This month’s visiting teaching message focuses on how we can become instruments in the Lord’s hands by practicing holiness. Today, I would like to examine what, exactly, holiness is.
The bible dictionary notes that holy items were those “set apart for a sacred purpose.” The same can be said for people. Like many items in the temple, we, too, have a sacred purpose – to do His work and to return to Him. We were sent here to be tested. We have a choice of whether to be common and worldly, or to be different, to be set apart. The bible dictionary also notes that the word holy “came to refer to moral character.” Thus, holiness refers to our character, to how we conduct ourselves in righteousness.
President Faust notes that “holiness is the strength of the soul.” I like that phrase, because, well, sometimes I feel quite weak. I like to have strong things around me, and I like to have strong attributes – or, at least, to strive for them. To have that sort of strength, however, means that we must be willing to stand up, to bear burdens, and to serve the Lord. We must not faint in making the right choices, and we must not shrink from the path of righteousness.
In Leviticus, the Lord provides the Law of Holiness, a ceremonial attempt to secure a holiness of character. In this way, the Lord tried to teach through obedience to His laws. But this attempt failed, like so many of the Mosaic laws, because of the difficulty in resolving the letter of the law with the spirit of the law. The Jewish people got caught up in following the exactness and missed the point; they focused so hard on individual trees that they could not recognize the great forest at their disposal.
Have you ever been so caught up in the exactness of your callings or your duties that you missed opportunities to serve? Too often, we see it in our quorums and societies, people looking at numbers instead of people. We ask, why aren’t we at 100% in our home or visiting teaching, instead of asking, why didn’t this sister or family get served? We are occasionally guilty of following the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
According to President Faust, holiness comes from both faith and obedience; having one attribute alone is not enough. The Israleites sought only obedience and missed the faith. Yet faith alone cannot make us holy; we must act. We must trust in the Lord, and we must be obedient to His commands and to His actions. We must serve Him with all of our heart. Then, President Faust tells us, our hearts will be purged from the profane and the worldly.
We can become holy as we serve the Lord. As we turn towards him, as we follow His commandments in faith, we purge our hearts of the worldly desires that occasionally enter in and become more like Him: holy.
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