LORD’S DAY, AUGUST 20
Jeremiah 17:1-13
Jeremiah 17:9

"The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

A SANCTIFIED SPIRIT (8)

Unbelievers without a sanctified spirit live with all the functions of a totally depraved will, with a guilty conscience, with a corrupt mind consisting of human wisdom, understanding, intelligence, thinking, judgment, reasoning, imagination, and memory, with a heart including human love, emotions, affections, feelings, zeal, enthusiasm, ambition, passion, lusts, and tempers, and with skills and hobbies bound by sin. They may be very smart like scientists and inventors. They may be talented musicians, artists, singers, poets, medical specialists or engineers. However, all of them are spiritually dead, separated from the Lord God Creator! They do not know how to, or desire to, use their talents and skills for God’s will and glory!

Only human beings have an immortal soul, created in God’s image, after God’s likeness. Thus, when human beings die, it is not the end. After death, their soul will either be with God if they are saved and born again, or be in Hell if they reject God’s love and salvation. Due to the sinful human nature, the human soul including the will, conscience, mind and heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer 17:9), and "the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom 8:7). How vital it is for a human soul to be saved, cleansed and sanctified!

Many professing Christians do not know God’s holiness nor understand God’s Truth correctly. They quote certain Bible verses to support their worldly worship without reverence at all – clapping or waving their hands, jumping, or dancing to worldly music! How all the features of the soul need to be sanctified for God and His glory!

The features of a sanctified soul include a sanctified will, a sanctified conscience, a sanctified mind, a sanctified heart, and sanctified skills and hobbies so that we may keep our soul, heart and mind separated and dedicated unto the Lord always.

THOUGHT: My sinful soul needs to be sanctified unto the Lord.
PRAYER: Lord, please sanctify my soul, heart and mind for Thee.