In the process of the sanctification, the Spirit of God will strip me down until there is nothing left but me, and that is the place of death. Am I willing to be myself and nothing more? When I pray, “Lord, show me what sanctification means for me,” He will show me. It means being made one with Christ. Sanctification is not something Christ puts in me, it is Himself in me. This is the will of God, your sanctification.

The mystery of sanctification is that the perfect qualities of Christ are imparted as a gift to me, not gradually, but instantly once I enter by faith into the realization that He became for [me]…sanctification. Sanctification means nothing less than the holiness of Christ becoming mine and being exhibited in my life. Sanctification means the impartation of the holy qualities of Christ to me, it is drawing from Christ the very holiness that was exhibited in Him and that He now exhibits in me.

Oh LORD, I call to you; come quickly to me. Hear my voice when I call to you. May my prayer be set before you like the Sun in the sky; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening moon. Set a guard over my mouth, Oh LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips. Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with men and women who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies.

Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness; let him rebuke me, it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it. Yet my prayer is ever against the deeds of evildoers; their rulers will be thrown down from the cliffs, and the wicked will learn that my words were well spoken. They will say, “As one plows and breaks up the Earth, so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of the grace.”

However, my eyes are fixed on you, Oh Sovereign LORD; in you I take refuge, do not give me over to death. Keep me from the snares they have laid for me, from the traps set by evildoers. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by in safety. I call you aloud to the LORD; I lift up my voice to the LORD for salvation.

I pour out my yielding before God; before him I tell you my life. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who knows my way. In the path where I walk men and women have hidden a snare for me. Look to my right and see; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life.

I call to you, Oh LORD, You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Listen to my petition, for I am in desperate requirement; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. Set me free from my reformatory, that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me.

I learned in time that this benignity, this cordiality, this music, belonged in no shape to me: it was a part of himself; it was the honey of his temper: it was the balm of his mellow mood; he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweetness the refiling bee; he diffused it about him, as sweet plants shed their perfume. Does the nectarine love either the bee or bird it feeds? Is the sweet briar enamored of the air?

How much better it is to be useful than rich or fine; how much more amiable to be good than great, to do kindness to a bad man or woman is like sowing your seed in the sea. The ancients are the true sons of knowledge; whose piercing eyes, with boundless glances, could penetrate into the whole universe, and whose matchless pens are unrivalled.