To The Ruddy End

If I traded it all,
If I gave it all
Away for One Thing,
Just for One Thing
If I sorted it out,
If I knew all about
This One Thing,
Wouldn’t that be something?
(“One Thing” by Finger Eleven)

Brothers-in-arms,

It’s all about sanctification.

Remember Curly from the movie City Slickers, the tough-as-nails trail boss that would just as soon eat you for breakfast as say a polite good morning to you? Remember his unexpectedly epic observation that life was about just One Thing?

Turns out he was right.

Growing up in the church we were taught that a good, solid working definition of “sanctification” could be rendered: “set apart for holy use”. Although it came across as little more than religious mumbo-jumbo at the time, we now understand these words to be the hope of our lives – the discovered purpose for which our hearts have always been yearning.

Set apart for holy use. How much of that do you think you run across in the average day? Seriously. Sure, you know plenty of Bible-believing, church-going, dog-gone nice people who have gambled their hope for life-after-death on the promise that “if you believe on the name of Jesus, you shall be saved”. And even beyond those people, you probably know a few people who are striving manfully to put away more and more of their dark desires and conform just a little closer to those things that in our day have come to be regarded as ‘godly’ or ‘Christ-like’. And at the ultimate extreme, you might even know a handful of people you would dare to describe as a “real man or woman of God”.

But set apart for holy use?

We’d bet you have no idea what that would even look like. (How could you?) And double-or-nothing says you’ve been hammered your whole life with the lie that it just couldn’t be done anyway – leastways, not in today’s world.

Permit the Warrior's Path to be that lone voice calling in the desert of your doubts that says:

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It can be done…and You can do It.

The church – the whole world – is dying for sanctified individuals to whom they can retreat in search of answers when the shallow answers offered by “religious” leaders who look and live just like everyone else no longer satisfy the deep needs of the human heart to draw close to God. It’s a great thing that a movement of “leaders” has risen in the church today: men capable of keeping a massive organization up and running smoothly. It’s wonderful that preachers are more educated, more articulate, better trained to keep an audience hanging on their every word.

But where are the Holy Men? When you want to hear from God, of whom do you say, “I’ll go ask so-and-so. If anybody spends enough time in the supernatural realm to know what’s going on, it will be him”?

Sanctified – set apart for holy use. Do we even know what that would mean? What that would cost? Are we really willing to pay that price?

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What price, you ask?

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Set apart.

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Render that set aside. Shelved. Held in reserve for one use and one use alone: God’s use. Set aside to be held at the ready for works of holiness at any moment.

Ummm….okay…what were those other options again?

Oh yes. We don’t really want to be about just “One Thing”, do we? We find ourselves caught between our desires. The world is in desperate need of sanctified individuals, and we would be honored to play such a vital role in the redemption of our race. There is such a sense of purpose, of significance, of epic destiny in being “set apart for holy use.” But, at the same time…well…we still want to live our own lives, don’t we? We’re not asking for too much: we just want to get to do what everybody else is doing. Of course, we’d love to be used by God for His holy use, and we’d be more than happy to do our best to squeeze some of His work in between painting the house and washing the car and the football game…maybe halftime would be a good opportunity? That’s more than most people would give God. Seriously. That’s major beer and snack time. What would the guys think if they knew I was skimming through a chapter of Wild at Heart instead of getting my 'stash' re-stocked for the second half?

One of the messages of the church today is that becoming a Christian doesn’t have to mess with your life – that you can still talk and walk and dress and act (for the most part) just like everyone else.

Fine. God bless ‘em.

But there is More, if you’re willing to go ‘all in’, if you’re hungry to see this thing through, as C.S. Lewis would say, “to the ruddy end”.

Sanctified: set apart for One Thing. A life reserved for one purpose. Not “God and the American Dream”. Not “God and the environment”. Not “God and a fine, up-standing citizen and member of the Republican Party”. Just God. A life reserved for God. Sitting at His feet, growing closer to His heart, waiting for His next command, His next mission, His next need that requires a holy, clean vessel through which He can touch the world.

Sanctification isn’t the work of a day, nor is it had simply by the wanting. Today’s decision is just to raise that life up as the goal for which you long, and then to step out onto the Road that will lead you ultimately in that direction. Even determining that you want to someday become a person who is about just One Thing will be a mighty enough feat in itself.

It may be twenty years before someone thanks you for that choice.

But they will.

Oh, yes. They will.

Learning to let go,
Derrick and David