Bible: Sanctify me? ME?

13 March 2024

Sometimes I get discouraged that I still have bad habits, I’m anxious a lot, and my faith should be stronger. I came to the Lord 50 years ago! How come I’m so far from where Jesus wants me to be?

Maybe I had farther to go than most..? Nah.

There’s a verse in Deuteronomy (7:22), that helps me: “And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.”

We are born into a fallen world; we learn to survive and grow in that place. It’s a bit like Canaan, full of forces we need to defeat in order to live in peace and thrive in the Lord. Were we to become as innocent as lambs in the instant of our conversion, we would fall prey to the beasts before we have managed to put on the whole armor of God. If we do well, the armor gets thicker and stronger as we grow in Him.

God changes us in countless steps, some tiny, some large, over the entire course of our lives. We experience a defeat, we learn from it, we are prepared by that defeat to have victory the next time. I liken this process, by which God shapes us, to the steps up the pyramid of Teotihuacan: hundreds of places to go higher, stop for a bit, or step back down. No vuelve aca! No turning back!

Our life journey is God sanctifying us. Making us Holy. Not like Him, but closer than we were before. This is our Christian walk.

Loving you

Grampa Jeff