OCTOBER 2013
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AMBASSADORS OF HOLINESS (PART 1) PURE WATER – An opportunity to consider holiness: what does it mean for a 21st-century young person in The Salvation Army and how can we recapture and refresh holiness in our generation in a way that makes our world a better place? Can you remember back to March and April, in the ‘Deep Water’ stream, when we began to dive deeper into our theology to be sure we understand the basis of our faith and doctrines? We covered most of the Salvation Army doctrines, but we missed out Doctrines 9 and 10. Now the time has come, and over the next couple of months we are going to take the opportunity to consider these two doctrines… the doctrines of holiness… in more detail. This is ‘Pure Water’. These doctrines emphasise the importance of living life in the way that is pleasing to God, with values such as honesty, kindness, generosity, faith, love and hope top of our agenda. They encourage us to stay strong in our faith, obedient to God’s call and open to allow the Holy Spirit to continue to change us into the people of God we are created to be. This is holy living! I remember a time when my five-year-old son accompanied me on my weekly grocery shopping trip at our local supermarket. The following day I was surprised to find a small packet of Trebor Softmints stuffed in his coat pocket. I knew these hadn’t gone through the checkout with the other shopping and was concerned that my son was embarking on a career as a shoplifter! Thankfully I soon remembered what had actually happened. My son had picked up the mints on the way round the supermarket (his bribe for behaving nicely!) and when we got to the checkout he began looking for them in the laden trolley. They were nowhere to be seen so we assumed that he had put them down somewhere in the store when he couldn’t keep his hands off some other exciting article in the shop, and then had forgotten to pick them back up again (a frequent occurrence in our shopping expeditions!) He got another packet of mints from the shelf, we paid for them, and he ate them.
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It wasn’t until the next day, when I discovered this other packet of mints, that I realised he clearly hadn’t lost them in the store... he’d put them in his coat pocket and unknowingly walked out with them. It was all totally innocent; neither of us knew the sweets were in his coat pocket as we left the store that day. Now, of course, there was no dilemma in our minds as my husband and I explained to our son the error of his ways. We must take the sweets back, tell the shop assistant what had happened, and pay for them. This I fully intended to do at the next available opportunity. Of course, 50p was not going to make or break a large supermarket chain like this one, but it was all about the principle. It was about teaching my son lessons of honesty, integrity and all things Christian. I am ashamed to admit, therefore, that several days later I noticed the offending mints still in the glove compartment of the car. My intentions were honourable, but unfortunately in the hustle and bustle of daily life I had forgotten to make right the wrong that my son had done. I am telling this story because it occurred to me that this is similar to the concept of holiness. If we are honest, most of us probably do understand, even just a little, what holiness is; and that as Christians we are called to live holy lives; and we are aware of the changes that we should make in our lives to become more holy. But perhaps it sometimes seems as if making those small changes won’t make a great deal of difference in the grand scheme of things – perhaps in the jumble of our everyday lives we forget we should be doing things differently, or perhaps we are just too ashamed to own up, too scared of the consequences. But by not pursuing holiness we are truly missing out. ‘People tend to associate holiness with sobriety and heaviness, but this is not what it means to be filled with God’s spirit of life and love... Holiness is joyful, dynamic and powerfully magnetic... Holiness is about being truly alive, truly human... it is an expression of our relationship with our Father.’ Pete Greig1 continued over u
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