Sanctified Toward

I should give the next several posts a series name like "Thoughts from The Year: A Restrospective Look at How Deep I Get to Be When Counseling College Students" because these are all rooted in conversations I had during counseling sessions this year. Then again, who would read a series with a name that long? Then again, again, this is MY blog, and I am windy, so that's the name I'm picking. I didn't have time or energy to post these then, but I kept a list, so I'm going to start plugging away at getting these thoughts onto the page. 


During a conversation with a client this spring, my client was lamenting that she was not growing spiritually at the rate that she wanted to be. [Sidenote: If I had a dime for every time a client of mine said something that struck a chord deep within me, I could counsel people for free and live off of all those dimes! This was one of those times.] The details don't matter (and, if they did, I couldn't share them anyway... helloooooo, HIPAA!), but the way she said this made me think about the idea of spiritual growth in a new way. This happens to me pretty regularly in counseling sessions; it's one of the many reasons I think the Lord called me to this career. When I'm thinking about my clients' problems or pain, I see the Lord objectively, which often means I see Him more accurately than my sin, insecurities, and fears typically allow me to when I'm thinking about my own problems or pain. I'm also a verbal processor, so sitting and thinking isn't how I arrive at conclusions or insights. It's when I open my mouth and speak "free association" style that I tend to make sense of the world around me.

So in this conversation, I realized that most Christians probably often feel like my client was feeling. Insert pretty much any area of spiritual growth into the self-talk they have with themselves, and it goes like this:

"I'm not obedient the way I should be."

"I'm not disciplined the way I should be."

"I'm not sacrificial the way I should be."

"I'm not faithful the way I should be."

"I'm not committed the way I should be."

(And so on, and so forth.)

A lot of the time, these statements are true. They aren't always true, of course; satan likes to attack with shame, guerilla style, and sneak in guilt and shame where they aren't legitimate. But we do fail pretty miserably at looking like Jesus on a day-to-day basis, which means we often need to be real with ourselves about the areas in which we need to dig deep and give God more. That said, even when these statements are true, this counseling session helped me realize that we can still find some hope in them and process them in ways that promote our walks with Christ.

On the one hand, our choice can be to see the utter failures of our walk - all the steps of faith we don't take, all the moments we hesitate instead of follow, all the thoughts we let roam freely instead of take captive. That's what my client was doing. That's what I do a lot of the time.

On the other hand, I think we can find hope in the idea of being "sanctified toward," as the Lord laid on my heart. Sure, I'm not obedient the way I should be. But am I more obedient than I used to be? Do I want to be more obedient than I used to? If the answer is yes, that means I'm being sanctified. And do you remember what it means to be sanctified? According to our friends at Merriam-Webster, it means "to set apart to a sacred purpose or to religious use: consecrate; to free from sin; purify." So if we are more obedient/disciplined/sacrificial/faithful/committed/fill-in-the-blank than we used to be, or even if we desire it more than we used to, I contend that this is evidence of the Spirit setting us apart for a sacred purpose, therefore consecrating us, or freeing us from sin, therefore purifying us. So often - too often - we see sanctification as the evidence of our changed hearts. We operate under the presumption that sanctification equals outcome.

But that's not true - by no means! Sanctification is the process of being made more like Christ. It's a present tense spiritual endeavor that the Lord undertakes when He takes us under His wing. It is what is happening now, not the end result. And sitting with this client, all of this hit me in a rush, so I shared with her what I felt the Lord was sharing with me. And, as I tend to do, I ended up having a way paved to share this realization multiple times with other clients, too.

I believe in the concept of being "sanctified toward." It gives hope. It reminds me that, though I have a long, long way ahead of me, I have also come a little bit away from the starting blocks by now. Neither I nor my client are the shiny jewels we want to be, but we aren't lost in the darkness anymore, either. We are being sanctified toward all those wonderful spiritual fruits we long to bear.

We have an obligation to show up, of course; the Lord isn't going to just operate on us without our participation. And it's not a great idea to settle for, "Well, I'm better than I used to be, so that's something." Stopping there leads to complacency, so it's not too smart to be satisfied with that level of change. However, most (though not all) of the clients I've been given don't struggle with complacency. Same goes with a lot of my friends. No, they (again, like me) battle a relentless task master who sputters and wheezes and sprays venomous phrases in their ears like "not enough" or "too little" or "that's the best you've got?" and countless other iterations of the same demeaning, never-satisfied, perpetually displeased self-talk. As a result, getting us to see progress, however little it might be and however much more might be needed, and sometimes accept that our work has been enough is actually more evident spiritual growth than the "give more" lesson that others need to learn.

So, like I said, the concept of being "sanctified toward" gives me hope, enough to keep walking forward and submitting to the process of being changed from the inside out. Most importantly, I think the idea of being "sanctified toward" lines up with a verse I have written out on a post-it note, which is stuck to the printer in my office: "... being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of our Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).