Praise The Lord

                                                     SANCTIFICATION

    Just before going to the cross for us, Jesus prayed these words to the Father: "And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they may be also sanctified in the truth" (John 17:19).  And then through Paul, Christ's Spirit tells us, "you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God; the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life" (Romans 6:22).  As we can see, God's sanctifying of us began with Jesus' finished work on the cross, but it also continues throughout our lifetime here on earth. The full salvation that God offers includes both justification, as well as this ongoing sanctification of us in God's truth. Justification includes Christ's atonement for our sin and God's declaring us to be righteous in his sight through our belief and faith in Christ. Sanctification is ultimately God's conforming of us into the image of his Son by crucifying us with Christ and then by continually applying the cross to that which is our flesh.

     Our flesh includes those natural elements of us that resist being under the lordship of Jesus Christ. God tells us that are created spirit, soul, and body, but because of the sin-infected bloodline we all inherited from Adam and Eve, our spirit is spiritually dead in God's sight until he causes us to be spiritually born again when we confess Christ as our Lord and Savior. At this moment of spiritual rebirth, God gives us a new heart and unites our spirit in Christ's Spirit (1 Cor. 1:30). This new heart he gives us is his quickening of our spirit in his Spirit. Because we have now received God's life, our spirit is truly alive now. Before this rebirth, our spirit only existed, but it was separated from God and was therefore as good as dead in his sight. As a new, spiritually born again creation, God now has a way to commune with us and make known his will to us. "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them" (John 14:23). The more I see that I am in Christ, the more I see that God lives in me.

     God is Spirit, and the spirit he created us with was meant to have close, personal, intimate fellowship with him. We are saved by God's grace through faith in Christ, but that eternal life, which we now have in the One who is resurrected eternal life, must be lived out according to God's will. He saved us to live for him, but I cannot live for him unless I'm giving him his rightful place in my heart, and in every area of my life. I can't live for God unless I'm truly allowing Christ's Spirit to live through me. "Apart from me, you can do nothing," Jesus says. My flesh, or my natural human capacities and abilities, wants to protest this, saying in effect, "Hold on just a minute there. I can do many things, including things to honor God." But God says, "the flesh avails nothing," so therefore "put no confidence in the flesh." So God does not ever look to improve our flesh, or body, so that it can govern our soul and lead us. Instead, God has "condemned sin in the flesh" of Christ, and we have also been crucified with Christ.

     When we are put in Christ, all of his experiences become ours. So what Jesus is basically saying, from God's point of view and not our flesh's point of view, is "Anything you try to do for my Kingdom, apart from me, counts for nothing in my sight." Flesh and blood cannot ever inherit the Kingdom of God. When Jesus told the religious leaders, scribes, and Pharisees this, they began their plot to kill him. They were being told that their natural human efforts to make themselves good enough and religious enough were all for nought because they were only "cleaning the outside of their cup," not the inside. Jesus could see the sins of their flesh and their dead religious works of the flesh, so their boasting of how obedient they were to God's laws was only merely outward obedience, not inward obedience as well. In their hearts, Jesus saw greed, lust, and envy. The sins Jesus most often talked about were those "hidden invisible sins" that are matters of the heart. It is those sins that take root and can then end up growing into more obvious, visible outward sins.

     Our spirit, united in Christ's Spirit, is to govern and lead our soul. Our flesh, or our body, is to be submitted to the indwelling Holy Spirit's authority, and is only to be useful to us in the matters of God by carrying out what the Spirit first communicates our soul to do. Our soul contains our free will, so once we receive a revelation from God in our spirit, and we choose to obey his will, our body can then obey what the soul tells it to do. In other words, the body is to manifest what God reveals first to our spirit. All of this is by God's grace, because he is the One who lives in us, "both to will and to work according to his good pleasure." He renews our mind, gives us the desire to obey his call on our life, and then empowers us to obey him. This sanctifying of us that God does is a process of addition by subtraction, where God first communicates to our spirit that he wants us to let go of, and stop depending solely on, our natural capacities and abilities. Instead, he wants to live his supernatural life through our natural capacities and abilities. He can think his thoughts through our mind, draw out Scripture passages and truths from what he has previously taught us, and he can speak his words through our mouths. Therefore, sanctification includes our presenting of our natural, God-given elements to God, so that they can be submitted to his sovereign control and authority.

     The Bible reminds us that we do not belong to ourselves, but that we were bought back from slavery to sin (redeemed) at a very steep price on the cross. Yes, God has given us a wonderful mind, a unique personality, a free will, an ability to perceive things, an ability to feel proud, and many other natural elements, but all of these are to be presented to him by us in prayer and brought under his authority. He gave us a free will so that we could choose to follow him, rather than creating us to be obedient robots. He gave us pride, yet he says he hates pride. It is actually misdirected pride in self that he hates. The pride he gave us is not to be used by us to fuel our flesh's own self-centered desires, and it is not to be used to follow the world's wisdom of "believe only in your own abilities." Instead, God gave us pride to "take pride in Christ Jesus because of all that he is doing through us."

     God also gave us the ability to feel jealous, but not in a wrong, selfish, controlling way. Instead, we are to be jealous for God's name. "Jealous" is one of the names God calls himself because he hates to see his created people go off and worship the false gods of this world, such as money. God is not out to destroy our unique personality, but as we saw with James and John, who were called the "Sons of Thunder" because of their desire to call fire, or lightning, down from heaven to wipe out a bunch people who had hurt their feelings, God sometimes has to conform our personality a bit.

     After spending three years with Jesus, John ended up writing an amazing gospel of God's love later in his life. He is also the one who called himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved," boasting in Christ's great for anyone who follows him, rather than boasting in his own love for Christ. John knew what it meant to receive God's grace, so it is no coincidence that he was the only disciple who received the grace to make it all the way to the cross with Jesus. And at the foot of that cross, John was there to soak up the greatest outpouring of God's grace ever. At the foot of Christ's cross is where Christ's sanctification of us began, and where it continues throughout our lifetime. We need to "keep on asking" the Holy Spirit to apply that cross of self-denial, self-surrender, and self-sacrifice for others, to our every day life.

     Immediately after telling us that the end result of sanctification is eternal life, God gives us a very solemn warning, combined with an incredibly gracious promise. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The name "Jesus" means "God is salvation" because he came to shed his own blood and offer forgiveness of sin. He came to die and be resurrected again so that the wages of our sin could be fully paid for, and so that we could be spiritually born again into new life in him. This is why we have to remember that Jesus' full name is the "Lord" Jesus Christ. He is our Savior but he is also to be the Lord over every area of our life. Of course, no human being is perfect in this area of full self-surrender. The only perfect hero in the Bible is Christ, but we are to press on in faith because he lives in us and "as he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17). Our faith, however, cannot be in our own human, natural ability to be faithful to God. True faith rests in his far greater faithfulness to us. He's the Faithful One, so it's his faithfulness that we must tell the world about, not our ability to be faithful to him. He is faithful to us despite our many times of doubt and faithlessness toward him. Our witness to the world is to tell people how God allows us to sleep at night, how he keeps our marriages together, and how he continues to protect us and our kids, despite difficulties and hardships we go through, and despite our weaknesses and failures to him.

     God's solemn warning about the wages of sin being death should also be taken in this context: "To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace...You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you...if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness...if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God" (Romans 8:6,9-10,13-14). Through Paul, the Holy Spirit is talking to Christians. There are the "sins of the flesh," but there are also the "works of the flesh," and as we read further, we see that anything that originates in the flesh, including what we think honors God, is something God calls us to repent of and turn away from. He says that for us, as Christians, this is "the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God" (Hebrews 6:1). How do we "walk in the Spirit"? By walking in faith that rests in God's great faithfulness to us, and by listening to, and obeying, whatever God calls us to do when we pray. We walk in the Spirit by reading our Bibles and taking God at his word, and by loving one another with a sacrificial love. As we walk in faith, we receive revelations from God in our spirit as to what his will is for our life. We receive everything from God through that open channel of faith, and with God, it's always about receiving first.

     We are to "purify the conscience of dead works to worship the living God" (Heb. 9:14). We are not called by God to try and establish our sense of righteousness before God, based on how well we obey God's laws. Instead, we are to be sanctified in his gift of righteousness, based on faith in Christ's finished work on the cross. The truth God wants to sanctify us in is in the fact that "For our sake he (the Father) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21). Because we are the righteousness of God through faith in Christ, all accusations by Satan, and all self-condemnation, should be silenced. Christ's blood sprinkles and cleanses our consciences, so there is no charge against us after we confess our sins to the Lord. We may cause ourselves to strain our fellowship with God, but our relationship with him is never broken because we do not fall in and out of righteousness, or right standing, with our Father. The Righteous One died for the unrighteous, so if we receive him into our hearts, the Father sees righteousness when he looks at us, even though we still commit sins from time to time.

     One aspect of truth that God wants to sanctify us in, so that we do not get lured into Satan's trap of self-condemnation, is this fact that we are the righteousness of God. How can we, as human beings, be the righteousness of God? It is because our righteousness, or right standing with God, is an unearned, undeserved, unmerited gift from God, based on belief and faith in Christ's finished work on the cross. It is not our level of obedience to God's laws that make us righteous. Instead, it is Christ's perfect obedience to those laws, and his perfect obedience to the Father's will in going all the way to the cross for us, that causes God to declare us righteous in his sight when we believe.

     Just before going to the cross, and as he was speaking about sanctification, Jesus said, "when he (the Holy Spirit) comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned" (John 16:8-11). Jesus is speaking to three different beings here: unbelievers, believers, and the devil. The Holy Spirit needs to convict, or remind and cause us to confess, that we are the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. He needs to continually remind and assure us of this because we do not physically see Jesus and we are accused by the devil every time we fail God on some level or another. Satan tempts us to believe that we have somehow broken our relationship with God because of something we've done wrong, but the Holy Spirit looks to counter that constant lie by sanctifying us in the truth that God declares us to be righteous based on what Christ has done for us.

     God's word to us says, "this is the will of God, your sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 4:3), and Jesus says that "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). Sanctification is a work that God does in us and through us, gradually conforming us into the image of Christ. Our "doing" is to commit ourselves to God's doing through us. However, God does conform us into the image of Christ by doing so in some mysterious way that we are not consciously aware of. In fact, he only does this work in us by our active cooperation with his correction and discipline of us. Because "all Scripture is inspired by God to teach, correct, and train us in his righteousness," we must open up our Bibles and let our Bible read us. We must come to God, wait and listen for him to speak into our spirit, and be open to his correction, discipline, and even his chastisement when necessary. His command to us through his prophet Jeremiah is this: "Listen to me, obey my voice, and walk only in the way I command you, so that it may go well for you." If we seek him personally, if we wait and listen to him, and if we are fully open to whatever he tells us, then he will answer us, sanctify us in his truth, enable us to know his day-to-day will for our lives, and live his life through us so that he can then accomplish his will.

     Just as it is God's Spirit who sanctifies us the truth, we have to be reminded at times that even our acceptance of Christ was a work of God in our spirit. This is the truth because he tells us that "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3). What this means is that our spirit was created with the ability to receive his Spirit as he "stands at the door and knocks." Our soul has the inherent free will ability to look to our spirit and cause it to open the door of our heart God. Then we are able to say "yes" to Christ because we come to know intuitively in our spirit that God is right about our sinful condition, and that we do need a Savior. He causes our spirit to "know" that fact from God. We don't know this in our mind first. We come to "know" it in our spirit's conscience first as God brings us to our senses by enlightening and quickening our spirit. How sad it is that many people cannot even identify their spirit, much less use its functions. Again, this "coming to our full senses" is something God does, so instead of criticizing other people who are not spiritually enlightened, we are to pray and ask God to open the eyes of their heart.

     Without his Spirit's work of quickening of our spirit, we remain natural only. Our spirit exists but our conscience is not functioning as it should and our intuition is not sensitive to God. Our conscience has not been sanctified under God's authority and control, so our natural is given free reign to argue with it, and persuade it to function only according to our flesh's desires. But when God's Spirit causes me to "come to my senses" and accept him, my mind eventually comes around to accepting what we already intuitively came to know in our spirit. Because this "knowing" first occurs in our spirit, God's goal is to continually develop the intuition of our spirit, because it is there that we can receive his thoughts and know what his will is. This is why God says that "man believes with the heart (spirit) and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved" (Romans 10:10). God's Spirit is the only One who can cause us to say "Jesus is Lord," so he is the only One who can bring us to our full senses, most importantly our spiritual sense. At a certain point the Bible says that the Prodigal Son was "brought to his senses" and finally realized he was in a pigpen far away from his father. At that point, he had a choice to make. Stay away and die in that land of famine, or return to the forgiving embrace and provision of his father. When God brings us to our spiritual senses, we are given the same choice to make.

     For us to be able to walk in the Spirit, it is very important for us to understand God's separation of spirit and soul within us. He wants to enlighten our spirit with his own spirit of wisdom and revelation. His word, which is sharper than any two-edged sword, divides spirit and soul, quickens our spirit, and resurrects it in his life at the moment of our spiritual rebirth. Before that, we had a spirit, but it was as good as dead to God. It was unable to communicate with him, unable to know his will fully, and unable to be useful to him. Why? Because it was a spirit that was not yet united with his Spirit. It was not a regenerated spirit, so although we were physically alive, we were spiritually dead. Then God came to us one day in a way that our spirit deeply needed. He came to us in love because God is love. He created us with a heart that can sense his love, and the one crying need of every heart is love...not "I love your new hairdo" or "I love ice cream," but the kind of love that loves us first, just as we are. The kind of love that is willing to lay one's life down for you and I, even though we don't deserve it. He came to us in unfailing faithfulness, even before we gave a hoot about him. This defines his amazing grace toward us...he died for us while we were yet sinners and hostile toward his will for our life. Even so, he will not stop trying to speak his thoughts into our spirits, despite our tendency to resist his ways.

     Only by daily dying to the flesh, which means dying to our dependency on our natural capacities and abilities alone, can we expect God to manifest Christ's supernatural life through us. We die to self, so that we can bear witness to a life within us that never dies. What does "dying to self" look like? Well, it can include God's call for you to go and tell someone about him, knowing that that same person just ridiculed your faith last week in front of all your co-workers at lunch. It can also mean letting go of bitterness and resentment toward someone because of what they've said about you to others, even though that poisonous bitterness in you has become so ingrained that it has become part of your own sense of self-identity. If that bitterness was gone, you would be a different person in some respects, and people would notice that your whole disposition has changed. They would even see it on your face.

     Part of God's sanctification of us in his truth is seen in how he reveals the depths of his nature and character to us, because again, his goal is to conform us into the image of Christ as he forms Christ's life in us more and more each day. And one of the aspects of himself that he wants to reveal to us is the depth of his mercy and forgiveness. Whatever we are unable to forgive deeply enough, so that our hurt and pain is gone forever, God can forgive through us and completely heal the wound. The One who said "Father, forgive them" from the cross is willing and able to do that same thing through us today. My mind has a hard time trying to understand how God can do this, but if I yield my spirit to his Spirit's work within me, it just happens. The memory of so-and-so may return, but the pain of what that person did doesn't return with that memory. Afterward, my mind still wonders how it is that the pain can be completely gone now. My mind does not understand because what God did is a spiritual work, which he did through my spirit, not my mind. I just said, "God, I can't do this, but you can do this through me." And if necessary, I also say to him, "I believe you, but help me with my unbelief." Then, by his grace, he just does it miraculously. His grace does for me what I cannot do for myself. That's one of the reasons God has put us "in Christ." He's the Strong One, not me. His power is always perfected in our weakness, if we are willing to come to him and trust him. "Only believe," God says.

     "And it is God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10). This finished work of Jesus on the cross can only become part of our daily experience if we continue to present ourselves to the Lord in prayer, allow him to teach and correct us with his Word, and actively cooperate with his Spirit's leading and loving discipline of us. Sometimes his loving discipline also involves his chastening of us, especially when we start to drift back into the "sins of the flesh" or the dead "works of the flesh." Sanctification is what God uses to bring us, and keep us, under his sovereign control, authority, and power.

     Again, God's justification and sanctification of us began at the cross, but as with many other truths that God tells us, there is an "already, but not yet" aspect to this salvation that he offers. "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God; and that is what we are...Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this; when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is" (1 John 3:1-2). Although we become God's sons and daughters when we are spiritually born again into his spiritual family, we are not fully conformed yet to Christ's image. We only have a deposit, or a foretaste, of what it is to share God's glory, and that is through his indwelling Spirit. And so sanctification is the lifelong process of spiritually maturing us, not to the point where we can do more and more on our own, but to the point where we see that apart from him we can do nothing, and that doing his will in the way he commands is the only thing that truly pleases him. He makes it clear that he is not nearly as honored by our sacrifices for him, as he is honored by our obedience to his terms of relationship, and by our believing in his definition of righteousness.

   So what is our part in sanctification, which God says leads to eternal life? How do I lay hold of God's promise to actually live his life through me? Through Paul, the Holy Spirit tells us that our part in sanctification is to, "present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification" (Romans 6:19). He also says, "present your members to God as instruments of righteousness" (6:13). To present oneself to God is to come to him in private, personal prayer that believes he will speak his thoughts to our spirit. It is to come to him in prayer, and the reading of his word, open to whatever he tells us, no matter how uncomfortable his words may make us feel. Slaves give up their personal rights to live for themselves, or to use their natural, God-given "members" according to their own wisdom. Instead, slaves live for their master, being whatever the master calls them to be, and doing whatever the master calls them to do.

     The idea of being a slave is terrible, but not when our master is our Creator and loving Father. Christ died for our freedom, freeing us from the law's condemnation of us, freeing us from sin's power to control and enslave us, and freeing us from the fear of death. Instruments are only useful when they are placed in the hands of the One who knows exactly what to do with them, and to be God's instrument of righteousness includes the fact that we have the indwelling Spirit of the Righteous One living in us. This Righteous One, who knew no sin, became sin and died for the unrighteous, so that we could become the righteousness of God through faith in him. Our right standing with God is, therefore, an undeserved, unmerited, unearned gift from God. This peace with God that Jesus won for us is surely a peace that passes all understanding because we did not earn it first through our own merit. All merit is in the Son, and all power to live is by his Spirit.

     God does not give us tools we need to live the Christian life, as we oftentimes think about someone giving us tools to use in our own hands, according to our own wisdom. Yes, God does give us spiritual gifts, but these gifts are all "in Christ" because we have been united in him (1 Cor. 1:30). We are swallowed up in his nature and character, including his supernatural power, his faithfulness, his righteousness, and his resurrected eternal life. Because he is the Prince of Peace, we get to experience his indwelling peace, even in the midst of life's storms. So we are not "given" tools to live for God as much as we "are" God's tool.

     God is faithful to us in all his ways, and according to his wisdom. He is not going to be faithful to me in all my own ways, according to my own wisdom. In other words, he is not going to follow me around and bless my human, natural plans and efforts to please him, no matter how well-intentioned and honorable my plans seem to be in my own eyes. Sanctification, therefore, oftentimes involves God's tapping on our shoulder and saying, "You know, that thing you are thinking of doing for me is of the flesh. Therefore, it will not abide. Let it go. Seek me, listen to my voice, and follow my plans instead."

     Tools are formed and shaped by applying fire to metal, removing impurities from the liquid metal, and then refining it into the desired shape. God purifies and refines us by his Holy Spirit, as he allows us to go through certain fiery trials in life, "for everyone will be tested with fire" (Mark 9:49). This testing through trial is how he applies his Word to us. I cannot really know the truth unless I experience it. Sometimes I can't know the truth about who or what I am really depending on unless God puts me through some difficulty. That's when the truth is revealed about whether I'm depending on my own abilities, or depending on God's strength and ability. The Apostle Paul wrote over two-thirds of the New Testament, under the inspiration of Christ's Holy Spirit. Although he wrote about other things too, the main thrust of his message to Christians was about walking wrongly according to the flesh, rather than walking according to the Spirit by faith in God. He wrote about the sins of the flesh to some, but it was the works of the flesh that caused hi to call the Galatians "foolish." And in the book of Romans, he got to the heart of the matter, which God continually looks the most at...the flesh itself.

   At an early point in his ministry, Jesus said something that appears to make no sense to many of us today. He said, "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell" (Matthew 5:29-30). When the Bible talks about the "right hand of God," it is referring to his strength and power. Therefore, my right hand can refer to my own human strength, and my right eye can refer to my own human perception.

     What this passage of Scripture seems to be focusing on is a matter of who I am depending on. Am I depending on God, or I am I depending on my own human will and exertion, in order to somehow please and honor God? God is pleased with his Son, and if we are truly allowing his Son to rule us, he is then pleased with us. Because of what Christ has done, and what he is willing and able to continually do through us, we are called to "purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" within us (Hebrews 9:14). It is only because of his cross of self-sacrifice for us, and because we then allow him to live his supernatural life through us, that we can ever become useful tools in God's hands.

     In our heart, the Holy Spirit tells us to "sanctify Christ as Lord" (1 Peter 3:14-15). What does this mean? Through Paul, the Holy Spirit spells it out for us. We are to present ourselves to God as "slaves of righteousness," and as "instruments of his righteousness." (Romans 6:19,13). We accept Christ as our Savior, but are to then give him his rightful place so that he can be the Lord of our life. In this way, we become instruments of "his" righteousness. Slaves give up their rights to live for themselves according to their own wisdom. Instead, they live for their masters, according to his wisdom and his ways. God does not accept any attempts on our part to try and establish our sense of righteousness through our own "works of the flesh." Jesus blasted the Pharisees for trying to do this, and they were the most "religious' people in Israel at that time. It is an insult to God to try and establish our own righteous after he died for us in Christ, thereby justifying us and declaring us to be righteous in his sight, even though we still do commit sins against him.   

     Presenting ourselves to God includes prayer that comes to him with a high expectation that he is going to speak intuitively into our heart (spirit), oftentimes even before our mind can comprehend the full meaning of his words. "God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God" (1 Cor.2:10). God has not made it possible for us to figure him out, and to know his complete will for our life, by using our mind only. So he does not want us to only study our Bibles, commentaries, and other books, but neglect to come to him personally in prayer. It is in our spirit that we receive revelations from God and "know" something he is telling us, long before our mind can begin to "understand" it. "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9). This intuitive work of the Holy Spirit within our spirit enables us to know the things of God that our heart and mind oftentimes cannot even conceive of until later. This is because much of God's wisdom is counter-intuitive to worldly wisdom and philosophy, and our heart and mind is usually quite slow to understand it, even though our spirit already "knows that it knows."

     Only spiritual Christians would understand this way that God communes with us, but it is really not much different than someone asking me how I know my wife loves me. Because she cooks, cleans, irons my shirts, and wakes up with me every morning? No, it's just because "I know that I know" in the intuition of my spirit. My mind does a poor job of trying to explain things like love that are "spiritually discerned" by my intuition, so if she asks me why I love her, I can oftentimes find myself struggling to find high enough, and lofty enough words to define my love for her. My mind can then end up causing me problems with her, because if I can't explain my love for her well enough, my wife may then ask me to explain to her why I can't explain it. It's at that point that I bail out and just say that "I know that I know" that I love her.

     For us to "know" what God has prepared for us, as far as his will is concerned, we have to allow God to develop our spiritual senses by asking him to do so. For us to "know" the depths of his love for, we need to open our heart (spirit) to him. God is love, and he is infinite, so his love is infinite. My mind will never be able to understand his amazing love if all I'm doing is trying to figure out God mentally. At best, my mental approach will teach me "about" his love, and I can talk to other people "about" his love, but that is not the same as allowing his love to actually flow out me because I have spent time in his loving presence myself. If you say that you pray to God, but it seems as though he never speaks to you, then maybe it is because of what Jesus tells all of us through James. "You don't have because you don't ask." In the same way, we may be "asking amiss" because we are not open fully to whatever correction and change he may be seeking to do in us. We have a strong propensity to resist change and set ourselves in our own ways.

     We also may not be hearing God speak to our spirit because we might be praying to him only with our mind. Paul said that we are to pray with our mind, but also with our spirit. In fact, he said that we are to "pray in the spirit at all times" (Ephesians 6:18). Some of us don't know what it means to pray in our spirit, and others have a very hard time even identifying their spirit. If that's true, tell God. Don't be embarrassed to acknowledge ignorance and weakness to him. Paul said that he had a weakness in, of all things, prayer. Imagine the great apostle Paul, who wrote so much about prayer, saying that his weakness was in not knowing how to pray. The problem was in not knowing how to pray according to God's will, a problem that almost all of us struggle to understand how to do today. But then he said that the indwelling Holy Spirit, who is united with our spirit, intercedes in our prayers (if we let him), praying according to the will of the Father. At the same time, the glorified Jesus with the nail-pierced hands and feet, is at the Father's right hand, interceding for us there also. Then it is the Father who hears and answers our prayers. So God is sovereign and able to control all things in his Kingdom...including our prayers.

     Of course, the obvious reason we may not be hearing God speak his thoughts into our spirit is because we are not waiting on him, not listening to him, or doubting that he will actually speak to us. This happens to everyone from time to time. Maybe we are too timid to ask him for big things, especially when we don't feel like we are right with him for whatever reason. Maybe we ask God to help us with a particular need, wait on him for a little while, but then start looking at our watch, before excusing ourselves from the meeting in the prayer closet that he prompted our heart to come to. We wouldn't have the nerve to do that to our employer, but we oftentimes do that to God Almighty.

     In the same way, the Holy Spirit within us discerns truth and then reveals that truth to us intuitively in our spirit before our mind can understand. That's why we just "know that we know" sometimes. For example, we might hear a message being preached on TV, and just know in our spirit that something is not right with that message. It is God's Spirit within us alerting our spirit that there is a deception in the sermon to look out for. Usually, it's because the message is not Christ-centered, but man-centered instead, despite the many Bible verses that are sprinkled into the sermon.

     Another way that we present ourselves to God by opening up our Bibles and allowing our Bibles to read us. We keep on asking for the Holy Spirit's wisdom because the Bible says that he is the only One who knows the thoughts of God. He lives in us to testify to Christ, so he is the One who can make Jesus more and more real to us each day. We also present ourselves to God by practicing his presence in our day-to-day life, staying sensitive and alert to what he is doing around us in the hearts of other people.

     Although God began his work of sanctification in us, when he sacrificed himself on the cross for us in Christ, our willingness to remain in him is what allows his ongoing work of sanctification to continue in us. At his throne of judgment, he is not going to quiz us on how well we understand his theology and doctrine. A  mental understanding of doctrine, or a theological degree, are not required for someone to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

     I don't know exactly how God is going to word it, but based on what he tells us throughout Scripture, his main question to all of us at his throne of judgment will basically center on this: "What did you do with my Son?" Everything centers on God in Christ, and the cross is the central event in the history of his creation. And at his throne, he will look, see, and fully reveal what he already knows: whether or not we have truly allowed Christ to rule and reign in us. God will either see himself in us or he won't. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that he will take out a scale and weigh our good against our bad, or compare us with other people's integrity. Furthermore, our flesh, and all of its natural capacities and abilities, it's resistance and opposition to God's ways, and its issues and arguments with God, will not be there at the throne. It will be silenced and buried six feet under somewhere, so it won't even be around to have any last words with God.

     Since sanctification leads to eternal life, then I must quiet my flesh's attempts to assert itself, and ask God to subdue it in favor of my spirit. "In quietness and rest is our strength," the Bible says. Of course, our flesh is that thing in us that rises up during a time of difficulty and says, "Do something, anything. Don't just pray and wait on God." But when a person is born again spiritually, it is a new spirit (heart) that he receives from God. God does not save us by promising to improve and strengthen our flesh. Instead, he tells us that he unites our spirit in Christ's Spirit, and then crucifies us with Christ. Because we are in Christ, his experience becomes our experience. And because this co-crucifixion with Christ is a work of God, we have to shed unbelief and remember that this is not impossible for God to do, because he is not constrained by time and space.

     From that point of spiritual rebirth on, God then wants to grow us up spiritually. He does not want us staying in the first grade, by continuing to walk in the flesh, because he warns us that to walk according to the flesh is death. Everything else that is not of the spirit must be brought to the cross of self-sacrifice by "presenting ourselves to God as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." God will give us the grace to go to that place of self-denial, self-surrender, and self-sacrifice, if we trust him. Therefore, sanctification on a practical level is my coming to God today and basically saying, "God, you are much smarter and stronger than me. Do with me as you wish." Or, as Jesus said, "Not my will be done, but your will be done." Then the Bible says that it was by God's grace that Jesus went all the way to the cross for us. He sanctified himself, so that he could sanctify us, and keep on sanctifying us.

     One thing I have learned about sanctification is that it is not something I initiate, other than coming to God with a high expectation that he is looking to change me in some way, or deal with some issue in my own heart. I do not try to somehow sanctify myself first, and then come to him. I do not go around dying to things that I decide to die to, because I have found that I will usually sacrifice to him only what is relatively easy, or convenient, for me to give up. Then I will basically say to God in my heart, "Look at all that I have sacrificed for you, Lord." But the truth is that God will ask me to sometimes lay down, or release my grip on, something that I have begun to treasure a little too much in his sight. And usually that something is a thing that I am unaware I'm clinging too tightly to.

     In the case of Abraham, it was his only son Isaac who he physically brought before the Lord to sacrifice. But what Abraham presented to the Lord was actually much more than just Isaac. God was showing us what sanctifying us wholly (spirit, soul, and body), through our spirit first, is all about. Look at how God works from the inside out in Abraham, beginning with his inner spirit, in order to sanctify him under God's control and authority. As Abraham brought his son up to that mountaintop, Abraham also brought with him promises that he knew God had already begun to fulfill in his life. Isaac had been promised to Abraham and Sarah by God, and Isaac had already been born years earlier.

     What else, beside this fulfilled promise, did Abraham bring up to be sacrificed and let go of? Well, Abraham was to be the leader of a nation, through all of his future descendants. In fact, he was to be the father of nations, and was going to be used of God to be a blessing to others. So Abraham brought his sense of being a leader up to that altar of sacrifice. He brought his sense of being a father up there too because it was his son who he brought with him. He brought his sense of being a husband up there also because how was he going to explain to his wife that he sacrificed their son that day? Telling Sarah that he barbecued their son could have easily caused their marriage to end right there. He brought up his pride, his sense of self-identity, and his free will. He brought up his perception of who he thought God was, so he brought his own theology up there. He brought his own personality up there, because Abraham's personality would have never even considered sacrificing his one and only son.

     Abraham basically brought his entire being, or all of his "members," up to that altar of self-sacrifice. Today, that altar is the cross. And at that altar, Abraham presented himself to the Lord as a "slave of righteousness for sanctification." He let go of his God-given natural capacities and abilities as he stood there, believing that God would someone provide the true sacrifice. Isaac said, "I see the wood for the sacrifice, but where is the animal sacrifice?" And at that, Abraham said, "God will provide the sacrifice." Sure enough, God eventually did provide that sacrifice...himself in Christ. How did Abraham perceive this reality that would not happen until many, many centuries later? Was it through his natural mind and understanding? No, it was through his intuition, as God revealed in Abraham's spirit what Abraham's mind could not have known or understood yet. In so many ways, God's call on his life to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, made no sense to Abraham's natural mind, or to all those other natural elements of Abraham's being that I mentioned.

     We can never come to know God through our intellect only because much of what God prompts our spirit to do cuts against the grain of human reason, logic, and understanding. As we read the rest of this story of self-sacrifice, we see God had something much greater to give Abraham than everything he was asking Abraham to give up. God's thoughts and ways are far higher than our own and he only provides us with his spiritual wisdom through his revelations to our spirit.

     By studying the Bible in an academic way, we can only come to know his general will, but his day-to-day will is hidden unless we humble ourselves and seek him personally to hear his voice speak to our spirit in prayer. He does not impart his wisdom to our brain first, which is why we can never figure out God with only our intellect, no matter how much we think we have doctrine and theology down pat. Only our spirit is capable of personal fellowship with God because God is Spirit. We can say we are saved, and we can assure ourselves that God has promised us eternal life, but how is that eternal life lived out here on earth? Jesus said, "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ?" The only way I can truly know someone is by spending time with them. It's not enough to know "about" God and "about" Christian theology. "I want you to know me," God says through his prophet Hosea. This is what God's sanctification of us boils down to. Satan doesn't mind if we study our brains out over the Scriptures. He just doesn't want us actually communing with God in prayer, so he'll do anything he can to distract us from going into the prayer closet.

     God's sanctifying of us also includes the tests and trials he allows into our life, in order to refine and purify our faith into a faith that is much stronger because it begins to rest more and more in his greater faithfulness to us. Sometimes, these tests and trials include failure, as Peter experienced. After being told that he would deny Christ three times, Peter basically said, "No, I deny that, Lord." He was trying to tell Jesus, "That's OK. You really don't have to let me be sifted like wheat. I'm sure I've got this Christian walk under control by now. Nothing can shake me. If need be, I'll go all the way to prison and even die with you." As Jesus was trying to say, "That's exactly what I still need to deal with in you," Peter was trying to tell him the exact opposite. He was not allowing Christ to sanctify him in the truth, and because of that, Peter was not able to go to the cross because God did not give him the grace to do so. The flesh was still in the way, so God had to expose Peter's weakness in the flesh before God could empower him with his grace and supernatural power instead.

     Within two months after denying that he even knew Christ to a group of people, Peter preached a sermon and 3,000 people were saved that day. At another point, he was walking to the temple with John to pray when they came across a man who had been lame from birth, begging at the front gate. Because they had already given what they had to help fund the church community of new believers, they said to the lame man, "Gold and silver we don't have, but what we do have we will give you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, get up and walk!" Because God's supernatural Spirit lives in us, we have infinitely more to give than we realize, especially at those times we know that we are completely empty-handed.

     If you are going through a financial crisis yourself, God has qualified you to talk to other people about his faithfulness. They are going to listen to you only because you are going through what they're going through. In the end, God will do whatever it takes to glorify his name, so although it seems that you are the only being tested, it is actually his name, honor, and glory that are on the line as you tell others about him. It is as other people see the underlying peace that God gives you in the middle of a storm in life, that they will start to say in their hearts, "If God can do that for him or her, I wonder what God can do in my life?"

     The world can do good things for other people, but God calls Christians to do great, impossible things in Christ's name. Because he knows we have a tendency to limit his power by boxing him into our own various levels of unbelief, he has to oftentimes remind us that it is natural for him to be supernatural, and that because he lives in us, he is capable of doing miracles through us at any time. The One who commanded the laws of the entire universe into existence is certainly capable of operating outside the laws of nature if he wants to.

     God's call on our life, which is to basically lay our life down before him and allow him to do through us whatever he pleases, is not a call to passivity and inaction on our part. Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it" (John 14:12-14). Is there any need to worry about whether or not God will supply us with the power to do what he asks us to do? Jesus answers that kind of concern by saying, "the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given. For to those who have, more will be given" (Mark 4:24-25). To those who have what? To those who have faith that rests in God's faithfulness to us.

     Is there any need to wonder if God is doing anything in our life at any given time? No, not when Jesus tells us that "the Father is always working, and so am I" (John 5:17). I've noticed that the times I doubt God is doing anything in my life are usually the times I have not been truly quieting my natural flesh so that he can speak into my spirit's intuition and conscience with his still, small quiet voice. During those times of fleshly busyness, and much thinking and human reasoning, I am not even making my spirit available to him so that he can give me any spiritual revelations. Or maybe I am quieting myself but I'm doubting he can talk to my spirit, or I'm not really open to hear any words of correction and change.

     Sanctifying us in these truths about himself is how God gives us the courage to follow his Spirit's leading into his supernatural, miraculous life. Christ sanctified himself on the cross so that he could then sanctify us in his truth. If our justification and sanctification was important enough to Christ to die for, how important should both of these elements of salvation be for us also. He wants us to receive the full salvation he offers, not just his justification for sin.

     Peter and John intuitively knew in their spirit to tell that lame man to get up and walk, only because Christ's indwelling Spirit prompted their spirit to do so, and they had not minimized the importance of their spirit's intuition and conscience. Instead, they knew to respond to their intuition and conscience, regardless of what their practical, natural mind may have thought. They trusted that Christ's Spirit was speaking into their spirit because they knew that his Spirit lived in them. So when they felt that prompting, they just knew it was God telling them to heal this lame man. If they were men who only relied on their minds, or only on their natural capacities and abilities, their natural mind and feelings would have protested the idea of trying to miraculously heal this man, even in Christ's name. Then their natural mind and feelings would have probably told them to go on ahead into the temple to say some prayers or maybe "have church." Such is the difference between Christians who walk according to the flesh and those who walk in the Spirit. God is after our hearts more than our natural minds.

     The flesh can go to church and even pray, but it will naturally resist anything that has to do with God's desire to prune away natural human self-reliance, self-dependency, self-identity, and self-security in the perishable things of this world, and in our natural capacities and abilities alone. The fleshly Christian seeks to walk in spiritual self-sufficiency, and can be doing this without even realizing it oftentimes. I have drifted many times back to believing that I can stand on the strength of my own two legs and walk in obedience to God by my own human efforts alone. Or it may be that I'm putting my own human plans and effort to the forefront of my walk because what I think I'm doing for the Lord is actually just originating from me, rather than from him. But it's when I'm starting to convince myself that I'm walking just fine in my own strength that God usually "brings me to my senses." He often does this by drawing me back into his word and then revealing the truth to me about what I'm doing.

     Paul's prayer for certain people at one point was that God would "change those people's hearts, and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap" (2 Timothy 2:25-26). He then warned that "in the last days" people "will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly" (2 Tim. 3:5). These are people who come to church but are not willing to allow God to touch and change certain areas of their heart, and certain areas of their life. Because they have reasoned with their conscience and suppressed it, they are not hearing the inner warning God tries to give at times. This dullness then clouds their intuition, to the point where they cannot hear God speak into their spirit. Paul said that we must keep our conscience between our self and God, rather than between our self and the shifting moral standards of this world. He also said that "the testimony of our conscience" should be based on the grace of God and not earthly wisdom (2 Cor. 1:12). People can be mistaken about us and misjudge us, but God's righteous and just grace lovingly guides and disciplines us in his truth.

     Through the conscience and intuition of my spirit, God lets me know when I'm wrongly walking according my flesh, and not according to the leading of his Spirit. It is through my conscious that he intuitively communicates this to me, causing me to feel guilty in his light and also causing me to have a lack of inner peace in my spirit. Why do I feel grieved in my spirit? Because my spirit has been united in Christ's Spirit and he is the one who is grieving. If I resist his conviction, he will at times allow me to fall down and fail, just as he did with Peter. He'll allow this failure in order to make me see I'm not as strong and spiritually self-sufficient as I think I am, and to make me see once again that I need to keep my eyes on him and live by his grace instead.

     My conscience does more that just tell me when I'm doing something that is not in line with God's will. It should also function to intuitively know God's acceptance of me, even after I've failed him in some way. Because my conscience should sense his conviction, but also sense his grace, I can then be bold in approaching him for mercy in those times. God's word says that "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness." By confessing sin, he keeps us under his waterfall of right standing with him. We may strain our sense of fellowship with him but our relationship with our Father is never severed. That is one thing that the Holy Spirit needs to remind me of constantly, through my spirit's consciousness, in order to counter the devil's accusations.

     To sense God's mercy and forgiveness comes through our spiritual intuition, not mental apprehension and study alone, because it doesn't make sense to us mentally oftentimes that God would not be disappointed, exasperated, or angry at us when we fail him. Despite our lack of mental understanding in those times that we fail him, our spirit should be intuitively telling us that it's still OK to approach him again. That's what God wants because in returning to him is our strength. His power to forgive and be faithful to us is perfected in our times of sin and faithlessness. Our peace with him is peace that passes all understanding, so it is something only our spirit "knows," not something our mind "understands" first. Our mind catches up later with some level of understanding, only after our spirit intuitively "knows" that he has cleansed and healed us of that sin.

     We have a peace with our Father that we can sense and know in our spirit after confession and forgiveness, long before our mind has a chance to understand how this can even be possible. So obviously this is intuitive knowledge that God gives us, not mental understanding. And what our mind eventually concludes is that God is not like us. He doesn't judge people's sin the way we do. His mercy is just as righteous as his judgment, which is something he wants to intuitively "know" in our spirit so that we can then intuitively treat other people with mercy...even though our so-called "understanding" mind is already busily judging whatever it is that they've said or done to us. For this reason, we cannot come to God in the kind of prayer that says, "Lord, do you see what so-and-so has said or done against me?" If we do that, God will basically say back to us, "I am not your gossip partner. If I can do something with your heart first then maybe I'll do something with their heart later."

     How do I maintain a good conscience before God, so that nothing will stop me from returning to him after I've failed him? Do I somehow make myself right with God by doing certain things, and then return to him? I have to answer that by asking myself this: "Do I make myself well before I go to a doctor to get get healed?" That's what Satan tempts us to believe but that is not truth. "I can't get well until I see the doctor first, so get your lie out of my way." In order to maintain a good conscience with God, I have to remain under the cleansing power of his blood because that blood sprinkles my conscience and removes guilt. Why does Christ's blood have the power to do that? Because the Son's shed blood is priceless to the Father. It is of infinite value to him.

     One thing I have come to see about sanctification is that presenting ourselves to God means presenting my entire being to God, not only certain elements of myself. He has given us, as Christians, a new heart (spirit) that is responsive to him because it has been united in his Spirit. Because our new spirit in him contains our intuition and conscience, those elements of our being must be included in what we present to the Lord. We don't need to give God a list of everything about us that we are putting back into his hands. We only need to come before him in prayer with a fully surrendered heart, no mask of pretense, and a high expectancy that he is looking to work changes in us. God created my conscience to be completely open to his judgments and corrections of what I do, or what I may be thinking of doing. In fact, it has to be so open to him that I should be asking him to shine his light into every corner of my heart, in order to reveal things to me that displease him, things I'm not even consciously aware of.    

     In whatever sin God does show me, I have to stay away from trying to justify that sin myself. God does not want to hear me say, "Lord, I have sinned against you, but..." He wants me to be real with him, "Lord, I have sinned against you period. It's me. It's no one else. It's me." That was the difference between King Saul and David, who God called "a man after my own heart." God reveals my sin to me so that I can acknowledge it and confess it, in order to be cleansed of it by him. Christ's blood also sprinkles and cleanses our conscience so that no accusation of the enemy can cause me to feel like I'm condemned. Satan cannot condemn me and self-condemnation is not real condemnation either because only Jesus Christ can condemn anyone. If my conscience is open for God to work through, then he will reveal his wisdom and his will intuitively to my spirit. But if I play games with my conscience, retarding its proper function, then I end up cutting myself off from the revelations God wants to give me.

     If we don't see how damaging sin is to us, and to others around us, we should ask God to reveal the seriousness of it to us. If we don't see how bad sin is, he may choose to show us through some experience how hidden sin also gives Satan legal grounds to attack us. This can include "peripheral sin," such as a family member's hidden pornography in the house, or a hidden secret habit that someone in the house is doing. It may be a revelation to you about sin in your home that you are not committing yourself. It may also result in you being falsely accused of that sin, and even having your faith ridiculed on top of that. Satan was able to influence Peter, even as he was talking face to face with Jesus at one point, so Satan can certainly influence anyone at times, including Christians.

     God can even allow the devil to make a big federal case about that hidden, peripheral sin that is near you but is not necessarily your sin. Satan can influence or lead someone to discover that sinful thing and then continue to influence that person to shout loud accusations against you. And God will permit Satan to do this just to make it clear to you how ugly sin is. Why would God allow this kind of commotion to happen to you? To make you want to hate sin as much as he hates sin and to show you what you can do to stay out of Satan's line of fire. If God reveals in our heart, or sin that happens to be around us, he wants us to attack it. If we don't attack the enemy, the enemy can attack us. Jesus said about his church that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, so that means we are to take the fight to whatever the enemy has entrenched and made a stronghold of because gates don't attack.

     We may say that letting Satan falsely accuse us is a harsh, unfair way of revealing the ugliness of sin to us, but look at how God revealed the ugliness of sin to us in what he allowed Jesus to go through. He was falsely accused of inciting rebellion against Rome, lied about by false witnesses who contradicted each other in an unjust "religious" courtroom, falsely accused of blasphemy against God, beaten before being declared guilty of anything, and then crucified by a Roman governor who knew Jesus was completely innocent and was simply being persecuted by envious people. But even in this harsh attack by the enemy, God was looking to sanctify our perception of sin, in order to bring our perception of it in line with his perspective. He was condemning sin in the flesh of his Son, and was showing us that wages of sin is death.

     On a vertical cross, God was also showing us that our flesh has no ability to save itself, no matter how much one tries to push up on the balls of their feet to keep breathing. It is when Romans began crucifying people vertically that God came to us in Christ, and God's word tells us that "in the fullness of time he sent his Son." Is it a coincidence that when the Romans began to crucify people on vertical crosses, God sent his Son to die? Isn't a vertical cross the most graphic way of showing us that "the flesh avails nothing"? Isn't the weakness of the flesh what the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write the most about to the early Christians? Wasn't it the flesh that Jesus focused the most on, as he agonized about going to the cross, when he told his disciples, "The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"?

     What's harsh and unfair, not to us but to God himself, is that God in Christ was bearing our sin, taking the condemnation we deserve under his own law, and paying the price of death for us. Because Christ lives in us by his Spirit, we have to remember that whatever is happening to us that is unfair happened to him, and continues to happen to him. Satan hates us only because he hates Christ who is in us. The world hated Christ and crucified him unjustly, and "as he is, so are we in this world" today. We are his representatives today and the part of this world, who chooses not to receive him, has not changed its spirit of envy against him. That part of the world rejects the idea that he is the only way to heaven, and they insist that they can make themselves "good enough," or "religious enough" to get there on their own merit. But that's when God's sanctification of us in his truth, through his indwelling Holy Spirit, says to us, "No, that is not true. The real truth is that all merit is in my Son, in whom I am well pleased, and all power to live is by my Spirit."

     In the end, and there's always an "in the end" with God, he turned the tables on Satan, taking the crucifixion that was meant for evil and turning it to good through the empty tomb. He will do the same for you and I in every unfair trial we experience too. It doesn't matter how much Satan tries to accuse, attack, and condemn us for our sin, and it doesn't matter what form these attacks take. He is a created being and he is only one of many instruments God uses to reveal things to us.

     This is why God keeps calling us to come to him in the kind of prayer that seeks to be sanctified by his truth. We have a very real, personal adversary who wants to destroy us out of envy. We have the eternal life in heaven that he can never have. Envy is different than jealousy because envy does not necessarily want what you have, it just doesn't want you to have that thing. Satan has no interest in being in heaven under God's authority again, but he just can't stand that you have that as a Christian. In coming to God in prayer we must keep in mind that he does want to hear our petitions, supplications, and intercessions for others, but sometimes he wants us to simply quiet our own natural thoughts and feelings, and just listen to him speak intuitively to our spirit. We should ask him what to pray for.

     Remember that the Holy Spirit is the One who intercedes in our prayers, praying according to the will of the Father, and then communicates his will to us through our channel of faith in him. True prayer is so open to his voice that it actually seeks his correction and discipline. David said, "Search my heart, O God, and show me my hidden sins. Point out anything in me that displeases you." Of course, there are plenty of times when God is simply looking to remind us of his love and he just wants to embrace us so the we can feel his love in a fresh way. But even when he does choose to discipline us, that is also done in love. God is love. Everything he does is driven by his love.

     Instead of worrying about what God wants us to surrender and let go of in the natural, think of what he wants to replace it with...his own supernatural power. This is why, on a practical level, sanctification is really just you or I coming to God and saying, "You are much stronger and smarter than me. Do with me whatever you want." Christianity, without yielding to God's desire to sanctify us, is just religious exercise that we perform in our own flesh. This is something God calls death, not life. The advantage we should be getting from justification, and God's regeneration of our spirit, is sanctification. The Bible says "the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy." Don't allow Satan to deceive you into believing that sanctification isn't important. God told us at the top of this page that "the advantage you get is sanctification," so don't let Satan rob you of something that God says is his will for your life. This was a will that went into effect when God in Christ died for us, and the inheritance we have in him is guaranteed to those who love him. Because he is infinite and eternal, so is our inheritance. Let's be sure to receive the full salvation God offers, in both justification and sanctification, while we are here on earth.