"So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves" - Gal 5. 16. NLT
To 'sanctify'........this is a word not used very often in ortdinary conversations today. We may regard it as a technical word, we may tend to put its meaning away from us. But its meaning is plain enough. It means to make holy, to make like Christ. To be sanctified is to be Christlike.
When you read the gospel story, you may wish in your heart that you were like Him, you may even try to change the pattern of your life, to make yourself holy. People try and try and try, but never succeed. Indeed the more you try, the more conscious you become aware of failure. Your self effort never seems to lead you to the goal that you long to attain; and at last you are forced to admit, maybe with some feeling of despair, that you do not possess in yourself the secret that will make you holy.
And that is true, we do not.
No one can stoop down and lift himself by his own shoelaces to a level higher that the one he occupied before. Anyone may try the experiment.
Nor can anyone lift himself by his own self effort, by his own will-power, by his own determination to a spiritual level that was beyond his reach before.
But what cannot be done by our own self-effort, God is able and willing to do in you and for you. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those whose trust is in Him. And in proportion to the measure in which you yield yourself to His control, He will make you holy. He will make you Christlike. He will make you the kind of person God wants you to be.
To 'sanctify'........this is a word not used very often in ortdinary conversations today. We may regard it as a technical word, we may tend to put its meaning away from us. But its meaning is plain enough. It means to make holy, to make like Christ. To be sanctified is to be Christlike.
When you read the gospel story, you may wish in your heart that you were like Him, you may even try to change the pattern of your life, to make yourself holy. People try and try and try, but never succeed. Indeed the more you try, the more conscious you become aware of failure. Your self effort never seems to lead you to the goal that you long to attain; and at last you are forced to admit, maybe with some feeling of despair, that you do not possess in yourself the secret that will make you holy.
And that is true, we do not.
No one can stoop down and lift himself by his own shoelaces to a level higher that the one he occupied before. Anyone may try the experiment.
Nor can anyone lift himself by his own self effort, by his own will-power, by his own determination to a spiritual level that was beyond his reach before.
But what cannot be done by our own self-effort, God is able and willing to do in you and for you. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those whose trust is in Him. And in proportion to the measure in which you yield yourself to His control, He will make you holy. He will make you Christlike. He will make you the kind of person God wants you to be.
