We talked about this sanctifying process.  We mentioned that the main problem we run into, especially Spirit-filled people, Pentecostals—once you can finally get a Pentecostal to rest and believe that they are saved by grace through faith, and I say that tongue and cheek, but there is too much truth to that.  For decades, those of us that sprang out of the Methodist revival, those that started the walk in the Spirit in the 1800s, early 1900s, baptized in the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues, have, for decades, mistakenly believed that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is what provided power for sanctification.  And it is not.  The baptism in the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues is the provision of God to enable us and empower us to carry out the ministry of Jesus on the earth.  He gives us power to be witnesses unto Him; amen?  

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is about an empowering for you and me to intercede and to pray.  We don’t know what to pray, but the Holy Ghost prays through us with utterances that are not discernable to the natural mind.  The baptism in the Holy Spirit and the power in the Holy Spirit is that enabling power to bring about, through our intercessions, self-edification.  "He that prays in an unknown tongue speaks unto God and gives thanks well;" amen?  It is a supernatural ability to worship, to praise God, to give thanks.  This is the refreshing: praying in the Holy Ghost.

Take some time today and pray in the Holy Ghost.  Pray in other tongues.  Let God pray through you.  Pray, and be edified, praise God!  What a gift God’s given us; amen?  Lets never in any way diminish the necessity and the partaking of that great gift, that ability to pray in the Spirit, but it’s not the power to sanctification.  We are sanctified exactly the same way we are justified, and it’s by faith and by reliance in the fact that Jesus has already accomplished that in redemption.  When He said, “It is finished,” beloved, it was finished; amen?  So, it’s a walk of faith, believing that this justification that’s been freely given us—what does it mean?  What does justification mean? What does this pronouncement to righteousness mean?  It means exactly what it’s declared:  We are no longer under the power of sin; amen?  We have been pronounced righteous.  Our sins have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west.  We make the declaration like the apostle, “It’s no longer I that live but Christ that liveth in me,” hallelujah!