May 29, 2026
- May 29
- 3 min read
Have you ever experienced a time when you notice something new and then everywhere you look, you see it? Maybe you just bought a white car and now everywhere you look you see white cars. Or maybe your kids or grandkids start using a new word you’ve never heard and before long, you are hearing it on television shows, in conversations at work and other places. Once you notice it, you can’t stop seeing it.
This is how God got my attention recently.
I was standing in line at Just Love Coffee waiting for a much-needed Americano. The line was long, and I found myself reading the bags of coffee while I waited (I really needed coffee!). One particular bag had an abbreviated Bible verse printed on it. The words caught my attention, so I pulled out my phone and looked up the passage.
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:27
Those words jumped off the screen at me: to keep oneself unstained from the world.
I put my phone back in my pocket, ordered my Americano and went about my day. But those words stayed with me. Then several days later, the exact same verse came up in a book I was reading. Out of more than 30,000 verses in Scripture, this verse found its way in front of me twice in one week.
The more I sat with James 1:27, the more I realized this is what holiness looks like. Not isolating ourselves from the world, but living differently within it. James describes a faith that is both compassionate and set apart. Caring deeply for people while refusing to be shaped by the patterns and values of the world around us.
Holiness is not simply avoiding obvious sin (although it’s that too). It is becoming people whose hearts, desires, priorities and lives increasingly reflect Jesus. In a culture that constantly pressures us to compromise, blend in, and chase the same things everyone else chases, God calls His people to live differently.
At White Oak, one of our formation goals is holiness. We want to become people who are set apart from sin and set apart from the world. Our desire is not simply that people know more about God, but that we become more like Him. We want to be a church full of people whose lives increasingly reflect Jesus in the way we love, serve, lead, parent, work and interact with the world around us.
But that kind of transformation does not happen by accident. Every single day, something is shaping us. Our culture, our habits, what we consume, the voices we listen to, the things we laugh at, the priorities we chase - all of it is forming us into someone. James challenges us to honestly examine what is shaping our hearts most. Are we being shaped more by the world around us, or by the Spirit of God within us?
Maybe the best way to evaluate our pursuit of holiness is to honestly wrestle with a few questions:
Are you turning toward sin or away from it?
Would the people around you notice a difference between your life and the world around you?
What is shaping your heart more right now: the culture around you or the Spirit of God within you?
Those questions are not meant to produce guilt or shame. They are meant to help us honestly evaluate who we are becoming. Holiness does not mean perfection, nor does it mean withdrawing from the world. Jesus Himself spent time with broken and hurting people. But while Jesus entered the world fully, the world never shaped Him. He was different.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to be different too.
So maybe the challenge for all of us this week is simple: What areas of my life have become stained by the world without me even noticing? What would it look like for me to pursue holiness more intentionally this week?
As we follow Jesus together at White Oak, may we become people who are unmistakably shaped by Jesus - loving people deeply while remaining unstained by the world.
Being formed with you…
Erin
Erin Feiser
Formartion and Missions Pastor
