Sanctified (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24)

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
– 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24

This comes near the end of Paul’s letter to the Thessalonian church. It’s such a beautiful prayer: May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.

That phrase—sanctify you completely—is worth soaking in.

To sanctify means to make you holy, to make you more like Jesus. He uses the word completely, and it makes me think—and I want to encourage you to think—about one specific area of your life where you need more sanctification, where you need to be more like Jesus.

Just identify one. There are multiple for all of us, but choose one right now.
What’s one area of your life where you need God himself to sanctify you more?

If Jesus were to return today, what’s one area where you wish you looked more like him?

Let’s pray for that area of our lives to be sanctified today. And imagine if we did this regularly before God—simply asking him, Help me be more like you, Jesus, today than I was yesterday. This is exactly what 1 Thessalonians 4 describes as God’s will for our lives: our sanctification.

Prayer

God, we want today to be more sanctified. We want to be more like Jesus. Help us in this particular area that’s coming to our minds. And if nothing is coming to mind, open our eyes. Bring something to mind—an area where we need to be more like Jesus.

We want this, God. So we pray that you yourself, the God of peace, would sanctify us specifically in that area today. Make us more holy in that way.

And we pray that you would do this completely, with every facet of our lives, more and more and more, so that we might be kept blameless at the coming of Jesus. We want to look like Jesus when he returns. Help us, we pray, and we praise you that you are faithful and you will surely do this when we seek you.

You desire this in our lives even more than we do. So we pray for our sanctification.

And as we pray for that in our own lives, we pray for salvation to spread—and sanctification to follow—among all the nations. We pray for the Jola people of Bangladesh, for over 1.4 million men, women, and children to hear the good news of your love.

Please, God. Spread the gospel through the Bengali church, through others you raise up to go, through people I know there. We pray for the spread of the gospel to the Jola people of Bangladesh—that they might be sanctified by you, made holy, brought to eternal life through you.

You are faithful, O God. You will surely do this for all the peoples of the world.

We pray all of this according to your Word, which we love, in 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24. In Jesus’ name, amen.