there is no victory without purity

I was listening to Jason Upton the other day. I had actually quite forgotten about him, I'm afraid. But I came across some CDs of his I have, and I was very glad I had found them. In one of his songs, he starts singing about how there is no victory without purity.

i started to roll that around in my head a bit. it seems like no one talks about purity anymore, and if you do you are a religious fundamentalist, a pharisee, "holier than thou", or amish. and truthfully, i think that's awful.

obtaining purity has been stripped down to not much more than a list of dos and don'ts by western Christianity. and there's been a lot of contemporary teaching on getting rid of that list, about how god loves us despite what we do or don't do. and that is so true. in fact, that's the only way to look at it.

but it doesn't stop there.

in the dictionary, purity is defined as the state of being pure. pure is defined as " unmixed with any other matter", and "free from what vitiates, weakens, or pollutes" among other similar definitions.

the first definition illustrates the heart of god, i think. purity is a natural result of a true relationship with jesus. when you let his love consume you, you will not want to be mixed with any other matter. and god is jealous over our hearts, as we grow with him he will strip away all that is not of him and bring us to a state of purity. search his word, ask him to speak to you. he will guide you to purity. religion can't accomplish that. all religion can do is try to tell what is right and what is wrong, but there is no substitute for the gentle guiding and refining from a god who loves you.

the second definition explains the why of purity. the things that are not of the lord weaken us! pollute us! they make us ineffective (vitiate). it's not that god is mean, and he wants us to conform to some arbitrary standard of conduct he conjured up from the sky or else bad things will happen. he designed us and created us for him and he knows that the things that are not of him will destroy us in time. and he loves us too much to let that happen.

search my heart, oh god. bring me to a place of purity before you.