Dominican Republic Mission Trip
The Sanctification Model
This week while on our mission trip to the Dominican Republic, where we are serving the Fundacion Red de Misericordia (FRM), the Mercy Network Foundation, an orphanage for Dominican children, I am teaching the care staff, support staff, and administration of FRM. The two primary goals for teaching this week include 1) new teaching on sexual addiction and 2) continued education on sanctification. Regarding sexual addiction, sadly many of the children at the orphanage have undergone sexual trauma. The teaching will focus on how to help the care givers know both 1) how to think about the trauma biblically and 2) a biblical worldview regarding sex. Today’s focus is on continued education on sanctification.
The Sanctification Model
The sanctification model taught at FRM is from the late David Powlison’s work in his Dynamics of Biblical Change course. Paul Tripp and Tim Lane wrote about Powlison’s model in How People Change. This same model is a foundational to what I teach at Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary as well.
Since the inception of this orphanage, Senora Olga Arocha has taught this model as the way to understand how to help children change for the glory of God.
Today, I will do continuing education related to this model. We will discuss the importance of the heart in the change process. Further, we will go over every element of this model with the staff.
Individual Elements
Powlison’s model comes from Jeremiah 17:5-10.
Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.
For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
In a salt land which is not inhabited.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose hope is the Lord.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit.
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings. (Jeremiah 17:5-10)
In the diagram, the sun represents the pressures in life. As the pressures in life provide heat to the heart or roots, a heart honoring Jesus Christ produces spiritual fruit of righteousness, and a heart struggling to honor Jesus Christ produces fruit from the cactus. The cross in the middle of the diagram is what provides for the change from one side to the other, or from a life that dishonors God to a life which honors God. Further, as fruit is produced, the biblical laws of sowing and reaping impact the situational heat as consequences of either righteousness or works of the flesh. All of this cycle of sanctification takes place in the circle of God’s providential care.
For the students who are here with us on the mission trip, this demonstrates how what they learn in the classroom transfers cross culturally into another situation and language.
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