What does it mean to abandon yourself to holiness? ...when we come to God...wanting to see where we're wrong in the way we relate more than we want someone else to admit how they're wrong in the way they relate to us...including God. But it goes further. We're abandoning ourselves to holiness when we come to God wanting not only to see where we're wrong but also to claim the privilege of letting others experience how God relates to them by the way we relate to them....(in the Bible) we're being told to abandon ourselves to holiness, to share in the way God relates, with radical other-centeredness, with terrible sacrifice, with humble love...
But we'll never even come close to God's example of love until we clearly understand that sin is relational...relational sin is anything we do for the primary purpose of getting something for ourselves...that means that the primary thought behind everything we do is to trust Him with our deepest needs and longings, to bring Him pleasure by putting all our eggs in His basket, to fix our hope for everything we hold dear on who He is and what He is doing and what He will yet do...
...when you abandon yourself to holiness, you think more of how you fall short of God's holy way of relating than of how others fail you or how badly you you feel or how difficult your life may be...but your focus on your own failure does not make you hate yourself, not when you're relating to your Papa...it makes you hate your sin, not yourself...and this focus doesn't leave you discouraged and feeling heavy. Broken, yes. Despairing, no. You know that purging lights up the path of holiness, the road paved by grace that leads into God's presence, into Papa's lap...
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