The Word that Sanctifies
I recently read from a well-meaning Christian blogger, who was writing on the topic of overthinking. This is how she ended the article:
“I don’t have a miracle cure for overthinking…But if ever there was a cure, it would have to be fervent prayer. If you pray about your thoughts and worries, God will faithfully answer and help you to protect your brain against them. He will grant you peace and comfort.”
This shows a common tendency among Christians – we think that prayer is the ultimate answer. If I don’t know how to combat certain thoughts – depression, fear, overthinking, etc. – then if I pray about it, God will resolve it.
The last thing I want to do is to downplay the importance of prayer. Paul himself specifically recommends prayer as a key solution for combatting anxiety: “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).
But if prayer is a significant part of God’s solution to wrong thinking, it is certainly not the entirety of the solution. Jesus provides us with a hint toward God’s solutions in John 17:17 –
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
If sanctification is the process of growing more like Christ, then Jesus is asking the Father to grow Christians in these very things – to be less fearful, less anxious, more trusting, less discouraged, less caught up in overthinking, more present in-the-moment. That is sanctification! And the way in which this sanctification happens is in the truth – which is the Word of God, the Scripture. Scripture, then, brings sanctification.
But how exactly does Scripture provide sanctification in these things? By providing us with the Biblical truth that we need to sink our teeth in, so that we would mature spiritually.
This is to say that as the Christian studies God’s Word, he learns what is factually true in the spiritual realm. Then, he spends his time rehearsing these thoughts to himself, thinking through these truths, pondering them, digesting them. That truth changes his mind, his perspective, and influences his thinking and even his emotional feelings. As he grows strong in the truth of God, he begins to process life differently. His paradigm of reality begins to change, to be more in line with God’s truth. And as that happens, his struggles, trials, and difficulties are put in their proper place.
This is not a process that the Christian accomplishes single-handedly. Even Jesus himself prays to the Father that this process would be accomplished. Prayer is significant and important in our fight against sin and false thinking – but the Word of God is also the vehicle which Jesus himself points to as the means of our sanctification.
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