How to Enter Into the Sanctification Process with the Lord

In part 2, you learned how to get God to move you into the Sanctification process

Though all of the above may seem like a tall order in the type of world we live in today, it really isn’t. I have personally seen God do a sanctifying work in several people I know, and the changes in these people’s personality have been dramatic and powerful.

They are no longer the people I used to know. They are now true saints in every sense of the word.

The Holy Spirit is powerful and He is God Almighty Himself.

Once You see Him really get a hold of a believer, and then start this sanctifying work in them to make them to become more holy and Christ-like in their souls and personalities – it is truly an incredible sight to behold! In my opinion, this is even more miraculous than watching Him heal someone of a physical ailment or disease.

I will end this article with a very simple 4 step process that will lead you into this sanctification realm if you decide you want to give God a full and solid green light to start this process within you. However, what I cannot give you is exactly what God will be personally doing with each and everyone of you once this sanctification process starts up.

Everyone is operating at different levels of spiritual development with the Lord. Some people have more baggage to clean up than others. Some people will be more resistant to the Holy Spirit wanting to remove certain negative qualities than others will.

Some will progress at a faster rate of speed than others will because they will be more honest with the Lord and will be more open to receiving revelation on exactly what it is God wants to put in them and exactly what it is He wants to take out of them.

This sanctification is a process. It is not something that will done overnight. You can trust God to perfectly handle the time frame in which He wants to operate in.

He will not overwhelm you. He will give you plenty of reasonable time to work with the Holy Spirit once the Holy Spirit starts to impart revelation and knowledge to you on exactly what it is He wants to come after.

For those of you who would really like to get serious with the Lord on getting this sanctification process started in your life – here is a very simple 4 step process that will get you in if you decide you want to take the plunge.

1. Decide If You Really Want It

The first thing you will need to do is to make a personal decision as to whether or not you really want to enter into this sanctification realm with the Lord. Many Christians really do not want God to do any type of sanctifying work in their lives.

The reason for this is that they know He will be coming after some of their vices and character flaws, and they simply are not willing to give up some of these vices, or attempt to try and work with Him to change certain parts of their personalities.

So the first thing you will have to do is to make a personal decision as to whether or not you really want the Lord to begin this type of deeper work in your life. This is not something that you can go halfway with Him on. This is an all-or-nothing decision.

You are either going to go all the way with the Lord once He begins to do it with you or you are not. You cannot straddle the fence post with Him on this process.

If you do, then the Holy Spirit is not going to move with full force to help get you cleaned up and sanctified to the degree that God would really like to get you to in this life.

Once the Lord starts to move into certain areas of your life and personality, then you are going to have to be willing to fully work with Him on it or nothing is going to get accomplished. He has to have your full consent on all of this. God really respects your free will and He will not run against it.

If you decide you want to give the Lord a full and solid green light to begin this type of deeper work in your life after really thinking and chewing on the ramifications on what this type of deeper progressive work will entail, then you will now be ready for step 2.

2. Ask God the Father to Begin the Sanctification Process

To get God to start to move you into this sanctification realm will only require one thing – and that one thing is that you go before the Lord in serious and heartfelt prayer, and ask Him to start this sanctification process in your life through the power of the Holy Spirit. It really is that simple.

The Bible says to ask – and then you will receive.

The Bible also says you have not because you ask not. In other words, all you simply have to do is ask God the Father in prayer to start this sanctification process and tell Him that you will now be willing to work with both Him and the Holy Spirit once it starts up.

Once you put this initial request on His altar, I would keep reminding the Lord to keep this sanctification process going for the rest of your life at least once or twice a year for the rest of your life.

By reminding God to keep this sanctification process going on for the rest of your life, you are showing Him that you mean serious business with Him, and that you want the Holy Spirit to keep working with you in this realm as long as you are walking and breathing in this physical body.

The show never stops with the Lord, and He will take you as far as you will want to go with Him in this realm.

For those of you who would like a good sample prayer to go before God the Father to get Him to start this sanctification process in your life, here is a very good sample prayer you can use:

“Father,

In the name of Your Son Jesus Christ, I now approach Your throne with a very special request. Your Word tells me that You want to completely sanctify me through the special workings of the Holy Spirit.

Your Word tells me that You want to shape, mold, and transform me into the express image of Your Son Jesus Christ. Father, I now want to work in cooperation and in partnership with both You and the Holy Spirit to begin this deeper sanctifying work in my life.

Father, I now ask that You begin to completely sanctify me in both my body, my soul, and my spirit. I now give You a full and solid green light to begin this sanctification process in my life.

Father, I now ask that You hold nothing back once You begin this sanctifying work in me and my life.

I will now be willing to work with both You and the Holy Spirit in any area of my life and in any area of my personality that You feel needs to be cleaned up, sanctified, and made more holy.

Father, I now have full faith and belief that You will honor this request and will begin this sanctification process in my life in the way and manner You deem most appropriate at the level of spiritual development that I am currently operating at with You.

Thank You Father.
Thank You Jesus.
Thank You Holy Spirit.”

This would be the basic gist of wording this type of prayer for those of you who may have a hard time in wording some of your specific prayers to the Lord.

If you can truly approach God with this type of prayer, and you are really meaning it from your mind and your heart – then God will hear you loud and clear, and He will then begin to start this sanctification process in your life right where you are standing at the moment this request is put before Him.

3. Study the Word For the Knowledge That You Will Need

If you are willing to give God a full and solid green light in which to start this sanctification process in your life – then there are now two things you must be willing to do on your end to get this sanctification process moving into full gear. You will not be a passive robot in all of this, expecting God to do all of the work for you.

He will need you to do your part in all of this. This will now lead us into the last two parts that will complete what you will need to know in order to be able to work in cooperation with the Lord on all of this.

Your first part will be to study the Word on some type of regular and frequent basis.

As some of the above Scripture verses have stated, it is the combination of the Holy Spirit working with the Word and the knowledge that the Word will give you that will cause this sanctification process to move into high gear in your life.

It’s the Word and the Spirit working in conjunction with one another that will take you on this road to holiness in the Lord.

However, your part is to get into the Word. The Holy Spirit cannot do this part for you. Many Christians do not spend much time in the Bible and this is one of the main reasons why there is not much spiritual growth occurring in their lives.

The Holy Spirit will personally guide you in this life as to how often and how frequently you will need to read from the Bible. You do not want to get into legalism and ritualism with how often and how much time you will spend in the Word. God Himself will personally guide you in all of this.

Just realize that God will be wanting you to spend kind of regular quality time during the course of your life in reading from His Word, and trying to understand and assimilate what you are reading as best you can.

The subsequent articles that we will have listed in the Sanctification Section of our site will be giving you many of the appropriate Scripture verses pertaining to your sanctification and exactly what it is God wants to impart into your personality and exactly what it is He wants to take out of your personality.

4. Work in Cooperation With the Holy Spirit During This Process

The last and final part to really being able to get this sanctification process started in your life is your willingness and eagerness to work very closely with the Holy Spirit once He starts to move in on you and let you know exactly what it is He wants to do.

Here are a few examples of what you may expect from Him.

The apostle Paul says that God wants to sanctify you completely – body, soul, and spirit. Do not be surprised if one of the things that the Holy Spirit will move in on is any particular vices you may have that could be harming your physical body.

Good examples of this would be smoking cigarettes, smoking pot, abusing alcohol, and overeating on the wrong kinds of foods.

Many Christians are addicted to smoking cigarettes. I have seen God move on quite a few of them on this particular vice.

Some of them have been successful in kicking the habit, and others have not. The power of the Holy Spirit is there to help break this addiction off you, but you have to really want to have this vice removed before God will move in to break this addiction off you.

Some people really do not want to give this up for the Lord. When that happens, God will respect your free will on the matter and back off.

However, I have seen Him come back in waves on that person, and every so often He keeps coming back and knocking on their doors, letting them know once more that He would really like to have this addiction removed from their lifestyle.

The same goes for those Christians who still like to smoke their pot. I have discovered there is some slack with the Lord on the cigarette thing, but there is much less slack with Him on the pot issue!

Every Christian who I have known that has smoked pot, and then really came into a full surrender with the Lord, have all had the pot taken out of their lives very quickly.

Bottom line – God will be letting you know very early on which of these vices He would like to have removed from your personality and lifestyle.

His divine power is there to help break these addictions off your back, but you will have to be the one to make this personal decision for yourself as to whether or not you will work in cooperation with the Holy Spirit to take these addictions out of your life for good.

I have seen God break many of these types of addictions off people and they did not have to go through any type of physical withdrawal during the weaning off process. God, through the power of the Holy Spirit operating on the inside of you, has the full power to be able to set you completely free from any vices or addictions you may have.

There is nothing that the power of God cannot totally defeat and overcome if you are willing to allow God to work with you in these areas.

Other areas of your life that God may want to move in on are some of your attitudes. If you are holding any unforgiveness towards others for things they may have done to you in your past – expect God to move in very strongly to try and get you to forgive these people and to let all of the wrongs they may have ever done to you into His hands.

Vengeance and payback in this life belong to the Lord, not to you or anyone else! God will be righting all the wrongs ever done to you in this life.

Your job is to forgive all of those who have ever hurt or wronged you and get on with the rest of your life.

If you are operating in any type of a judgmental, critical, controlling, or manipulating spirit – expect the Lord to deal very heavily with you on these issues. These kinds of attitudes and behaviors are poisonous and toxic to all of those who come in contact with them.

They are all unacceptable in the eyes of God, and the Holy Spirit will be moving very strongly on you with conviction and insight to tackle these kinds of attitudes and behaviors.

Bottom line – God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will be letting you know very clearly what good, positive, and godly qualities He will want to try and “put on” into your personality, and what negative qualities and vices He will want to try and “put away.”

Once all of this knowledge and information has been given to you by the Lord, then it will be up to you as to whether or not you will want to work in cooperation with the Holy Spirit to get all of this accomplished.

If you are willing to work with the Lord in the specific areas that He will target – then the Holy Spirit will start to do the miraculous and supernatural work of removing all of the bad things that He will not want operating in your personality and life, and then impart all of the positive and godly things that He will want have operating in your personality and life.

And once this starts to happen, God the Father will then start to transmit and impart part of His divine nature and personality right up into your mind, soul, and spirit.

God’s love, joy, peace, patience, boldness, goodness, gentleness, and kindness will all start to move up and mesh into your personality, thereby increasing your ability to be able to walk, live, and operate in these saintly and godly qualities.

This sanctification process is available to every single born-again believer. However, it is up to each and every Christian to make this personal decision for themselves.

This is something that the Lord will not force on anyone due to the individual cooperation that is needed from each person to really get this process started.

Conclusion

I will leave you with one last thought on all of this. True holiness is God’s ultimate and highest aim for all of us. Getting saved and born again is just the beginning. Once you are saved, God expects you to spiritually grow and mature in your personal walk with Him.

To those of you who would really like to try and achieve any true sainthood in this life with the Lord – this progressive, sanctification process is what will lead you in.

This path and journey to holiness in the Lord is there for all who are willing to step into it and are not afraid to work with the Holy Spirit in the directions that He will want to take them in.

To those of you who are willing to take this dive into these deeper waters with the Lord, I guarantee you will find the most incredible state of well-being that you will never find in any of the material things or pursuits of this world.