³Guide older women (and men) into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. The Good News Translation says we should behave as people who live a holy life.

Many of us shy away from the word “holy”, because we don’t qualify to be called holy. We know God is holy. We know Jesus is holy and that their Spirit is holy too, that’s why he’s called the Holy Spirit.

So, when Paul says we should live holy, I already miss the bus. I feel bad because I don’t make it. I wonder out loud whether I would ever make it through the gates of heaven. I don’t think so. Holiness is not for me.

But I suspect we feel like that because we don’t know exactly what holiness means. The original Hebrew and Greek word for “holy” means to be set apart. We who are children of God are required to set ourselves apart for God. We have to keep ourselves for God.

That means we sit on the side of God and not on the side of the wrong things. But we do know that we visit the bad side now and then and do the wrong things. But that shouldn’t stop us from living a holy life.

People always talk about “the road to holiness”, and that is so. Holiness is a road we travel where we learn to miss the target less and less – and to do more and more what God wants us to do.

It is not like a door that you open and walk out of the unholy room into the holy room. It’s more like a process where we learn how to cut those wrong things from our lives one by one. Some are easy, but some wrong things that we do have become such an intrinsic part of our lives that we struggle to get rid of them.

Where do you start on the road to holiness? First, by sitting down with pen and paper and asking the Holy Spirit to point out the wrong things in your life. Usually this isn’t that difficult. The wrong things in our lives pop up quickly.

Then we have to start making plans to get these things out of our lives. With some we might need to get help. Some wrong things are planted so deeply in us that we are too weak to pull them out. Ask the Spirit to make you bump into people who can help you.

We don’t have to be afraid of the word “holy”. We shouldn’t think that we will never get to holy. It is there for each of us. There are places where we are already set aside for God, places where we are holy. However, there are still places where we trip and fall, where we are part of the world and not part of God’s world.

Let’s make a stand and dig all the wrong things out of our lives. Let’s try our best and plan to make the right choices and do the right things in all areas of our lives.

Then we will show the world that we know God and love Jesus.

Scripture
Titus 2:1-5

Reflection
Where are you missing holiness?
Write it down.
How can you get rid of the spots?

Prayer
Father, I want to live holy before You. I want to be set apart in everything for You, so that others can see You in my life. Please help me recognise the spots in my life. Please help me make plans so that I will trip up less. I ask this in Jesus’ Name.