SANCTIFICATION IS BY THE HOLY SPIRIT!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SUNDAY JANUARY 07, 2024.

SUBJECT : SANCTIFICATION IS BY THE HOLY SPIRIT!

Memory verse: "Sanctify them by Your truth, Your word is truth." (John 17 vs 17.) 

READ: John 14 vs 23 - 26:

14:23: Jesus answered and said to him, "if anyone loves Me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

14:24: He who does not love Me does not keep My words, and the word which is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me.

14:25: These things I have spoken to you while being present with you.

14:26: But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

INTIMATION:

A follower of Christ becomes sanctified (separated from the ways of the world) through believing and applying the Word of God in their daily living. He or she has already accepted the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for forgiveness and remission of sin and has declared Him as his or her Lord and Savior. Daily application of God's Word has a purifying effect on our minds and hearts. Scripture points out sin, motivates us to confess and forsake sin, renews our relationship with Christ, and guides us back to the right path. Obedience to the truth of God will separate one from the world in the sense that one obeys God and not men. One’s continued obedience maintains the separation from the world.

The Scripture says, "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of heart." (Hebrews 4 vs 12.) There is life-changing power in the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is the embodiment of that power of God. The Holy Spirit convicts people of sin, and also assures them of the truth of the gospel. The Holy Spirit is the power of our new lives in Christ. He begins a lifelong process of change  making us more like Jesus. 

To ‘sanctify” literally means to "to separate," to set apart for sacred purposes, to purify. We can purify ourselves by reading God's Word, thoughtfully applying it to our lives, and preparing our hearts to participate in worship through anticipation, self-examination, and meditation. We cannot become sanctified on our own, but God gives us the Holy Spirit to help us obey and to give us power to overcome sin. We rely on God's power to free us from the grip of sin. Don't use the excuse that you can't help slipping into sin to continue in your sinful lifestyle, for God has made available His power, through the Holy Spirit, to overcome our evil desires.

A message about sanctification without a message about empowerment simply produces pressure. Because it causes people to go out and start trying to live a sanctified life without knowing how to do what they know they should be doing. If we don't know about the power of the Holy Spirit to help us do what He has revealed to us to do and not do, we would be overcome. We see the commands, such as the one in First Peter 1 vs 14 - 16, about not conforming to the former lusts that governed us before when we were in ignorance and didn't know the requirements of the Gospel, and about being holy even as God is holy, and we realize out inability to do all that without help. Hence the need to go back to our empowerer—the Holy Spirit. 

If you study the subject of holiness, for instance, you will learn that there is no such as a person becoming holy apart from a great involvement with the Holy Spirit in his life. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is the power of God given to us to do in us and through us and for us and to us what we could never do on our own.

Jesus said in John 15 vs 5, "....Without Me you can do nothing." We are not capable of anything in our own powers or strength, "....For by strength no man shall prevail" (First Samuel 2 vs 9). To make available His power to help mankind, God became a man in Jesus so that Jesus could die for our sins. Jesus rose from the dead to offer salvation to all people through spiritual renewal and rebirth. When Jesus ascended into heaven, His physical presence left the earth, but He promised to send the Holy Spirit so that His spiritual presence would still be among humankind. All believers have the power of the Holy Spirit available to them. It's only the power of God in the Holy Spirit given to us that can the believers have the strength to do all things (Philippians 4 vs 13).

Prayer: Abba Father, thank You for the gift of Jesus Christ our Messiah, and the Holy Spirit our Helper. Your faithfulness endures forever, and without the Holy Spirit empowerment I am capable of doing nothing. May I never take my focus away from You, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed. Amen,

PRAISE THE LORD!