It's In Your Ticket!

In preparation for the discipleship course at Calvary Chapel Sydney I listened to a message by Edwin Orr called, "Sanctification."  In the message he talked about a poor young man years ago who traveled from a Baltic port immigrating to the United States.  His plan was to connect with family who lived in Chicago and start a new life.  He had been provided a ticket on the ocean liner but his parents knew he would not be able to afford meals.  So they kindly packed him a basket of bread and cheese.

Day after day the young man would hear the dinner bell and glumly eat his bread and cheese.  He cheered himself by thinking such mundane meals wouldn't last forever.  But before long, however, the cheese began to grow mouldy and the bread became stale.  In desperation he went to the kitchen and begged for a job for some better food.  "I am sick of cheese," he told the chef.  The chef saw this as most extraordinary:  a ticket holder asking for a job to work for food!  Seizing the opportunity, the chef made the man a deal:  "Don't tell anyone, but if you come in here every day and wash the dishes I guarantee you will eat what the captain eats."  "I work very hard," the young man assured the chef.  So for the rest of the voyage, the man in Orr's words "worked like a slave but ate like a king."

When the young man finally arrived in Chicago, he told them of the deal he made with the chef.  "Silly boy," his relative told him laughing.  "The meals were already paid for in your ticket!  You didn't have to clean all those dishes!"  Edwin Orr told the story with the aim of illustrating when a person is born again through faith in Jesus, we no longer are a slave to sin.  This victory is "in your ticket," so to speak.  Even as death had no power over Jesus after His resurrection, so sin has no power over a believer who has been born again.  Romans 6:11-12 says, "Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts."  A Christian can say no to sin and yes to God in everything.  It is not through the effort of the flesh but the power of the Spirit we are saved and sanctified.  As Corrie Ten Boom was fond of saying, "It is not try but trust; it is not do but done."  That being said, we must not shirk or deny our responsibility to seek God and intentionally make godly choices and sacrifices which are pleasing to Him.

If you would struggle to answer the question, "What does it mean to be sanctified?" I exhort you to listen to the audio in the link provided.  I trust you will find it practical and most useful in your spiritual development as you begin to comprehend the love of God and the real victory Christ has made available to you by His grace.  "It's in your ticket!"