Houses & Holiness
One year ago, we moved into our little house on the prairie.
Moving day brought such a sense of relief, as our previous home had sat on the market for months without so much as a nibble. After finally taking the house off the market in February 2020 – when I was nine months pregnant and on the cusp of a global pandemic –God showed up in a way only He can. He provided a buyer to us who just so happened to have exactly the house we were looking for in our quest to downsize.
So, we switched house with our buyer, and settled in on April 20th with that wonderful sense of relief and grateful for all God had done.
The enemy didn’t wait long to come knocking, though, in his quest to destroy that relief. To steal that gratitude. The passage in John 10:10 that says, “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” started to hit pretty close to home. On summer walks through the neighborhood, the enemy took every opportunity to draw my eyes away from God and towards other houses and neighborhoods, whispering, “Maybe if you’d just waited a little longer you could’ve gotten into one of these newer houses. A prettier house. Maybe you could’ve gotten into one of these nicer pockets of the neighborhood.”
It didn’t take long for envy to replace my relief. And when that happens, it so easily seeps into other areas. My thoughts began to sound a lot like this: “That mom has nicer clothes than me. Her kids have nicer clothes than my kids. That family has a nicer car than we do. And they take fancier vacations than we do. That writer is more successful than me. She has so many more Instagram followers than I do.”
And on and on.
This is not a fun way to live, friends. Maybe you’ve been there too. And try as we might to remind ourselves just how blessed we are, I was convicted recently that combatting this is going to take more than a few simple verbal reminders.
It’s not just a head issue. It’s a heart issue.
It’s a holiness issue.
One of the best decisions I ever made was saying “yes” to a woman at my church when she asked me to participate in a women’s theology class. If I’m being completely honest, I was more excited about the opportunity to have a few hours to myself once a month than the material we would be covering. But God has worked powerfully through that material, anyway, radically changing the way I view almost every area of my faith. Our most recent book, “The Hole in Our Holiness” by Kevin DeYoung, encouraged me to take my struggle more seriously—to do more than just remind myself that “I have it pretty good.”
It encouraged me to fight my sin. To pursue holiness.
What exactly is holiness? DeYoung writes that “at it’s most basic, holiness means separation. It is a spatial term. When someone or something is holy it is set apart.” As Christians, we are holy in Christ. Yet, there is a hole. A hole that DeYoung describes like this— “The hole in our holiness is that we don’t really care much about it. Passionate exhortation to pursue gospel-driven holiness is barely heard in most of our churches.”
So many of us are choosing to rest only in God’s grace while forgetting that He also calls us to be holy as He is holy. To obey His commands. I don’t have time to dive deeply into justification and sanctification, but DeYoung gives this important reminder over and over in his book: “stressing the necessity of personal holiness should not undermine in any way our confidence in justification in faith alone.” Jesus’ death on the cross did what our obedience never could—but we are still called to pursue holiness! To fight sin and obey the commands of scripture. (I encourage you to read the book for yourself for a more complete picture of justification, sanctification, and holiness. You won’t be disappointed!)
This was a wake up call I never knew I needed. It’s challenged me to pay closer attention to the commands in scripture not to covet and to be content with where God has placed me in this season of life. To fight my sin with the Sword of the Spirit (the Bible). To confess my sin and ask God for help when I’m struggling.
Could you use such a wakeup call, too?
I’ll leave you with two pieces of encouragement:
- Don’t be afraid to pursue holiness! “It’s not pietism, legalism, or fundamentalism to take holiness seriously. It’s the way of all those who have been called to a holy calling by a holy God” (Kevin DeYoung).
- When someone shares with you a sin they are fighting or asks for help pursing holiness in an area of their life, don’t downplay it. “Don’t beat yourself up over this,” might sound encouraging, but is it really? Could you instead come alongside them, open the Bible with them, and pray with and for them?
I highly recommend diving into Kevin DeYoung’s book “The Hole in Our Holiness” for a more complete picture of holiness. You can find it here:
