It is the great moment of our lives when we decide that sin must die right out, not be curbed or suppressed or counteracted, but crucified. — Oswald Chambers (1874–1917)
Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit. ~1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
Beloved. We do not have to ask anymore. G_d has told us what His will is for our lives. We are to be sanctified. That is, we are to be set apart, and made holy for His purpose and glory. This is G_d’s will for our lives. It is not a question, beloved, and He did not stutter.
In fact, sanctification is to be ever more set apart for Him in an ongoing way.
Indeed, the more sanctified the person is, the more conformed he is to the image of his Savior, the more he must recoil against every lack of conformity to the holiness of God. The deeper his apprehension of the majesty of God, the greater the intensity of his love to God, the more persistent his yearning for the attainment of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the more conscious will he be of the gravity of the sin that remains and the more poignant will be his detestation of it….Was this not the effect in all the people of God as they came into closer proximity to the revelation of God’s holiness? ~ John Murray
But don’t miss this part. There is a point in this process where it all begins to work. G_d moves us towards this point, but there is a moment in each real believer’s life where, by G_d’s unfathomable Grace, the believer says something like:
ALL i Am
ALL i Have
ALL i Will Be and
ALL i Ever Will Have
i give to YOU
ABSOLUTELY… UNCONDITIONALLY… NOW and FOREVER… AND – OH BY THE WAY L_RD, i HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO DO THIS. HELP ME AND HOLD ME TO IT!
Then begins the race set before us. And oh, friend it is exciting. G_d takes a prayer like that seriously. He starts changing our pallete of desire. He gives us the tools to actually start to pull off a holy life.
We start thinking in terms of moving away from the fire, instead of getting just close enough that we don’t get burned.
We actually start to look at our sin, and are sickened by it. How very cool is that! We start to see it the way He sees it.
Life begins to make sense. It makes sense because it His Life, lived the way life was designed to be Lived.
We begin to FLEE from sin. Sometimes we are caught up by the ankles, or tripped while fleeing, but we are fleeing like Joseph running naked from Potiphar’s wife. “How could we then do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
We begin to understand that if Joseph had just said to Potiphar’s wife, “Hey, don’t touch me.” That he would have ended up in bed with her (sooner or later, but surely). That failure would only prove G_d’s Word true. We cannot resist on our own. We must, by His power, flee from sin like a man running from a burning building.
We start to see that we should not even look at the shiny, curvy, tasty stuff that would distract us from our relationship with Him. We understand that the root word from which we get “sexual immorality” above is: “pornia,” and that covers a whole lot of places our eyes should not go. And thankfully, He begins to make it so we don’t really even want to go there any more.
We may even start to look a little weird to the world. Our TVs may get dusty in our closets, and we won’t even know the price of a movie ticket. We might not even know what the very latest news story is. These things are simply distractions from the main attraction: HIM!
Surely, we won’t drink, smoke or drug any more. Not because we’re so good. But because we’ve become utterly dependant on the flow of His Spirit in our lives. Dependant down to our next breath – every heartbeat. How could we ever want to disrupt that precious flow of His Mercy, Love, Grace and Peace in our lives?
We, eventually, quit thinking about tithing in terms of percentages. We realize that everything is all His. Any portion we give is merely recognition that nothing (including our very lives) is our own any more.
Ultimately, even our prayers begin to change. There is someone markedly missing from the request list: OURSELVES. We have no real need, because He is our All in All.
We begin to see that this whole thing is not about us. It is about Him. And He is wonderful beyond our wildest dreams.
Then, in having been strapped to His purposes and plans, we begin to see what the result is in our lives. Absolute freedom to do anything we want – and all we want is Him.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. ~Galatians 5:1
Sanctification is not a heavy yoke, but a joyful liberation. ~Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983)
