Holiness

This time of year for our church is a time for corporate prayer and fasting. Last year we did the 15 day Daniel fast as we prayed for others and for God to increase the Kingdom. This year we are doing a 7 day fast of water and unleavened bread as we seek to become more holy. 

This morning we talked about holiness and how to become more holy.  We read about Moses in Exodus 32. God was going to destroy the Israeli people because of their sin.  Moses pleaded with God to not distroy them and God changed His mind. But as Moses went back to the people he then saw what God saw, the atrociousness of their sin, and punished them.  Our pastor challenged us in this area. As a society, do we look at some sin as really bad and other sin as not that bad? And on a more personal level, do we truly look at our own sin as God looks at it?   Later in Exodus, Moses come down from Mount Sinai and his face shown. Moses had been connected to God and talking with God and doing God's work all along, but why did his face shine after this particular encounter?  Was it because he finally saw sin as God saw sin? Matthew 5:14 says 'we are the light of the world'.  In order to be a light others see we have to take sin as serious as God does; not brushing it under the rug or ignoring certain areas of our life, but rather looking closly and turning from it.  The Bible uses the word leaven to represent sin, so during the next 7 days we will be cutting out the leaven in our physical diet in order to symbolize how we will let God examine our lives and highlight any sin we need to turn from.  In seeing sin as God sees sin and humbling ourselves to learn from Him I am hoping we, like Moses, can shine brightly for the world. 

Day 1 -sins of thought

Satan frequently targets our minds with inappropriate, sinful thoughts. My take away verse for today is Matthew 15:18-20.  Lord, let my heart be a reflection of yours.