The Holy Spirit is not sedentary. He wants not merely to exist quietly within us, but to thrive. Because our spirit is firmly fastened to God, the incredible energy of His Spirit is now at work within, motivating us to move forward with Him.

A mounting desire to please God with our lives is the outcome we should expect from His indwelling presence. And as a part of this yearning to please Him comes an inherent sense that we are to be holy. Because God is holy, a godly life must be a holy life.

Let’s be realistic: how many of us could say with a shred of confidence that we are holy in all our attitudes and behavior, especially given the fact that God gives us something seemingly so impossible to live up to as: “you shall be holy, for I am holy.”(1 Peter 1:15-16)

Even though it’s hard to imagine that we could ever achieve such a measure of perfection, we can’t deny that Scripture ushers us toward that goal. So we often feel left with little alternative but to work for it. It’s not hard to understand why we see things this way, because it’s actually pretty common to think in terms of holiness being associated with what a person has achieved. Isn’t that how people of all religious stripes see it—the “Holy Man” as opposed to your everyday run-of-the-mill believer? Not only is this philosophy deeply ingrained in us through our general experience of life, but it’s also prevalent in the beliefs of our churches.