simply says, “Let me love you.” We need to open our hearts up to his love. As we do, it allows him to come to this very place. Linger there and listen; ask for the healing grace of Jesus Christ over and over again. He comes, dear friends, he comes.

Does it always have to happen exactly in this way, in this order? Of course not.

The human soul is a place of profound mysteries. God is a person of infinite creativity. He can do this any way he wants. Sometimes he goes straight for the wound or the brokenness. Having had that healed, we find it far easier to resist the enemy and renounce our sins. Sometimes it requires binding the enemy first, simply so we can think clearly enough to do the repenting and find the healing we need. This is an outline to the process whereby we become holy in his name. Jesus will guide you. Ask him to guide you.

Do not be surprised or discouraged if you find that it takes more than one round of prayer. It didn’t take you a day to get into this mess. Sometimes you’ll have to pray again in a month, and then again in six months. Listen carefully: This doesn’t mean that “it didn’t work.” Quite often Christ comes back in our lives for a deeper work of healing. Even if you’re only eighteen, the sun has gone down a lot of times in your life; there’s a lot of past there. But if you’re fifty-eight, there’s a whole lot more past to your story. So be gracious, be patient; it doesn’t mean you’re blowing it if Christ brings it up again. It simply means it’s time for another round, and so you go back again through this exact process of repentance and deliverance and healing.

The beauty is that as you become more whole, you can become holier. And as you become holier, you can become more whole. Trying to choose one without the other I think has really brought people a great deal of distress, brought them to the conviction that no real change takes place in this life. It’s not true. It’s just that discipline is not enough. As my wife Stasi was saying just the other day, “You can’t repent your way out of brokenness.” It simply doesn’t work. We repent our sins; the brokenness must be healed. Furthermore, this isn’t simply about the sweet love of Jesus. You have an enemy, strongholds are real, and you must break those agreements and banish the enemy.

After a broken leg has been set, and had time to heal, it needs to be strengthened. The same is true of your soul. God urges us to make “levels paths” for ourselves, so that we can be restored. You’re going to have to make some adjustments to your life if you want lasting wholeness. Danny needs to get himself out of the bar scene; he cannot hang out in those places anymore. There may be “friendships” he has to end. You must walk away from those things that trip you up, friends. Curt is going to be helped a great deal by a recovery group; he’s got to stop even the littlest bit of drinking, at least for a season. Dawn needs to open up her story to a few friends who can help her; isolation is deadly. If the Internet is the problem, get a filter. If you’re addicted to daytime soaps, throw out the TV. Get rid of the “triggers” in your life. Make level paths for yourself.

Choose holiness. In those hundreds of little decisions each day, choose holiness. The more you do, the more you will find yourself able to. The more we make choices that comprise our integrity, the weaker we feel and the more the enemy pours it on. However, the more we side with the Spirit in us, the stronger we feel. Over time it becomes easier to choose; our will gets stronger; we discover that in fact, we really do want goodness and nothing else.

Chapter Eleven

The Fruit of Holiness

In all fairness, this must be said: The process of transformation can be a painful one. I don’t know why we ignore this, why we don’t talk about it more often. Some of those things within us that need transformation require a deep cut of the Surgeon’s knife, and he typically doesn’t offer anesthetics beforehand.

Holiness will cost you. It will certainly cost you the expense of laziness; there’s no more coasting through life. You have to be aware now of where your heart is going on any given day, what you’re allowing in and where your heart is wandering off to. That will cost you, in the sense that there’s no more slacking off anymore, no more assuming your personality and your motives don’t need to be looked at. You have to be vigilant to guard your heart. Frankly, the cost for this is pretty minor when you look at the benefits: there’s a whole lot of “struggle” and “battle” that never have to unfold because they never get started. Besides, as you practice self-awareness and shepherding your heart, you get stronger; it begins to come naturally, and the benefits are more than worth it. But yes, it does cost—or you’d see a whole lot more people living this way.

There are higher costs. You will have to give up precious idols, and that is almost always painful. You’ll be giving up your false comforters. To maintain your personal integrity will cost you relationships. It may cost you employment. Your pursuit of holiness will cost you sleepless nights—not because you’re worrying, but because you’re praying (fending off warfare, breaking agreements, battling some deep issues).

You will experience a higher degree of loneliness, because they are very few people who seem to want this, and so you will feel odd. You’ll wonder why people aren’t wrestling with the same things you’re wrestling with. You’ll wonder why they don’t talk about the same things you talk about or want to pray about things that seem so obvious and urgent to you. You won’t feel comfortable seeing the same movies your friends do, or listening to the same music, reading the same books. And so you’ll experience the loneliness that Jesus lived with. But he felt it was worth it.

A genuine holiness will—if you decide to receive the life Jesus offers you—inevitably put you in the crosshairs of religion. Because of their love for technical morality, large portions of the Church will be upset with your freedom. Because of their lack of desire for holiness, they will not want what you’re offering. Jesus was in almost constant conflict with the religious, so that ought to give you a warning—this is probably in your future as well. Don’t look for it; I’m not encouraging that. Don’t make it your mission to go change the Church. But the conflicts will inevitably come, simply because you are siding with Jesus. There is a cost to that as well. But again, Jesus clearly felt that it was all worth it, everything he went through. So did his closest friends who followed in his footsteps. So did the vast cloud of witnesses down through the ages who chose holiness over an easy life. Their shining examples ought to give us heart!

It does pay off handsomely. To be set free from the sins that plague us is an utter relief. It is a joy and the healing of our humanity. That alone should cause us to know that the pursuit of a deep and genuine holiness is worth whatever it costs. But perhaps we need a little encouragement at this point, a little convincing. Is holiness worth it?

Everyone wants to live a powerful life. Every human being wants to feel that his presence on this earth
matters
. Those devastated souls who end up taking their own lives often do so because they feel nothing is lost with their absence. They feel in fact that they are doing the world a favor by leaving the stage. Those who live with a deep, joyful satisfaction usually have found a place where their lives are doing some great good and they
know
it. We long to matter; we yearn to make a difference. What we haven’t seen is the connection between our personal holiness and our impact in this world.

In chapter 2, I began our look at the captivating goodness of Jesus with two stories: his baptism and the trial in the wilderness. Notice now what happens when Jesus returns from that penetrating test of his character:

Jesus returns from his testing “powerful in the Spirit,” filled with the power of God. It is from
this
place the landslide begins to happen—the healings and miracles, the profound teaching, the bold-faced confrontations and the gentle rescues. All of it flows from his holiness.

You don’t hear this taught much—or
modeled
much—by those who seem to have “made it” in Christian leadership. In the Church, we’ve come to assume that power and influence come from skill, from expertise. We live in a world that
worships
expertise. But the Kingdom of God operates on entirely different values. One life totally given over to God is far more powerful than a hundred with gifting and expertise. Look at whom Jesus chooses to change the world: fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes.

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that God waits until we have reached Jesus’ level of holiness to use us. If that were true, who would ever get a chance for God to use him in this world? We’d all be waiting still. Give your life to God; he’ll use you.

Having said that,
of course
holiness matters. When Peter writes to husbands, urging them to “be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect,” he adds a warning that at first seems unexpected in a passage on married life: “So that nothing will hinder your prayers” (1 Peter 3:7). But think of it—is God going to honor the prayers of a man seeking blessing on his business while at the same time he is being mean to his wife? Never. The principle goes way beyond husbands. Of course our prayers are limited by our sin. If you want powerful prayers, get the sin out of your life.

Before we hold one of our retreats, I can guarantee you what’s coming: a thousand reasons to compromise. I’ll wind up being helped by the cute girl in the store who chose not to wear a bra today. Will I choose to look or not? Will I get irritated with a team member, give way to pride over the fact that we filled the retreat, turn to self for my sense of strength? On and on it goes, like a Mardi Gras of temptation. (This is part of the cost I mentioned earlier. It is a painful trial, and it usually lasts longer than I thought it would.) As Chinese Christian author and church leader Watchman Nee warned, the devil doesn’t really care how he gets you to sin, but simply that you do—that you step out of the protection of your life in Christ. If I give way to any of these seductions, I will be compromised. I won’t be nearly so powerful at the retreat. Duplicity will have entered in. I’ll either be under a cloud of condemnation, or operating in the flesh, or trying to pretend I’m doing better than I truly am.

Friends, of course holiness matters. If you want to live a powerful life, you must choose holiness.

Again, I want to prevent the enemy from sneaking in a standard of perfection. The life God uses is a life
surrendered
to him. The surrender is what matters; this is what allows the powerful life of Jesus to invade ours fully. Seek a genuine holiness and you will discover the joys of knowing that your life is making a profound difference in this world—and in the one to come.

There is power to a holy life; there are also innumerable rescues waiting to be had.

A friend of mine walked into his boss’s office the other day to drop off some items. He didn’t realize that though his supervisor was gone for the day, the enemy was there, about to spring a trap he had set. On the desk lay an open letter. My friend “happened” to glance down and he “happened” to notice his own name in the body of the letter. Something in him said,
Whoa—this is about you. You’d better read it and see what your boss thinks of you
. The better part of his character replied,
Run. This is none of your business. Do not let curiosity compromise your standards
. I’m sorry to say he lingered; he read the letter. In it his boss vented to a colleague over some of my friend’s shortcomings. The effect was devastating. My friend left feeling betrayed by his boss, and utterly compromised in his own integrity. Further anguish and devastation followed.

Holiness would have prevented the whole scenario. This supervisor should never have written the letter in the first place. My friend should never have given way to the urge to read it. If either of them had chosen holiness, the train wreck would have never happened.

Think of the devastation caused by sin on this bleeding planet. Think of the rescues that could have happened if people had chosen holiness. That little girl wouldn’t have been sexually abused; she wouldn’t have fallen into sexual traps as a teen; she wouldn’t have struggled with her sexuality at thirty, and her marriage wouldn’t have been crippled by the lack of intimacy. If he had known the way of holiness, that father wouldn’t have become an alcoholic; it wouldn’t have destroyed his life, his family, and his ministry. All those thousands of people who were meant to be blessed by his life would have received immeasurable blessings. On and on it goes. The ripple effect is staggering. David wouldn’t have slept with Bathsheba; he wouldn’t have killed Uriah; the consequences of his sin wouldn’t have inflicted an entire nation. If Achan hadn’t lusted after the silver and gold he took from Jericho and buried in his tent, thirty-six men wouldn’t have died in the battle for Ai.

Really, now, think of it—what unspeakable tragedies could have been prevented if holiness had ruled the day?

On an intimate scale, you wouldn’t be wrestling with many of the wounds you have, and the companion sins, because you wouldn’t have been wounded in the first place. On a global scale, the Holocaust could have been prevented; 9/11 would have never happened, nor the bloodshed that has followed, nor the cost of many valiant lives seeking to end terrorism. The scope of sin’s aftershocks is pretty staggering. If we knew just how devastating sin really was, we’d fear it the way Christians did for centuries.

Holiness
rescues us
from sin and its repercussions. When God says, “They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain” (Isaiah 11:9), one of the reasons this will be so is because no one living there will want to sin; no one will be able to. There will be
no harm
because holiness will be their way of life. Friends, the rescues that await your embracing the way of holiness are worth the price and then some. And there are more fruits still.