Touching Holiness: Capturing the Essence of Jesus

By Gloria Laura Lavoie

Jesus never held anything back, including in the words He chose. Always with purpose, always with promise, He said that He will never leave us or forsake us. In the promise alone lies tremendous comfort, but when we experience His presence for ourselves, we have experienced something extraordinary. His holiness exudes what should be abstract, yet He makes Himself known in what feels tangible. He wants to touch us with His perfect holiness and desires that we capture His sacred presence personally, deeply. If we believe Jesus to be untouchable, this book reveals the opposite as we glimpse His birth to His resurrection . . . to the heart of mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973646402

Gloria Laura Lavoie

Glory loves serving Jesus. She takes great pleasure in leading the ladies' fellowship in her church, where she insists that she receives far more than what she gives. She is the author of Heirs of Salvation: The Blessed Assurance and Expectant Joy of Our Descendant's Salvation and Touching Holiness: Capturing the Essence of Jesus. Glory lives in New Bedford,Massachusetts, with her husband, Paul. They have two grown sons and four grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2018 Gloria Laura Lavoie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4641-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4642-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4640-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018913921

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/26/2018

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Power Unleashed

Chapter 2 When Jesus Speaks Your Name

Chapter 3 Create in Me …

Chapter 4 The Uninvited King

Chapter 5 The Privilege of Worship

Chapter 6 The Power of Praise

Chapter 7 Three Years to Extraordinary

Chapter 8 Heaven’s Touch

Chapter 9 A Servant’s Nature

Chapter 10 Whispers from the Grave

Chapter 11 The Perfecting of Patience

Chapter 12 The Night a Stable Replaced a Throne

Chapter 13 The Throne of Perfection

Chapter 14 Unsurpassed Grace

This book is

dedicated to my sister, Diane, who has far exceeded the definition of a sister. Diane, we share a lifetime of cherished memories. You have always been such an encourager and cheerleader to me in my writing. Sis, if I could have asked the Lord prior to my birth to place me in the home with the best sister there is, He would have told me, I already took care of that. She’s waiting for you.

Acknowledgments

To my husband, Paul, who has always encouraged and supported me. Paul, you are a man of integrity and honor and I am so very blessed to call you my husband all these years. I haven’t yet finished thanking God for you—my gratefulness to Him will continue until my last breath.

To my sons Joshua and Jason: being your mom has been the most profound role I was given in this life. You’ve both been a source of pride and joy for me. To my daughter-in-law, Julie, I love the way how it is a stranger who first enters a home with one’s son … and how that stranger comes to remain as family.

To my grandchildren Jacob, Matthew, Alaina, and Hattie: oh, how my cup runneth over! What blessings have been poured out through each one of you.

You have all each enriched my life in your own special ways. I have been encouraged and inspired in this work through sharing life with all of you. I love you all … but Jesus loves you so much more.

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But most of all, the utmost of my acknowledgement and gratefulness is to my Blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is difficult to express the humbleness that I feel with every word I write. I lay every written word that I’ve ever penned to honor my King at the foot of His Throne. It is for His glory alone.

Introduction

Holiness. It is what the Lord requires us to seek, yet it is a state that He and He alone possesses. We are called to be in this world but not of it. We are called to be holy, for He is holy. We understand this, yet we also understand that the holiness of Jesus belongs to Him alone. Striving to be holy is the best we can do, but it is what we must do.

Reading through the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus, we can be certain of one thing: holiness was not taken lightly. In these books especially, we see the Lord’s commandments established, we see the ark of the covenant fashioned, and we see the Tabernacle’s intricacies directed and ordained.

In His perfect holiness, He was establishing His covenant with His people founded upon it. The sinfulness of man often corrupted any or all of what the Lord had set forth, but through it all there was always a remnant that understood His holiness.

Today, nations are saturated with all that is unholy, making it difficult to sometimes recognize that it is not without holiness. Sometimes the diamond can’t shine if the fog is too thick, but Jesus’s presence supersedes everything that attempts to cloak Him.

In this life, not one of us escapes times of sorrow, trials, or turmoil. We hope that during these times, we’ll have family or friends who will be there to give us words of encouragement or perhaps a bit of wisdom-filled advice.

However, sometimes all we ache for is their presence: a warm hug, a shoulder to cry on, an ear to simply listen. But hoping, needing this, doesn’t always guarantee that we will have it. But there is One whose presence we can guarantee.

When Jesus makes His presence known, things change. Perhaps not the circumstances right then, but we’ll have received His peace and comfort. Not just a drive-thru version of peace and comfort, but as Paul the apostle boasts to the saints in Philippi:

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

That’s the peace we crave—one that will surpass our understanding. We’re not particularly prone to accepting our lack of understanding of things. We want to know stuff. This I do know: every one of us will take His peace with few caring to understand it.

That kind of peace and comfort gets us through not just to the end of our need, but even to the next hour, because sometimes that next hour is all we ache to get through.

Jesus reveals His presence and holiness in the most remarkable ways, through the most remarkable circumstances. His Word is rich with testimonies of this, yet we possess our own testimonies of remarkable.

His holiness is beyond all of us, yet at the same time we serve a King who makes it personally known to us.

I pray that this book is a reminder of the presence of Jesus that we so freely enjoy but also of the holiness that He makes touchable. I pray that each one of us recognizes the essence of His presence.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,

which was, and is, and is to come.

—Revelation 4:8

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

—Hebrews 11:1

Chapter 1

Power Unleashed

As I nestled into my seat, I felt the excitement reverberate around me. Was this really happening? My husband, Paul, and I exchanged smiles. Leaning forward, I caught the smile of my sister, Diane. Sharing this with her and her husband, Virg, was an added blessing. We were on our way to Israel.

To put it mildly, Paul and I have not exactly been world travelers, but through the years, plane travel has also not eluded us. Now, whenever we’ve flown, we’ve always chosen to travel coach, therefore walking through first class and never staying long unless the line stopped moving.

Of course, it has been our choice. So I can playfully say that while these individuals have already been served beverages, and at times, some semblance of nourishment, one cannot help but think, Ah, but very soon, I’ll be given a wonderful little bag containing four peanuts.

Now truthfully, we’ve never felt a hint of wanting as we’ve passed through these seats. Our appetites get satisfied prior to boarding, and in relatively short order, we all arrive at the same destination.

For this trip we traveled three thousand miles to join Diane and Virg and their church. I had never been on an international flight before and had no predetermined thoughts of the plane that would take us halfway across the globe. Upon boarding, I quickly realized that I had previously only flown on this one’s babies!

Within the plane’s massive size, the entirety of our group had been booked in coach. We proceeded with our customary walk through first class, but because of its grand width, it was a large room. Each patron had roughly four square feet to himself or herself, complete with a wide recliner. Draping the recliner was a very thick, luxurious blanket and full-size pillow. Their individual televisions were home sized. They had assorted shelves and cupboards surrounding them to hold their belongings.

Where there were obvious differences in their flight experience from ours, there were also less obvious ones. But we didn’t care. In fact, I don’t believe anyone in coach cared.

Our quick stroll through these rooms—yes, there were more than one—caused us to gawk and murmur like a bunch of urchins in a Charles Dickens novel. Unlike other flights, these passengers were boarded last, so our gawking and murmuring could flow freely! But once we stepped into our seating area, our focus shifted to what we had and not what others did.

Our larger-than-normal seating, together with a comfortable distance between rows, ensured our kneecaps weren’t going to be compressed into our spinal cords. Hot meals, beverages, snacks, blankets, and pillows—although thinner and smaller—gave us all first-class treatment on coach tickets.

Even the restrooms, which those in first class had to share with us urchins, could easily fit three people, which must have aided anyone with claustrophobia since most plane restrooms are made for chihuahuas.

Throughout our long flight, there was never a thought to anyone who might be having it better. Many who traveled in first class on that trip might have done this trip a dozen times. Perhaps for some it was more a business trip than a pilgrimage—routine and blasé. Others were simply returning home after traveling abroad.

Personally, for this journey, I would have gone happily if they had strapped me onto the wing or locked me in a typical tiny restroom with the resident chihuahua. It had been a trip that