Lauri and I just came through a bout with Covid. This was the second time for me, but I seem to be regaining strength much more rapidly than the first go around. To help me fully recover, this will be my last article for 2023. I guess you could say it is my yearend post-Covid post.
When the curtain opens on 2024, I’ll pick up with this theme of more and more. These are thoughts I’ve been deeply pondering the past few months. As we exit this year and step into the next, may God guide your thoughts regarding this series of articles. Truly God is calling his Church to press into him for more and more of his grace as we rise to the challenges at our doorstep.
Our Sanctification
First Thessalonians 4 and 5 are significant passages for us as Tsunami Surfers. Paul is writing to a church that has seen the power of God at work, with many of them turning from away idols and serving the true and living God. In spite of fierce persecution, these believers continued to preach God’s truth and show extravagant love. In the fourth chapter, he affirms that they are already living to please God, but urges that they “should do so more and more” (4:1 NRSVue).
So where did they lack? What was the more and more. He instructs them beginning with verse 3:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passion, like the gentiles who do not know God; that no one wrong or exploit a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things . . . For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. (4:3-7 NRSVue)
As the Gospel was spreading throughout the pagan world, this congregation stood out in exemplary ways. Therefore, it is rather surprising to me that sexual immorality was still a dominant issue for them.
God’s will is our sanctification. He calls us to be a holy people. And while we may be living out our faith in exemplary ways, he may very well be calling each of us toward more and more.
I have no doubt that some of you have allowed sexual immorality of one form or another to seep into your minds, hearts, cell phones, and bedrooms. It could be this area of life is where God is calling you to more and more of his sanctifying grace. But I believe the sanctification God has in mind involves more than simply abstaining from a form of sin.
Look with me at the benediction he gives to this good church in Thessalonica:
May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. (5:23-24 NRSVue)
Twenty-five years ago, I began to read and study the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. What stood out to me in this verse was the phrase “kept sound and blameless.” The Greek word for “sound” is holokleron, which many other Bible versions translate differently. But the prefix holo is where we get the word “holistic”. That very same word is translated as “perfect health” in Acts 3:16 and “complete” in James 1:4.
This blessing refers to the God of peace. For Paul’s Jewish mind, it would be the God of shalom—a word meaning wholeness. And so this God of shalom desires that we experience soundness and wholeness, as well as blamelessness. Wholeness and holiness are linked together. Their effects infiltrate our entire being—an ongoing impact on our “spirit and soul and body.”
When it comes to being sanctified, there are things which only we can do: surrender deeply and separate ourselves from that which displeases God. Then there is that which only God can do: fill us with his Spirit and enable us to live out his will.
As we separate ourselves, he makes the separation good. As we surrender, he grants power through his Holy Spirit which enables us to obey.
That’s the general principle. There is a deep surrender in saying “YES” to God. It may come at a time when you are face to face with your impoverished powerlessness. From that point onward, that “YES” is followed by a lot of ongoing yeses, yeps, OK’s, and uh-huhs, day after day after day.
Once we enter the new year, I’ll pick up with a theme of being sanctified in body, soul, and spirit—an ongoing process to restore the full image of God within us as we walk out life in this crazy “already, but not yet” world. But my hope and prayer for each of us is to end 2023 considering where the Spirit of God is urging us to press forward in our walk of holiness for his more and more.
Tsunami Surfing is not a blog for the casual reader. You are a person with a sincere desire to see God’s people become the healing hands of Jesus for those caught in the riptide of the sexual tsunami. Perhaps like the Thessalonians, God is pleased with our spiritual progress, but he desires us to press into him for more and more.
If God is speaking to you as he did to the Thessalonians, how would you fill in the blank:
This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you _____________.
As you desire to minister to the sexually broken, is God shining a light on your own brokenness? Or perhaps like the soil with thorns, are there “cares and riches and pleasures of life” that keep your fruit from maturing (Luke 9:14)?
May your Christmas be merry, bright, and possibly white. But as we step across the threshold of the calendar, may God empower and enable you in your work and ministry for the glory of God. Press into him for his more and more in 2024.
Peace!
Mark
So sorry to hear that you and Lauri had Covid again. I recently had it for the second time as well. I got Paxlovid, which I think was helpful, but it has its own side effects. Having Covid feels like being hit by a bus. I think that the new year is always a good moment to have some time in prayer about what is and is not beneficial in your life. I like to focus on my own walk with Christ because, after all, I'm the only person I can control.
Simply praying that you and Lauri gain strength and are healed, that you may fully appreciate the joy of this Christmas season! And may God continue to bless your ministry as we ride this crazy tsunami wave into 2024! Merry Christmas to you both!