"I'm calling you up higher"

Today was not a good day. I sinned today... a lot. Go figure, I'm human. I'm not proud of it at all. In fact, I am ashamed at some of my outbursts, losing my temper, etc... God decided to use one of my most stressful days in a while to really reach out and whack me back into His plan for my life. I was listening to the song "Yes" that Anna did a mime to, and singing along with it, and I caught the meaning of one of the lines in it... "I'm calling you up higher". When I've heard this before, I've alway heard it as "get your act together, there's things I want to do with you. I want to take you to higher places than you are now." This time was different... this time I heard it as "I am calling you to a higher place of holiness with Me. I am holding you to a higher standard than those who do not hear My voice" It literally shook me... I laid in my kitchen floor and shook as I prayed for Him to restore my mind and my heart... I thought back to the young man giving his testimony while Eddie James was at New Vision, saying how every time he sinned, it was like he spat on Jesus and drove another nail into His hands, another stripe on His back... Every sin he committed was a slap in the face of the One who loved us so much that He gave up His spotless life for our filthy exisitence. (My paraphrase, not his actual words) When you come back to that thought, it makes you realize that it really is all about Him, and how we live our lives and present ourselves to society at large is how they see Him, and if we don't hold ourselves to that higher standard, then how can we expect the world to live up to them... it makes us no better than the Pharisees. Speaking of which, they, being the priests of their time, though they practiced more of their own traditions then it, still had a reverence for what God had commanded. Think about the priests of old, specifically the High Priest. Every year on the Day of Atonement, he would go into the Holy of Holies, knowing full well, even as he tied the rope around his ankle before walking in, that he may not walk back out. If there was any un-atoned for sin in his life, he was not walking out of that room. His corpse would be pulled out by the priests on the other side of the veil. They were serious when it came to being right before God, especially when going into His presence. The veil has been torn now, and we have the priveledge of always being before God and in His presence, so why should we treat it with any less seriousness than they did?