Sanctification is learning to love God and to hate everything else.

Does this offend you?

Consider Deuteronomy 6:5,

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

And, Luke 14:26,

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”

My prayer has been to be set free even from a desire for my wife, who is most dear and precious to me.

I want my only desire to be for my wife who is in Christ.

See the difference?

Loving who is begotten by God, including those not yet made manifest, is one and the same as loving God.

“And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”
— 1 John 4:21

When the affection and desire of my heart is singular, I become “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58)

I can then be like Jesus, who hated Simon, but loved Peter, who in one breath calls Him blessed and in the next call Him Satan, because one was in God and the other was without.

Matthew 16:17, after Peter’s confession of faith,

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.’”

Matthew 16:23, six verses later,

”But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.’”

When the affection and desire of my heart is singular, I become pure (oneness) in heart—a prerequisite to see God.

Learning to love God and to hate everything else is the process of being made holy, set apart and fit for service, which is sanctification.

#sanctification #heartwords