From Oswald Chambers' devotional My Utmost
for His Highest:
"This is the will of God, even your
sanctification." — 1 Thessalonians 4:3
"In sanctification God has to deal
with us on the death side as well as on the life side. Many of us spend so much
time in the place of death that we get sepulchral. There is always a battle
royal before sanctification, always something that tugs with resentment against
the demands of Jesus Christ. Immediately the Spirit of God begins to show us
what sanctification means, the struggle begins. '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 nothing but 'myself,' that is the place
of death. Am I willing to be 'myself,' and nothing more--no friends, no father,
no brother, no self-interest--simply ready for death? That is the condition of
sanctification. No wonder Jesus said: 'I came not to send peace, but a sword.'
This is where the battle comes, and where so many of us faint. We refuse to be
identified with the death of Jesus on this point. 'But it is so stern,' we say;
'He cannot wish me to do that.' Our Lord is stern; and He does wish 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 simple naked self over to God? Immediately I
am, He will sanctify me wholly, and my life will be free from earnestness in
connection with every thing but God.
"When I pray--'Lord, show me what
sanctification means for me,' He will show me. It means being made one with
Jesus. Sanctification is not something Jesus Christ puts into me: it is Himself
in me. (1 Cor. 1:30.)"
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