Holiness is not about walking around looking down on everyone from above. People might make the mistake of living that way, but it is not the nature of holiness to be so flawed. What you’re looking at is a first-class hypocrite. A truly holy person (or at least in pursuit of holiness) will be full of love, because love, itself, is the root of holiness.

Holiness is alignment with the character of God.

That’s it, believe it or not. The purpose, in whole, is that simple. It’s to draw closer to who God is and allowing him to align the fiber of your spirit to His. It’s not easy, but its value is beyond price.

Holiness frees you from this world. We so often seek to stop the troubles of this world without realizing that pleasure and pain, times good and bad, fortune and failure … are all rather meaningless aspects of life. They are the sheets above the bed, soft and easily torn if you realize they are not the bed, itself, but only rest ontop of it. Not only are they easily moved and swayed, but the depth of sheets compared to the mattress is staggering. The mattress is huge, unmoving and thick. Sheets sway even beneath the breeze.

Seek holiness, and you will find several powerful changes to your life unforeseeable otherwise. These will include:

• Freedom from life’s heavier burdens
• Cleanliness that cannot come from self-help
• Protection from life’s more temporary issues
• Foundation with a force that doesn’t change

If you want a life that no longer heaves at the simplest mention of drama or seems empty when the busyness of the every day slows, stop trying to build the foundation of your life upon the sand. Stop choosing the rippling of thin sheets and instead choose the sturdy mattress beneath it.

Holiness will not be found through adherence to religious law. The only outcome of religiosity is death, plain and simple. The Jews proved that living by law produces only death.

Do you want holiness? A quieting of your soul to the immortal soul of God is necessary. He is a whisper among the screaming of the world around you. While he may not be loud, he remains steady, unabated and when the crashing of the world around you dies, his whisper is all that will remain. It is a pure sound, one of hope and stability beyond our petty ideas of success.

It will require surrender, a letting go of your own ability to do good or be good or look good or act good. Surrender devoids yourself of the responsibility of success and the glory of victory. You must surrender both if you wish to experience God. The victory is His, it says in the Bible. That means you don’t get to have it.

What you get to have, instead, (and this is much better than victory), is God Himself. That is the real reward of Holiness. Imagine a life without waiting for the days to pass for the presence of God, but the constant, ever-momentary and never-ending presence of the Creator of the Universe in communion with your soul. No amount of money, or fame, or lovers, or success, or pride, or Earthly peace, or anything … can compare with communing with a living entity that exists simultaneously in this time and every other point in time that exists.

God didn’t say “I Was.” He said “I AM.” That means present tense in EVERY aspect of the word. Holiness connects you with a force that stands outside of time. No longer will your days depend on the rising or setting of the sun, the birth or death of loved ones, or the comings and goings of paychecks and bills. It all settles on the living force from which you came and to which you will return. A communion, an intimacy so far ahead of sex that it makes sex look like murderous abuse.

Holiness is not to look good at church, to feel good about yourself or even to be a model for your children. It’s to leave the temporal nature of this world behind and embrace the immortal, the never-ending, the ever-present. Are you prepared to stop crying for your every flaw and instead surrender it to God? Let him have your weaknesses, let him have your strengths, let him have your hopes and fears. You get HIM in return.

There is no comparison on heaven or earth for that deal.