Personal Holiness

Whenever we get nearer to God and really enter into fellowship with Him, what we feel is the opposite of self congratulations. We will never see the beauty of Christ without seeing how much further we have to go. Christian soldiers have to fight with sin every day.  If they truly are people of God, if the Spirit of God is within them, they will want all the strength they can get to maintain their ground and make progress in their spiritual lives. Self contentment is a shirking of the battle.  Some people shirk repentance and holy care by believing they already have the only sanctification they will ever need.  They get justification and sanctification mixed up.  They do good deeds and they think that is all that is needed.  By doing this, they keep themselves away from the necessary work of the Holy Spirit ... they will do the work of the Lord in many ways but they do not want to hear about personal holiness. (from the sermon, "Onward and Upward," January 9, 2022).