i know i haven’t written for awhile, and my excuse has everything to do with this season and the opportunities it brings with more hours of warm daylight and so many more outdoor activities beckoning. one thing i continue to do is read, and when reading other materials i often come across a sentence or passage that i instinctually need to pass along, as though the text makes it obvious to me, while sitting on that page, that if i replicate this quote, someone will stumble across my post and pull great purpose and inspiration out of the repeated words.

i picked up oswald chambers (“my utmost for His highest”) last night as i do most nights, and while many of his posts are thought-provoking challenges and others meet you right where you are at, affirming you without any hesitation, this one invokes my spirit to an entirely new place, a place i fear, maybe an impossible place to reach. and so it haunts a little too.

sanctification. the death side. july 22nd. [sections]

“the Spirit of God in the process of sanctification will strip me until i am nothing but “myself,” that is the place of death. am i willing to be “myself,” and nothing more – no friends, no father, no brother, no self-interest – simply ready for death? this is the condition of sanctification. no wonder Jesus said, “i came not to send peace, but a sword.” this is where the battle comes, and where so many of us faint. we refuse to be identified with the death of Jesus on this point.

“am i willing to reduce myself simply to “me,” determinedly to strip myself of all my friends think of me, of all i think of myself, and to hand that simple naked self over to God? immediately i am, He will sanctify me wholly, and my life will be free from earnestness in connection with everything but God.”

i am terrified to strip myself down this far. i don’t know how, and i don’t want to know what i look like when i’m there, peeled away from all that gives me identity, from all i know, all i thought. maybe i fear there will be nothing left worth saving, a shriveled core that is weak and hopeless. i am so weak.

i pray for all of us that we can dig into the meaning of sanctification, like how we have been digging our toes deep into wet sandy beaches. let us pause and dig until we are completely buried, and then come out the other side naked and simple, sanctified and earnest, ready to live, ready to die, made holy and complete just as we are. imagine being complete just as you are.