Every Room

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1 Peter 1:14-16 "As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy.'"

Think

You know that half second when you hand somebody your phone.

You meant to show them one picture. And they take it and start scrolling, and everything is fine, everything is completely fine, and somehow you are standing about eight inches closer than you were a second ago with your hand slightly out.

Nothing is wrong. You just did not intend to hand over the whole thing. You intended to hand over the one picture.

That is a pretty good description of how most of us surrender to God.

“Here is my Wednesday night. Here is my worship. Here is the part of me that is doing okay.” And God says, “Thank you,” and then keeps scrolling, and you feel yourself lean in.

Peter writes, “Be holy in all you do.” All. And then he quotes God from Leviticus. “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Before that lands wrong, we need to fix a definition, because a lot of students hear the word holy and think it means flawless.

Holiness is not perfection. If it were, everything would be nothing but bad news. That is not what Acts 5 teaches and it is not the God that the Bible describes.

The word behind holy means set apart. Devoted to one purpose. It is not a scoreboard. It is an ownership question.

Holiness means saying, “God, every part of my life belongs to you.”

And the reason God takes sin seriously is not that he is fragile or in a bad mood. It is that he is holy. Sin is not against a rulebook, it is against a person, and Acts 5 is in your Bible so you never make the mistake of thinking God is casual about what he paid for with his own Son.

So take the tour. Not the version where you nod at the idea of surrender in general, which costs nothing. Walk through the actual rooms.

Your phone. What is on it, what you watch, who you are in the messages nobody else reads, what your hand reaches for at midnight.

Your dating life. Who you are pursuing, how you treat them, what you have decided about your body and whether you decided it before or during.

Your friendships. Who you become around certain people. Whether there is a group where you go quiet about Jesus.

Your words. What you say about people who are not in the room.

Your private life. What you do when the house is empty.

Your entertainment. What you feed yourself for three hours a day without thinking about it once.

Your body. Whether you treat it like it belongs to God or like it is yours to use, punish, or perform with.

Your thoughts. The conversations you run in your head. The person you rehearse arguments with. The place your mind goes when it is unoccupied.

Read that list again and find the room you skipped.

There is one. There is always one. That is not a sign something is wrong with you. That is the whole point of doing this. Everybody has a door they would rather keep shut, and God is not surprised by which one yours is.

He is not asking you to fix that room before you hand it over. He is asking for the keys.

Be holy in all you do. Not because you are afraid of him. Because you belong to him.

Hand over the whole phone.

Apply

Name the room – Go back through that list and find the one area you rushed past. Say it out loud to God today and tell him it is his. Then tell one person you trust so it is not just between you and a feeling.

Pray

God, you are holy, and I belong to you. There is one area of my life I have been keeping for myself and you know exactly which one it is. I am handing it over today, not cleaned up, just handed over. Make every part of my life set apart for you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.