The Lord Sanctifies Us (Leviticus 20:8)
Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you.
—Leviticus 20:8
I love this verse because the first part sums up much of what we see in Leviticus: God gives his statutes and calls his people to obey them. Do not merely hear these things; do them. The second part of the verse—“I am the LORD who sanctifies you”—is a needed reminder.
None of us is holy or pure in and of ourselves. God is continually at work, purifying and sanctifying us. In everything that happens in our lives, he is working for our sanctification. He is drawing us closer to him and making us more like Jesus Christ. Consider every circumstance you faced yesterday or will face today, including the trials you may be enduring: God is working for your good, to draw you nearer to himself and to conform you to the image of Christ. He is purifying you today, just as he was purifying you yesterday.
When we struggle with sin and experience its consequences, God is sanctifying us. He is purifying and disciplining us, as good parents discipline their children, teaching them what is good and right and what is wrong and harmful. Therefore, look to God today as the one who is at work for your sanctification, and ask him to accomplish all he intends in you—to draw you closer to himself and to make you more like Christ.
O God, we pray for this. We want to be holy. We want to be more like Jesus Christ. We desire to reflect Christ more at the end of today than when we awoke this morning, and we pray the same for tomorrow. We long to be increasingly sanctified, more and more conformed to your image, as you describe in Leviticus 20:8. We want to think according to your Word, to desire what accords with your heart, and to live in a way that reflects Christ.
Please sanctify us. Make us moldable, humble, and contrite instruments in your hands. Keep us from resisting your work. Cleanse us of pride and of our tendency to resist your loving discipline and sanctifying work in our lives. Help us to trust you in whatever we are facing, knowing that you are working for our good.
Help us to hear your Word and to do it. Sanctify us today. And as you make us more like Christ, help us to lead others to do the same. Enable us to encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ and to strengthen their faith. Use our lives, we pray, to bring about sanctifying work in others and saving work in the lives of friends, family members, coworkers, and classmates who do not know you.
A Prayer for the Zhugqu Tibetan People
We pray for the sanctification of all the peoples of the world. We pray specifically for the Zhugqu Tibetan people of China. For this small Tibetan Buddhist people group of approximately 50,000, with no known followers of Jesus Christ, we ask that the good news of your love—the One who makes them whole in Christ—would spread among them. Bless those who labor for the spread of the gospel in Tibetan Buddhist regions in China. Open their eyes to you, the Lord who saves and sanctifies by the blood and love of Jesus Christ.
In his name we pray all these things. Amen.
