Chosen To Sanctification

 

“But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” -2 Thessalonians 2: 13-14

 

When my daughter Becca was just eight weeks old, I watched her tiny heartbeat on the ultrasound screen for the first time.  A heartbeat, the first sign of life.  As I watched, it became so real to me that this new life was not something I owned, nor my wife.  It was a creation of God, and therefore His.  It was a gift from Him to us.  He saw her before she was formed, he has chosen her, and all people, to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. 

 

In the 1983 Templeton Address Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave the profound speech “Men Have Forgotten God.”  In this he said: “The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.”  His words were true then, as much as they were prophetic.  The American culture we know is reflective of the selfsame Roman culture that Paul wrote too.  A people that worship and serve the creature more than the creator.  The “pursuit of happiness” has been perverted into a pursuit of indulgence.  A campaign of humanism that fights for the loudest megaphone.  That we might promote ourselves and forget God.  It has taken us off the narrow way, and into the dark and depraved path of idolatry.  Now, generations of Americans are being told that we are the lords of our lives, and those whose lives are under our care.  Even the innocent child and unborn baby are offered up as sacrifices to our idolatry.  The desire to maintain this power, this lordship, has led us to depths of sinfulness that would horrify those who have gone before us.  We have forgotten that God is “above all, through all, and in you all.”  That he is Almighty.  He is in control, and he reigns and rules over all the universe, how much more mortal man?  We do not possess our lives, nor the lives of those in our care; it is a gift.  We are bound, constrained, indebted to give thanks, because a merciful, loving God who made us, saw us in our mother’s womb; he gave His Son to die for our sins so that we could be saved.  This is every man’s blood bought destiny should they choose it.  The Hebrew writer asks “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”  A salvation that is built on yielding, on sacrifice, on surrender.  What are we saying to our children when the lives of those who would soon to be children are aborted for our own gain?  Are the fires of Molech once again kindled in the abortion clinics?  Are the altars of Baal built into the laws of our very own country?  Who are we to be so careless with a life that is not ours?  These are but aftershocks to the earthquake of sinful carnality that registers in the human heart.  A heart that God wants to cleanse and fill with His Holy Spirit.  Therefore, now more than ever, the time has come for the Christians to weep, fast, and pray.  Not only for the loss of the unborn, but for those that remain.  For those who are lost, broken, hurt, and led to believe that there is no God; or that they are God.

 

God in heaven desires a relationship with each one of us.  Jesus Christ wants to give life.  He wants to bring you out of sin and into sanctification.  God can cleanse the heart, save the heart, and change the heart.  If he has your heart, he has you.