New Growth Potential

Okay, why should we talk about holiness or sanctification or whatever you want to call it? Let us spend the next couple of weeks or so talking about the difference it can make in your life. Let us discuss one difference per week. This week I would like to expound on a comment I wrote in an earlier article, “opened up to a growth potential that never before seemed possible.” Please allow me to use a story from my military days to illustrate this idea.
Part of my job in the Marines was to off-load civilian ships that carried equipment and gear to sustain a battalion for thirty days in the event of an outbreak in fighting. These ships floated in strategic locations around the globe so that a rapidly deployed battalion could meet their gear there without having to load up before leaving home. These ships need to come in periodically for routine maintenance. Part of my unit’s job was to off-load these ships for this servicing. My first operation like this was also the first time for most of our unit. My team was sent below the deck to unchain vehicles from the deck. They had to be chained down to prevent them from shifting while the ship was floating around in the ocean. That kind of weight moving around could prove deadly to a ship even on a calm day at sea! These vehicles had been chained down for two to three years. The room we went to was about 100 feet wide by 100 feet long. We tore through this room unchaining jeeps, hummers, trailers, etc. and were finished in about two hours. We were so happy. We wondered why there were so few vehicles for thirty days of war but, we celebrated a job well done anyway. Just then one bulkhead (wall) of that room opened up and beyond it was a room ten or twenty times the size of the one we had just finished, full of more vehicles such as five-ton trucks, howitzer missile launchers, tanks, hummers, you name it and it was in there. That rained on our parade pretty hard because we thought we were done, even though we knew there must be more vehicles than this. So we just buckled down and got to work on that room. Then we discovered that there were many more rooms just like this one that we still had to conquer!
The Christian life is kind of like this story. Salvation happens when we learn of the job that needs to be done and we arrive at the room to do the job. In our initial sanctification we begin to unchain things that hold us down and are dangerous to our lives and we remove them. However we come to a point where we realize there are more things to unchain but we can not quite seem to get to them se we can get them loose and out of our lives. Entire Sanctification happens when we cry out to God, give it over to Him and He opens the wall that has kept us from growing beyond that point thereby opening up a whole new realm of growth opportunity to us. Now providing we truly love God and buy totally into the mission He has for our lives, we will unchain and clean out everything in our lives that should not be there. If we do run into another wall that seems to hinder us we are equipped with the knowledge and power to get past that wall and keep growing.
If someone has been struggling with a particular sin or sins I challenge and encourage them to give it all over to the Lord. I challenge them to stop trying to do it themselves and to truly give it over to Him. All the spiritual disciplines are great if they are not simply another attempt at doing it on their own. Believing God can sanctify is also great, but when do we stop believing God can do it and start believing that He will do it?”
If one says that they have already done all this yet still struggle with a particular issue, the question then becomes are they talking about sin or the temptation to sin? The difference is that temptation is being tempted to do the sin and sinning is actually giving into that temptation. Sanctification does not stop temptation it simply makes it possible to resist it. If they are still committing these willful sins then, have they truly given it all to God? Hebrews 5:11-14 says if we are going to grow then we have to stop eating baby food over and over and begin to eat solid food. People will stop themselves from growing but God will not. If they have truly given it all to God, stopped trying to handle it themselves and if God had truly sanctified them then they would be past the point of being held back by it. I encourage you to continue in your pursuit of Holiness. It is a tough row to hoe and at times seems impossible. Even still, the opportunity to be opened up to unimaginable growth in Christ makes it worth all the trying.