Sanctification: God's Goal

The Lord has a primary goal for the life of every person and it can be summed up in one word: Sanctification. If you're scratching your head in doubt, wondering what that word means, you are not alone. But as believers we need to understand what it means because the word actually defines us. We need to understand it to grow in faith.

The verb to sanctify means to "separate" or "make holy." When something is sanctified it is separated out from a common, everyday use to a sacred use. The Lord sanctified a lot of things in the Old Testament: He declared the 7th day of the week as holy, He set aside the tribe of Levite to be priests and He even consecrated the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy, in the tabernacle. (Gen 2:3; Num 3) It was not unusual to have God change common things and people into being holy objects set apart for His use through the process of sanctification.

And God continues to sanctify people today. Before a person is sanctified he is estranged from the Lord. He is spiritually dead and an enemy of God. (Eph 2:1-3; Ro 5:10) But in the exact instant someone becomes a believer and accepts Christ's gift of righteousness, his sins are washed away with the blood of the Lamb, and he's adopted into the Lord's family. Once a person accepts Christ as his personal Savior, he becomes a child of God. You see, God loves His children and desires a personal relationship, not some distant, loose connection. He desires His children to come into a personal kinship with Him. It is important that we understand that this is done on an individual basis. There are many people who mistakenly believe that God only works in "classes" of people. That's simply not true. Jehovah's Witnesses teach heavily on the "class" theory. But that runs contrary to what we find in the Bible. Although He often dealt with the Israelites in a "class" sense, God is and has always been the God of the individual. Remember that God used to meet with His creation in the coolness of the evening every day. (Gen 3:8) It is a personal, one-on-one relationship that God desires to have with us.

So when a person trusts Jesus Christ, that person is "set apart" as a dearly loved child of God for sacred purposes. As believers, we're not here on this earth to acquire personal gain but to serve and glorify God. That's why we were created in the first place. We are called upon to glorify the majesty and grandeur of God Eternal and therefore, as members of His family, we're called saints. The very word saint has the same root as sanctification. We are being sanctified as saints, holy and set apart from the rest of the world. We are called saints, not because we are perfect or without sin, but because we live a life consistent with the One we represent and also because of what He's done.

Sanctification is a never ending process. As long as we live we will be in the state of being sanctified. We are sanctified and will continue to be sanctified until our course in this life is finished. We are saved in an instant and sanctified in a lifetime. Sanctification is a never-ending process that begins at our salvation and ends when we go home to the Lord. God loves us and because He loves us, He has gone about His business of changing us and conforming us into the image of His dearly loved Son, Jesus Christ. (Ro 8:29) This conforming process takes time and is accomplished through various troubles and trials and experiences. I am convinced that many painful things we must endure as we go about living our lives here on this earth are there for the sole purpose of sanctifying us. The act of enduring difficulties shapes us into the vessel God desires us to be. The Holy Spirit comes on board and guides us through the varied and often painful experiences because it's for our own good that we endure these times and trials.

These times make make us better people. We may not see the good in a particular experience but I can guarantee you it's there. Every experience we have is there for our good. We are being sanctified, changed and conformed into the image of Christ and this takes time and effort. Every painful experience we endure now leaves us better people for the future. We become people we never would have become if it weren't for that particular experience. That is why we can "consider it all joy .. whenever [we] face trials of many kinds..." (James 1:2)

The older I get, the more it hurts when I fall. Have you noticed that? When we were kids we'd fall and then get right back up and run off to continue playing. I took a good spill in our driveway yesterday evening and although I'm not hurting as much as I thought I would be today, I'm still quite uncomfortable. Mostly it's just my right shoulder. I have considerable restriction in range of motion. I couldn't even raise my arm up high enough to comb my hair this morning. I had to use my left arm for that. And when I put away the clean dishes this morning I had to have Michael put away all those that required two hands up over my head because I can only raise my left arm. But I have pretty good movement in my right arm even if it is limited in range. I can use it just about all I want as long as I don't try to raise it. Isn't it funny how falls seem to happen in slow motion? You start to fall and then you start to think: this is dumb, I shouldn't have done that because now I'm falling and I'll probably get hurt really bad, hope I don't hit my head too hard, are my neighbors out watching me fall? I hope I fall graciously, gee I hope I don't get hurt too badly, and on and on our thoughts go while we're still in the process of falling. Haven't even hit the ground yet and I've carried on an entire conversation with myself. It's all in slow motion. Oh well, it sure could have been worse. I could have broken my arm, like my sister did a year or two ago, instead of just wrenching my shoulder good. And I only bled in a couple places. I fully expected my right arm and elbow to be shredded meat but after I washed off all the dirt and gravel and oil, I had only superficial scrapes and scratches. They stung like crazy (especially when I washed them) for quite awhile but I got out of the deal in pretty good shape, all things being considered.

Well, yesterday was another day of not reaching 100 degrees for a high. It's so nice to be out of all that heat we had there for awhile. Nights have been nice and crisp and cool, great for sleeping. I'm really looking forward to fall this year. I guess I always do but for some reason it seems to be a stronger yearning than I remember having before. It's almost noon and only 82 degrees. I doubt we'll hit 100 today either. Yes! I just love it!!! If we could just have summers that never went over 80 degrees I would be a happy camper. The weather the past few days has been just about perfect for my liking. It could still get a lot colder at night but it hasn't been bad the last few nights.

I have a meeting at church in a couple hours with the 40 Days of Purpose campaign prayer team. And then at 7:00 tonight I have the regular weekly prayer meeting to go to. We're kind of making Tuesdays days of prayer for me it seems. But I'm so happy the prayer meeting went back to meeting at 7:00 instead of 6:00. I can make the later time and went last week and I just enjoyed it so much. I really hated having to miss it all summer but that 6:00 time slot was just a bad time for me. That's right about our dinner time and I couldn't ask Michael to make his own dinner one night every week, it just wasn't a loving thing to do. I do have the deacon's meeting that starts at 6:00 but that's only once a month so that's not too bad. We've recently changed the lay pastors meeting to 6:30 from it's normal 7:00 time slot but that's only once a month too. I just didn't feel comfortable leaving Michael to himself every Tuesday night. So anyway, I'm back to going to prayer meeting on Tuesdays and I'm loving it.

I also have a doctor appointment coming up on Thursday that will interfere with my blog, time wise. And then we're planning on making another WalMart run on Friday so I'm not sure if I'll get to my blog on either one of those days. But I will try. If I don't maybe I'll get one done over the weekend, I'll just have to see how things go but I wanted to give you some advance notice that I might be off for a few days. I guess I better get this published and find something to eat before I go to my meeting. See you tomorrow...