Holiness Within? Really?

While reading chapter 11 in the book we are studying in our Small Group, “The Utter Relief of Holiness” a thought struck me that has been rolling around in my head since yesterday.  The Holy Spirit is given to us when we realize our sinfulness and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior from sin.  (1 Corinthians 6:19–20   Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?  You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.  So glorify God in your body.)   So if we have the Holy Spirit within we have all we need to be “holy.”  We don’t have to try or struggle to be holy.  It is already there we just have to understand how to use that holiness to its fullest potential.  As I thought about this the Lord showed me an easy to understand application of this concept.  I have a wonderful Nikon DSLR camera that I bought a few years ago with money that came to me from my grandmother’s estate.  It has all kinds of bells and whistles that I had no idea how to use but I thought I wanted to learn.  I started right away taking pictures in Auto Mode - my pictures are nice but I just felt like they could be so much more if I knew what “aperture” and “shutter priority” meant and If I understood about lighting and shadows and ISO (OH MY!) And what are all those other settings and symbols that came up on the screen? I had every intention of finding an online study or night class to learn how to use this wonderful camera.  I even bought a book for “Dummies” on how to use the DSLR camera.  Well skip ahead a couple years and I still have not learned how to use this camera. I am still stuck in Auto Mode.  My excuses? - time, money . . . name an excuse and I have probably used it.  Here I have this wonderful camera that has all the potential to help me take fantastic pictures – well at least much better than I have taken in the past – and I am not using it to its fullest potential because I have not learned how to use it.  I have seen photos taken by people who have taken the time to learn and study their camera and use it to its full potential and a lot of times these photos are so beautiful they take my breath away, or cause me to weep, or just draw me in and make me think deeply about them.  So I began to realize that my life can be a portrait of holiness if I learn to step out beyond “Auto Mode” and use the holiness given to me to its fullest potential.  But I can only do that by sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning and studying and understanding what holiness looks like and becoming more like Him, for He is Holy.  I need to put aside the excuses and make learning how to use the holiness within me a priority.   My heart-felt desire is to become so much like Him that when people look at me they don’t see me but they see Him and their breath is taken away, or they weep, or just think deeply about Him.