What Does Daily Holiness Look Like?

Blog Series: Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble

It is said that you cannot break the laws of God. You can only break yourself against them when you violate them. In this series we are looking at some of the simple and clear “laws of God” – that is to say, “biblical principles” –  that we must follow if we do not want to bring very negative cause-effect consequences into our lives.

Daily holiness depends on ready repentance

I was in big trouble. It was early in my ministry life. I was pastoring a church at the time. It was Friday afternoon, and I desperately needed a haircut before the weekend. I didn’t have enough time to go to my regular barber. I had to find somebody close and quick. I was running out of time. I had passed a large establishment near my home where they cut hair. I called to see if they could get me in right away. They could.

I jumped in the car and took off. As I was driving, a dark sense of foreboding came rolling over me like a dense fog off a spooky swamp. When I find someone who understands how to cut my hair, I always go to that person… never anyone else. Now, here I was, because of my own bad planning, having to go to a New Barber!

I parked the car and walked through the front door. Heavy music throbbed through speakers so loudly I could feel it against my chest. BOOM-BABBA, BOOM-BABBA, BOOM-BABBA!!!

I am often insecure when I feel out of place. I was dressed very conservatively by comparison to everyone else in the place. They all looked as though they had stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine. I was momentarily stunned. I looked like a penguin in a flock of flamingos.

Feeling insecure about being “different,” I decided I had to get out of there. I turned on my heels to leave and nearly flattened a receptionist who had snuck up behind me.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked with eager anticipation.

“Uh, yes,” I admitted, my ears radiating embarrassment. “My name is Max Anders.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Anders. Follow me.”

The shop was one big open room, with a couple dozen hair cutting booths around the perimeter which all opened to the middle. As I walked across the open center area to get my hair cut, I imagined dozens of pairs of eyes burning into the back of my head. I stared at my toes.

I crawled reluctantly into the haircutter’s chair, and as I explained how I wanted my hair cut, we both had to talk very loudly to be heard over the deafening BOOM-BABBA, BOOM-BABBA. As she began to cut, the music stopped abruptly just in time for her to shout into the tomb-like silence, “And what do you do, Mr. Anders?” Every head in the place turned in my direction. The suddenness of the music stopping, the volume of my haircutter’s ill-timed question, and the clear cultural difference between me and every other person in the place gave them all an intense interest in my answer. They all strained to hear.

I cracked.

I felt so out of place, so conspicuous, so embarrassed that I might not be “acceptable,” in that environment that I did the only thing that occurred to me at the moment. I lied! “I’m a landscape architect!” I heard myself croak. The answer seemed to satisfy everyone. Their heads turned back, the music started up again, and their world returned to normal. Mine imploded. Landscape architect?!? Why did I say that? I don’t know a thing about landscaping. Why didn’t I tell her I was a pastor? Because I’m a chicken. I’m an over-educated, under-committed, gutless wonder, I admitted to myself.

I was overwhelmed with remorse. My entire being was drained of strength. I don’t remember anything else until I got back to my office. I slumped into my office chair like someone who had just lost everything. I laid my head down on my desk, and absorbed the crushing weight of shame and guilt.

As the Holy Spirit drove back and forth over the top of me like a steamroller over a hunk of human asphalt, I realized that the profound conviction under which I was buried was not a result of having told a “white lie.” It was because, out of fear and embarrassment, I had publicly denied Jesus.

I had lied to save my own emotional skin, just as Peter had lied the night Jesus was betrayed. I now knew that I would have done exactly what he did. That didn’t play well with God.

What’s more, I got a vision of the haircutter visiting our church the next Sunday and seeing this “landscape architect” in the pulpit, and the lie getting out. That wouldn’t play well with the church!

As I sat there, face down on my desk, hands sprawled out in front of me, breathing laboriously into my desk pad, it slowly dawned on me what I had to do. I had to call the haircutter, confess my sin to her, and ask her to forgive me. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but the Holy Spirit had me face down on the sidewalk and wasn’t letting me up.

When she came to the phone, I said, “When you asked me what I did for a living, I felt out of place and embarrassed and I didn’t tell you the truth. I told you I was a landscape architect. But I’m not. I’m the pastor of a church. It was wrong for me to lie to you, and I would like to ask if you would forgive me?”

She didn’t know what to say. She was squirming. Involuntarily, she began to babble. “Oh, don’t worry about that Mr. Anders, lots of people have second jobs… why I didn’t think a thing… heavens, it doesn’t… don’t give it a second thought.”

“You don’t understand,” I returned. “I don’t have a second job. I made it up because I was embarrassed to tell you I was a pastor. That was wrong of me, and it would mean a great deal if I could know that you forgive me.”

This went on several times; my asking forgiveness, and her talking a blue streak around it. One last time, I acknowledged my sin and asked if she would forgive me. When she finally realized that I was not going to let her go until she said she forgave me, she said she forgave me. I thanked her and hung up the phone. The steamroller drove off of me, and I began to come back to life.

In retrospect, I think God used that situation to strengthen and protect me. I fear my life could have become a continuous struggle every time I got in a situation where I felt intimidated, with subsequent follow-up lies following me like a swarm of mosquitoes after a sweaty fisherman. In fact, I think it could have led to bigger and bigger lies, and perhaps, even eventual moral failure. I know that may sound extreme, but I’ve never known of anyone who fell into big sin who hadn’t gotten there by first tolerating little ones. Plus, you have no moral authority without a clear conscience.

1 Peter 1 says, “…like the Holy One who called  you, be holy yourselves in all  your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy'” (vs.15-16). I am so grateful to the Lord for the power of His conviction that would not let me go until I had done the right thing. I am so glad He held me to the standard of His holiness.

Daily holiness is not a matter of living the life of a monk. Nor it is a matter of never sinning. If that were the case, daily holiness would be out of reach for all of us.

Holiness is a matter of ready repentance.

When the Holy Spirit, whose ministry it is to convict us of our sins (John 16:8), does convict us, and we readily repent, then we are capable of daily holiness (1 John 1:9).

But, what happens when we disobey God? We’ll look at that next week.

The entire “Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble” series is in the archives, beginning with the post on July 26, 2022.

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