Monday, February 8, 2016

How To Live The Sanctified Life

My Utmost For His Highest
 
May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely… —1 Thessalonians 5:23
 
“When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? […] Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared for God to perform in us everything for which He separated us? […] Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God.[…] Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him, just as He is one with the Father (see John 17:21-23). The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him.”  CHAMBERS
 
There are two parts of sanctification.  The first is at the point of salvation, when you are sanctified – “set apart – declared holy   by the work of the Spirit and your faith in Jesus.  Both aspects of sanctification require your submission to God.  The first was the point where you confessed Jesus as Lord and believed in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.  The second is a daily progression of yielding your will to God’s will.  Becoming one with Jesus.  Choosing obedience to the Father’s will and rejecting the will of your flesh – your old nature.  Satan would have you focus on your failures and not your faith.  Convince you that you will never overcome the demons that haunt your life.  That you will never be the person that you know you should be – that you want to be.  The truth of the matter is that you can’t be that person by trying more – but by trying less.  You were first sanctified by faith, not by works.  You are called to live by faith and not by sight (or works).  Sanctification is a supernatural phenomenon.  You yield your life and the Spirit does the work.  You could not be righteous through self-effort before you were born again and you cannot be more righteous through self-effort now. ELGIN
 
“Purify My Heart”  Maranatha Music
 
Purify my heart Touch me with Your cleansing fire Take me to the cross Your holiness is my desire
 
Breathe Your life in me Kindle a love That flows from Your throne Oh purify my heart Purify my heart
 
Charley Elgin

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