Sanctification in the Latter Days.
During this season, we are sanctifying ourselves before the Lord. This inspirational book is based on Sanctification,which is a topic we are going to tackle in-depth. As we therefore surrender unto the Lord, let the Almighty God sanctify our lives for the glory of His holy Name. May the Lord purify us as we soak ourselves today in the precious blood of the Lamb of God.
With that phenomenon therefore, it so happens that there are certain moments in life when we would be confident enough that God is with us and we would be in a position to even determine the measure of His glory in us. It is at such times that we are able to hear God’s voice and not have any doubts in our spirits that the voice belongs to Him. You would witness the Lord manifest Himself in your life because your life would be set apart for a holy and noble use.
In Joshua 3:1-4, the Bible proclaims:
“And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over.And it came to pass after three days, that the officers went through the host; and they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it.Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore.”
For this reason, the Lord is leading you towards the direction of a new way. When the Lord takes you through this new way, you will not by any means get lost, for He will guide you through. In verse 5, the word of God declares that:
“And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.”In accordance with this word, therefore, it is my belief that as we sanctify ourselves, the Lord will in turn do a new thing upon our lives. This is a powerful prophecy unto all of us: urging us to sanctify ourselves today so that tomorrow we would witness God doing new things upon our lives. He shall in turn take us into a new dimension of His glory.
The Bible continues to say in verse 6-10,
“And Joshua spake unto the priests, saying, Take up the Ark of the Covenant, and pass over before the people. And they took up the Ark of the Covenant, and went before the people.
And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.
And thou shalt command the priests that bear the Ark of the Covenant, saying, When ye are come to the brink of the water of Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan.
And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither, and hear the words of the Lord your God.
And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites.”
In the case of the Israelites, as it is evident in this scripture, God came down and commanded them to move from a place called Shittim to the banks of Jordan so that they would cross over to the Promised Land. All the while, they had been preparing to cross over the Jordan: but many days had gone by and hence many of them were victims of tiredness and fatigue. So, as a good leader, it was upon Joshua to come up with a concrete decision. The children of Israel had to rest by the banks of the river Jordan before they crossed over, so that they would be rejuvenated first before their advent across the river. That made them to stop at a particular spot and rest.
In relation to this scenario of the Israelites, there are many of us who have a clue where we are going. Unfortunately for some of us, there has been a “stop-over” in our lives.
It is likely that you expected and desired to pass over your Jordan but instead of passing over, you came into a sudden halt.
This can be well illustrated in a scenario whereby you probably began a journey and you thought you were running so fast; but somewhere along the line, you came to the realization that things were not working out for you as fast as you expected them. In the end, you probably ended up halting in your race and quest. On the whole, you ended up stopping in your journey.
I want to challenge you and mention that even when you thought everything had come to a halt, God was still in that very situation of stoppage. He indeed made you come to a halt for a very good reason.
The Bible vividly proclaims that the children of Israel stopped to rest before they crossed over. It is very likely that most of them could have taken it as any common occurrence for them to stop owing to factors like weariness, and the need to plan on how they would cross over.
What they didn’t know was that it was not such an easy task to cross the Jordan, not unless God did something miraculous at their time of stopping-over. On that account, there are many of you who feel that your stopping over has for some reason become your slaughterhouse. You have perhaps imagined and thought that God is about to let you die, just because everything in your life has come to a standstill. You have further imagined that perhaps God is not for you and that is why everything is not working in your life.
In the event of it therefore, you have come to a conclusion and a strong conviction in your heart that the particular point at which your life has come to a standstill isn’t exactly the level at which you are supposed to be. You have castigated yourself, perhaps, thinking over and over that you are supposed to have crossed over your Jordan to the other side of the land.
You have mourned and bitterly complained, wondering what is happening to you. Well, I have just one thing to tell you. God is saying that He wants you to enter into a time of rest; a period of rest; even though your destiny could be across the Jordan; so that you can hear His voice in that period of rest because He has something He wants to say unto you.
Accordingly, the Bible declares that it is at this moment of stoppage; a time when they had made a brief halt; that the Lord began to speak to Joshua.
God spoke unto Joshua and said: “Joshua, I concede that I intend to do great things unto the children of Israel. But before I do those great things, I desire that my people be sanctified.”
Intriguingly, God declares and says His people have to be sanctified and further crowns it all by proclaiming that He is the Sanctifier.
That brings to fore one attribute of our God. If He asks you to do something, He always has a foreknowledge of how it would be done. That is why He commanded the children of Israel to be sanctified and later on declared that He is the one who would sanctify them. All He wanted them to do was to poise strategically, in readiness for the Lord and invite Him to sanctify their lives. In consequence, He would become their Sanctifier.
The term Sanctify in itself implies the setting apart of a particular thing for a holy use. On account of this therefore, anything, anybody or any place that God desires to use and has everything to do with the Lord, must be sanctified.
In the ancient days, the animals that were brought as a sacrifice unto the Lord had to first of all be taken through the process of sanctification before they could be given up for sacrifice. Even the altars or the places that God used to fulfill His will had to be sanctified first before He could use such dwellings.
Most important, the people that God used had to be sanctified. So, if your desire is to cross over the Jordan to the other side so that God would use you and work in your life then sanctification is a prerequisite.
Thus, in turn, Joshua turned to the people of God and said: “The Lord has sent me to tell you that you have to be sanctified so that from tomorrow, He will begin doing great things in your life.”
Consequently, whenever the Lord calls His people to sanctification, He always has one reason for it. The sole reason for this sanctification is that there is a destiny He has aligned unto us whereupon He would take us. He would call us to sanctification because He wants to take us to the next level of glory. Essentially, there would be something great and of impact coming our way.
In regard to this, whenever you go unto God for sanctification because for some reasons you understand that He desires to raise you to another level nothing else should matter to you; neither the people around you nor those who are closely related to you. It is all about you!
This day therefore, we need to enter into a prayer of sanctification, to beseech our Lord to sanctify us so that if there is any little thing in our lives that He has to remove, He can go forth and do it, for we are ready to obey His voice.
Properly illustrated in other words, this phenomenon is evident in Roman 7, where the Bible says we should yield ourselves unto God as vessels of righteousness – meaning it is upon us to set forth into yielding ourselves unto God as such. We have to eventually desire to yield unto the Lord so that He can come forth and sanctify us.
To further exemplify this phenomenon, let me use an illustration from the viewpoint of the children of Israel. Consider this: Assuming the children of Israel arrived by the river Jordan and were informed that they were going to be sanctified; and instead of obeying, they declined and demanded that it be postponed. Worse still, what if they became stubborn and demanded that Joshua ensures they cross over the Jordan before they became sanctified? I bet they would never have crossed over to the Promised Land. The Lord would not allow them to cross the Jordan without sanctification.
Unto the Israelites, the Lord commanded that they sanctify themselves, for the next day, something great was bound to happen. But unto Joshua, it was a double portion because once he sanctified himself, not only was he going to do the greater things of the next day but the Lord would also magnify him.
The Lord was going to do something that would make people look at Joshua and realize that he was called by the name of the Lord.
I hope you can be a Joshua in this season; so that the Lord would sanctify you; and as you get sanctified, the Lord is going to do something great and mighty upon your life so that you would be magnified. For all this to happen, there has to be a small price to pay: Sanctification, it is the only thing that will ensure you are honoured and magnified.
Unfortunately, many are those who know very well the kind of battles they are going through. They could be going through a situation in which their sole desire is for the Lord to magnify them. Categorically, this can only occur and be made manifest if the Lord sanctifies you. There is need for the Lord to sanctify you first, before you can be magnified.
The first most important phenomenon that we can derive from this therefore, is that just as the Israelites had to be sanctified first before they could face the predicament of their tomorrow in which God intended to do something great, we too have to be sanctified.
Secondly, Joshua himself being the leader of the Israelites had to be sanctified. Eventually, all the children of Israel had to be sanctified so that they would be ready to conquer the enemy that had occupied their land. The Promised Land was ideally theirs because the Lord had already given it in their hands. He had already said that the Land belonged to the Israelites yet there was someone else who was occupying it.
For the Israelites to overcome the likes of Hivites, Canaanites, Amorites and Perizzites, the Bible declares that they had to first of all be sanctified. Successively, God spoke unto Joshua and commanded him to proclaim unto the Israelites that: “Hereby ye shall know that the Living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites.”
The whole scene is dramatic, when the Lord commands that without fail He would drive the enemies of Israel out of their habitation: which was the Promised Land.
Without fail therefore, the Lord is declaring today that whatsoever belongs to you, shall come to your bosom whether someone else claiming its ownership or not. God will have to drive away those opposing business, career development and all manner of increase in your life; for you to be a partaker of whatever belongs to you
If only you sanctify yourself; then, without fail what belongs to you will come into your bosom. God is not a robber! He is a rewarder! That is why He wouldn’t sanctify us then forsake or fail us. God is sanctifying us this season and then without fail, He is going to grant unto us whatsoever belongs to us in the Might name of Jesus Christ.
This season, may the Lord sanctify our lives and fulfill His word in us without fail because He is our sanctifier; today, we are going to yield ourselves unto Him as vessels and instruments of righteousness. Let Him sanctify us today, in the name of Jesus Christ our Saviour so that we shall not miss out on our tomorrow.
How we pray that even as the Lord sanctifies us, He is going to do a great thing upon our lives, so that we who are the Joshuas of this generation can be magnified in His name.
He is going to do great things that will make a statement and declare unto many people that He is our God and we are called by His name. As He sanctifies us, He is going to take us to that destiny we have desired to get into, without fail. He will grant us that victory and do great things in our lives. He is going to deliver us and heal us assuredly. He is going to breakthrough for us certainly and in turn we shall get into our destinies, for the Lord has said it.
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