The Pursuit of Holiness: Getting Started

I moved to a new home in Feb­ru­ary and in my pack­ing, came across The Pur­suit of Holi­ness by Jerry Bridges. I KNEW I had it, but had for­got­ten where I put it. When I got into my new space, I placed the book and the accom­pa­ny­ing study guide in a place where I could NOT mis­place it. Now, I’m dig­ging in.

In the pref­ace, Bridges says:

…the pur­suit of holi­ness is a joint ven­ture between God and the Chris­t­ian. No one can attain any degree of holi­ness with­out God work­ing work­ing in his life, but just as surely no one will attain it with­out effort on his own part. God has made it pos­si­ble for us to walk in holi­ness. But He has given to us the respon­si­bil­ity of doing the walk­ing. He does not do that for us.

We can­not say we’re Chris­tians if we take no actions toward con­form­ing to Christ. There are things that WE must do (or not do) in striv­ing to attain holi­ness. Funny thing is, I rarely (if ever) hear Chris­tians talk about being holy, liv­ing holy lives, or pur­su­ing holi­ness. It’s as if once God saved us, we think we can wear HOLY across our chests like a super­hero. I don’t hear much talk about what being holy looks like in every­day life. More often than not, it’s “God knows my heart!” or, “I’m still grow­ing in that area!” But no talk about how to tackle our sin­ful issues and con­quer them by God’s grace. Bridges says there are two rea­sons for this:

1. We don’t want to face up to our respon­si­bil­ity. We pre­fer to pray to God for vic­tory when we know we should be act­ing in obe­di­ence.
2. We do not under­stand the proper dis­tinc­tion between God’s pro­vi­sion and our own respon­si­bil­ity for holi­ness. We strug­gle with what we’re sup­posed to do and what we’re sup­posed to rely on God to do.

When the word pur­sue is used in ref­er­ence to holi­ness, it sug­gests two things: First, that EFFORT and DILIGENCE are required. A pur­suit is not a pur­suit at all with­out EFFORT and a com­mit­ment to see­ing the pur­suit through. Sec­ond, this pur­suit is a task that will last our whole lives. It does not end. We will never attain per­fec­tion in this life, but we have to keep striv­ing for it until we breathe our last breath. We strive to con­form to the will of God in one area of life…and surely he’ll reveal our need for holi­ness in another area. We will ALWAYS be pur­su­ing holiness…that is, if we’re com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing Christ.

And that’s just a part of the pref­ace, ya’ll. LOL

Going on through­out the book, we’ll dis­cover what holi­ness is, what our respon­si­bil­ity is for liv­ing a holy life, why we strug­gle so hard to defeat sin,and what God has pro­vided to help us over come it.

GOOD STUFF! If you don’t have the book, get it. But even if you don’t, I hope you’ll keep read­ing as I go through it.

I’d love to know your thoughts so far..so reg­is­ter and leave a com­ment. I know reg­is­ter­ing is a pain, but it cuts down on spam…and I HATE SPAM!!

The Pur­suit of Holi­ness: Get­ting Started Filed under The Pursuit of Holiness - Jerry Bridges | Comments Off