By TIMOTHY L. MELTON
Pastor, Cherokee Pentecostal Holiness Church
Transcribed by Myra D. Colgate
Read 1 Peter 3:15
The Word says, “We’ve had a heart that was as black as coal.”
This teaches me I was lost and had no hope.
We should ask ourselves, “Was I lost and had no hope? Have we all felt this way?”
Aren’t we glad He sanctified us and cleaned us up? And “though our sins were as red as scarlet, now they are white as snow.” I realize when some of us got saved, God just took some stuff right out of our lives, stuff that we’d struggled with for a long time.
I know God has broken chains off, run devils away, and moved in a mighty way. There, we have a definite work of sanctification. There’s a moment of salvation where God does some cleaning up. In fact, He so cleans one up that the Holy Ghost is willing to move on inside of the person. We each one should remember to say, “Thank You, Lord.”
There’s also another side to sanctification. There’s “the Work” the Holy Spirit does. The other side is what the person must do. It is a process. We each are sanctified in the process of sanctification, Amen. In Fact, what the Holy Ghost did in me changed my life so that from that day forward, I’ve never been the same.
What He’s doing in my life now, daily cleaning me so that I will never be the same!
How many now realize He’s still changing us all today? We won’t be the same today as we were yesterday. Hallelujah! And He’ll change each person tomorrow so one isn’t the same as today either.
There’s some work that the Holy Ghost can do for a person, and there’s some work one must do for their own self. That’s right. This is where the preacher can get in trouble because we don’t wasn’t to tell about this part.
I’ll never forget the time the Holy Ghost did give me a “Word” for somebody. I went up to them and said right to their face, “The Lord said to tell you…” and then I told them. When they got what I’d said, and after I’d finished, they looked at me, and this is what was sadly and literally said, “Those are my devils. Leave them alone.”
The consequences were so severe in the weeks to follow. That person’s repentance had to start from scratch and work its way back. Why was that? Because when the Lord comes and says sanctify yourselves, how many know that he is not playing around?
Alright, a person does realize, what is within them, within their own life that’s nasty, it needs to be removed. If it’s not done, it can make that person sick! What’s not done can really make one sick!
For our part, as we find in verse 15, in other words, each person must sanctify our God himself, within them, within their own self, and He is to reside there within their own heart. It means to have set apart a place for Him there. To sanctify a place for Him there. For that is to be the place where one can get to and do their own part as well.
How does one set apart a place for the Lord, there, within their own heart? Are we speaking of the heart as a place for the spirit, which is in the likeness of that person, which is the living part of each one of us, and is also like God? He had said, “We each have got to set a place apart for God to “land” within each of us. God must have been invited there to move in and to operate there as well, within that person. It’s the image of the person’s spirit that’s on the word “heartbeat”. He is not talking about the heart muscle, with four chambers and a couple of arteries, that is thumping in one’s chest. He is speaking of the spirit of the person, the likeness of a person, that’s the part of each one of us who is to become more like God.
