Perfect Your Holiness Living

God's Urgent Call
Calling of Prophets

Isiah in the Temple

2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 The Message

14-18 Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way:
“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God.
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God.

7 With promises like this to pull us on, dear friends, let’s make a clean break with everything that defiles or distracts us, both within and without. Let’s make our entire lives fit and holy temples for the worship of God.

For Reflection

We all have to blow our own nose.  Likewise, we all have to claim our own holy inheritance actively.  Yes, God will be with us, guiding and comforting. However, it is we who have to take the steps necessary to walk in the manner of God.

We are all acquainted with those who are lead by false prophets or down-right unbelievers just as were the Corinthians. Paul warns them and us that in our associations with others we choose not to be corrupted by them.  Paul asks us to remember who we are as children of God.  Paul reminds us what that means.  While we cannot avoid interactions with non-believers, we cannot be distracted by life's pressure to conform.  We must remain separate spiritually and psychologically if not socially.  We are bound to God. We must live in this world but not be of this world.

Pray

Pray that you will continue to grow in the grace of God.  Pray that you will have the courage to separate yourself from those who act in an unGodly manner.  Pray that your confidence in God will sustain you and lead you around the temptations of life and into a more robust relationship with God.