Holiness

I had a heart to heart with my 17-year-old brother tonight. He is more quiet than our youngest sister (who does enough talking for our whole family!), but in a one-on-one he has a lot to say. He is a senior in high school, one of his school’s star football players and mentored by the pastor of the church he attends. He and I actually have similar personalities, a little bit thoughtful and feelers, and have always had a special bond.

Tonight his questions, and ponderings, centered around frustrations he’s recently felt in his social circles . . . mostly about what he’s noticed in friends and classmates.

I'm not sure if it was what he noticed, or more how much he cared, that touched and broke my heart.

No one cares, he said. He related how when he was a freshmen, he knew the seniors were "bad" kids, but he didn’t think his class would ever get to that point. Now, they’re no different from any kids of the world. He said he knew this about the guys. But his greatest shock was with the girls. Freshman girls would have been in shock at the things the guys did and said. Now they liked it, joined in. They act just like guys, he said. And the guys don’t care about anything except having fun. They can’t see long-term, or desire any accomplishment or maturity.

His disappointment with people was a feeling that rang familiar with me. Yah, I’ve been there. I’ve certainly seen groups of people act in shocking ways. Namely, ungodly. And, it’s been disappointing.

My brother and I got to talk about how God does care even more than we do about each person’s individual journey and that He is in control. Really, no righteousness, or even desire for righteousness, is of ourselves, but from God. We recognized that God looks at the heart, a heart that we can’t see or know. And we discussed reasons and motivations behind teenage apathy and immaturity, and cultural effects on their ways of thinking. We felt compassion and we felt pain. And I felt impressed.

What a young man, without a father in his life, to care about these things. From a girl’s perspective, I got to share with him how impressive it is for some girls to see a guy who does care about righteousness, and he said likewise for a guy seeing a girl pursue purity. We recognized that a desire for holiness, or its lack of, is not gender-specific . . . but that it certainly is needed.

But oh God, please let us desire it. Let us seek both grace and mercy in the truth that we have nothing to offer of ourselves, but also DESIRE righteousness, goodness, purity, holiness, because YOU DO.

Make us people who are willing to stand up, to dare to be different, to walk according to Your ways, believing that in them we will find our greatest joy.

God, make us a generation that seeks Your face. Break our hearts for what breaks Yours.

And give us rest and hope, that You ARE doing the work.