After Easter – The Dynamics of Personal Holiness

'Jacob’s Ladder’ is a weekly Sunday post; its blog history is at dreliatjacobsladder.blogpost.com This is a Fellowship of the Spirit. It is not a church construct; it involves neither mission, fund raising, nor religious participation. God desires our participation in all of life, and not via the existential misleading ‘gospel’ of corporate and culture influenced selection. Jacob’s Ladder pursues Christian growth as human growth. It works to complete social holiness and fulfill personal holiness in our lives. God wills community for all of us, and Jacob’s Ladder will keep on growing!

God is Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth..

Dearly beloved,

We have spent just over a year journeying through essential scripture on Christian growth; all Posts are up on the Blog for quick and easy reference; it is time to ensure that our spiritual lives are moving effectively so that we can deal with the struggles that face us in this world! They are around the corner and are both personal and social. Social holiness is the easier of the two. Half of it is current sociology and political ethics, and everyone has an opinion. It is not too difficult to single out The Good Samaritan and then use current examples of what it involves for our times. But personal holiness is a different story and much more significant, for it involves that personal commitment to the Lord God in Jesus that brings life changing ability in the here and now. And it does not come easy. The road into the Kingdom of God is narrow and you can easily slide off the path while convincing yourself you’re still on it!

 Personal holiness has never been effectively dealt with by any branch of the Church, Catholic, Protestant or ‘other’. I grew up in a Protestant Christian family with the old traditional ways of devotion – they were never as effective as they were made out to be; too much going around in circles of repentance and forgiveness, not enough really going forward in spiritual ability; and in the end, although unsaid, we were always left with the struggle of

‘I don’t have enough faith?’ or

‘I don’t really believe enough? or

‘I’m just a forgiven sinner and though I’m happy about it I guess I won’t really get far in spiritual ability.’

That was never good (ie godly) enough. I have always pushed for church to be what it could and should be, beyond culture. The old ways were never sufficient. They carried the weight of dead tradition as versus a joyful and powerful experience in the here and now. What I’m after is the end result that Jesus speaks of! And it is very different from the general notions of holiness -

Cut off from everyone and living in isolation.

No vices (not observable anyways!)

Lots of religious practices, like praying often

Faithful membership in a religious body

And so on…

Instead it has only one condition as found in the 1^st  Commandment, and it must be practiced.

 On the Blog, for this week, first go to the post for Feb 1^st 2026 entitled ‘Be Still and Know ‘ and read it slowly and thoroughly. That is step one on the right path. And it is a big and through step. And we take off this week from that point and begin to move further.

The scripture basis for Christian meditation is very short and simple. Like Jesus shows us, with the Lord’s Prayer. No need for falling on our knees, or confessing our sinfulness, or self-denial, etc. Times have moved on, our world keeps changing, and traditional models don’t quite fit anymore. We need spiritual ways that build strong and true Christian lives. The ‘I am’ and the “I cause to be” that describe God are more in the present and the future than they are in the past.

God is Spirit. They that worship God must worship God in spirit and truth. Something about God being Spirit that we must come to terms with, that is a very specific key to personal holiness. We all have a reasonably good sense of what it means to do the kind thing, the loving thing. But to relate to God in the sense of Spirit has never been clear, and this is where the hardest work lies. We have to start thinking about what we have talked a little about and begin to practice it before we ever are able to have access to and move within the mind of Christ.

God is not about rituals, rites and repetition. If you are exactly there, then that may be your comfort zone. But that’s the stuff the Levites started. To love God is to be open to a differentness that can be disturbing, because God is not always affirming of what we think is best for us. But to share a closeness with God, in thought, action and intention is to develop a sensitivity to God’s leading in your life. And to follow that leading in thought, word and deed. It is deeply intuitive and totally results oriented. Like Jesus. And to observe, almost from the outside in, as you shift gears, switch persona, seize on the new and the different, and find within yourself the ability to be much more than you thought you could ever be. As one of my favorite parishioners used to say and still says, God has a plan for each of us; and it involves some very real and powerful growth! Easy to conceive of. Much harder to get on and stay on track.

The parallels with physical exercise are quite amazing. Does not happen overnight. Requires the discipline of consistent practice. You are a forgiven sinner. Sure. Jesus offers salvation. Great. And what does all of that mean? As I said earlier, salvation is much more than a declared state of being. Somewhere along the way we got very tied up by continental and western philosophical theology. (will take us a while to unravel all of that!) Salvation =  a state of dynamic action in this world. You would have noted my clear twofold emphasis – personal holiness, social holiness. Love God, love your neighbor. That’s all it comes down to. And it means that you are always moving forward.

We will talk more about how the Bible should be read as we go along. But Bible study and reading scripture does not amount to a hill of beans in Christian growth. Makes us feel good because we’ve always been told that reading the Good Book is good for us. It’ll make us better. Why? How does that work? Well, you practice what you read. Yeah, like practicing what you preach, and we all have seen how that can go. The why and how of goodness becoming reality has never been dealt with effectively. Be aware that while most Bibles have 66 Books, the full Bible has 88. We lost about 20 because a Church Council decided to keep them out of the Canon. Not wise. The version I use is the Oxford Annotated Bible with 19 of the missing 20 in its Apocrypha section. It is the best translation of the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament.

Much of Christian practice has suffered from a woeful lack of integration; practice has almost always been based on emotion and feeling in worship, i.e. the more you feel, the better it is (which is where my typical comments about I'd rather be at a rock concert come in (!) and on the other hand, an almost totally academic approach to scripture reading and referring to what ‘experts’ in Commentaries have said. We need some of both and more which takes us beyond these, but always kept in balance. There are very few who know what they are talking about. Far too many reflect an academic discipline or a cultural perspective or a combo of both! And God is not Jewish. And the entire ‘intellectual’ approach to the Bible is off grounded. Not where it should be. Scripture is not a place for academic, intellectual, or pseudo-cultural notions; people need insight balanced with ability for daily living.

Feelings are fleeting. Intellect too often knows what is good but is unable to do it, lacking the will for good action. It’s what folk refer to when they talk about the difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. What was it Paul said in Galatians about ‘if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.’ An exceptionally large cross someone wore once made me say, so, I guess if you get mad enough you’re gonna hit someone with that cross, huh? It didn’t go down too well, but I made my point. You do not look the walk (ie look = talk); you walk it.

For this week, the focus is entirely personal and individual. You cannot do this effectively unless you are ready for it and wish to. It is the beginning of true spiritual adventure, from mind into spirit. If you get on the road, you begin to move forward into that true ability that being in the Kingdom of God brings. It is not leading into any kind of ‘holier than thou’ stuff. Part of it is that the more you grow the humbler you stay! But you won’t need someone to pray for you. If you don’t get on the road into the Kingdom, you will stay a talker, quote scripture, dress sharply perhaps, but be unable to act on a relationship with God because it has not taken off, and you are not able to see how God works amongst us. No branch to vine connect. Take care. Until next week, every blessing in Jesus, G.