The first time I encountered holiness—and it was an encounter—I had quietly entered the women’s prayer group that met at Calvary Temple Church in Denver, Colorado on Wednesday mornings. My mom would drop me off at a class and allow me to meet her back in the prayer room. I must have been mid-elementary school age—old enough to perceive something other worldly stretched before me. Every time I opened the door to that lower sanctuary prayer room, it was the same scenario—a dimly lit space, women on their knees, the sound of hushed weeping, and quiet groaning in the Spirit. This phenomenon is mentioned in Romans 8:26 NLT: 

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”

Rarely do we experience or hear it these days, but sometimes the Holy Spirit intercedes through us with sounds and syllables that cannot be spoken in ordinary language. The key is in the verse above “…but we don’t know what we should pray for…” The Holy Spirit prays through us with, unutterable depth, to send the perfect petition to God.

This did not scare me; it drew me in. I knew that it was a holy space created by the outpouring of earnest and desperate women. They walked in, fell on their knees into the holy of holies, and asked a holy God for holy and lasting change in their families. There are so many contradictions in that. These were simple, average, not wealthy women, but they had a super power—prayer.

There was mighty faith in that room too along with broken hearts, dreams, and the heart wrenching ways of prodigal children or grandchildren. These women demonstrated in living color what serious prayer meant. 

I often saw my mother pray in her own bedroom like this, so it wasn’t a showy thing that she did in a meeting, for I am sure that most of these women prayed at home as well.

The second and third time I brushed with divine holiness was when I attended Bible school and joined the desperate cries of praise and intercession with a serious student body for the salvation of the nations. I also began to attend church at Shady Grove in Texas. Their collective worship services as a congregation rang out the high praises of God. Sometimes we worshiped loudly and joyfully, and sometimes we barely whispered as we waited for the manifest Presence of God in our midst. We remained quiet and deep, and we felt the wind of the Spirit blow across the sanctuary in the most gentle and life-changing ways. We rang out high praises of worship and intercessions in that place for more than a decade. God is still answering those pleas.

The most poignant moment of holiness was just a few years ago visiting Scotland. While walking along the northern coast where many revivals had taken place in the 1800s, the heavens opened. The Holy Spirit still hovers and woos many from this place. The enduring natural beauty of the craggy shoreline rocks and the ocean beating against it with such force and majestic power reminded me of God in all His power and dominion. The wild, untamed, and roughed landscape sets the stage. It opens the heart. It prepares the spirit to see and hear God with fresh zeal and revelation. The purple heather bloomed profusely across the green hillside along with the Scottish blue bells, and we walked up the mountainside, but flew down dancing and praising the Holy One in ethereal rapture. We saw ineffable mysteries and felt the tangible breath of the Lord of Creation.

It is what many people call the thin place. The place where the veil between heaven and earth is so gossamer that you can see through it to the other side. You can become an eyewitness to the holy existence of God in the form of Jesus Christ. You enter another realm and something moves deep within your heart that changes you forever because you’ve encountered holiness without stain or blemish. You have seen the backside of the goodness of God pass before your eyes as Moses on the mountain. 

And somehow the blood of the cross of Christ becomes indelible and the price that He paid for your sins irrevocable. You never forget the thin place of holy foundation and long for it again and again.

This morning as I was preparing to speak to a church gathering about the first thing that God called holy, Shabbat, my previous encounters with holiness became alive in my spirit again. It aroused my hunger for a holy God. 

We live in a culture and a time when nothing is holy. Some years ago when I was addressing a group from another country. I remember asking the question, 

“What is holy in your culture?” 

“What is Holy in Christianity?” 

Nobody had one answer to these two questions. 

Holiness. Is this word becoming obsolete in society…to be stamped out of our dictionaries? It makes me sad and fearful for humankind.

So I compiled a list of things that the Bible calls holy. It began to form a long process of meditation on holiness from which I have been ruminating on daily. All of these groupings of holy things are worthy of study. 

Ten Things God Calls Holy

1. God Himself — Isaiah 6:3

2. His Name — Psalm 111:9

3. His Spirit — Ephesians 4:30

4. His Word — 2 Timothy 3:15; Romans 7:12

5. His People — Deuteronomy 7:6

6. His Dwelling Places — Exodus 3:5

7. His Sacred Times (Sabbath) — Exodus 20:8

8. Things Set Apart for Worship — Leviticus 27:30

9. His Calling (Priesthood/Purpose) — 1 Peter 2:9

10. His Gatherings — Leviticus 23:3

I have been thinking lately of this Sabbath especially since I’ve been asked to speak on it many times in my present world. It is the first thing that God called holy so we should look at it seriously.

Since we have had the privilege of traveling to many nations in the world and celebrating Sabbath with religious, secular, and Messianic Jews. We have seen the practice in many forms. One thing that stood out to me through the years is when we lived in Israel, it was interesting to observe Orthodox Jews in their Sabbath practice. In all of their religious life, they are constantly separating the common from the holy. That’s what life boils down to—the separation of the common and the holy. 

Sabbath tops the list because it is mentioned first. 

12 “Then the Lord said to Moses, 13 “Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.

14 “‘Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people. 15 For six days workis to be done, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death” (Exodus 31:12-17 NIV).

Now we live under grace as believers,  but if you remember the Old Testament people were stoned for not keeping the Sabbath. In some Ultra Orthodox Jewish communities today, that could still be true. And I have seen this kind of fanatical reaction to the breaking of the Sabbath– – even if you are a gentile accidentally stumbling into a Jewish community and are found breaking their Sabbath. They are seriously abiding by Moses‘s law.

I thank God that we live under grace but this does not exclude us from remembering that keeping the Sabbath was one of the 10 Commandments. It was also a law or gift as I prefer to call it that was given at the time of creation. And the first thing that God called holy. 

I believe that God created the world in six days and wanted to take the seventh day not just to rest – I don’t believe that God was tired. I think he wanted to meditate and view the beauty of creation—to sit back for 24 hours and take it all in – all the wonder, and all the glory, and all the beauty. He wanted to have fun. And when he created Adam and Eve he wanted to have fellowship with them. I wonder what they did on those Sabbath days in creation before the fall of man?

Notice in verse 17: “You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.”

We remember and observe Sabbath as a sign from God to know that it is God who makes US holy! Wow!

Therefore, I approach Sabbath as a gentile Christian because it is good for me. It is a gift of time and it is not something that I have to do. It is something that I choose to do. I love the Jewish liturgy surrounding Sabbath. I love the meal that is eaten together as a family or with friends. I love the lighting of the candles, the lifting of the wine chalice, the breaking of the bread, and the sharing of joyful hearts. The blessings that are prayed over the children and the wives are profound. It is such a holy event. And that same holiness can be carried over into the next day as we rest – – not in legal sense of being tied to your room. But in the sense of taking joy in freedom of relaxation. Refuse to see In the limitations of not working as boundaries but as freeing you from the and the taskmaster of the six day work world.

But above all it is holy and a sign that God is making me holy!

It truly it is something holy—something set apart. We must approach it in the same way. I wrote this poem with those thoughts in mind.

Holy, the Sabbath

I yearn to reach into the sacred deep—

to touch the mystery—that draws and shakes me awake with one stroke.

Dare I even

      tiptoe into

                                  holiness?

I wait with yearning 

and 

imagine

                                       

                                    holiness…  

Its syllables and sounds

h-o- l-i-n-e-s-s

Holy. Holy. Holy fall from my lips is hushed tones.

No one hears my timid, breathy prayer but me—I long for that which is unstained—for the Holy One, for a transcendent ascension into that sanctuary of time—a day, apart, as holy.

Holy. Holy. Holy.

This word is untouchable, unreachable, even unrecognizable in my world, like an old Hebrew word, a derivative of a dead Semitic root. 

Close or far, the letters 

h-o-l-y

blur. 

But they are not vague. I feel 

the power of a dark

stormy night brewing with torrents of stinging strikes of blinding rain pellets and the crackling thunder, electrical lightening. 

My fears unfurl without restraint and run wild and untamed. A few minutes in, I sit still

enough to inhale and exhale slowly and breathe 

holy 

in hushed breathless syllables as the atmosphere calms to, “Peace be Still.”

Holy rises within me as an a mounting ocean wave of revelation of awe and pure light that radiates untainted sinlessness—a purity unknown by me.

In the soft unfolding of seconds that feel like  compressed hours—

when I stop striving—

and suddenly realize that

I am naked and unashamed.

Standing bare in the presence of Holiness, my eyes blink in the light of unblemished, perfected beauty.

There is a silvery crystal river that runs above the brassy, clanging, chaotic din

of all I comprehend on this earth—

that whispers that my life has been bought by a costly price, redeemed by a bloody unjust exchange—my life for His. 

Holy whispers back in echo

that my life is set apart

not by exclusion, but irrevocable inclusion.

I am holy too and brought near 

by a savage death 

of intimate love.

Through the years, I have dined at round Sabbath tables with many peoples, tongues, and tribes where long arms of hospitality have filled my mouth and heart equally, and in rudimentary kitchens where we broke bread and sipped wine and remembered the Lord in death with weeping and tears and lifted the cup with incandescent joy because He lives. He lives!

I have felt holiness in the stillness

between the scary, powerless, gapping spaces,  between prayer and the heavenly realm

where the soul flings wide its doors with wild abandonment of faith

and nothing is forced to performance. Where I know that I have touched the God that sees.

There, prayers are heard, are received.

Holiness is 

the quiet separation —

of a life violently rescued and unequivocally surrendered— 

again and again.

At the altar of the Sabbath table, holiness is understood in these five words,

Here am I. Send me.

Holiness is a day that whispers,

Rest.

Holy is the Sabbath.

Holy is the Lord of the Sabbath. 

Holy. Holy. Holy 

is He.

Holy is the Sabbath Bride that prepares herself for the Bridegroom. 

Holy, the Sabbath sanctuary.  

A table that becomes

more than polished wood and grain, and bread and wine and angels crying out, 

“Holy, Holy. holy.”

The Sabbath table is the very

altar

of heaven. 

Bonnie Saul Wilks