Take Time to Be Holy!

excerpted from http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2007/004/12.96.html

An early 20th-century Salvation Army officer, Samuel Logan Brengle, embodies for me everything I could imagine a holy person to be. Brengle served God as an evangelist and revival speaker for approximately 40 years.
Clarence Hall's biography of Brengle records these words (in the context of the Salvation Army) from an anonymous source describing Brengle: "There are men to whose name rank and title add weight, prestige; whose position in the minds of their fellows is elevated by it. But not so with Brengle. Rank does not give increase to that name; neither would lack of rank diminish it. In the minds of people the world over, the name Brengle means holiness, sweetness, love, benediction, blessing, power; Commissioner Brengle means no more. Though the rank he has recently added is just recognition of his value to the Salvation Army, it is a superfluity in the evaluation of the man himself."
The writer here is pointing to the Life underneath the professional life, to the characteristics that point beyond the man toward the God to whom he had dedicated his life.
As a truly holy man, Brengle did not set himself above others, nor did he attempt to flaunt some kind of cheap piety.
Hall writes: "Looking him over at close range, men saw in Brengle these three: humanity, humility, and—humor … to them the most surprising of these was humor. Others (found) that this man's saintliness sparkled and bubbled with good nature, that his humor was gentle, whimsical, graceful. His smile was the kind that opened suddenly, like a bursting skyrocket; it would start in his eyes, twinkle there, then wreathe and wrinkle over his face, shake his body, and seem to run vitalizingly to his very toes."
People sought his presence. Again, Hall (quoting a Salvation Army associate): "I have seen the leading commissioners, engulfed with a thousand duties, set aside their papers, dismiss their stenographers, lock the door, and wait upon the American preacher. They wanted him near, they felt their need of this holy man, and all their actions seemed to say: 'It is holy ground, Brengle is here.'"
I have read the Brengle biography at least a dozen times. Few books in my library inspire me as much as this one does when I feel that my personal arrangements with God are slipping (or, to use Longstaff's words, when I am not spending time in secret with Jesus).
What I see is a man who knew lots about life in the streets but saw it from the perspective of knowing lots about life in the Lord's presence. After reading of Brengle, I'm pointed in a better direction: seeking deeper communion with the Father.
Common threads of holiness
When one reads the Scriptures and the church fathers on this theme of being holy, and when one reads appropriate biographies of the great spiritual champions, and when one observes the lives of less-than-prestigious people who seem to have gone deeper with Jesus than most, you see these commonalities:
They don't second guess their decision to intentionally follow Jesus. They possess a powerful (not necessarily spectacular) sense of personal conversion, and they readily invite others to share the same experience.
They conscientiously prioritize life so that they spend ample time in personal worship, reflection in Scripture, and prayer (listening to God and absorbing whatever God wishes for them to know and experience).
They make a steady effort to discipline their lives toward virtues that reflect Jesus. They cultivate a healthy hatred of sin and all that corrupts life.
They cultivate healthy relationships—both giving and taking—and add value to each human encounter. I might add that they usually understand that their connection with God is often in the context of "community" and not merely as solo-saints.
They engage the larger world with a humbled mind to serve and seek justice and mercy for those weaker than they.
I see these qualities in Commissioner Brengle, and I have no doubt that this man would have been a spiritual influence in any branch of the Christian movement. Not because of his giftedness as a preacher and evangelist, but because of this underlying holy life that compelled people to feel nearer to God when he was around.
Clarence Hall writes of a night when Brengle was introduced to a crowd as "the great Colonel Brengle." He was apparently disturbed by this excessive introduction and wrote in his journal: "If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I am also conscious that He uses me, and that it is not of me that the work is done. The axe cannot boast of trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, he used it, and the moment he throws it aside, it becomes only old iron. Oh, that I may never lose sight of this."
This perspective made Brengle tender, not hard.
"There is nothing about holiness to make people hard and unsympathetic and difficult to approach," Brengle wrote. "It is an experience that makes a man pre-eminently human; it liberates his sympathies, it fills him with love to all mankind, with compassion for sinners, with kindness and pity for them that are ignorant and out of the way. And while it makes him stern with himself, it makes him gentle with others."
The soil of suffering
One of the elements of Brengle's life that many of us would like to avoid is the fact that the man knew suffering. During his assignment to the Boston Corps, he was accosted by a thug who threw a paving brick at him from a distance of just ten feet. The brick hit Brengle in the head with full force, and he almost died. He was forced to spend 18 months in rehabilitation. From then on, he suffered periodically from excruciating headaches and bouts of depression.
During his recovery, Brengle wrote what was probably his best book, Helps to Holiness, and would often quip, "Well, if there had been no little brick, there would have been no little book."
Hall writes that Brengle "never allowed himself to give in (to physical weakness) until completely overcome, but would laugh away all minor complaints as mere trifles, maintaining a happy buoyant spirit until some malady positively forced him to bed. His spirit drilled his body into an habitually erect and optimistic carriage, which could be forced to drop but could not be induced to droop."
Brengle said: "God does not make pets of His people, and especially of those whom He woos and wins into close fellowship with Himself, and fits and crowns for great and high service. His greatest servants have often been the greatest sufferers." I don't think the Commissioner would have had a lot of use for a prosperity gospel or for a faith that is devoid of struggle.