LORD’S DAY, JULY 2
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
1 Thessalonians 4:3

"For this is the will of God,
even your sanctification…"

GOD’S HOLY WILL AND PURPOSE

Many church leaders and members fail to see God’s holy will and purpose for His people, so they just focus on God’s love and material blessings for them. That is why many want to join the church to hear about love and material blessings! They feel that God has blessed them and their church! They are deceiving themselves or being deceived by their own feelings and by teachings full of half-truths if their lives are not sanctified and holy as God is holy!

God never saves us so that we can live any way we like. We must see God’s purpose for us when He so loved mankind that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). His holy purpose is for the saved ones to be like His Son Jesus Christ: "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom 8:29). Is your life more like Christ in faith, love, humility, meekness, godliness, holiness, and obedience to God and His Word each day?

What is Christ’s purpose when He so loved us that He gave His life for us, died for our sins, rose again for our justification (Rom 4:25), and is ever living to make intercession for us? That is to wash us, cleanse us, sanctify us and present us to Himself as His holy and chaste Bride! "… Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph 5:25-27). Are we holy and sanctified "as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor 11:2)?

Truly, God has loved us, called us and "chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph 1:4), and "For this is the will of God, even your sanctification… For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness" (1 Thess 4:3, 7).

THOUGHT: God has saved me so that I should be holy like Christ.
PRAYER: O Lord, I thank Thee for Thy holy will and purpose for me.