Daily Devotions

Hypothetically, your church is seeking God’s direction and will for a new pastor to care for and lead your church.
I was thinking, a man like John the Baptist would probably never get hired today. No church would touch him with a ten foot pole. His resume wouldn’t even be considered, I’m sure. He was a public relations disaster. I mean really, he “wore clothes made from camel’s hair, had a leather belt around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1:6). Who would honestly want to look at and listen to a guy like that every Sunday?
His message was as rough as his dress: a no-nonsense, bare-fisted challenge to repent of your sins because God was on his way.
John the Baptist set himself apart from others for one task, to be a voice of Christ. The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6:17a, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord…” Everything about John centered on his purpose. His dress. His diet. His actions. His demands.
James, in his epistle said it like this, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” Those are pretty strong words.
You don’t have to be like the world to have an impact on the world. You don’t have to be like the crowd to change the crowd. You don’t have to lower yourself down to their level to lift them up to your level. Holiness doesn’t seek to be odd. Holiness seeks to be like God.
Today, choose holiness. Chose to be like Christ. Be like Enoch and Noah who are said to have “walked with God.”