The Different

7/15/2016

Hebrews 12.14 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

In my understanding of the word holy, I’ve come to learn it means: other or different. The life with Christ should be different than the life apart from Him. We might read the verse this way: Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be different; without difference no one will see the Lord. What is it that makes a little Christ different?

Difference begins with how we see the world around us, and, how we view God. If God is our God that automatically makes us different. But there is more to the story. Difference is how we live with a right view of God. God makes a difference in how we see, how we talk, and how we live. He makes a difference in how we think. The Christian is not like the garden-variety human: he is different.

The different see others differently as well. They are not a threat, they are on a journey. They have something to add, but they haven’t made their destination yet. Others, to the different, are assets, not liabilities because they are made in the image of God. God has planted eternity in their hearts too. (Ecc.3.11) And though the sins of others are often grievous, they are sought with a different heart with a hope that they can, with God, somehow make a difference in this world.

I think we Christians labor too much over words like holy. I think we paint our words up in mysterious tones and cause people to think they know what it means, but they aren’t really sure. It’s called Christianese – a language spoken only in the Church that confuses and confounds the others who don’t speak it. And often the ones who do speak it, (almost superstitiously) speak with the words and phrases they use that are pressed into meanings that are vague and hard to understand. Like answering questions no one is asking.

It really boils down to this: who is your god? If God is your God, then you’re on the right track because He is the only God who has gone out of His way to draw you into relationship with Him. But a relationship with God is different. He speaks, we listen, and then we go and do as instructed. Simple. A different relationship is one of trust and obedience to the extreme because the different understands, will have it no other way.

Holiness is difference. Holiness is other. Holiness is recognizable because it is so noticeably different than religion or other human effort, because holiness is counter to all the world has to offer. Difference is ridiculed by the world as naïve and childish, but to the different, they’d have it no other way.

Father, because You are my Father, You make me different. But Lord, I don’t just want to be different, I want to be different and make a difference in the sphere in which I live. May I be radically different in my approach to You that I may make a radical difference in all I do and say, for Your sake, Amen.