We need to cooperate with God to preserve our soul in sanctification by clearing the main arteries of our psychological heart, and we need to preserve our body in sanctification by presenting it to Him to live a holy life for the church life.
God’s will for us is our sanctification, that we may live a holy life for the church life; for this, we need to cooperate with the Lord to preserve our whole being – spirit, soul, and body – in the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.
First, in order for us to cooperate with God to preserve our spirit in sanctification, we need to keep our spirit in a living condition by exercising our spirit.
We need to exercise our spirit day by day so that we may keep it living; we need to exercise our spirit to have fellowship with God.
If we fail to exercise our spirit every day to have fellowship with God, we will leave it in a deadened situation.
Some very simple ways for us to keep our spirit in a living condition is by rejoicing in the Lord, by praying unceasingly, and by giving thanks in all things.
Amen, Lord, we want to rejoice in You always, pray unceasingly, and give thanks in all things, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for us – our sanctification!
Our spirit is exercised and kept in a living condition when we rejoice, pray, and give thanks in all things; in this way our spirit is pulled out of death and kept in life.
For us to preserve our spirit, we need to keep our spirit from all defilement and contamination.
We need to exercise ourselves to have a conscience without any offense toward God and man; the conscience as a part of our spirit is the window into our soul, and when our conscience is not clear but it muddied and unclean, the Lord cannot shine into the parts of our inner being.
May we learn to take heed to our spirit, set our mind on the spirit, and care for our spirit, even do all things according to our mingled spirit and walk according to the spirit!
This is our yearning every day and our learning in all things: we learn not to live in our natural man but to exercise our spirit to be one spirit with the Lord and to live in the mingled spirit.
Hallelujah, the Lord lives in our spirit, and we can cooperate with Him by exercising our spirit to contact Him, receive Him, and enjoy Him!
We need to Cooperate with God to Preserve our Soul in Sanctification by Clearing the Arteries of our Heart
God is faithful: He chose us to be holy, and He is sanctifying us, even preserving our whole being complete. Hallelujah!
On our side, however, we need to cooperate with God to preserve our soul in sanctification by clearing the three main “arteries” of our psychological heart (cf. Psa. 43:4; Neh. 8:10; 1 John 1:4; Jer. 15:16).
The parts of our soul – our mind, our emotion, and our will – can be considered “arteries” of our heart, and they need to be “unclogged” and cleared so that the Lord’s life can flow freely through all the inner parts of our being.
We need to make sure that these arteries are clear; every day we need the Lord to be our “divine cardiologist”, having “daily heart examinations” by the Lord with His divine light.
In order for our soul to be sanctified, our mind must be renewed by the mind of Christ (Rom. 12:2), our emotion must be touched and saturated with the love of Christ (Eph. 3:17, 19), our will must be subdued and infused with the resurrected Christ (Phil. 2:13), and we must love the Lord with our whole being.
But many times our heart has serious issues: our mind has sinful thoughts and impure intentions, our emotion is not in tune with the Lord’s intention but loves what the Lord hates and hates what the Lord loves, and our will doesn’t choose the Lord but many times is stubborn toward Him while being weak toward the world. Oh Lord.
The way for us to unclog the three arteries of our psychological heart is for us to make a thorough confession to the Lord; we need to be with the Lord and stay with Him for a period of time, asking Him to bring us fully into the light.
Then, in His light we will see the mud, the impurities, and the problems, and in the light of what the Lord exposes, we will confess our defects, failures, defeats, mistakes, wrongdoings, and sins (1 John 1:5-9).
For us to unclog the artery of our mind, we need to confess everything that is sinful in our thoughts and in our way of thinking.
Many times we have impure thoughts, we think just like the people in the world, and we even have sinful thoughts.
If some sinful and impure thought comes into us and gets lodged in us, as soon as the Lord shines on us concerning it, we should confess it to the Lord, and the artery of our mind will be unclogged.
In order for us to unclog the artery of our will, we need to confess the germs of rebellion in our will; our will is rebellious toward God and so weak toward the enemy, and we do not choose Him but rather choose other things or people. Oh Lord Jesus!
For us to unclog the artery of our emotion, we need to confess the natural and even fleshy way that we have expressed our joy and sorrow; also, in many times we hate what we should love, and we love what we should hate.
The Lord wants us to love what He loves and hate what He hates (Rev. 2:4, 6), but many times this is not our situation.
May we take the necessary time to spend with the Lord to allow Him to shine on us and in all the inward parts of our being, so that we may confess in His light all that He is exposing; in this way we cooperate with the Lord to preserve our soul in sanctification, for the arteries of our soul are unclogged. Oh Lord!
If we take the time necessary to unclog the three main arteries of our psychological heart, we will have the sense that our entire being has become living and is in a very healthy condition.
Amen, this is what we want and this is what the Lord wants, that we would daily cooperate with Him in prayer to unclog the three arteries of our heart so that we may preserve our soul in sanctification.
Lord Jesus, we want to cooperate with You to preserve our soul in sanctification by clearing the main arteries of our psychological heart – our mind, emotion, and will! Amen, Lord, we open to You concerning our mind with its thoughts, opinions, way of thinking, philosophies, and all things related to it; we want to confess anything that Your light exposes and have our mind renewed to be the mind of Christ! We open our emotion to You, Lord, with all its feelings, preferences, loves and hates, and everything related to it; shine on our emotion, remove anything that is not You, and touch and saturate us with the love of Christ! Lord, we open our will to You with all its decisions; may our will be subdued and infused with the resurrected Christ! Amen, Lord Jesus, we love You with our whole being!
We Cooperate with God to Preserve our Body in Sanctification by Presenting it to Him to live a Holy Life for the Church Life
How can we cooperate with God to preserve our body in sanctification?
According to Rom. 12:1-2, we can cooperate with God to preserve our body in sanctification by presenting our body to Him so that we may live a holy life for the church life, practicing the Body life in order to carry out God’s perfect will (see 1 Thes. 4:4; 5:18).
When we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, we are sanctified; when we do this, our body becomes holy, well-pleasing to God, and this is our reasonable service.
Due to the fall of man, our fallen body – the flesh – is the “meeting hall” of Satan, sin, and death.
But praise the Lord, by Christ’s redemption in the regenerated spirit we have the “meeting hall” of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit!
Therefore, by Christ’s redemption and in our regenerated spirit, our body is a member of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 6:6, 12, 14; 7:11, 17-25; 8:2-3; 1 Cor. 6:15, 19).
The flesh as the meeting hall of Satan, sin, and death is never dismissed; it will go on until we are glorified and transfigured.
We need to realize that, as we grow in the Lord and we advance in our Christian life, our flesh will NOT get better – it will not improve!
Rather, no matter how long you are a believer and how many years you are in the church life, your flesh is still the meeting hall of Satan, sin, and death!
So we need to present our body as a living sacrifice for the church life to cooperate with God to preserve our body in sanctification!
To preserve our body is to glorify God in our body (v. 20), that is, to express God in our body.
To preserve our body is to magnify Christ in our body (Phil. 1:20); to magnify Christ is not something mere spiritual, but it is in our body – we declare Christ to be great in our body, we extol Christ in our body, and we exalt Him through our body!
To preserve our body in sanctification, we must not live according to our soul, the old man; then the body of sin will lose its job and become unemployed (Rom. 6:6).
This is the one instance of unemployment that is good news, when the body of sin loses its job and becomes unemployed!
For us to present our body, we must not present our body to anything that is sinful but instead present ourselves as slaves to righteousness and our members as weapons of righteousness (Rom. 6:13, 18-19, 22; 1 Thes. 4:3-5). Amen!
We have a choice daily: we can either present our body to (or allow our body to be involved in) sinful and worldly things, or we can present ourselves as slaves to righteousness and our members as weapons of righteousness.
For us to preserve our body in sanctification, we must buffet it (1 Cor. 9:27) and lead it as a slave to fulfill our holy purpose to become the holy city (Rev. 21:2). Amen!
Paul didn’t allow his body to take the lead but rather took it as a slave and buffet it, for he wanted to live a holy life for the church life.
We should not allow the lusts of our body to entice us or lead us where they want but rather, we should cooperate with God to preserve our body in sanctification by buffeting it and leading it to fulfill our holy purpose to become the holy city, New Jerusalem!
Lord Jesus, we want to cooperate with You to preserve our body in sanctification by presenting our body to You to live a holy life for the church life! May we realize that our flesh will never improve but will always be the meeting hall of Satan, sin, and death; may we run to our spirit, set our mind on the spirit, and glorify God in our body, even magnify Christ in our body! We choose not to live according to our soul, Lord, and we refuse not to present or involve our body to anything sinful! We present ourselves as slaves to righteousness and we present our members as weapons of righteousness. We want to live a holy life for the church life so that we may fulfill our holy purpose to become the holy city, New Jerusalem!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, msg. 24 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 5, The Will of God – our Sanctification.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Dear Lord Jesus, precious Jesus, / How can I still stubborn be? / At Thy feet cast all my hard’nings, / And return with songs and singings; / ’Tis my love to be Thy bondslave, / ’Tis my joy to Thee obey. (Hymns #1158)
– Oh, purify us, Lord, by speaking in our heart; / Thy living, spoken word this washing will impart. / Increase Thy speaking, Lord, and cleanse our every part. / Oh, purify us, Lord, we pray. / Oh, purify us, Lord, today; / Wash all our natural life away. / Speak now Thy words in us, / And make us glorious. / O Lord, do speak in us today. (Hymns #1135)
– Lord, we’re expecting that we’ll be given / Boldness with every breath. / Christ must be magnified in our body / Whether by life or death. / We hope in nothing to be ashamed, / For us to live is Christ— / He is the Person in all our living, / Our everything, our life. (Hymns #1295)
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