Philippians 4:5-7
“Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
This week I have been at a leadership course and the Hope conference at Laidlaw which has been a stimulating and challenging week.
One of the speakers spoke on relational holiness and I think it is worth sharing a few of her thoughts given that we have been looking at holiness this year as a church.
As a church we have been looking at the purity culture found in ancient Israel which was a core identity marker for the Israelites but our holiness comes from our attachment to Jesus.
When we look at the examples that Jesus used to illustrate the kingdom of God we see he used very irregular “impure” things eg Luke 13:20-21 the woman (regularly unclean) making bread with leaven (fermented, also unclean) which was hidden in the flour and went everywhere… spread and permeated everything.
We are called to remain attached to Jesus and one way in which we do this is in paying attention to our emotions. Intense emotions can be a guideline to where we are growing deeper in our relationship with God. The challenge is to distinguish between healthy emotions and not allow unhealthy ones to dominate or unhinge us from our relationship with Jesus.
Very often unhealthy emotions are rooted in fear and when fear or anxiety takes hold of us we are unable to be calm or remain attached to Jesus.
Instead of running away from our emotions I invite you to use them as an opportunity for prayer and to identify the root fear and take it to God to remain holy and wholly attached to Jesus.