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| 1 Thessalonians 4:3 " This is the will of God, even your sanctification."
In sanctification God has to deal with us on the death side as well as well as on the life side. Many of us spend so much time in the place of death that we get sepulchral. (To burial the grave or monuments erected to dead; mournful,) There is always a battery royal before sanctification, always something that tugs with resentment agains the demands of Jesus Christ. Immediately the Spriit fo God begins to show us what sactification means, the struggles begin. "If any man come to Me and hate not...his own life, he cannot be My disciple"
The Spirit of God in the process of sanctification will strip me until I am nothin but "myself" and nothing more...no friends, no father, no brother, no self interest, simply ready for death? That is the condition of sactification. No wonder Jesus said: " I came not to send peace, but a sword." This is where the battles comes, and where so many of us faint. We refuse to be indentified with the death of Jesus on this point. " But is is so stern; and He does with us to do that.
Am I willing to reduce myself simply to " me" determinedly to strip myself of all my friends think of me, of all I think of myself,and to hand that simply backed self over to God? Immediately I am, He will
Sanctify me wholly, and my life will be free from earnestness in connnection with everything but God.When I pray, " Lord, show me what sanctification means for me," He will show me. It means being made one with Jesus. Sanctifitiion is not siomething Jesus Christ puts into me: it is Himself in me. 1 Corinthians 1:30
For it is with God ALL things ARE possible.
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The struggle begins
