Becoming a Saint One Day at a Time

God calls us each to holiness, to sainthood.

Every day, each experience we have helps us grow in our faith and in our purpose: To achieve holiness; to become saints; to fully become the person God intends us to be.

Each experience, then, has the potential to be “purgative.” Purgation is a process that gets us ready for God. Just as God’s grace was given to the martyrs, so it is given to us to grow in holiness and towards sainthood.

In this process, it is imperative to see God as the Potter and know that we are the clay. Each experience, then, is given over to God for His guidance and our growth. Sainthood means allowing God to mold us just as a Potter molds clay. (Isaiah 64:7)

Everything we experience is an opportunity to grow in our holiness. God can “make us worthy and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose” by giving us circumstances that cause us to depend on Him, to trust in Him, and to respond according to His will

In other words, through our circumstances we allow God to mold us into a loving, forgiving, humble person versus a bitter, frustrated, angry person. (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12)

During this process, our passions can take us places that we may not have ever dreamed of and thus do things that are completely unique to each of us. In these places we cannot be lukewarm Catholics—we are expected to be on fire for our faith so that God can use us to build up the kingdom! In this the Year of Faith, it is important to ask God to ignite our passions so that you can serve Him. It is time to pray that God saves us from a lukewarm existence where we neither serve Him nor grow in our holiness. (Revelation 3:15-16)

We each have received different blessings from God. Maybe we have good health or we have a rewarding career. Is intelligence or a great marriage our blessing? God’s blessings are another way that we can grow in holiness towards our sainthood. For God to mold us into sainthood with our blessings, we have to actively offer them back to God. We have to honor God with them. They aren’t meant to stockpile but to serve. (Proverbs 3:5-10)

For many of us, the most profound way that God is able to mold us is through our sufferings and our struggles. In our weakest, most vulnerable moments, when there seems to be no hope nor any other solution, we crawl to the foot of the cross and lay our cares upon Christ who died for us. Oftentimes, before we make that journey to the cross, we mistakenly think we are able to take care of ourselves and thus miss the opportunities to grow in holiness and towards sainthood. (2 Corinthians 12:10)

When we are pleading for God to reach down from heaven and touch us—and give us “signs”—it is probably time to take a step back and look at the people with whom our paths have crossed. God uses all the people—family and friends and critics and adversaries alike—to mold us. Each person has been placed in our life for a reason: to grow in holiness and become a saint. Whether the person has put a stone in our path making it more difficult, or has removed one, each person can help us each reach our goal of sainthood! (Mark 16:2-6)

In all things, through all circumstances, and throughout each day, God desires each of us to grow in holiness towards sainthood. This can only happen when we allow Him to be the Potter and recognize that we are the clay.

Cheryl Dickow

www.BezalelBooks.com

My Name Is Cheryl...And I Am A Weakling

My name is Cheryl.

And I am a weakling.

That’s the kind of group I want to be in: the kind of group where we each take the stand and own up to who we are—who we really are. Not the avatars we put out in the world through our blogs and our tweets; but who we are at the core.

After all, that’s where we will all ultimately connect, where we will all see one another as Christ sees us: as humanity steeped in the dignity of our creation but as a weak humanity in need of strength found in him who has offered us salvation.

I love being weak.

It means I’m “needy” which seems, to many people I am sure, to be an unpleasant state of being. And I’ve been trampled on more than a few times in my weakened state. I don’t always fight back when society would say that I should. I’ve been hurt and I’ve been wounded.

For years I tried to fight being weak. A bit ironic, right?

I wanted to be able to pick myself up by my bootstraps. I wanted to be able to say with confidence and pride that I was able to overcome life’s obstacles. However, at 54 years old, it occurs to me that being weak can be worn as a badge of honor (humbly, of course). In my weakness I have put aside my agenda and my goals—not in a defeated way but in the understanding that they can easily overcome me, they can quickly replace discernment of spirit, they can negate my need to find strength through Christ.

In admitting my weakness, I have become strong.

God has given me incredible strength through women who have become friends in the deepest sense of the word. They have surrounded me with love and have moved me forward, past pain and into God’s arms and his grace.

They’ve lowered me, in my weakened state, on the mat through the roof to Christ; and to them I owe everything. They have given me life and hope. Christ did not abandon me in my weakness but strengthened me through these women, these friends.

My name is Cheryl.

And I am a weakling.