A FEW THOUGHTS ON HOLINESS

Know what I don't get? I don't get how traditions and customs that are man made are part of being holiness. Am I missing something? Yes! Yes, I agree that holiness is right. You won't get no arguments out of me. But let me bust your bubble religious folk, holiness has nothing to do with traditions and customs. Holiness has nothing to do with any doctrine. I'm so sick of religious folk. I'm so sick of those that don't read the Bible for themselves. They depend on what other people say the Bible said not knowing that some of what's coming out may be opinion or may be turned to gain attendance and not gain souls. The Bible says to study to show thyself approved. Not to show your pastor approved or anybody else. Read and study the Bible for yourself. Don't depend on someone else because they might be leading you astray. I used to make a habit, a habit that I didn't need to break, to come home from church and study the verses the pastor or who ever spoke used in their sermon for myself. Why? For one to make sure I wasn't getting led astray. Is that wrong? I don't think so. Is it questioning what the person preached about? Not necessarily unless they said something that does not line up with the Bible.

I was watching this video that featured Hezekiah Walker leading a church in a praise or what us pentecostal people like to call a shout. I looked down at the comments below and I saw one comment that was so religious. The individual made a comment talking about some of the dudes in the video that happened to have dreads. The comment basically said that the young dudes with dreads need to cut them off because "Holiness is still right!" Then someone responded to that comment saying that women needed to keep their head's covered in church because "Holiness is still right!"

This is why people turn away from the church and turn away from God. We try to witness to people with the customs and traditions we were born into rather than witness to people the Word of God. I talked about in blogs past how now I'm leading songs at church. My mom made a joke about how it was because I cut my hair. What's sad though is that some would probably say that and mean it. For the record, I could sing when I was growing my hair, but I didn't do it. Cutting my hair had nothing to do with me gaining confidence enough in my voice to lead songs. What gave me confidence was just going out and doing it. Getting my mind past being nervous, past every judging eye looking at me, and just sucking it up and doing it. Could I have done that while I still had cornrows and my Afro? Yep.

Another questions now comes, did my hair make me any more or less saved? Did the fact that I got my hair braided and had long hair make me more or less holy? Tradition would say yes. Religion would probably say yes. From all I've read in the Bible, I didn't read anywhere where having an Afro and braids was an abomination.

If you going to say, "Holiness is right," know what Holiness really is and please don't go by the customs and traditions you were taught growing up. Study to show thyself approved.

This wasn't exactly the blog I had planned, but here it is. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you got something out of it. As always, my twitter and facebook information is on the right. My YouTube is: http://www.youtube.com/danielakabigd. My DailyBooth is: http://www.dailybooth.com/bigdusty. My Podcasts page is: http://bigdusty.podomatic.com. If you have an account with Blogger, go ahead and follow me here so you'll know when the next blog comes up. Don't forget to share your thoughts below. Share this blog with other people. Feel free to advertise this blog all you want. Trust me, you're not going to hurt my feelings.

Stay Saved,

Daniel Richerson aka Big Dusty

If We Would Just Give God His Time....

You know sometimes, we go to church expecting to get out a certain time. We go to church expecting the usual things to happen. We go to church ready to go home and catch the game on TV. We go to church because it's a ritual. But...What if we would go to church with the purpose of praising and worshiping God? What if we went to church and the spirit of the Lord is showing himself strong, and we actually let the spirit move besides having to follow the ritual order of service? What if we actually let go and let God and stop using it as just another quote? I believe some of us got too contemporary, meaning we look for inspiration and not substance. Can you imagine if people would come to church not for the performance and actually let the Holy Ghost move? We've made church a ritual where we come to church at 11 in the morning then we get out at 1 in the afternoon. Wednesday nights, we come to church at 7 and get out at 8:30 or 9. We shed a few tears, then we come home saying God moved, but no substance is getting in. We always talk about how church used to be, well, what's wrong with us? Back in the day, people would actually work the altar and people got delivered, filled with the Holy Ghost, healed, etc. They would stay at church for hours, not just to do it, but they were praising and worshipping God, getting saved, getting filled with the Holy Ghost, and wasn't doing it for show. We got to get back to letting God be God, and not let God move for 10 minutes then move on because we got to follow the program. Sometimes we got to throw the program out. People are hungry to get saved. People are hungry to be filled with the Holy Ghost, but what are we as the church feeding them?

Stay Saved,

Daniel Richerson