So Help Me God

I’ve been talking a lot lately with one of my friends about entire sanctification. We’re both on the side of ordination where we have to articulate sanctification in a certain way, and so we’ve been talking about the way we see entire sanctification and the way the Church of the Nazarene sees it.

We were talking about this yesterday and were talking a bit about our experiences trying to explain and understand the doctrine of entire sanctification. Someone had once criticized my friend for his theology of sanctification.

I’ve been thinking about this since then. My friend was somewhat chastised by a pastor for implying that sanctification was a daily thing. “You mean I need to pray to God to ‘re-sanctify’ every day?” (Loose paraphrase)

I would argue that comment with a great big YES! Maybe I don’t need to be entirely sanctified every day, but I definitely think that we need to pray to God to keep us sanctified every single day.

Jesus implored us to do nothing less than do this each day. “And He was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.’” (Luke 9:23).

Daily.

Every. Single. Day.

We will continue to debate and wrestle with the theology and concept of entire sanctification, and that’s okay. But I do not think that we get to debate on whether or not entire sanctification is a daily process. If I’m not denying myself and picking up my cross every day, then I’m doing it wrong.

My prayer this morning was that God would help me to deny myself today. My prayer was for God to help me bear the weight of the cross today. So, help me God, to put my faith in you.