Yesterday, I read a quote that struck me because there was a time I would have nodded in agreement, but have come to understand differently. It said something to the effect that it is not by books, study or sermons that we grow in sanctification, but by hardship. I have some experience with hardship... I was in that miry pit that the Psalmist describes... a pit created by me. I recognize that God used it for my good, however, it was not the pit itself that sanctified me. Many people suffer great harm and it does nothing to save or sanctify them, but further pushes them into despair, anger, and bitterness. I've witnessed this, too. It is not the hardship that sanctifies, rather the Lord who sanctifies. It was the Lord who came and ministered to me in the pit and then delivered me from it, that sanctified me. It was there that I learned about myself, my fallenness, my misery and my desperate need of my Savior. Learning of Him and His grace alone, to rescue was what was working my sanctification. He taught me of Himself through the Word and through His people most of all. Lots of study, reading, sermon-listening and receiving from Him. It is His faithfulness to complete what He began in us, that sanctifies us, and He does that through the Good News of Jesus... the life-giving work of the Gospel. "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." ~Psalm 40:2
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