What is Holy?

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the Student of Life Podcast. Listen, we're going to get into so many transferable truths throughout the content of these episodes that I believe God is going to use to help you apply, because he's going to reveal what's already been there the entire time. Enjoy. Yo, what's up? So this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I'm your host of the Student of Life Podcast, and we're going to jump straight into this one today. As always, we're going to call this one What Is Holiness? What is holiness? Like, what does that even mean? Is it even possible to be holy in this body, in this world? And so we're going to keep it very basic. Like I say, I have the audience I believe that God has called me to reach in this space. There are a lot more appropriate theological and very deep things out there in the place. I'm a very practical person. I do love studying some of those things and some things I don't, but I do. Because, you know, I want to make sure I understand the entire Bible. And it's a living— it's something that we would— let me back up. I will probably never fully understand and comprehend it as long as I'm living because it is living and active. But I have a pursuit to study, to show myself approved unto God and to do his will. Most importantly, not just for knowledge, but to live this thing out the way God intended it. So that being said, Uh, we're gonna unpack, you know, what is holiness? Is it even possible? Uh, is this something that's optional? You know, because truthfully, according to the scripture, we already know that it's not. It's actually a requirement, uh, because without holiness no one can see the Lord. So, so what does that mean? What does it truly mean to be holy in this body? And like I say, in this world, uh, wrestling with our humanity and our flesh. So let's unpack it in its most simplest terms. To be holy, when God said, you know, be ye holy for I am holy, and then we look at other verses throughout, throughout the passage of scripture, you know, you go to Titus 3, 1 Corinthians 6, uh, 1 Peter 1, and I'm gonna drop these in there, you know, uh, 1 Corinthians, uh, Romans 12, I mean Romans 12, um, you can look at Romans 6, you know, it's a lot of verses out there that talks about it. In the context of just holiness. And kultivat, you can go to James. And so in the simplest terms, it is to be set apart. And one example, and I pray to God this sticks, but one example we can look at is think about all of us, I hope, brush our teeth every day. You know, I pray that we brush our teeth every day, at least morning and night. Some of us brush our teeth, you know, multiple times a day. Since I've been on Invisalign, trust me, I've had to brush my teeth like 3, 4, 5 times a day. Nevertheless, when— all right, I'm using my wife for example. All right. When— now I have mistakenly used her toothbrush a few times before. And I, you know, every time— I'm not gonna— maybe like 2 or 3. And she throws it away, of course. She's like, "That's just nasty. I love you. Yes, we kiss. We do all of that. But that's my toothbrush. Like, you don't— don't use my toothbrush." And I believe that she's like that. For one, that is nasty to just be using people's toothbrushes all willy-nilly, uh, but nevertheless, that toothbrush, it has been set apart for her mouth. It's been set apart to brush her teeth. It belongs to her, not me, not the kids, uh, not our— not company, not guests, or none of that. It has been set apart. So out of all the toothbrushes out there, that particular one has been chosen and set apart to brush her teeth, to clean her mouth. Okay, even with me and her husband, it's still not set apart for me. It's her mouth. It would be extremely nasty, un— like, it wouldn't even be sanitary for us to just have one toothbrush per family. That, that's nasty even thinking about it. Like, she's using it, I'm using it, the kids are using it. Uh, like our two boys and our daughter. Like, and then to even take it a step further, when company comes over, they need to brush their teeth. Hey, I have a toothbrush for you, you can use it. So everybody's using this toothbrush. It— that means it hasn't been set apart for anything. And that's how our life looks sometimes within the context, as we are saying we believe God and we are believers and we're maturing in Christ. We're saying that, okay, I'm set apart, but our lives doesn't look like holiness. Now I see a lot of content out there, you know, like I say, people point to God used imperfect people, and that's true, he did. And then also too, a lot of times these imperfect people, we have the Bible when these people didn't. So in context, what we have to be careful of is like, yes, we're going to mess up, we live in this body, but we are perfect in Christ. We live in this body, we are holy in Christ, But however, we do wrestle with our humanity. So also too, although these people messed up, and you know, we can read the accounts and God used them, so we should never get to a point where like when people mess up, like, oh, that they are false prophet, oh, they this, this, and that, that they just messed up, that sin is present. But the thing is also too, we can look at their lives and God is also showing us, yes, they messed up, yes, I used them in spite of all the things, but you don't have to be— do that. A lot of these people didn't have what you have, especially in the Old Testament. Now in the New Testament, after Jesus ascended back and he left us an advocate and a helper, we still even see some of those people, you know, they had their, their struggles and, and things like that. We can go to Apostle Paul, you know, in Romans 7 when he talked about, uh, you know, when I try to do evil— I mean, when I try to do good, evil is always present. And this wrestle, because he was trying to fix the flesh with the flesh. Then in Romans 8, we see the beauty because he's now seeing, okay, oh man, wait, I can't fix my flesh with my flesh. I can't be holy in my flesh, but I can be holy walking, being in tune, yielding in the prompting of the Holy Spirit, habitually listening and being, uh, led by the Holy Spirit because I've accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. And also too, I have made a conscious decision to die to myself. I have— I am cultivating a lifestyle of holiness. It wasn't that Paul was trying to keep the law, but he was cultivating a life of holiness because the Holy Spirit, he's perfect. The Holy Spirit, it— he is God. He is God. So Paul is showing us that, yes, because I have the Holy Spirit, I'm not trying to keep the letter of the law. I'm free from that. The letter of the law, it, it kills. But because I, I am living according to the Holy Spirit, I'm, I'm following the promptness. And I believe we can see this, I believe, in Galatians 5. I'm following in the prompted— the— I'm yielding to the, the prompting of the Holy Spirit. But we also can make a conscious effort to yield to the prompting of our flesh, our humanity. So whichever one that we habitually follow, truthfully That's who we have been set apart for. And a lot of us, we, we, we wrestle with the concept because, like I say, it is very much present that, listen, I get— I have wrong thoughts. I have, uh, sometimes things try to come up, you know, desires that come up that I know it's not of God. My wife was just gone for a while. Listen, I had to wrestle with some things, some thoughts. That doesn't mean that— it didn't mean that I wanted to cheat on my wife or commit adultery or anything like that. But these thoughts come up. I had to be intentional about not watching things. I had to be intentional about not going certain places, certain conversations that I was having because my wife was away. Listen, we live in a world, man, with influences, and the devil doesn't play fair. But at the same time, although I had those thoughts, I just cast them down. I just follow the scripture, man. Listen, this is not of God. I, like, I knew this is not a guy because I'm always renewing my mind. So, man, this is not of God. Cast this down, um, man, get this out of here through the power of God, you know, making this— these thoughts obedient into Christ. And then it's like, okay, cultivating that lifestyle. But I had to do something. I just didn't sit there and meditate on it and ponder on it. And then to take it even further, there are times, truthfully, like at work, I, I might not always handle things appropriate. I can't just go around talking about Jesus but I can live it. I can live out the scripture. I can demonstrate, represent Christ in my work environment, or just in certain places, um, like at a game. I'm not saying that you always have to talk about God. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that you always should be representing God. Because it's times I'm like, man, listen, I don't really want to talk about the, the deepness of the word of God. I want to pay attention to this, this football game or this basketball game that's in front of me. Like, that's just what I want to focus on, and I don't believe God has a problem with that. But if I get to screaming and cursing and shouting and acting like the world, not acting like a believer and representing Christ, okay, that's a problem. But if I'm enjoying the game and cheering on my kids or cheering on whoever or where I'm at, and you know, I'm drinking a Gatorade and I'm just mingling with people, not sinning or anything, it's nothing wrong with that. Like, I don't have to just be like, oh, okay, let's talk about God because this is in front of— I mean, there's a time for everything. And, and sometimes we just have to learn boundaries. We have to learn, okay, like, man, okay, like, listen, we're gonna get and talk about the Lord, but can we just demonstrate him right now? But at the same time enjoy that— that is a part of holiness. Now, is it beneficial to my spirit? No. Watching a basketball game is not beneficial to my spirit. But if we are truly living this thing out, I probably— if I'm— that doesn't mean that I have— I'm not praying. I still don't have a heart posture of prayer. I could have had this devotion an hour earlier before the game or early in the morning. So holiness is not something that you turn on and off, but the, the— what my mindset, with my— what just the fixation is like, my heart posture, my mind is always fixated on him, but I'm living it out in different contexts all the time. I'm just not a person that's going around always preaching Jesus. Sometimes it's just simply just being like, just like, listen, like, just be, just be, do as he said. That is also a form of holiness. But like I say, in that same environment, if I'm up here cursing, I'm saying things, being negative, um, you know, getting drunk, acting just like a straight fool, I am not representing holiness. It does not look like I've been set apart. Kind of going back to the, the toothbrush example, truthfully I'm just letting everybody use me. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not being holy because God has made me holy or said that I'm holy. I'm not living through by the prompting of the Holy Spirit. That's not even a representation of the Holy Spirit. And if I'm habitually doing it, then truthfully, I, I'm demonstrating to you that I'm really not holy, that I'm really not a child of God, because that is a heart posture of habitually practicing dishonor to God. So how can I be for God when I'm habitually practicing dishonor to him and from, for him. So holiness is a true mark of every believer. It's not that they're going to— it's not that we are going to be perfect. It's not about perfection, but it should be maturity. It should be a mature lifestyle of saying, hey man, this person is looking more and more like Christ day by day. It's— you— the goal is not just to get better. The goal is to look like Christ. Let me say it again. The goal is not just to get better in the Christian life. The goal is to look like Christ, because you can get better day by day. You have good moral people that are better, but they don't look like Christ. So the goal for a believer is to truly look like Christ, is to truly, uh, have a heart posture of saying, man, like, I— God is refining me, he's pruning me. I am working out my own salvation with fear and trembling. We are told that in the scripture. So I have to make a conscious decision to say, hey, listen, yes, God has set me apart, but also too, let me live an intentional lifestyle of the conscious decision that like, no, I can't really partake in certain things no more that is totally contrary to the word of God, that's totally contrary to the yielding of the Holy Spirit. A lot of us keep habitually saying— habitually taking the Holy Spirit into the strip club and saying, hey man, you know, I'm just kind of rough. And it's a habitually hard posture. We habitually keep sleeping with people that we don't have no business sleeping with. And yes, God can be working on us and convicting us, but what I'm saying is that if, if this is a habitual practice with no conviction— because see, guilt— let me— help me, Holy Spirit. Conviction is not condemnation. A lot of us are living in condemnation. Conviction is like, hey, listen, you— what you're about to do, what you're doing is wrong. Holy Spirit said, I, I want you to stop that. I want you to make this right. Even if you do get it wrong, hey, look, don't go make this same decision again. Don't go make this, because some stuff is not even mistakes, it's just habitual bad decisions. And until we be honest with ourselves and truly go to God and say, God, listen, I'm struggling in this area and I want to do these things, but I know that I also want to live for you, man. Listen, you got to get a part of a community, a local church, not just a fun live environment, but a, an environment that's going to truly challenge you and hold you accountable through the power of God, not to beat you up, not to humiliate you, but to truly hold you accountable in your maturity, in your lifestyle, and your pursuit of holiness. And so we have to play a part in this. So like I say, going back, there are just certain things that I'm not going to do, I don't want to do anymore. And then there are things that I still truthfully wrestle with because Tim Pratt Jr. humanity likes those. But I know I have authority and power over my humanity through the power of the Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done and the Advocate that he sent back, that God sent back for us. The Holy Spirit is not coming and going, so we have a responsibility to truly look at our lifestyles and say, hey, does my lifestyle truly represent Christ? Is my lifestyle truly representing that I have been cleansed and that I maintain a heart posture of repentance and I'm looking more and more like Christ day by day? Or does my lifestyle look so fickle to the point where really a person can't tell if I'm a believer or not? They can't tell if I'm Christ-like or not. Because one thing about it, when you look at a lot of these people in the Bible that we point to, that's what they were. That's the key word. They were a murderer. They were an adulteress. They were uh, persecuting Christians. They, they were full of just evil. They were. But they, they were hothead. They, they, they were these things. But on and on and on, as we look at their life in the context of scripture, we've seen that they looked more and more and more like Christ. We can't use that as a crutch to say, okay, yeah, I was these things, I'm just getting better, I'm rough around the edges, and so on. And things like that. No, no, no. A lot of times we hide behind that and we use that as an excuse because we truly don't want to do the work of denying self. We don't want to die to self. And that's the tension. If most of us are honest, that's the tension we feel. Our humanity, our flesh loves what it loves. It will always oppose the things of God. But then the Holy Spirit, when he comes in us and indwells in us, he, he, um, help me, Holy Ghost, He is helping us overcome these things. He's helping us overcome the power of sin in our lives because truthfully we have been freed from that, if that makes sense. And so to make this practical, because man, words and wordplay are so much everything, sin is very much present. We have not obtained our glorified bodies yet. So sin is very much present in our lives. We have not been freed from the presence of sin yet, but at the same time, we have power over it because of what Christ has done and the yielding and prompting of the Holy Spirit within us to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit, to live out and show the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, is what I'm trying to communicate through the power of God. So this is holiness. So going back to the toothbrush example, if you look at yourself, have you truly been set apart for God to do his will, to do his work through the power of the Holy Spirit? Or are you letting everything outside of God use you and saying that you still have been set apart for just him? So in other words, is everybody using your toothbrush? Or are you just using it? Like, think about that. Is everybody using your toothbrush, or are you just using it because you have chosen it to be set apart just for your mouth? Because like I say, that's truthfully a lot of our lives look like that, and that is very nasty. But think about in the eyes of God how that looks like. So we can say all day Hey, I'm a child of God. We can say anything with our mouths this day. I can say right now I'm a millionaire. That don't make me one. I can tell you right now, man, I'm a millionaire. And I understand speaking things that— but as of right now, I'm not a millionaire. Now, I thank God, you know, yes, I have done good for the most part financially, but I'm not a millionaire. Not at this moment. But I can say that all day because I said don't make it true. What makes it true is when I actually obtain it. When I'm at— when I'm at— when I actually have a million dollars network or whatever in my bank account. But this is the thing, we have obtained the Holy Spirit through the accepting of Jesus Christ, the finished work that he done on the, on the cross, or whatever you want to call it. Some people call it a tree or whatever, but we have, we have accepted it was in him. We have, we have obtained the power of the Holy Spirit and dwelling in us when Jesus Christ finished that work. A long time ago. But at the same time, when the Holy Spirit comes in, he's not going to force us to do certain things. He's not going to force us to live holy. It's a prompting, it's a tender relationship that we have to yield to and say, okay, God, help me live out this thing through the power of the Holy Spirit. Help me live a life of— help me maintain a life of holiness, perfecting in my holiness because of the fear that I have for God. Not a fear that we think about, but the reverence that I have for God. I want to exhibit an increase in my spiritual faithfulness and fruitfulness every day, every day, because I am considering myself— I, I am considering myself dead to sin, and I choose to not revert, not revert back to a simple lifestyle that basically, uh, was totally against God. I hope this makes sense. So we have to really understand that in its simplest forms, holiness is just a set apart for God to do his will. And we can do that through the power of the Holy Spirit and also to the conscious self-decision to say, okay, I am going to die to self. I know that's not technically in the Bible, but it's basically living a crucified life. I am crucifying this flesh. I am going to war with it. Will not have dominion over me. And I apologize for the birds in the back. I'm not going to edit that out. But it is a continuous mindset that I, I am going to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I am going to do that because I am cultivating, cultivating a lifestyle of holiness through the renewing of my mind, being connected to community, dedication and consecration, you know, praying with God. And just conscious decisions to say that I am going to live holy for God because he has set me apart and he has equipped me to do this through the power of the Holy Spirit and because of what our Lord and Savior did. That's in this simplest form, simplest forms of what it means. So I mean, listen, I hope this blessed you. I hope it challenges us. I really do. I really hope it challenges us, man, because a lot of us, like I said, we cannot keep making these excuses, uh, to just live fickle lives. And, uh, we have to be honest with that tension. And I, I have a lot of content out there. I preached on it a lot, um, with the tension of, like I said, our humanity versus the Holy Spirit. Um, but feel free to hit me up, man. I am— I, I look— I love to talk to people. I love coffee shop meetups. We could do Zoom, we can do phone calls or whatever. But, and, and this is something that, like I said, I'm not preaching or teaching at you from this. Listen, man, I'm— I deal with these things too. But the difference is, is maintaining a heart posture of repentance. And I know that I can't keep this in my own strength, so I know that I have to have an intentionality to truly stay submitted to God. Because like I say, there are some things that Tim Pratt Jr., um, still desires to do, still desires to see, still desires to be connected with. That's my humanity, that's my flesh. But my spirit man, no, no, it's like, no, I don't want no parts of that. And when we don't respect and understand the intention and properly examine it and deal with it according to the Bible, most of the time this is where we always go wrong in what leads to either self-righteousness or falling back into that lifestyle. Hey, what's up? I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this Student Life podcast today. If this content has impacted you in any kind of way, please take some time to share on your social media feeds. And also, if you want to connect with me or just learn more about me, go over to www.timprattjr.org. Once again, thanks.