Brothers, my name is Jeff Pollard. I am one of the elders at Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida. We have six worldwide ministries there. The one that probably you would be familiar with, If you're familiar with any of them, would be Chapel Library. Before I begin, I want to say that I'm not teaching.

I have wrestled with this whole issue. It's interesting that Brother Sam began with his thoughts about burning in the soul and how he has viewed with it. I've wrestled with it in a different way, but I certainly have. Because if we're indeed talking about burnings in the soul, quite obviously we're not here for self-aggrandizement. We're here simply to do what we've been called to do, and that's to tell you what is burning in our souls.

That may be of little interest to some of you but I'm not teaching as I share this with you today. This is a collection of thoughts and not in a particularly coherent order, but there are things that are burning in my soul. I appreciate very much what Kevin had to say. And one other thing before I begin is Let me encourage you, if you're not aware of the evangelistic work that our brother Stephen Hopkins has been doing since Hurricane Harvey, you really need to find out what's going on down there. Tremendous work.

He and his sons and some others are doing tremendous work among those that have been devastated and preaching the gospel, feeding people, ministering to them both physically and spiritually. So if you haven't talked with him about him, let him tell you the stories of what God is doing there is a thrilling or the stories are thrilling. Well the Word of God tells us that God is holy. He is eternally set apart from all that is evil and all that is foul and wicked. He is set apart unto all that is good.

The fiery seraphim of heaven fill that glorious place with their cries, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Of his glory. And this triune God commands us in both Testaments, be ye holy, for I am holy. And the author of Hebrews urges us, follow holiness without which no man will see the Lord.

Now I read passages like this brethren and the result is always the same. I want to be holy. I know how weak, I know how feeble, I know how limited I am. In fact, I only know part of it. The Lord knows it all.

It's a worse picture than he lets me see, and I'm thankful for his grace, but I have to face the fact that there is so much about me that is not like him. I want my thoughts, my words, and my deeds to be holy. I understand the distinctions between definitive and progressive sanctification, but I just want to be clear and simple. I want to be holy and I want to live holy. That's not the best grammar.

Probably could say holily. But the fact of the matter is, I want everything about my life to be holy. I want that adjective to be descriptive of this life that I'm living. And if pastors don't think in those terms, Why in the world would God's people think they needed to be holy? I want the Spirit-wrought miracle of regeneration to manifest its internal power in every expression of my external life.

I want the life of God in the soul of man to be evident, observable, real, so that men, women, and children will recognize that Jesus lives, that the Holy Spirit transforms sinners, and that life in the kingdom is altogether desirable. Now let me put it another way. I want to be holy so that this perverse and dying world we live in will see that biblical Christianity is not simply hypocritical mouth religion. My thoughts about this are simple and always burning in my mind. I'm sure that we all agree that God's eternal purpose is to make us like Christ.

For whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. All the wisdom, all the power of God is invested in that purpose. So there ought to be some evidence that he's at work. Now this is God's plan and this is my heart's desire, feeble, as it flickers sometimes. I want to be holy and I want to live holy.

Now perhaps This will sound strange to some of you, but I want to see life. I want to see all of life the way Christ saw life. I want to hear all of life with the discernment of Christ. I want to understand all of life through the truths of Holy Scripture. I want the lenses of God's inspired and infallible Word always before me as I evaluate what's going on in my life and in the lives of those around me.

My evaluations of themselves mean nothing. I want to live all of life in the power of the Holy Spirit. I want my discernment, my treatment of others, my preaching, my perception of the world around me to be fashioned and sweetened by communion with Christ. And I want for his glory, that very thing to be evident. I want to love throughout my life with the purity and genuineness of my Savior.

If a woman in our congregation looks me in the eye and we make contact, I want her to feel safe, Not like an object. I want the holiness that arises from union in Christ to manifest itself through the look in my eyes, the tone of my voice, and the sincerity of my works. I want to preach with the moral authority that touches the human heart, exposes the corruption of sin, reflects the purity of God, and exalts the beauty of Jesus Christ as our prophet, priest, and king, and manifests that glory and power of the world to come. There ought to be something heavenly about our lives. There ought to be something heavenly about our congregations.

There ought to be something heavenly about our worship, not just punching the religious time clock. I want worship to be a taste of heaven. I want to hate what God hates and he does hate. I want to hate it too instead of loving it. I want to love what God loves and do both of those, loving and hating with all my heart.

And for that reason, I want my mind to be the habitation of God's thoughts, not a nest of lust, covetousness, envy, and pride. Covetousness, envy, and pride. I want to mortify the lust that defiles me, the envy that corrodes me, the pride that exalts me, the covetousness that discontents me. I would like to line them up in God granting me the grace, take the sword of the Spirit, and hew every one of them to pieces as Samuel did to Agag. Grace should never be a license for giving sin a pass, ever.

And I think the Reformed churches in this country have that down to a science. I want to live all of life to the eternal glory of my Heavenly Father. I have lived a life in which I have been a thief of his glory. I don't want to live another second doing so. I want to take up my cross and deny myself daily without complaint.

I want to identify my sins quickly, mortify them thoroughly, despise them violently, and confess them to Christ honestly. Judgment day honesty. I'm not very good at that. I don't know about you. I want to live all of life to the glory of my loving Heavenly Father which means I want to think, speak and act informed by the Word, empowered by the Spirit, for the good of God's people and for the glory of Christ and God my Father.

Every drop of blood that Jesus Christ shed, his glorious resurrection, his session at the Father's right hand, and his coming for us all had in view accomplishing his Father's purpose, making us like him, Making us like Christ. I understand that every one of us is a worksite in view, but It should at least be obvious. It should be patently obvious to somebody somewhere that God's at work. Making us, making us like Christ. He was holy, harmless, undefiled.

We sing a hymn in our congregation that contains the line, I long to be like Jesus, the Father's holy child. You know, sometimes it's hard for me to look at the congregation when we're singing that, because I don't see or hear singing sometimes that sounds like people are longing, longing to be like Jesus. How will God's people, speaking to pastors here, how will God's people understand the purpose of the Christian life, how to live the Christian life, or the goal of the Christian life unless we as pastors are holy? How will our wives believe that we truly love them as Christ loves the church? Unless we are holy, our lives are being conformed by the power of God's Spirit to that glorious, infallible Word.

If our children sat in a class for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and came home and never learned anything, and they were never any different than the first day they sat there would you as a parent not be deeply disturbed? And yet our churches, I mean brother and I look at some of God's people that have been sitting for decades, and the best thing you could do is in your mind is imagine them in diapers. Growth and holiness is a real thing. It's not fiction. It is God's work in these weak and feeble vessels.

I realize that some of us seem to be tougher work than others, But how will we minister to our wives? How will they reverence us as God commands them to unless we are holy? I know, I understand the theology. They should respect the uniform even if we're not worthy but the fact of the matter is that does not relieve us from the responsibility of living holy lives before them and guiding them in the truth and the glory and the beauty of Christian life. How can we be their guide?

How can we be their companion on the journey to the celestial city unless we are holy? How will our children believe that one word in the Bible is true unless we as fathers are holy? Brethren, I've pastored churches long enough to watch men who have talk about religion, talk about having more babies, talk about, oh yes, male headship. And yet by the time their children are teenagers, they don't believe a word that dad says because they live with him and they see no holiness of life. And anybody who's been a pastor for any amount of time knows that.

Brethren, how will our children believe that Jesus lived, died on Calvary's cross, rose again the third day, and really saves people from their sins, unless they see some evidence slow with a lot of us. I know, slow learner here. But my wife can see that from here to there God's done something. How will our congregations, our families, our friends, our neighbors, our culture, have any hope or have any reason to believe whatsoever in the, listen, transforming power of God's grace unless they see transformed people. Lost people can stop bad habits.

There ought to be a genuine separation in the way we live, and identifiably so. Well, brethren, God is holy. The Word of God declares it. He calls us to be holy and to do holy things, set apart from wickedness, set apart to what is good, righteous, pure, clean. I want what I look at.

I want what I listen to. And I want what I engage in to be in harmony with God's command and with his plan to make me and all of his children like Christ. With all my heart, I want to be holy, and I want to live holy. And I testify to you, that is what is burning in my heart.