The Sanctified Life

Bible Reading

• Exodus 29-30
• Proverbs 19
• Luke 11

Prayer Devotional

What is the cost of sanctification?  On February 8th, in Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers wrote, “It will cost an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of all our interests in God.  It means intense concentration on God’s point of view.  It means every power of body soul and spirit devoted to God’s purpose only!  It will cost everything that is not of God in us!”

The picture God gives at the commissioning service for Aaron and the Tabernacle (Exodus 29-30) is a good picture of sanctification.  Everything had to be sprinkled with blood.  Everything had to be cleansed and separated for service to God. Their clothes, the instruments, the furniture, every piece had to be cleansed!  Then they were to offer sacrifices every day, both morning and evening for 7 days, in the Lord’s presence.  When they did, God said that He would meet them there and speak with them in the place made holy by the sacrifices and His glorious presence (Ex 29:43-44) God promised that because of their faith, and offering those sacrifices, not just at the commissioning service, but continually after that, He would “live among them and they will know that I am the Lord their God.” (Ex 29:45)  

I am so glad that Jesus’ sacrifice paid for our sin, once and for all, so that we don’t have to “continually offer sacrifices” anymore.  But, I believe there is an application to us and our lives in in this picture of sanctification.  God wants a sanctified life!  He desires a life set apart completely to Him.  That we would have one single focus!  That we would put aside all else.  He longs for, as Oswald Chambers also said,  that “we will have a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, and freedom from everything that is unlike Him.”

I want to be free from everything that is unlike Him in my life.  But, it will only happen when I am willing to surrender it all, and sanctify it to God. I can’t say that I am there.  

My prayer today is that you will reveal to _______ whatever is not like Him in their life.  I pray that they will desire to be completely yours.  That everything they say and do will display a strong family likeness to Jesus.  I pray that you will lead them to want to eliminate everything in their lives that are not like you.