Sanctification

Sanctification is being separated from sin and set apart to serve God. It is a process. When we are born again, the Holy Spirit comes to live in us. Once inside, He begins cleaning house and making us into a worthy vessel for His presence.

Imagine you moved in with a roommate. His place is a mess, but he has committed to turning over a new leaf. If the two of you are on the same page, it won't take long before the place starts looking better. Once one room is made right, you now have a foothold from which to move to other areas. When you get discouraged, you can look to the clean areas for motivation.

But if your roommate starts slipping back into his old ways, you will find yourself fighting an uphill battle. As you are cleaning, he is going behind you and undoing your work. you will find yourself cleaning the same rooms over and over. You may need to stop cleaning until he comes to a place where he realizes what he is doing.

It can be like that with us and the Holy Spirit. We see a little bit of progress in our lives and we think that we are "all better now". We fall back into old patterns and habits of sin. The Holy Spirit is working to remove the sin from our lives and we go behind Him undoing that work while He is laboring on the next issue. Sometimes we have rooms in our heart with locks on the doors. The Holy Spirit will only work on the areas we give Him access to. He won't clean an area if you don't let Him.

God has a plan for our lives. He wants to prepare us for the Kingdom to come and our role in it. We are being separated from sin now because it will not exist in the age to come. The more we separate from sin now, the better we will be able to serve God now. It will be good practice for when we serve Him for all eternity in His Kingdom.