Everything Has A Reason
Husband left town on Wednesday. The
contractor working on our replacement awning was scheduled to be
at our house every day, but he cancelled Thursday and Friday.
That left me with a lot of time to myself for prayer and
thoughtfulness—as in full of thoughts.
In the silence God has spoken only two words
to me: salvation and sanctification.
Everything in your life, everything in the
lives of people around you, every news clip-video-movie-book,
friend, ache, illness, trauma, disappointment, challenge, and
joy is orchestrated by God or permitted by God to achieve either
your salvation or your sanctification.
Everything.
Let that sink in for a moment…
The first thing God does is arrange our life
so that we come to Him and commit to the Lordship of Jesus
Christ. This is more than just believing Jesus lived and died.
Lots of people believe. Satan believes. The Milwaukee Cannibal,
Jeffrey Dahmer believed. Judas believed.
The issue of salvation isn’t about the truth
of Jesus; the issue is whether or not we are willing to commit
our life to him. That is our salvation moment and it defines and
directs the remainder of our days.
If we are going through a rough patch there
is only one of two possible reasons. We have not yet submitted
to the Lordship and governance of Jesus, or we are having a
sanctification experience.
Sanctification begins at salvation and
continues until death. It is the process of being refined,
“rebranded” from sinner to saint. The goal is to become an
imitation of Jesus Christ.
Charles Spurgeon lived
from 1834-1892 and I regard him to be the greatest preacher of
that century. John and I have a 1st
edition of his sermons, published in 1862. This week I pulled it
out and read one on sanctification.
Spurgeon notes that
a Christian should bear a
striking likeness of Jesus Christ. The world should be able to
hold us up and say, “This person has been with Jesus, been
taught by him, and the man from Nazareth is guiding his every
footstep.” The only measuring stick that matters is the one that
measures our distance from the one who is leading us.
If we want a life
where doing wrong feels unnatural and doing the right thing
comes naturally, we need to change our pre-programmed desires
and inclinations. We were born with a craving for sin. It is
buried in our DNA. It has been fed by generations of our
ancestors. We don’t have to (and shouldn’t) settle for the
related behaviors.
Spurgeon says we must study the character of
Jesus in our Bibles, evangelists, and seasoned believers who
come into our lives. He suggests each of us is a life-time
manuscript that is being written by the Holy Spirit:
“At night, try to recount all the actions of
the twenty-four hours, scrupulously putting them under review.
When I have proof-sheets sent to me of any of my writings, I
have to make the corrections in the margin. I might read them
over 30 times, and the printers would still put in the errors if
I did not mark them.
“So must you do, if you find anything faulty,
at night make a mark in the margin, that you may know where the
fault is, and tomorrow may amend it. Do this day after day,
continually, noting your faults one by one, so that you may
better avoid them.”
Jesus didn’t die on the cross so just that we
can believe he existed. He died so that we could live
grace-filled, forgiven lives and grow into his likeness.