Trying to get a handle on comparing my heart to God’s holiness is somewhat like the comparison of a can of tuna fish to the ocean.

How my heart relates to holy has everything to do with church. It can be the difference between seeing church as a club or seeing church as the direct result of a cross.

Club or cross? I want my identity etched on the cross with all those who find their names burned in its wood across the past 2000 years.

Each year I spend several months in the Old Testament Scripture. Throughout the 39 books, I see a God who is primarily concerned with people’s hearts. Those who honored Him and treated Him as holy ended up on the honor role of all saints in the Book of Hebrews—chapter 11.

As a reader of Old Testament Scripture, I also encounter God who gives law. The law is a tool used by God to help the Israelites treat God as holy in great contrast to all gods conceived by humankind.

At the end of the day He wanted hearts given fully to Him—not law keepers.

In the heart and holy category, the teaching of the New Testament does not differ from the message of the Old Testament. The holy God still seeks the pure heart.

It is far too easy to begin with a heart that wants to be offered to God and end up placing check marks by all good deeds as I inadvertently  slip into law keeping.

I am not into feel good religion. I am into the heart and the holy.

This I believe; the more I grow in my grasp of holy the more my heart issue will take care of itself and the less need I will have to place a check mark by any action in my life.

Were I to search for a synonym for heart, my equivalent word would have to be soul. My heart is not a pump or a muscle like the one that keeps blood and oxygen circulating through my body.

My heart imagery is more like a sponge. When my heart (soul) is dry, what makes it moist and pliable is the holy. The more my heart soaks up God’s holiness, the more caring and understanding my heart becomes as I relate to others.

God hates sin but he loves anyone with a pliable heart reaching for the holy.

Churches focused upon the cross are church that cry over sin while reaching for the holy.It is here I find common ground with all Christ followers.

Stay tuned. – Gary J. Sorrells – On Cross Church.