WHY HOLINESS IS HARD.

Let’s be real for a second. We are a group of believers trying to get to heaven, but we keep falling short, over and over and over again. We all know that heaven, our final destination, our home beyond our home, is full of cleanliness, precious metals, and above saintly holiness. If it has all these, that means that our gate pass to heaven is a Holy Soul. A clean, pure, non-detestable, non-disgusting soul. But look at what we have become. Dirty and unbelievably filthy. Just like pigs in mud, we have soiled our souls with nasty habits. And because confronting ourselves is too hard to bear, it is better if we just kept rolling in the pits of dirt. It is, of course, the path of least resistance since getting clean requires a lot of mental and physical work, with the repercussions of this decision being felt emotionally. Something that we fear having to go through.

But there are a few brave souls out there willing to at least give it a try. Willing to change their ways despite their weaknesses. Trying to get to heaven. Regardless of what that means having to leave behind. Regardless of how much it will hurt having to leave behind. And it always hurts leaving one for another, always. In a world of no guarantees, you aren’t sure if your choice of leaving this world for God’s will be worth it. You aren’t sure if you will even survive this world if you choose heaven. How could you? How could we? When everything that pays for our daily bread nowadays has a slight touch of the devil?

The purpose of this article is to face our fears. It is to give some answers to why we feel attaining Holiness is hard. If we can at least put into words why we feel this is so, we can get one step closer to attaining it. As some anonymous writer once said, “The best way to defeat fear is to face it.” 

It will also give little tips to attaining Holiness even if you feel it impossible in today’s day and age. They are small simple steps and mind-altering attitudes that will go a long way in your relationship with God. 

So, let’s get one step closer to becoming Holy then (after daily repentance, of course.)

HOLINESS.

What is it? 

In a nutshell, it means being pure. Without sin. Without missing the mark of God.

It involves being set apart, selected, and secluded to be used for a Godly purpose.

So why is becoming Holy so hard?

Good question. Below are answers that I came to find out after having understood human nature on a deep, deep level, and relating this nature to the kind of matrix world that we live in today.

1.) GOD IS SILENT.

Let us start with the elephant in the room. A short introduction. 

Our God (God the Father) is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. He is also a God of order. During His time in the Old Testament, He reigned supreme, and He manifested in all manner of visually amazing ways. As a spirit, in dreams, in burning bushes, clouds, whirlwinds, light, fire, and my personal favorite, a hand on walls. He was present and you could feel Him. You could see what He could do, and you could FEAR Him (always a smart thing to do, fearing Him. Remember this always.). Then His time passed, and He allowed Jesus, His son, to come and help the rest of us (the unchosen ones) find a way to heaven. God the Father made the Jews His people and Israel, His kingdom. He chose them and, in a way, secluded everyone else. It was His plan, and we cannot question that for He knew what He was doing, and we cannot understand what He understands (it would be smart not to question anything He does, if you want an eternity of peace, alongside Him). 

Jesus opened up Heaven for the rest of us since surprisingly, the Jews didn’t like Him so much [Mark 6:4, KJV: But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his kin, and in his own house], so He came for the rest of us who were lost in all kinds of sin, unbeknownst to us. He came to save us. He prepared for 30 years and reigned for 3 years, bringing heaven alongside Him. Then He left, rising in heaven with the promise of a Helper [God the Holy Spirit], personally guiding us on our journey to heaven. 

Unlike God, the Father whose mighty presence was fearfully evident to us, and Jesus in His physical manifestation was a God that could be seen, the third member of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit is very quiet. Very smart (in my personal experience and opinion), very observant, and very quiet. Ever heard of the saying ” Still waters run deep”, that’s the Holy Ghost for ya. He never shouts, and He never forces you to wake up. He only provides opportunities for growth or self-sabotage and watches. Waiting. Observes with non-reaction. And if He does communicate, it is through your conscience, which we tend to ignore most of the time. You will have to work hard to find Him. You will have to use deliberate effort to give Him room in your heart. Unlike God the Father, He will not immediately punish you when you decide to go crazy in sin. He will let the world punish you for the choices that you make. Once you come to your senses, however, He will be ready in waiting to help you get out of sin. Unlike God the Father who operates like our Father, literally. God the Holy Spirit operates like a Doctor. You will seek Him when you are sick with sin.

And this is where it gets hard for us.

How are we to know if our soul is sick? 

And who do we turn to when we find out that we are?

I am not saying that God the Father is on a holiday of sorts. But from my studies, I can deduce that He respected God the Son and gave Him His time on earth. And in the same way, He respects God the Holy Spirit and His time on earth. He never interfered all through their reign. 

Now make no mistake, the way to heaven for the rest of us is through Jesus Christ, but we can’t get to Jesus without communing with the Holy Spirit. And He only communes with those that are clean or at least asking Him for His help so they can try to be.

Back to the main point. God is silent. God the Father has given the Holy Spirit time to work in those that will accept Him. Jesus has given us the grace of having the Holy Spirit down here with us. The Holy Spirit will only go to those that accept life as a test of Faith and will work closely with you if you are smart enough to listen to His quiet voice. But how can you listen to Him with all these outward and inward (emotional and psychological) distractions?

 Because God is silent and nowadays man fears no God, that means man has no emotional connection to God. Without an emotional attachment to God, it will be difficult to relate to God and live in His ways. After all, the driving force behind motivation is strong emotion (from experience, do you not agree that your fear, hope, love, lust…whatever emotion it was, has propelled you towards your goals successfully).

If we don’t live in God’s way, we become impure.

How do we start listening to God?

So, the trick is to be emotionally invested in God and listen to the Holy Spirit once He starts talking to you through your conscience. The more emotionally invested you are in God, the more motivated you will be in matters pertaining to Him. This will make it all the easier for you to seek Him and do what you know He will approve of.

2.) LIVING IN A FEEL-ALL WORLD.

Feelings. We are in the Information Age and this world is predominantly media. Almost everything in the media is imbued with feelings. Music, News, Movies, Shows, Advertisements…The devil is smart. He knows that Emotions are powerhouses that human beings are immature enough to master. Very few people have mastered the art of recognizing their emotions as indicators and not as life experiences. Emotions only indicate the state of oneself within. They are not to be acted upon because they do not make sense by themselves. As an elite individual, it is good to realize that within us are the Rider and the Horse. The Rider is our conscious mind. The one that makes decisions, the one that makes sense of both our inner and our outer world and acts accordingly. The Horse is the emotions. All powerful but without direction. I have never met anyone that has ever made an intelligent decision following the Horse. Following the Horse and not taking control of the Horse as a rider is a surefire way to head to destruction. Something the Devil knows very well about us. It is our human weakness. Hence the need to teach the entire world that if it doesn’t feel good, it isn’t right. It isn’t worth living for. 

Through the media, we are taught to live in the moment without thinking about the consequences of the actions that our feelings drove us to. We are taught to live for the moment. Because human beings are pack animals, we choose to do what others are doing which is “feel ourselves through life”. Only regret awaits such uncontrolled horses, frolicking away to an early grave.

Holiness demands using your head over your feelings. It demands always thinking of the consequences of your actions. It demands having a good conscience over having a good moment. That is why it is hard to stay Holy. Because it takes minimal effort to do what will make you feel good, but it takes all the effort you can master to do it right so that your conscious can stay clean.

So how to overcome this temptation?

Get used to using your head and not your ” heart”. Your heart is not where your feelings are my dear, it is all in the brain chemistry. Your heart only feels the pain of disappointment and heartbreak, to some extent jealousy. But have you ever felt anything in your heart when angry or happy? Those feelings come euphorically into your chest or head. So, who lied to you that your feelings stem from your heart, and you should listen to them?

Duty over selfish pleasure is the way to Holiness in action.

3.) WE KNOW TOO MUCH TOO EARLY.

Do you remember a time in your infancy when the idea of sex did absolutely nothing to you? Do you remember when the sheer sight of small mundane things gave you a lasting pleasure than what you experience now? We are no longer children. That is the problem. We have grown up and known too much too early.

Two decades ago, back in my home country, sex was a taboo that was only discussed with couples that were about to get married. Now it is everywhere in the media and the language that we use. Children now use the “F” words and “B ” words like it is taking tea at breakfast. Children are already singing about sex while in middle school. Children have already watched sex happen in the media that they use. How then can you ask a society like this to stay celibate till marriage? How can we stay Holy when we can’t stay without thinking of impure thoughts?

The same goes for the sin of wrath where killing has been made usual in every show we watch, same for sloth when video games take all of our attention and energy… the list goes on and on.

We love pleasure. Of all kinds. We have lived in it for so long it will take deliberate effort and discipline to stay out of it. Studies have shown that we are the most addictive generation ever to exist on this earth. And with good reason, we value comfort and pleasure above duty and responsibility. With such a love for pleasure, it is difficult to forsake it.

How do we overcome the burden of knowing too much too early?

The trick to this is simple, learn to love duty over pleasure. Learn to get a high from doing what you know you are responsible for rather than from a fleeting moment of pleasure that leaves no substance of your footing behind. Love to cherish discipline beyond the taboo knowledge and Holiness will await you.

4.) THE DEVILS NOISE IS WHAT WE ARE USED TO.

Secret. Mysterious. Dark. Dangerous. All sounds alluring, doesn’t it? When we are young, inexperienced and for the lack of a better word, stupid, we tend to get drawn to the dark, elusive, and mysterious. The thought of it frightens us but also gives us a sense of power especially when involved in it. The more we like it, the more we like the things around it. The more we do that, the more we discover the pleasures within it. Once we do, getting out is as tough as nails. This is where the majority of the population lies, and it is this population that destroys the morality of the few that would like to retain their purity.

It is no secret now that the world is hypersexualized. But only three decades ago, we were not here. Rarely would you hear of a case of teen pregnancy, nowadays it is the norm. Rarely would the topic of sex even come up, nowadays it is everywhere. There are barely any gentlemen left and certainly very few “Ladies” are in existence today. This is not me delivering judgment. It is simply a fact of the world we currently live in.

The problem is this, the more we normalize such things. The street violence, lust, and corruption, the louder the voices of these vices become to all members of society. Even the innocent ones. We all know the saying-Bad company corrupts good morals. With an entire society falling under “bad company”, only the internally strong can maintain their good morals.

The voice of God is being silenced in the media and more so in the church itself. The Devil was smart to infiltrate all praises of God’s worship one way or the other. And where he couldn’t, he sent agents to do the work for him. Like a corporate CEO, he has expertly delegated his able team to silence God’s outward voice by filling us with his specially designed noise. I got to give him credit where it’s due. he has succeeded for the most part.

As human nature goes, we have to be isolated to discover our identity, both as ourselves and as members of God’s family. We cannot become our true selves without fortifying ourselves first. That way, it will be hard for us to be influenced into the ways of this world, which is darkness. The same kind of darkness that always seems to be alluring to us. The more we do not know our true selves, the easier it becomes for us to fall for whoever shouts the loudest. And who do you think shouts the loudest in this world?

This is how the innocent and naive get entrapped in the devil’s work. They are too busy living life looking outwards without solidifying themselves inwards. Because of being under the ephemeral influence of their peers or caregivers, they end up believing what they stand for instead of questioning what they stand for themselves. In today’s day and age, chances are, whatever the majority stands for is for the devil. With a weak spirit, anyone can be drawn in the noise.

How do we listen to God’s voice in all this noise?

The overcome this, the trick is to seclude oneself from outside influences as much as possible. Learn to love quiet and the peace that quiet provides. Learn to ask questions about the values and principles you stand for. Learn to stay quiet and listen to God speaking to you through your conscious or soul or spirit, whatever name you best like for the inner you. This will take at least a month, but you will learn a whole lot about the world in that one month alone. You will learn to look and not just see, experience, and not just live, you will see God in everyone and the devil behind them. You will receive discernment from the sacrifice of setting yourself apart. It will be easier to grow into Holiness when you have an idea of what Holiness looks like and what is not close to it.

5.) INTERCONTINENTAL MARRIAGES

I speak for most men, even the Biblical ones when I say, that women have the power to send men straight to their demise, if not hell. It is not because of the women’s fault, it is because of the powerlessness a man experiences when fully entranced by a woman, even without the knowledge of the woman (although in most cases the woman knows). Hence influencing the man out of the ways that he knows he should remain in.

Today’s dating world is not as it used to be. We are on a crazy rollercoaster of our lives in that department. Both sides of the table are generally equipped with sexual psychology and the boundary between harmless courtship seduction and manipulative narcissism is almost non-existent. With self-interest being the key motivating factor in today’s courtship as opposed to the sense of responsibility that kept marriages together in the past, both sexes are in a race to gain more from the other party with as minimal effort as humanly possible on their part. Dating and marriage are no longer about love, but how good you are at manipulation. Hence, the consequent breakups and divorces that are observed nowadays.

King Ahab, King Herod, Samson, David, and my personal favorite, King Solomon, the wisest man on earth, all fell for the charms of women that in one way or another other led to God’s wrath blazing upon them and as observed in the latter case, to their descendant generation. At heart, they were decent men, some could almost say good men. But women blinded them into sin. In today’s world, both sexes blind each other to sin. With all the sex on the airwaves, it’s very easy to personalize sex and make it something that you want to take from someone else as opposed to something that you would like to share between two people. Intercontinental marriages have led to a disdain for what a traditional marriage should look like. The differences in cultures and the spread of the godlessness found in most of today’s people get more and more entwined in marriage.

A good woman or man can be easily slothed out of the fire of God when married to a spiritually slothful partner. In the days of Ezra, as seen in Ezra chapter 10, it was allowed to send the foreign women away peacefully with their children so that their customs and knowledge in the Lord were not soiled. God kept reiterating to Moses that the Israelites should only marry Israelites and the fact that he divided the races was to make it easier for people to identify with each other and marry within each other’s race; avoid the soiling of their ways under God. Times have changed now, and I do not want to be an advocate for divorce. Hence, the below solution.

How do I seek Holiness while in a marriage that doesn’t support this way of life?

The trick to finding Holiness when trapped in such a relationship is solidifying your beliefs every day. Daily prayer, momentary fasting, daily reading of the Bible, even as little as 5 chapters a day. That is all you need. These small things done daily will strengthen your soul and even your partner will find it hard to change you. Depending on the dynamics of the relationship, you could choose to be vocal or quiet about it. But the bottom line is that you should always keep doing it regardless.

As for unmarried men and women, just ask God for a good wife or husband. With Heaven being open to everyone now thanks to Jesus and with the whole world being tainted, race is no longer more of an issue than belief systems. So long as your marriage is fortified under God, you should be fine. If even one of you is godless, soon, both of you might be if you are not strong enough in faith.

6.) BOREDOM FROM EXCESS OR STRIFE FROM SURVIVAL.

[PROVERS 30:9-Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the bread that is my portion. 9 Otherwise, I may have too much and deny You, saying, ‘Who is the LORD?’ Or I may become poor and steal, profaning the name of my God.]

When we have too much, we lack ambition for anything, because we already have more than we will ever need. There are exceptions to this rule for the severely greedy, but the majority of men operate around this. We have more free time to do nothing. And because we have only been taught to seek God in times of trouble alone, we put God in the back seat of our lives and live for pleasure. Most of today’s pleasure carries with it sin, and where there is sin, there is no Holiness.

When we have too little, even if we believe in God, we will be tested every day to do something wrong in God’s eyes just to keep ourselves going. Stealing, prostitution, and killing, all become options out of desperation. You will act for your stomach or someone else’s, temporarily forgetting about God in the process. The acts can be mitigated in the eyes of man, but in God’s eyes, they are still sin. Only His mercy and grace can save you from such unholiness.

How do I maintain my relationship with God in my riches or poverty?

The trick to this is simple. Just make a decision. That whatever happens tomorrow, whoever you might or might not become, your actions of seeking God will not be influenced by the circumstances that you find yourself in. You will build your will so to speak. To have a strong will to stay in the integrity of God. A hard thing to do for those who intend to get to heaven. But the only choice there is to make about it if heaven is truly your goal.

7.) FIGHTING ONESELF IS HARD. 

Holiness is hard because it demands that you fight yourself. You will have to fight your natural tendency to seek pleasure. You will have to work against yourself to run away from your desires. Your lustful appetites, your need for power and wealth, your attraction to the taboo. You will need to be disciplined in words and action and I for one can attest, this is not an easy thing to do.

When the whole world goes that way and your soul wants to go this way, the body suffers because it wants to go both ways but can only choose one.

You will feel time moving slower, your mouth dries up, your chest will become heavy, and your pulse goes up from time to time, with occasional body shakes every time you decide to do the right and forsake the wrong. It is a daily battle of self, one that will never end til the day we kick the bucket.

As fun as it sounds, it makes sense why people do not want to do this. It requires daily self-sacrifice, one that only a few men can master and the rest of us can imitate. But it is possible with God’s help. 

How do I fight myself?

The trick is, not doing this alone. Keep your eyes focused on God and live each day a day at a time, bettering yourself every day trying to commit less and less sin. I personally keep a grade book where I grade myself according to how I have been during the day, using the Ten Commandments as a template. Use your standard of measure and work yourself up daily. I also found it useful to include punitive measures to keep myself in line. Say, an A gets me a reward of chocolate. An F gets me 7 strikes of the belt (yes, I beat myself up, literally). I found that I have been keeping myself more and more in line the more I punish my misdeeds as I reward myself for my good deeds. You don’t have to harm yourself physically as I do, but you can include some kind of painful experience if you are a bad boy/girl for a day. Say maybe, deny yourself a good meal because you know what you did. The more you stay off this treat, the more you will be motivated to do good (or in most cases, fight your inner evil), so you can get the treat that you know you deserve. 

8.) HOLINESS STANDARDS ARE TOO HIGH, HOW CAN WE EVEN GET THERE?

Preaching to the choir my friend. I sometimes feel this way too. It isn’t easy training a soul for heaven when it’s trapped in a body that wants to do all kinds of things with all kinds of people and have all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. It actually feels like you are going insane trying to live up to the standards of a Supreme taintless Being when all that surrounds you is lost people leading other lost people, and all kinds of temptations screaming at your face on a daily basis. Especially as a man, it is NOT easy. 

But we got to try.

We have a saying back home, in Swahili and it goes like this: “Hii Maisha ni Kujaribu,”-translation, Life is all about trying.

If you do not try, you will not reach.

We have a home, so we should try to get there through our thoughts, words, and actions. We should try without giving up no matter how many times we fail or get disheartened. But how?

How do I attain high standards of cleanliness with my fleshly body?

The trick is to seek perfection while knowing that we are not perfect. It is accepting that we are flawed and something within us needs to change. It is identifying what needs to be changed and working on changing it a day at a time. I personally worked with one vice, independent of all my other vices, and after clearing that, worked on the next and the next and I kept working til I got enough confidence to stay in the race and so can you. The target is perfection (in deeds and words, very tough to do) but the motivation will come from the progress.

 

Bottom line: 

I am no saint I know I am nothing. Nothing, without God. This blog is for my fellow nothings who want to build something in God. People who want to build their homes in heaven. Holiness is the only way there. After repenting (which is the first step to Holiness, the arguably easiest step to the process), forsaking your past life and beginning a new one is the second and most important step. It shows the intention to have faith in God and follow His ways. It is the preparation of your heavenly house. It is the sanctification of your soul. It is no easy thing, but it is a hard thing worth doing. All you need to do is, continuously keep trying to attain it.

It’s good to remember:

BOTTOM LINE.

Remember the Gospel.

God loves us, but He is not crazy about us.
We are wallowing in our own sin for which we have no savior.
We should always repent and believe in the sacrifice of our God, Jesus Christ who was sent by God the
father to die for our sins, so we might get to have eternal life. [JOHN 3:16]