While we're on the subject of holy...

Thank you, Pastor Dustin, for that thought provoking and convicting message on holiness yesterday. What am I talking about, you might ask? Well, get thyself to Avalon Church next week and you won't miss out.

In the aftermath of the message and the challenge issued yesterday I want to reiterate the definition of holy (or hágios in the original Klingon Greek):

• specially recognized as or declared sacred by religious use or authority; consecrated: as in holy ground
• entitled to worship or veneration as or as if sacred
• having a spiritually pure quality 
• dedicated or devoted to the service of God, the church, or religion

Given that, I think my first order of business in applying holiness to my life is to stop using the word "holy" to refer to anything or anyone but God. I mean, really, what's so special about Toledo that it needs to be referred to as holy? Or guacamole? Really? How about crap? Do you actually mean to take God's primary attribute, the only one that is repeated when listed (Is. 6:3, Rev. 4:8) and associate it with a pile of dung? As Paul might say, "May it never be!" Although, I suppose if you're one of the people mentioned in Ezekiel 22:26:

Her priests have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the profane, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they hide their eyes from My sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.

Then you might be doing it on purpose, but if you're not, consider stopping. There are a couple other words I've been working on using only for God as well:

• Awesome. Meaning, showing or characterized by awe. And who or what else is? A pizza? A car? Compared to the Creator of the universe, it seems to me that everything else sort of falls off into insignificance.
• Glorious. Oddly enough I picked up the habit of using this word after watching the movie Demolition Man. But I've come to realize lately that it just doesn't apply like I've been using it. After all, can anything you can survive looking at (Ex. 33:20) really be called glorious?

So that's part 1 of my personal holiness challenge: a vocabulary update. After all, "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." (Mt. 12:37)

What words do you reserve for God?