Hi, from the Salvation Army, you're listening to Words of Life. These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life.
These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. Hi, this is Bill and Diane and Ken and Vern back with you once again to talk about holiness and holy living. I want to begin by just saying a word about our last session where we talked about sin and believers' lives. We mentioned it, but I would kind of emphasize a little more that the root of all sin is self. And Millard Reed says it's the delusion of self-sovereignty, a false belief in the autonomous self.
Our culture is filled with that. And I love Oswald Chambers in his devotional book where he calls it my claim to my right to myself. That's the battle we fight and that's where we get drawn and thrown astray. God, we need you. Guide us, inspire us, convict us, show us your way. May we live a life that reflects who you are to the world around us. In Jesus' name, amen. So we're going to ask the question, how can I be entirely sanctified? I'm going to suggest our resource book said by giving everything to God and seeking Him expectantly until He sanctifies you entirely. I'm going to throw that out to our crew and let's start talking about how we can be sanctified people. First by faith. That's the starting point unto salvation and sanctification.
Yeah, I love the tradition on which we come. I love that focus that, you know, that we know that everybody needs a Savior and He, of course, wants to save all people. But He can also save us to the uttermost. I love that, that direction of the entirety of Scripture that He wants to, doesn't want to just do a halfway job. There is no such thing as a halfway salvation. Yeah, it's a full salvation.
I love our language. We'll be seeing how we talk. It's this unbounded life, this full life, this overflowing life. But the how I think is intriguing. I think that's where we get really messed up because as a preacher, I can, you know, focus on how to get people to an altar too much. What I'm really trying to do is say, look, whatever's between you and the Lord, yield that to Him in whatever way He convicts you to do so. There's one way of doing it, but He's very creative. He can do this in all kinds of ways.
For me, it's interesting. You started with self, Vern. For me, the day I was sanctified was the phrase in a preaching service, a sentence. Before you leave here, I want to ask you, the preacher said, are you full of Him or full of self-will? And I looked at my very evangelical life, and I was an evangelical.
All the right meetings, all the right prayer meetings, all the right stuff, all the right whatever. But I was full of self-will. I had really defined what I wanted my life to be as a Christian. And that's ridiculous. You can't define your life as a Christian and say anything about yourself, I'm going to do this or be this. That's ridiculous. It's antithetical, His Lordship or not.
And that day radically changed the entirety of my existence. When I said, Lord, please, this morning would you begin to free me of this radical self-orientation? It's interesting you used the word radical. Deuteronomy 36, verse 6, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart. Circumcision is radical surgery. The heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live.
What a great word. It's love taking up our whole heart as we become entirely sanctified. Let me throw out the idea of the importance of offering ourselves completely over and over again.
We haven't highlighted the kind of emphasis on behavior. When you ask about being holy or start talking about being holy, most people look at your behavior and want to judge you and make that determination. But actually, it's not our job to be holy by our behavior. It's our job to offer ourselves to the leading and power of the Holy Spirit. And in Romans, we mentioned Romans 8, but back in Romans 6 where Paul was talking again about holiness, he says in verse 19, I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves just as you are used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. Let's talk about the importance of our offering ourselves to God.
That's how we avoid the self-curve business. I feel like for one of the confusions about holiness is what you just said is the behavior focus. Holiness is not about that behavior thing.
And first, that is the outflow of belonging to him. And I, for years and years, I was married to a holiness preacher and did not like my behavior. I was really, I had four little kids and I was like a screecher creature at home and was very defeated. And I wanted God to fix my behavior. And I did offer myself and I over and over went to the altar and asked for him to do this thing in me.
I wanted this experience so that my behavior would change. And he spoke to me one day and said very clearly, you want holy behavior more than you want me. And he said, you're clamoring after this experience. This thing you want me to do is more important.
It's an idol in your life. And he said, will you please just love me? Would you just want me? And he said, I will give myself to you if you will just want me. And it was when I realized that I had offered all of myself to him. I had done the things.
I had done the formula. You do this, you pray this, you offer this. And I had done all that, but my focus was wrong. And he just made that so clear.
I just want to give you myself. And when I realized that he needed to be the one who filled me just because I loved him, then my behavior started to change. The focus of my life growing up as I tried to live for the Lord was the list of rules that I was given. And that's a natural tendency, I think, in our holiness tradition to have that list. It just differs by geography or denomination.
But, you know, I was told, you know, I don't drink, I don't chew, I don't go with girls to do that kind of stuff. And that is not where holiness is found. We're looking in the wrong place when we look at keeping a set of rules. We need to be looking at that relationship and yielding completely to God. Yeah, for me, again, I want to communicate this in context where people may not have all the background you've described.
So I'm always concerned about this because preaching entire sanctification, it's hard in context when you don't have small group background, you don't know each other. You don't want to confuse people, but you also want to say, if there is rebellion in your heart, you've got to release that. His filling of his love will definitely do all that you need, but you've got to confess this.
You've got to repent of this. And that's a difficult thing because it can soon turn into a work or an act and then it becomes about us. So it's that balance of his, I would quote, I forget who it was from, said, the only power that can make a Christian is the power that made the universe. And that helps me. I mean, if he can make the universe, he can make me what he wants me to be.
If he can make dirt holy, like he did for Moses by his presence, he can make this dirty heart holy by his presence. So I love what you're saying. I'm just, I'm wondering as we move into this 21st century ministry in the church, how do we proclaim this in a way that's understandable, that's not mistakeable? I mean, even our book said there are three major ways of doing this. There's a longer way, the middle way, the shorter way. And, you know, we all critique the different ways, but all I want to do is I want to know what it is to be holy.
I want to be his. And there may be a variety of pictures in the Bible, a variety of ways, but we must get to the goal he has for our lives. The means of grace, reading his word, praying, being in a small group where you're with people who encourage you, teach you how to do those things, say, good job, way to go. You did great this week, accountability, essential because holiness is relationship. And in the body of Christ, we must be with one another to be holy. We cannot, I cannot live my life without my accountability group.
They keep me on task and they, they see things about me that I don't notice. So that's a means of grace, keeping the Sabbath resting, trusting in him. You have to do these things. You've got to get out of bed.
You've got to open. So there is a part that's our response. God's made us for himself. We have to do things with our bodies and our minds that make space for him to enter in. I thought a lot about, you know, what I'm offering to people just generically. I think the first thing is, is for people to sort of believe, not sort of to believe his vision for our life. I think that takes a huge amount of training and Bible reading and preaching for most people to believe he wants to make me like himself.
That's, it's a huge barrier that people have to get across. He really intends this for me. And then to acknowledge our need. That's, that's another difficult thing. I need him in this area of my life. I keep doing this.
This habit is breaking my life apart, these addictions. How, how do I yield this to him? I think it's another area of life we need to focus on. And then to yield ourselves by faith to him, that he can do what he promised, to receive that by faith and then to, and then to trust him. Just like we, it's interesting when I get people debating me on this, I keep saying, well, what, let's take the debate back to justification. What did you, what did you need him to do for you? You were dead in sins. You believed he, and then he raised you from the dead. That's a remarkable thing by faith. Initial sanctification.
Exactly. And he's doing the same kind of work in your life now. Believe him. Trust him by faith that he can release this self-curved heart of these little sins, idols that you've been, have, you know, dalliances with. So it's, it's a beautiful thing, but I, it's a, it's a lifelong process for some people. I've met other people where for whatever reason, they come to an altar and they are sanctified holy.
They don't know how the Lord does it. He does it. And then this middle way we've talked about where it seems like the book is focused on about sort of learning by grace that he can do it, he wants to do it, and you wait upon him to do it. Well, that's beautiful too.
Sure. I think the Lord uses unique ways of doing this in people's lives. I guess for us as people in the Salvation Army, I think what we're saying to anyone who will listen is that these verbs in the New Testament, like Romans six, well, first Thessalonians five, be sanctified, holy, they mean something.
The time is up to the Lord Jesus, but they are intentionally put there to say, be saved, be sanctified to believers. Well, thank you. We have emphasized and discovered together and been reminded of the scriptural truth that we can be entirely sanctified by God sustaining grace.
He is the one who sanctifies. And thank you for that good discussion. We're looking forward to the next session. May God bless you until we see you again next week. The Salvation Army's mission, doing the most good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support. You can subscribe to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. Join us next time for the Salvation Army's Words of Life.
