The Origin of the name:
Around 15 years ago, I was working on plans to start a Christian T-shirt business and started searching for names to use. The name I settled on was Qodesh, which is one of a group of words which means apartness, holiness, sacredness, separateness. The word resonated with me and even though I changed the name of the clothing business to Holy Armour, the idea of the holiness or set apartness of the work I wanted to do still stuck with me.
Now that the Lord is leading me to share the content I’ve been creating for the past decade with the world, I was musing on what to call the website that will serve as the centre of what I release. I have many naming ideas, simply because I like words, I like wordplay, double-meanings and etymology are really cool to me. But I wanted something that would resonate more with the direction and theme of the content than just something that sounds cool.
Of course, at first, I thought, lemme just use Qodesh again, but qodesh.com, qadosh.com, and qadowsh.com were all taken (Someday I’ll buy them from the bots holding them hostage). I still wanted to go with them of being set apart, so I settled on the pronounced name using a K instead of a Q.
My history with Christ
I used to preach a little bit, years ago, in a church culture that focused heavily on which doctrine, rules and strict biblical principles to follow. I however, found that my leaning was to the Love of God in Christ Jesus, the depth to which Christ loves us, the transformative power of His love. That’s what I taught on.
I couldn’t hoop and holler (if you know, you know; if you don’t, don’t worry about it), and I wasn’t the loud, energetic type with the raspy, breathy voice. I’m still not that. What I was, was amazed at the love of the Existing One who created all things. I was amazed that He chose to love us. Historically, we haven’t been great. Why love us? But He does.
After years of being Christian, I made some relationship mistakes and ran away from my church family to escape the consequences of that. Then I started drifting, barely communicating with God, lost in a valley of self-deprecating thoughts. I got married, moved to a different country, and drifted some more, taken captive by the jarring nature of that move (I’ll detail this in another post soon).
I stopped looking to God and stopped walking with Him, I turned and walked away from the Love of God.
Then He came to get me, He sent people to give me message after message of His Love and tender mercy. Through the voice of a dear friend, He said something that has since been etched into the recesses of my soul. “I love you more than you love your son and better than your parents ever could.” My son is the most precious person on the planet to me, I would gladly die for him.
That one thought wrecked my whole life. God loves me more fully than that? Me? Broken, dirty, rebellious, impatient, trifling, lascivious, incapable me? I had previously struggled with the question of why God would love me; I knew He loved everyone else, I had preached that, wrote poems about it, sang songs, and listened to sermons. But me? Nah, I’d wrestled with it for the greater part of fifteen years and believed He was real but not that He loved me enough to do things for me. I could pray for others but not for myself. I was unlovable.
But that one sentence, that one sentence told me something I hadn’t understood before the birth of my son. No matter what that kid does, I will love him. He’s not even four at the time I’m writing this, what could he do to ‘deserve’ love? Nothing, all he has to do is exist, and I love him.
That one sentence showed me that I didn’t need to deserve love or understand why or how. I just need to believe it and receive it. So, I did.
Being relational
Since that time, the Holy Spirit has been downloading perspectives into me at a breathtaking rate. As I’ve spent time in prayer, reading the Scriptures, listening to the teaching of the Word, I’ve been diving into this vision of relationality, how God wants to relate intimately with us as believers. My understanding of the Love of God and of loving God is growing into an understanding of what that looks like daily.
I consider the garden of Eden, the last supper, the mount of transfiguration, the garden of Gethsemane and many more instances of God showing us that He really wants to commune with us, to be with us and us with Him. Genesis 2:8-9 says the voice of God walked through the garden in the cool of the day. I dare say He did that regularly with them before they first sinned. He called for them when He could not find them. Maybe they had a meeting place, ‘the cool of the day’ sounds like a meeting time to me.
When I read the Scriptures now, I see a God who wants relationship with His people. A good who is willing to teach His people how to hang with Him, how to hang with each other in love. After the first sin and after every sin, God shows up and says, come to me, I will be your God and you will be my people.
Looking at the phrasing used throughout the Scriptures, there’s a clear call for a multilayered set of relationships in which we connect to God more deeply than we could possibly connect with any other being. God says we are His bride, His children, His beloved, joint heirs, His Sheep, chosen, royal, set apart. Those are relational words. Each of those positions us to be in close proximity to and in some kind of bond with the Eternal God of the universe. Isn’t that wonderful?
What’s relational about being set apart?
Now that we know why the word kadowsh, we have to answer what about the word is relational. Let’s get into what being set apart looks like. Here’s an analogy that resonated with me; when you go to a restaurant, they set your food apart from the rest of the food in the pots and from the meals of others. Once you’ve ordered and paid for it, it’s yours, you own it. In the same way, we who are believers were requested and paid for by the blood of Christ Jesus. Ergo, we belong to Him. We’re His possession; we’re set apart for Him.
I used to think, like many others, that this simply mean that God owns me and is going to pilot me like a robot and get me to do the things I’m scared of doing and that I need to somehow learn every rule in the Bible and follow it perfectly, everyday until I die.
We couldn’t pull that off, even if we wanted to. Our righteousness is a bloody rag. Because of the nature of sin in every human being, we don’t have the capacity to stop doing the things we shouldn’t. Not without the power of the Blood and the guidance of the Spirit of God.
God does own us, but He isn’t interested in piloting our bodies as though He’s a body snatcher. No. God is interested in collaboration. That’s why we have the choice to come to Him. That’s why He call us but doesn’t demand us. If God had been interested in drone or slaves, He wouldn’t bothered with freedom of choice.
God does however have standards, holiness is His way, He is the King and we do fall under His authority. This is all true, AND it’s the Spirit that guides us to repentance, to pray as we should, to renewal, to change, and to holiness.
That all comes from relations with Christ, it is impossible to achieve holiness independent of God AND it is impossible to achieve right standing with God if you aren’t in communion with Him. The more time we spend with Him, and the more we look into His Word and show Him our love through worship, the closer we get to Him and being like Him.
Holiness is separation unto God. Holiness is relationship with God which leads to true change.
Being set apart unto God means we begin to walk with Him, to being in relationship with Him, and as we do, we begin to change into the expressed image of Him who created us.
KADOWSH 