The Secret Place: 21 Day DevotionalSample

APART FROM AND A PART OF

Ephesians 4:16

As we now know, sanctification requires consecration, to be set apart for special use or purpose. Special use requires special work. A consecrated life is one that grows and builds itself up in love through the special work of each individual - emphasis on the word ‘work’. This builds on from repentance, from turning away from a life of sin, to putting in the work of obedience to actively grow more and more into the image of Christ. It will take effort to submit yourself to God and grow and build yourself up in Christ. The work required of you is special and unique to your own journey. There is no one size fits all process to sanctification. With that said, how do we know where to start? What do we need to do to consecrate ourselves? What does our ‘own special work’ look like? For this, we need to rely on the Holy Spirit. To lead us and convict us. The journey of sanctification cannot be done outside of a relationship with the Holy Spirit. The choice is ours to make whether we allow ourselves to live sacrificially to please the Spirit or whether we default to what our flesh finds manageable or comfortable. The scripture in Galatians 6:7-8 warns us “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life”.

The lengths that you will be required to go through to please the Spirit is a deeply personal thing and we need to be mature enough in our faith journey to be honest with ourselves and God about what the Holy Spirit is asking of us. Consecration means we devote ourselves unwaveringly to worshipping God. The journey of sanctification is not a passive one, it is an intentional one that requires commitment. A consistency in our worship, consistency in our communion with God and our consistency to show up in the Secret Place. When we are consistently there it means we now live and dwell there. While the process of sanctification is an individual one, the efforts and sacrificial work that you are investing in your sanctification benefits us all. We each have a part to play in the wider body. As you do your own special work, you help others grow, resulting in a healthy, growing Body of Christ. We are set apart to be a part of a healthy community. We are not called to live out an individualistic form of Christianity. Although we work on ourselves we do not work for ourselves. Let the furtherance of the kingdom of Heaven also be your motivation for persisting in sanctification. We must understand and take on the responsibility of the fact that our journeys are interlinked, somebody else's sanctification could be dependent on yours.

Your experiences can help others in their own special work.