Unanimous Individuality (pt1)

Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is he! Psalm 99:3

This is less a devotional, more an attempt to put my thoughts in order to help make sense of them. I have been attempting to talk to God more than I have been with a desire to close the gap between Him and me. As a part of that, I have been listening to some worship music from the IHOP in Kansas City. Misty Edwards' new album, Fling Wide, has truly opened my eyes with its desperate longing for Christ's return. There is such an honest pouring out in the live recording that I have found my own soul crying out, grateful for the hunger and thirst God has allowed me to have for Him. I find my heart swelling, my eyes turning heavenward, my life breaking open to receive what He has to give. In response to His recent mercy to me, the word holy came to mind.
The widely accepted meaning of holy is set apart. Something that is unique in such a good and complete way that nothing is comparable. This is God. He alone is holy. In each of us is a longing for something that good and true. We want to be part of what is above all other things. Sadly, we have grown weary in waiting for the return of the Holy One and have begun grabbing our own great things to make us feel less alone. The most common examples are the role models in our lives: the athletes, musicians, politicians, and actors. Still others look to institutions or philosophies. Our hearts cry out for individuality and unanimity at the same time. We long to be part of something big without being a face in the crowd.
This desire is the symptom of our cry for God. Only God is holy. Only he is set apart enough and good. Only God can adopt us into something pure, true, and larger than life itself; for only His kingdom will outlive our mortality and all it includes. Yet, in this collective of souls, we are still individually made, gifted, and called to do something no one else can. In God we have the individual unanimity our souls seem to cry for. In Him we are made whole.
We praise so many things. We laud and extol and cheer and lift up the names of so many and are so often let down. Personally, I long to cry out the name of something that will not fail, something that cannot be overcome, something that already is victorious. I am tired of depending on my own judgment or on the judgment of other men.
As I write, there is a selfish tinge to my words. My desire is that I would become so engrossed and close to Jesus that my decisions are made by His judgment, my praises are for Him. My soul cries for Him for my own sake, and it does not cry for me. His name is lifted by my life when I hunger for Him, when I praise Him, when I recognize Him in this world as the only thing that is truly holy. Let us pray for one another that we would have eyes to see the true and holy goodness that exists in God alone and that we would become unanimous in our seeking and longing and loving of God and God alone above all things. For only He is Holy.