When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification
much too lightly. 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? And after He has done His work, are we then
prepared to separate ourselves to God just as Jesus did? “For their
sakes I sanctify Myself . . .” (John 17:19).
The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of
sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of
sanctification from God’s perspective. 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.
Are we prepared to be caught up into the full meaning of Paul’s
prayer in this verse? Are we prepared to say, “Lord, make me, a sinner
saved by grace, as holy as You can”? 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. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart
for the Holy Spirit’s work in us?
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