Art of Living #22

Åґ☂ ◎ḟ ʟ☤√ḯη❡ #22 : "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thess 5:23).

Ѧ℘☺﹩☂◎łḯ¢ €ϰ℘øüηḓ : To many of us who have heard much sermons about holiness, sanctification, consecration, etc..., this word 'sanctify' might seems a big word of super-spiritual nature. But simply in a crux it means 'to be set apart' by God. In other words, when we have received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour of our life, from that moment onwards God has set us apart for Himself and His purpose to be fullfilled through us. Many of us who try to be Holy and not able to attain our standard of perfection like our God, we should not be dicouraged by the set backs. We are trained day by day by the Holy Spirit to become like Jesus and be moulded in to the very spiritual image of Jesus (Rom 8:29-30).

This ultimate transformation of becoming like Jesus is what God calls as "glorification", but He has only promised to take us from one level of glory to another level of glory, as we keep walking in the perfection of the Lord day after day by faith (2 Cor 3:17-18). Of course we need to co-operate with God to be glorified in this life, but we need not strive with our own human strength of disciplining oneself by a set of rules and regulations to make this possible. The Holy Spirit himself will guide us in to His liberty and He himself has taken the responsibility to make us like Jesus. He is faithful to transform us in to the very spiritual image of Jesus and make us a living witness of Jesus in this dark world of perversity.

Some times as we keep walking towards our goal of becoming like Jesus inwardly in our Character, Satan and his demonic cohorts will try their best to make us believe that the perfection of Jesus cannot be achieved by making us fall in to the weakness of our sin nature that we might be battling with for a long time from the past days of our youth. But take heart, it is not our own strength that makes us walk in the perfection of Jesus, it is the power of God that keeps us walking. We are already perfect in our spirit-man inside us (Eph 4:24), what we are trying to do is to renew the fallen soulish independent man to be ruled by the nature of the spirit-man which is already like Jesus inside us (Eph 4:23). For this to happen we need to feed our spirit-man with the word of God and keep praying in tongues with all kinds of prayer daily in order to get stronger and stronger spirit-man. Over a period of time, the spirit-man becomes stronger and stronger to make us overcome more and more soulishness and be like Jesus on earth. But, don't forget it takes a lifetime to attain it, so with much perseverance run the race, each victory leads you to higher glory! THE MORE WE CO-OPERATE WITH GOD TO BE PERFECT LIKE JESUS, THE MORE WE WILL BECOME A HEAVENLY REPRESENTATION OF JESUS TO THE WORLD! Blessings.....