Pursuing holiness by understanding God’s holiness gives you the most satisfying life possible.

The Son of God taught us to pray:

‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name’ (Matthew 6:9).

Therefore Jesus taught that the first request we make in prayer is that God’s name be honored as holy in our lives each day.

The first words of this prayer are the address: “Our Father in heaven,” but the first request is “Hallowed be your name.” This means that Jesus is showing us the chief desire of his own heart and what should be the chief longing of our hearts. You should long for God to be seen as holy in your life each day and pray accordingly. God’s holiness is supposed to be of ultimate importance to you.

Pursuing holiness replaces other pursuits

This means that the holy one in your life each day is not money, your investments and security, your employer, your job performance, advancing your career, padding your resume, building your network.

The holy one in your life is not a best friend, romance, spouse, family, or children.

The holy one is not a visa or green card or citizenship.

Neither is the holy one Hollywood, sports, video games, travel, food and restaurants.

The holy one is not sex or the pleasures of drink, drugs, or clubs.

The holy one is not adventures or experiences.

Rather, your holy one is The Holy One. The Almighty, infinitely loving, infinitely wise and good Creator and Sustainer of every living thing. The Father.

Every day you begin by setting God apart for highest devotion, love, and praise. That’s who the de facto holy one is in your life. It’s whoever or whatever is set apart in the temple of your heart for highest devotion, love, and praise.

Pursuing holiness revolutionizes your world

People can sense who the holy one is in your life. If your holy one is God, people will know it. There is a spiritual atmosphere in and around a person who regards God as the Holy One, the One set apart for highest adoration, praise, and thanks. When that is the ongoing condition of your heart—not merely a decision made once that is now compromised by other chief concerns—but rather when adoring and honoring God as the Holy and Incomparable One is the ongoing condition of your heart, then the Holy Spirit rules in your heart and clothes you with his presence and makes himself felt in the space around you. You become a holy man or holy woman who brings the awareness of God, even the reverence of God, to others.

You become a holy one. So you become what you already are—a saint—through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. And that condition, being a holy man or holy woman, becomes sweet and satisfying to you. Where at one time in your life you may have laughed at the idea of being a holy one, now in Christ it becomes both your identity and pursuit. You rejoice that you are already holy through faith in Jesus, but you continue to pursue holiness in your motives, thoughts, desires, words, and actions. You go through your days taken by the reality that you serve a holy, awesome God, and you really can aim to be holy because he is holy.

Holiness and the holy things God has put in this world become increasingly attractive to you. Prayer becomes something you can never get enough of no matter how much you pray. The Word of God becomes an ocean of life you can never exhaust. God’s people, God’s house, become your family, your house. God’s work becomes your family business.

All this and much, much more happens when God becomes your Holy One. It is the most wonderful life, because it is the life you were created for. And it endures forever.

How to pursue the Holy One

Proverbs 9:10 says, “The knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” The knowledge of God is insight; the knowledge of God as holy is insight. Understanding God’s holiness will revolutionize your life. You will have more insight and wisdom than the lost and aimless world around you.

Keep pursuing the knowledge of God’s holiness by reading and meditating on His Word, in company with holy people doing the same. The Word of God confronts you page after page with the Holy One. That’s why the world rejects the Bible and most people avoid it. Because in page after page the Bible confronts you with the Holy One, and you either have to repent and walk in reverent fear of this Holy God and trust in Jesus to make you right with him, or you have to reject him altogether. But you cannot humbly read about the Holy One in the Bible and stay the same. He is too great, too awesome, for that.