The pursuit of holiness is nothing short of a pursuit of the heart of God. God, who is holy, created man, and then placed upon him this mandate, “Be holy, as I am holy” (I Peter 1:16). The statement was made  with the full knowledge that those He was addressing were fallen. Depraved. Broken. Needy. Decidedly ‘unholy’.

And yet the statement was made, and it has not been revoked. As Christians, we’re tasked, as fallen, yet Spirit-filled creatures, to so mimic our Creator that we take upon ourselves the very nature of God Himself. We are to be like Him. We are to put away, put to death, and put off everything that smacks of the ‘old’ us – the ‘before Christ’ us, the ‘it’s all about me’ us. And we are to take on, put on, clothe ourselves with everything that is Him. Not I, but Christ. I have been crucified with Him. This life I now enjoy is His. He lives in me.

So why does my dead, crucified self put up such a persistent fight against the new self that has been provided for me by my resurrected Savior? Why, when I’ve been given the command to be holy, and then been given the Spirit by which I can be holy, do I not always walk in holiness as I ought?

As I was pondering this question, the answer came to me somewhat out of the blue. Here’s the reason:

Holiness in inconvenient.

And in the day in which we live, there is no greater sin than the sin of being inconvenienced. There are probably millions of people in our country today whose jobs depend on our demand for convenience. From retail stores that stock  more items than anyone could possibly need, to all the varieties of restaurants, to companies that offer every type of service imaginable – we are a culture of convenience.

And then I, as a 30-something Christian husband and father, am confronted with the clear, unwavering, unflinching demand of Scripture to be holy. And immediately I have a problem. It’s not easy to be holy. Fact is, it’s rather hard. And that’s because sin (the archenemy of holiness) is so close, so near, so accessible, so available, so attractive, so deceptive, and so addictive that to my fallen frame it’s nearly impossible to dodge all those land mines in any given day.

J.C. Ryle, who lived in the 1800’s wrote something about the danger of allowing even the smallest of sin in our life:

“There is nothing finer than the point of a needle, but when in has made a hole, it draws all the thread after it.”

This is what sin is in the heart of holiness. It starts small, almost imperceptible, but if left unchecked, will eventually penetrate the heart. And when it does, it can draw all sorts of sin in with it. So how do I defend myself against such assault?

The key to holy living is to learn to embrace inconvenience. It is inconvenient for me to set boundaries in my life that dictate how I interact with a woman not my wife. It’s inconvenient (and sometimes awkward) to deny to help a woman when to do so would put me in a compromising position. It’s inconvenient to have parental controls on my TV so that I can’t even watch a program without my wife putting in the password. It’s inconvenient to have web filters and accountability programs on my computer which sometimes filter out content that is actually ok to see but got flagged for some reason. It’s inconvenient to deny social engagements (and suffer through the subsequent conversations from those who don’t understand why I can’t attend). It’s inconvenient to get rid of your smartphone and opt for a basic one because of the temptation that rides along in your pocket all day. These are just a few examples, but they illustrate my point: holiness is inconvenient.

So the question is, are such drastic measures really that necessary?

Consider Jesus’ statement:

“And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire” (Mark 9:47).

Now that’s inconvenient. It’s also worth it if holiness is your one true desire.

The cry of my heart is that God would grant me the strength and desire to pursue Him and His holiness with all my heart. After all, if I’m going to follow Him, He will at some point lead me to the cross upon which He died.

And dying on a cross is inconvenient.