May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

This entry today, including the verse cited above, from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, really helped me today: “When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared for God to perform in us everything for which He separated us? And after He has done His work, are we then prepared to separate ourselves to God just as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself” (John 17:19). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God. Are we prepared to be caught up into the full meaning of Paul’s prayer in this verse? Are we prepared to say, “Lord, make me, a sinner saved by grace, as holy as You can”? Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him, just as He is one with the Father (see John 17:21-23). The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us?”

That perspective helped me after I read our chapter, Ezekiel 15, a short chapter. The word of the Lord came to me, “Son of man, how is the wood of a vine different from that of a branch from any of the trees in the forest? Is wood ever taken from it to make anything useful? Do they make pegs from it to hang things on? And after it is thrown on the fire as fuel and the fire burns both ends and chars the middle, is it then useful for anything? If it was not useful for anything when it was whole, how much less can it be made into something useful when the fire has burned it and it is charred? Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: As I have given the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest as fuel for the fire, so will I treat the people living in Jerusalem. I will set My face against them. Although they have come out of the fire, the fire will yet consume them. And when I set My face against them, you will know that I am the Lord. I will make the land desolate because they have been unfaithful, declares the Sovereign Lord.”

It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God. Why? Because the unfailing love of Creator God – Father, Son, Spirit, is too great and enduring to allow us to suffer forever in the horrors of sin. That which is not of God within us will be destroyed so that that which is of God, His love, His faithfulness, His mercy, His grace – will grow and flourish within us with Him guiding us. That is our encouragement and hope when we read difficult chapters in Scripture. Nothing is wasted. Almighty Sovereign Creator God will redeem us and with His love we will be healed.