Saint-i-fication

Today was my first day teaching teen Sunday school. We talked about sanctification, which is a big word that old Presbyterians like to use to mean 'saint-i-fication' or the process of becoming a saint.

.

What is a saint? Many people might describe a saint as a good and pure person or a great church leader. Someone who really has their life together. Today we talked about a saint who was a smart alek, a gang member, and a thief. He lived with a woman he wasn’t married to, had an illegitimate child, and was a member of a cult!

.

St. Augustine of Hippo was born in North Africa about 350 years after Jesus. He became famous for being a church leader and writer and for influencing the teaching and preaching of Martin Luther and John Calvin (who started the Protestant Reformation), and John Knox (who started the Presbyterian church and influenced the Puritans that settled America). So, a lot of these great ideas about Christianity can be traced back to Augustine of Hippo. So, how did such a messed up guy get to be a saint and do so much good?

.

Three things: Prayer, Scripture, and Grace.

.

Prayer

.

Augustine wrote in his autobiography about his mother, Monica. Monica continually prayed for Augustine and tried to get him to go to church. Monica prayed so powerfully that her non-Christian husband and her mean mother-in-law became Christian and finally, so did Augustine. After Augustine finally got his life straightened out, he told Monica, “It was impossible for the child of so many tears to perish.”

.

I bet your parents pray for you a lot like Monica prayed for Augustine
.
Scripture

.

It is impossible to read a page of Augustine’s autobiography without reading scripture. Augustine must have read scripture so much that he started to think and talk in scripture. Check out the first few sentences of his autobiography:

Great are You, oh Lord, and exceedingly worthy to be praised! Your power is immense and your wisdom is beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation long to praise You. We, who carry our mortality around with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud.

In this one little passage, he summarizes and paraphrases several passages of scripture. Compare the following verses to what Augustine wrote:

Psa 47:2 For the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth.

Psa 48:1 ...Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God!...

Psa 96:4 For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.

2Co 4:8-10 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

1Pe 5:5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

And it is not like he was copying scriptures out of his bible – you can tell, since these are not exact quotes. He was writing what he was thinking but he was thinking along the same lines as scripture. Augustine has read scripture so much that it had molded his mind to be like scripture.

.

We can start getting our minds like God wants them to be by reading the Bible regularly.

.

Grace
.

Also in his autobiography, Augustine writes that God gave him a vision in a garden.

I was … weeping … when suddenly I heard the voice of a [child]… chanting over and over again, "Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it." … I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible … I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof."

Even as messed up as Augustine’s life was, he could see that God was speaking directly to him through the words of the bible. God had chosen Augustine and had already set him aside to do some good work.

.

That is what being a saint really means – being set apart for some uncommon, special use. So, you don't have to be holier-than-thou or perfect. You just have to accept that you are set aside for some special purpose for God's use, and that through prayer, scripture, and grace, God will be getting you ready to do that special work..

.

In this process of being sanctified, or 'saint-i-fied,' the grace is the part that God does and the prayer and scripture reading is the part that we do.

.

Over the next few weeks I want to talk about how we can get better at prayer and scripture reading.