Henry Blackaby - Holiness

HOLINESS

HOLINESS
GODS PLAN FOR FULLNESS OF LIFE

HENRY BLACKABY

Copyright 2003 by Henry Blackaby

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Scripture quotations noted NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blackaby, Henry T., 1935
Holiness : God's plan for fullness of life / Henry Blackaby & Kerry Skinner.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-7852-6321-7
1. Christian life. 2. HolinessChristianity. I. Skinner, Kerry L., 1955 II. Title.
BV4509.5.B546 2003
234'.8dc21

2003012108

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 BVG 06 05 04 03

TO OUR FOURTEEN GRANDCHILDREN
AS THEY PURSUE DILIGENTLY GODS
WILL IN THEIR LIVES.

Mike, Daniel, Carrie, Erin, Matthew,
Conor, Christa, Stephen, Sarah, Emily,
Douglas, Anne, Elizabeth, and Joshua.

Contents

THESE MESSAGES ARE THE HEART OF MY PRESENT ministry. Preached in one form or another, these Truths have developed in my life over many years. They are my life-messages to Gods people, as God calls us to renewal, revival, and spiritual awakening. These Truths first began to make a deep impression on my life as a young boy. I can remember listening to my layman father teach and preach. He began a church in a dance hall in a very sinful city on the northern coast of British Columbia, Canada. He saw broken lives in an alcohol-soaked city. He wept before the Lord over the condition of the people. Time and again he preached passionately on sin, repentance, the fear of God, and holiness. Sin in the lives of desperate people overwhelmed him as he lived out his Christian life with integrity. He remained true in his personal holiness. Our family also lived our lives under the deep conviction of the return of the Lord and its accompanying accountability. All this left a deep impression on my young life.

As a young man my life and message were also shaped toward repentance and revival through the many stories and pictures my family received from China during the great Shantung Revival. My aunt and uncle were missionaries in China during those awesome and exciting times of revival.

During the early days of my ministry God convinced me of His holiness and the need for His people to return to Him. God used the writings of Oswald Chambers and Duncan Campbell to impact me deeply. The year before I went to Faith Baptist Church in Saskatoon to become their pastor, Duncan Campbell had been in the city. He left a significant mark on the city and indicated Gods promise of revival in Canada. This promise of revival and the witness of his godly life were some of the reasons I answered the call to minister there.

I had already felt the weight of sin and the deep need for biblical repentance while pastoring in California during the 1960s. I trembled before God as I realized Gods people no longer feared God nor sin, and no longer sought holiness. As a pastor I saw the consequences of sin in Gods people. Passionately I preached and taught Gods people to fear God, hate sin, and thoroughly repent before holy God and seek holiness as a way of life.

God honored the fervent and faithful proclamation of these Truths to His people. Gods people did heed Gods Word, and lives and families were dramatically changed. The communities where I pastored were changed in many ways, and the lost were saved. God graciously granted me the privilege of experiencing touches of real revival. My first encounter with deep and real revival was in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in western Canada. After I had spent much time in prayer with the other pastors, God suddenly moved mightily, every night, for seven and one-half weeks! Churches were affected, and thousands of lives were touched. The effects of those days are still being felt thirty years later. During this time we saw many people saved, new churches started, and many people called into the ministry. Many churches experienced great renewal.

Later, at Howard Payne University in Texas, God allowed me to see and experience revival with the people there. This revival affected hundreds of other colleges and many seminary campuses. The Truths God had burned into my heart were being confirmed in changed lives. Again, in Ft. Collins, Colorado, I witnessed twenty-one straight hours of deep brokenness and repentance in a gathering of several thousand Campus Crusade workers. I encounter many of those changed lives as I travel all over the world.

My life has been shaped by God through these experiences of revival, and thus the heart messages of my ministry have been deepened. In this book I share what God put on my heart for His people. Today, I am passionately burdened to share these much-needed Truths with Gods people:

The loss of the fear of God

Seeing sin from Gods perspective

The highway of holiness

May God continue to be gracious and grant that these words and Truths continue to draw Gods people toward Him and thus toward the experience of deep revival. My life-message continues to be toward true revival and spiritual awakening in this nation and across the worldfor the glory of God!

One
THE LOSS OF THE
FEAR OF GOD

IT IS THE PEOPLE OF GOD WHO CAN TRULY SHAPE a nation. Many look to great leaders or powerful governments to shape a nation. But most likely, leaders and governments will not restore a nation once it is on the downward slide. While leaders and governments can influence a nation, there is no group of people who can determine the coming years of a nation like Gods people.

As go the people of God, so goes the redemption of the world. God is therefore working mightily in His own. We are closer to either revival or judgment than we have ever been. There is not an alternative to these two. Either Gods people return to God with all of their hearts, or God will judge our nation. We do not have to guess how that judgment will look or how thorough it will be. The Bible indicates how thoroughly God judges His people. Any nation that forgets God as a corporate people comes under the judgment of God. When God judged Israel, the Northern Kingdom, He completely wiped them out. When God judged Judah, the Southern Kingdom, He destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and put the people in bondage for seventy years. God also took the people in Jesus day and scattered them so thoroughly that they did not get back together for more than nineteen hundred years, just as Jesus predicted.