All to Him I Owe

Are you a little frustrated with the pace and speed of your sanctification? Does it seem like God has stopped working in your life?

We all love it when life leaps into forward gear and we make all kinds of progress. Problems just seem to fall away. Perhaps in your life you’ve had a season like that, a season when your life seemed to shine and flourish. Maybe it was when you first became a believer or during some period when your were very well nurtured by good community and wise input.

Then there are those seasons where things go very slowly. You wonder, “Is this all there is? Why do I keep struggling with the same old things? I keep losing my temper, or feeling anxious, or being clumsy in relationships…” What vision does God give us for what our lives are supposed to look like, especially when we’re dealing with the long, hard struggle part of being a Christian? Let me say two things with the hopes of encouraging you today.

First, don’t estimate your sanctification by how you are feeling. Remember that Philippians 1:6 states, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” God has promised to be at work in our lives regardless of how we feel, or what we sense is happening. Estimate your sanctification progress with the promise of scripture in mind.

Second, remember that there are particular kinds of growth and strength that may be happening in our lives that we don’t even see. A survey of the beatitudes shows us that much of God’s work is far beneath the surface of our lives before it manifests itself with external actions. God may be growing you today by simply putting affections to death, putting new affections in place, and growing a love for God that will one day show itself in neat external ways. A lot of God’s work in our lives is not categorized as splashy transformations. They’re just good, quiet, strong, steady fruits of the Lord working in our lives.