How Tall Are You?

It’s hard to be holy.  I don’t know how they did it back then in the good old days.  They had so much focus; they had so much drive.

They relished in their new life, they put their hand to the plow and they never looked back.  They just lived in victory after victory after victory.

But me, I can’t hold a candle to those guys.  I have a candle, but the flame seems to flicker as the breeze blows back and forth, and once in a while, I’m not going to lie, my candle blows out. But I do have a hidden lighter to reignite the wick. For appearances sake.

Their armor must have been made of the finest material and any advances from the devil, from the recesses of their hearts, and from the flashing lights of the world’s pleasures just bounced right off of that breastplate.  Their helmets were securely on and that sword was sharp and swift.

It’s hard to be holy. I want to be like them, I really do.  But I can’t seem to figure out the formula, to follow protocol; and I have yet to unlock the secret code of how they we able to live and lead that holy life. 

I mean, just read through the New Testament and all you see it the church, you know the called out ones, the body of Christ, those reborn believers living in a manner worth of the calling.  Wait a minute.

The New Testament is full of admonitions, urgings, exhortations, some condemnations, and even a few warnings regarding the way that they were living. Why, they weren’t consistenly doing so well, now were they? 

I guess it is not as easy as I had thought, now is it? It seems that these once hard to climb up their pedestal saints of old weren’t so high up there after all.  It appears that they didn’t even have lifts in their shoes, or sandals I suppose.

And all of a sudden, I am not feeling so bad.  And it isn’t like I am lowering the standard of holiness, I realize that I may have been beating myself up more than I really need to as I made this worn path leading to righteousness.  It is hard to be holy after all.

I have tried very hard at times, and then not so hard at other times, attempting to keep above the fray and come to find out that we are the fray.  It is not an excuse; it is just the way it seems to be.

So grateful we have the Holy One who keeps building in us His holiness.  Turns out, we are not supposed to be “our” holy; we are to be “His” holy.  Let’s just live like we know we should.