The starting point to godliness

Godliness is not a fashionable term at present but it is an attribute that is central to a vibrant Christian life. To live a godly life is to put God at the centre of everything we do including the most routine and mundane of activities. We can very easily slip into the mind set of separating the sacred from the secular.

We pray, we read our Bibles, we attend worship services and we enjoy the spiritual experience and then quite separately we apply ourselves to our professional duties, we pursue our leisure activities and we get on with the ordinary business of living.

As our lives become busier it is very easy for our spiritual activities to become side-lined and eventually to be abandoned altogether. Godliness, however, is the essence and style of our everyday living. The starting point for godliness is a sense of reverence towards God.

Isaiah had a vision of God in which he saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted surrounded by seraphs who called to one another, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory,' (Isaiah 6) and it was from that his sense of calling to mission came.

But godliness goes beyond a mere sense of awe because it is also draws on the knowledge that God loves us. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19) and our attitudes and actions are based on the awareness that we are children of God.

We can come into the presence of this awe-inspiring God with confidence and find unfailing mercy for all our shortcomings and overwhelming grace to help us whatever our need (Hebrews 4:16). The more we are aware of the twin truths of God’s greatness and his goodness, the more our lives will reflect his character, so the third dimension of godliness is found in our actions, and especially in our attitudes and behaviour towards other people.

Prayer: Lord, Help me to be more godly in my behaviour and attitudes. Amen