Which Helps Our Inner Healing More: Conversion or Sanctification?

The key to healing the wounds of one’s soul is not just a conversion experience.   We know that “conversion” is defined as a spiritual change from sinfulness to righteousness, seen often as an alteration in one’s attitude or character.  Clearly a single moment in one’s life when conversion occurs is the unlocking of the door to one’s ultimate healing.  BUT to be truly healed or sanctified, to be made holy in every way, one undergoes a process, not a single event.  We see the principle of continuous cleansing or healing when we read 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.”  Here, the Lord is continuously at work “making one holy” and “keeping one blameless.”The world’s view of healing is fixing something within the soul that is broken. But this way does not relying on God’s involvement during the repair.  The end result of healing from the world’s point of view is this:  the wounded person ends up trusting the flesh. Thus, she has a renewed confidence in her “fixed-up”, freshly healed self-image.  But this approach is doomed to failure because it leaves God out of the equation. In the book Transforming the Inner Man, the authors describe the process of inner healing as that of “death and rebirth.”  The LORD’s view of healing is “leaving the broken part right there in place [within the person], and overcoming it [the wound] by His nature.” They suggest,“We’ll use the broken thing to give glory to God, and from that awareness of sin we will build a trust every day anew in God’s Holy Spirit.”That daily trusting is true sanctification, the key to inner healing.Transformation takes place — not because the person’s soul has been patched up in conformity with the world — but because the person has been changed in a profound intimacy with his Creator.  The power of the resurrection is applied to the deadness in the person’s soul, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Thus, “the healing process” is really a rebirth, a repeated, continuous, daily experience of “conversion”.I believe this new insight is really important.  My “soul-hurts” and my “fleshly drives” may be healing up, but they don’t completely go away.  So it is a powerful concept to me to “nail them to the cross daily.”  I must actively consider them dead and buried.Now I take the next step. I connect with the power of God at a deep level.  There I ask Him to reveal His glory in the midst of my mess, and because of my mess.  Like Isaiah said, “From ashes comes beauty.”    Hallelujah — what freedom.In Christ,