Even Your Sanctification: Are You a Serious Christian?

BLJ: We continue to study Rev. Fay's book, "Even You're Sanctification." This is an excellent book on the second work of grace, commonly called holiness.

ARE YOU A SERIOUS CHRISTIAN?

Orlow Webb once said,

"If you get saved real good, you will want to be sanctified real bad!"

Do you want to be the best Christian you can be? The best minister? Missionary? Wife? Husband? Parent? Student? Employee? Do you want to be the best church member and Christian worker that you can be? If so, then the search for heart holiness must become a passion and an obsession with you.

"God could not justify a man unless in his desire to be forgiven there is also a desire for the cleansing of the whole being." [7]

The plain truth is this. You dare not be trifling about God's sacred call to holiness. You will not long retain His smile if you do so, for the call to holiness is God's call. I repeat, "He therefore that despiseth, (rejecteth, margin) despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit" (1 Thess. 4:8).

Be careful! Do not frustrate or grieve the Holy Ghost.

Recently a man said, "I am saved tonight because I'm sanctified." I understood fully what he meant; for that man, like every man, had discovered a warped, carnal nature within him. The Bible calls this inward depravity a "bent to backsliding" (Hos. 11:7). Fortunately, that Christian man sought the Lord for entire sanctification, the second blessing, and found deliverance from his inward moral weakness and the consequent stabilizing power of the indwelling Holy Ghost for daily victorious living.

Unfortunately, many Christians have failed to obtain this great experience of sanctification; and the carnage of backsliding and dead religious profession is widespread. One has said,

"We cannot more fearfully and dangerously show our contempt for the Holy Ghost than in despising God's call to holiness." [8]

I recall as though it were yesterday how serious and intent I was in obtaining entire sanctification. Alone in the church, I sought earnestly, with many tears for the blessing. I well remember kneeling at the altar with the hymn book open before me and singing this prayer with a broken spirit:

"Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole;
I want thee for ever to live in my soul.
Break down every idol, cast out every foe--
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." [9]

Yes, I really did long for this inward washing. I seriously wanted every idol of my heart broken by the power of God, and I yearned for release from my inward carnal foes. God knows how desperately I needed this inward washing, and I praise Him that He gave me a serious yearning and hunger for it. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness," said Jesus, "for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6).