Holiness Is What I Long For Quotes & Sayings

I grew up believing Christians didn't just believe in Jesus. To be saved, people had to look and speak a certain way. They followed a long list of nots to ensure their holiness. They fit the mold. They followed the rules. — Anna White

Suffering related to circumstances beyond my control, suffering related to consequences of my besetting sin, and suffering caused by others who refused to see their own sin. In all these instances, the Lord has been at work, refining my focus upon personal holiness, amplifying my ministry through very humbling experiences, and reminding me repeatedly to extend grace not just to the gracious but to those who lack a grace I took too long to come to myself. — James MacDonald

Righteousness - true holiness - is seen over time in our persistence. It is relatively easy to "flirt" with righteousness - being occasionally courteous to other drivers (if you happen to be in a good mood), helping someone in need by opening the door for them (if you have time), throwing a few extra bucks into the offering plate (as long as you won't miss them). But this behavior is in reality superficial righteousness. The righteousness God seeks is a persistent righteousness, a commitment to continue making the right decision even when, perhaps hourly, you feel pulled in the opposite direction. — Gary L. Thomas

May 2 Numbers 6 The Nazarite was holy in three negative ways: (1) he must not touch the grape; (2) he must not cut his hair; (3) he must not touch a dead body. Were I to transopose such consecration into new testament parallels I suppose this would be the setup:
1. Grapes
the source of natural joy
that which makes glad the heart of man. This is denying oneself the allowable pleasures for the sake of a greater holiness.
2. The long hair of man is his shame. He must let it grow so that he becomes unashamed of shame
reproach bearing for God.
3. Seperation from evil in all their doings
yea,even from family pulls (v.7).
I know little of any of these. — Jim Elliot

It is nothing short of a transformed vision of reality that is able to see Christ as more real than the storm, love more real than hatred, meakness more real than pride, long-suffering more real than annoyance, holiness more real than sin. - Discipline — Elisabeth Elliot

I earnestly long for more grace and personal holiness, and more usefulness. — Robert E. Murray

Once he had thought it a refuge, once he had thought it holiness ... But now he began to suspect that the good brothers did not shadow the ether not because they were good, but because they had masked themselves from everything, had carefully erased their stray thoughts, had poured out their human longings, emptied themselves of desires and become so transparent as existence that they had not only ceased to be evil, they had ceased to be good. They had ceased to fight the battles of everyday life, and simply weighed nothing. Not a feather. Not a grain. They had given up everything, until they vanished from the scale of all that mattered, having given away themselves long before any power declared the contest. — C.J. Cherryh

Our holiness is an effect, not a cause; so long as our eyes are on our own personal whiteness as an end in itself, the thing breaks down. — Charles Simeon

Some people have been in church for so long, been doing the "be a good Christian" thing for so long, that the very idea that they were chosen and determined for blamelessness before they'd started earning credit is very offensive. In our flesh, we tend to think that our holiness is the result of our spiritual elbow grease. We intellectually may agree to the doctrine of sola gratia, but we tend to live and act like we're saved by what Don Whitney calls "sola boot-strappa." That, however, is not the testimony of Scripture. — Matt Chandler

Holiness is not a bid to be noticed or loved or accepted by God. Holiness, rather, is acting out and acting upon the truth that God has noticed, loved and accepted us long before we did anything to warrant that. — Mark Buchanan

A man who struggles long to pray and study Torah will be able to discover the sparks of divine light in all of creation, in each solitary bush and grain and woman and man. And when he cleaves strenuously to God for many years, he will be able to release the sparks to unwrap and lift these particular shreds of holiness, and return them to God. This is the human task: to direct and channel the spark's return. This task is tikkun, restoration.
Yours is a holy work on earth right now, they say, whatever that work is if you tie your love and desire to God. You do not deny or flee the world, but redeem it, all of it - just as it is. — Annie Dillard

No man can expect to make progress in holiness who is not often and long alone with God. — Andrew Murray

Living in filth was regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the Church and to society, as an evidence of sanctity. St. Jerome and the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the fact that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because he had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing. St. Mary of Egypt was emninent for filthiness; St. Simon Stylites was in this respect unspeakable - the least that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors. — Andrew Dickson White

I long to be filled with divine knowledge, divine wisdom, divine love, divine holiness, to the utmost extent of my capacity. I want to feel that all the currents of my soul are interfused in one channel deep and wide, and all flowing towards the heart of Christ. — Griffith John

When you are converted, you want to do what you didn't want to do before, and you don't want to do what you wanted to do before. There's a change in the heart; there's a cleaning up, a change in orientation, and holiness becomes attractive, instead of something you have to put up with to figure out what you can get away with. As long as young people are asking, 'Can I get away with this?' or 'Can I get away with that?' I wonder if they're regenerate. If they're asking, instead, 'How can I grow in holiness?' then I suspect they've begun to understand. — D. A. Carson

[Sanctification] is a process that includes on the one hand medication and diet (in the form of biblical instruction and admonition coming in various ways to the heart), and on the other hand tests and exercises (in the form of internal and external pressures, providentially ordered, to which we have to make active response). The process goes on as long as we are in the world, which is something that God decides in each case. — J.I. Packer

Mother Teresa was once asked by a journalist why she does what she does, that is, how she is able to take the dying poor from the streets of Calcutta, nurse and love them. Her response reflected her deep self-knowledge: "I realized a long time ago that I had a Hitler within me."2 This realization became the basis of her self-transcendence and of her unique holiness. — Wayne Teasdale

I just gave up trying to be a Christian ... Let's face it, I ain't got the knack for holiness. Besides, I didn't have the slightest little desire to join the likes of Reverend Pelham at the dinner table for fourteen minutes, much less at the banquet table of Heaven eternally. Eternity is a mighty long time to be stuck with people who judge every word you say and think and condemn most of what you do. It struck me as pretty miserable company. And if Reverend Pelham was the kind of company God preferred to keep, well, I just hoped they'd be happy together. — Katherine Paterson

The one opinion that matters and the only correct evaluation of you is what the Lord thinks. He has made clear the standards He holds for us if we long to be pleasing in His sight. If we live sincerely reaching for holiness and humility, if we sing with our end goal being to bring Him pleasure and glory, then we are successful in His eyes. — Anna Blanc

THE foolish man thinks that little faults, little indulgences, little sins, are of no consequence; he persuades himself that so long as he does not commit flagrant immoralities he is virtuous, and even holy; but he is thereby deprived of virtue and holiness, and the world knows him accordingly; it does not reverence, adore, and love him; it passes him by; he is reckoned of no account; his influence is destroyed. The efforts of such a man to make the world virtuous, his exhortations to his fellow men to abandon great vices, are empty of substance and barren of fruitage. The insignificance which he attaches to his small vices permeates his whole character, and is the measure of his manhood. He who regards his smallest delinquencies as of the gravest nature becomes a saint. — James Allen

For a prohibition always increases an illicit desire so long as the love of and joy in holiness is too weak to conquer the inclination to sin ... — Augustine Of Hippo

Pardon me, O perfections of my God, for having preferred imperfect and evil inclinations to Thee! Pardon me, O justice of my God, for having outraged Thee by my sins. Pardon me, O holiness of my God, for having so long stained Thy sight's purity by my sins. Pardon me, O mercy of my God, for having despised so long Thy mercy's voice. In deep sorrow and contrition, I cast myself at Thy feet: Have mercy on me. — Ignatius Of Loyola

The ways of the world exalt themselves against God. They sometimes look rational and appealing to the most ernest disciple but Christ says to us then what He said to His disciples long ago, when many of them had given u pin disgust, "Do you also want to leave me?" If we answer as PEter did, "Lord to whom else shall we go? Your words are words of eternal life," our rebel thoughts are captured once more. The way of holiness is again visible. — Elisabeth Elliot

Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse. — Swami Vivekananda

It is time, and long past time, to reread the gospels as what we can only call political theology - not because they are not after all about God and spirituality and new birth and holiness and all the rest, but precisely because they are. — N. T. Wright

Fear is the root of all evil. Better live a single day fearlessly than living a long but fearful life. Especially, never fear another human being. Fear is the root of all relationship problems. — His Holiness Divas

It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God. — Austin Phelps

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. — Eugene H. Peterson

When the mind opens by speaking denials, this true Self that philosophers have so long striven to free shows itself all glorious with wisdom, strength, and holiness ... Denial of evil is a word of Truth. — Myrtle Fillmore

Most men seem to live for themselves, without much or any regard for thy glory, or for the good of others;
They earnestly desire and eagerly pursue the riches, honor, and pleasures of this life, as if they supposed that wealth, greatness, merriment, could make their immortal souls happy;
But, alas, what false delusive dreams are these!
And how miserable ere long will those be that sleep in them, for all out happiness consists in loving thee and being holy as thou art holy. — Arthur Bennett

Many Christians live as if salvation is the only reason Jesus died. Christ died so we would die to sin and live to righteousness (1Peter 2:24) This is a life long discipline that we must exercise every moment. His marvelous grace does not excuse us from His expectations of holy living. — William Branks