Welcome to another episode of Struggling Well, and in our part of the country, allergy season. So, I want to go ahead and ask you to forgive us if you hear a sniffling or sneezing or coughing because it's starting the pollen is really coming out here big time. I don't know where most of you all live, but in our part of the country it gets bad and if you have allergies it's lousy.
Yeah, right now it's the time of the year that I don't enjoy I mean I enjoy springtime and everything coming to life, but I don't enjoy it because it's allergy season. So,
is it a sin issue with you babe? I don't know. So, I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, Susan. Maybe. I don't know.
But please come along with us this morning and I hope that something touches your heart and your head.
Yeah. So, I want to go back in time this morning as we start back to when we were in Bible college, babe. That's a long time ago. and I think probably for me it was the first time in my life where I heard these three phrases as it relates to salvation. I was saved. I am being saved. I will be saved.
And they've become more familiar to me as I've grown and everything. But the completed act of salvation that's because of the cross of Christ. Paul says it this way in Ephesians chapter 2. For by grace you have been saved through faith. This not of your own doing. It's a gift of God. So there's that you have been saved. That completed action. But in Philippians, the same author Paul says, that you he will complete a good work in you. He who has begun a good work will complete it. The idea that there's
Where are you in Philippians?
Philippians chapter 1 and verse 6.
Page turn.
And I'm sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ. So there's that sense that there's still something to take place in my life. And we've come to know that by the word sanctification. And then I will be saved or glorification when I get to heaven. So it's that middle phase of being saved that I wanted to camp on some this morning. The idea that there's a work that's going on in us. It has nothing to do with earning salvation. That's the completed act that's already happened, but it's the sense that there is a need to constantly be growing in my Christian life and becoming and taking on more the image of Christ in my life.
Do you think that most people understand that?
Oh, I think I don't know. I can't I mean, I don't know whether most people do. But I think that there's this tendency that we have in life because of the way we deal with education. So that's where we think of okay, I need to go to school to learn certain things. So I go, you know, K through 12, I get my high school diploma. For some people, that's it. At that point, they're done. Other kids go, well, I'll go on and go to college. Some go on and go to grad school. But there's always an end in mind when my learning is done.
And I think that some times that carries over into the Christian life where we think, "Okay, I came to Christ at a young age or in my teenage years or my college years or whatever and I've learned what I need to learn and I'm done."
Yeah.
And I so I think there's that mindset that there comes an end point whereas I would say for the life in Christ and becoming more like him, the end point is when I go to eternity.
Okay. I have a question for you. All right.
Is there Or can you explain the difference between maturing and the process of sanctification? Because I'm not the same person I was when I first came to know Christ. When I was saved, I was 16. Okay. I'm not that same person. You know, I've matured to some degree. What's the difference between that and sanctification?
Well, I don't know that there is necessarily a difference. I think, you know, I have age-wise, you and I have age-wise matured, so our thinking is a little different. because we've experienced life more.
Mhm.
But that's really what sanctification is all about. It's about growing as I walk through life, as I live life. So, you know, as a for you as a teenager, for me as a seven-year-old, trusting in Jesus was re real, but it wasn't like a it doesn't have the same depth and meaning that it does today,
right?
and so I think there is the process hopefully of becoming more like Christ. I take on more and more of his likeness in how I treat other people and how I experience life and how I trust him or I don't trust him
and I think just from life in general or my life in general sanctification is not like some walk in the park some days I mean I have felt like there's been growth in my life but most of it has come through struggle.
Sure I would agree with you. I think that there's there is a sense that it becomes more acutely evident to me when I when I'm struggling in my life and I'm up against life's difficulties, the things that will make me more Christlike become harder to see lived out in my life.
Yeah. Because I think and you may have just said this that as I see myself more clearly as I read the scriptures more deeply, I see the depravity of my soul and how much there still needs to happen. I don't know if I mentioned this on one of our other podcasts and if I did, forgive me, but I was Did I say this about being awakened one night and I felt like God brought to mind something that had happened probably eight or 10 years ago. And as I was laying there, I realized that I had never repented of it.
I mean, this is a long time ago, right?
And I remember I mean, this is that my repentance of that was just a few weeks ago. And I was startled by this thing that I had no idea had been a weight on me. but I'm going to believe that in God's wanting to sanctify me to make me more like his son that I needed to offload that sin, know that it was forgiven because of the cross, but offload the tentacles of that sin by repentance. And that kind of startled me.
Yeah. I think the Holy Spirit works in our lives and our hearts and in and is constantly longing to be the one who is the power source for us to become more like Christ. And so the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 12 says that you to remove you run the race to remove the things that so easily entangle you when you run. and oh that it would happen the minute those things entangle us. It doesn't always work that way. And so it's being still enough in that case for you it was when you were sleeping but to be still enough and to listen to the voice of God over any other voice. And when the voice of God says, "Hey, this needs to take place or this needs to happen or you need to repent of this or whatever," then I'm moving and shaping myself more like his son when I do that.
Okay, another question. It's just popping in my head, babe. I can't help it. Can you stop that process of sanctification? Are there times when
Well, yeah. I mean, I think you can hit those seasons where you just don't want to listen to what God has to say. say
I don't think it's a it's not a formulaic process to sanctify.
It's a battle that goes on. It's a daily battle that goes on between my sin nature which is still there. It's not completely eradicated. Now I have the ability to overcome that because of the spirit who lives within me. He who is in me is greater than he who's in the world. so can I stop it? Yeah, I can stop it. I can slow it down by refusing to listen to the voice of God.
just asking that question and hearing your response. I'm thinking about Ephesians 4:17 when, and I'm reading from the NLT when Paul says to the church at Ephesus. I say this, live no longer as the Gentiles do, and he's talking about the idol worship and all the craziness that happened,
for they are hopelessly confused. Now, he's writing to the church, so he's writing to you and me. Their minds are full of darkness. They wander far from the life of God. that God gives because they've closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. But that isn't what you learned about Christ. So I'm assuming, and I hope not wrongfully, that he's writing to the church that there were people that were struggling with wanting to ignore God and that process of being sanctified, they stepped away from it.
Well, the culture again, no different than today. The culture that is out there in the world in which we live is not a god- centered culture. So, so I can find myself doing things that the culture would say no problem, nothing wrong with that at all and get and even with even though I have my salvation, I have been saved. I can revert back into the culture in which I live and not necessarily demonstrate that. And so I need to be paying attention to the spirit of God and the word of God as to how I should live.
further on in the chapter, Paul says, "And do not bring sorrow to God's holy spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption." And then it says, "Get ready get rid of bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, etc." so that process as I think about my life in particular, the process has in as I've repented of my sin and changed the direction I'm walking in
to allow the spirit of God to take me further. and sometimes that is through difficulty. my faith is tested and but it's an interesting it's an interesting word that we don't talk about too much, but I'm glad we are this morning.
Yeah. And so our prayer for you all, our prayer for each of us is that we continue to move forward in our walk with Christ being sanctified, being set apart for God so that we resemble more and more the life of Jesus and how we live our lives. Have a great week.