When we pray to be sanctified, are we prepared to face the standard of these verses? We take the term sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared for what sanctification will cost? It will cost an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of all our interests in God.

Sanctification means intense concentration on God's point of view. It means every power of body, soul and spirit chained and kept for God's purpose only.

Are we prepared for God to do in us all that He separated us for? And then after His work is done in us, are we prepared to separate ourselves to God even as Jesus did? "For their sakes I sanctify Myself." The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God's standpoint. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. Are we prepared for what that will cost? It will cost everything that is not of God in us.

Are we prepared to be caught up into the swing of this prayer of the apostle Paul's? Are we prepared to say - "Lord, make me as holy as You can make a sinner saved by grace"? Jesus has prayed that we might be one with Him as He is one with the Father. The one and only characteristic of the Holy Ghost in a man is a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, and freedom from everything that is unlike Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit's ministrations in us?

Many years after I first read that “without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14), I began following this truth and encouraging everyone with whom I spoke to do the same.

Ten years later God gave me a clearer view than I had ever seen before of the way to obtain holiness—namely, by faith in the Son of God.

Immediately I began sharing with everyone, “We are saved from sin and made holy by faith.” I testified to this in private, in public, and in print, and God confirmed it through a thousand other witnesses.

I have now declared this truth continuously for more than thirty years, and God has continued to confirm my work. JOHN WESLEY IN 1771

I knew Jesus, and He was very precious to me, but I found something deep within me that would not stay pleasant, patient, and kind.

I did what I could to keep those traits suppressed, but they were still there.

Finally I sought Jesus for help, and when I gave Him my will, He came to my heart and removed everything that would not stay pleasant, patient, and kind.

And then He shut the door. GEORGE FOX

At this very moment, my entire heart does not have even a hint of thirst after my acceptance by God.

I am alone with Him and He fills every void.

I do not have one wish, one will, or one desire, except in Him.

He has set my feet in His large room.

And I am in awe, standing amazed that He has conquered everything within me, through His love. LADY HUNTINGTON

Suddenly I felt as if a hand—not weak but omnipotent, and not of wrath but of love—were laid on my forehead.

Yet I did not feel it as much outwardly as inwardly.

It seemed to be pressing in on my entire being and sending a holy, sin-consuming energy throughout me as it moved downward, my heart as well as my head was aware of the presence of this soul-cleansing energy.

Under its power I fell to the floor, and in the joyful wonder of the moment, I cried out in a loud voice.

This hand of power continued to work without and within me, and wherever it moved, it seemed to leave the glorious influence of the Savior’s image.

And for several minutes, the deep ocean of God’s love swallowed me, as all its waves and billows rolled over me. BISHOP HAMLINE

Some of my views on holiness, as I once wrote them, are as follows:

Holiness appears to me to have a sweet, calm, pleasant, charming, and serene nature, all of which brings an inexpressible purity, radiance, peacefulness, and overwhelming joy to the soul.

In other words, holiness makes the soul like a field or garden of God, with every kind of pleasant fruit and flower, and each one delightful and undisturbed, enjoying a sweet calm and the gentle and refreshing rays of the sun. JONATHAN EDWARDS

Love’s resistless current sweeping

All the regions deep within;

Thought and wish and senses keeping

Now, and every instant clean:

Full salvation! Full salvation!

From the guilt and power of sin.

What will He do? He will sanctify us wholly. See the previous verse. He will carry on the work of purification till we are perfect in every part. He will preserve our "whole spirit, and soul, and body, blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." He will not allow us to fall from grace, nor come under the dominion of sin. What great favors are these! Well may we adore the giver of such unspeakable gifts.

Who will do this? The Lord who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light, out of death in sin into eternal life in Christ Jesus. Only He can do this: such perfection and preservation can only come from the God of all grace.

Why will He do it? Because He is "faithful" —faithful to His own promise which is pledged to save the believer; faithful to His Son, whose reward it is that His people shall be presented to Him faultless, faithful to the work which He has commenced in us by our effectual calling. It is not their own faithfulness but the Lord's own faithfulness on which the saints rely.

Come, my soul, here is a grand feast to begin a dull month with. There may be fogs without, but there should be sunshine within.

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.—Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord , the first, and with the last: I am he.

Sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ.—The very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.—He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.—Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?—The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.

It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

God is not a man that he should lie; neither the Son of man that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?—The Lord sware and will not repent.

God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.—Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day—Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.—All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.