All throughout the Bible, God calls His people to holiness – “be holy as I am holy."  But what is holiness?  Is it being perfect?  Is it never sinning?  Or is it more than that?  It is critical for us to have a right understanding of what God’s call for human holiness is all about, and this is what I see in God’s Word: it is an invitation into His divine intimacy.

In today’s episode, we will highlight two key assurances the Bible provides in 1 John to help us as followers of Jesus to know that we can be certain of our relationship with God and of our standing before God.

Practicing sin is different than committing a one-off mistake.  Practicing sin is different than giving in to a single moment of weakness. Jesus’ life of sinless perfection is the ideal to which we are to aspire.  As we are born of God, we take our nature from Him, and thus, we aspire to His righteousness by practicing it. 

Today, we will wrap up our multi-episode look at John chapter 9, and the example we have in the man that Jesus healed of blindness.  This man barely knows Jesus, but his life has been transformed by Jesus, and so he shares his simple faith with boldness. 

We all have a story to tell.  If you have been saved and redeemed by Jesus into the family of God, then you have a story to tell!  Don’t be scared off from sharing your faith just because someone may ask you a question that you cannot answer.  And don’t be afraid to honestly admit what you do not know.

One of the primary fears that can keep us from sharing our Christian faith with others is the fear that someone will ask us a question about Jesus, or God, or suffering, or anything – and we won’t know the answer.  There is grace for this, and if we make an honest mistake, God is big enough to handle it.

An honest “I don’t know” is an asset in faith-sharing, not a liability.  Don’t be afraid of it.  We have permission to admit what we do not know or fully understand about Jesus.  The man we meet in John 9 is not hindered in his ability to share his faith by what he does not know, but he was empowered to share what he DID know with confidence, because it was rooted in an undeniable, personal experience with Jesus!

Stories like the one in John 9 give me great hope, because they encourage me that anyone can share their faith effectively without having to be an expert in Christian apologetics.

Psalm 136 provides us with a simple template for composing our own, personalized Psalm of worship to God.  I want to invite you to think with me – to imagine with me, from your own personal experience of the goodness and faithfulness of God in your life...

Are there any specific moments or instances in your own personal history for which the Lord is worthy of worship? Of adoration? of thanksgiving through song?  In today's episode, I want to do is stoke your imaginations and fuel your memories for praising God for His past goodness, deliverance, and provision for you!