Power for Service and Warfare

Power for Service and Warfare

Let us first note the conditions for Receiving the Holy Spirit. These we may summarize as (1) The putting away of every known sin, and (2) A definite trust in the power of the blood of Christ to cleanse the heart from the love of sin. To fall into known sin should be exceptions and not the rule. (3) A third condition for receiving the Holy Spirit as a Person is absolute obedience to the light that you have. You must at all costs do what you know to be right, as far as you have light. This means full surrender to do the will of God when you know it. This last part is of great importance. You can receive the Holy Spirit by faith according to the word or the Lord in Luke 11:13. All these conditions you can fulfill with your will. You can take these steps today and stand firm to them as a firm commitment with God. You can say now: “I will to put every known sin out of my life; I will to trust God to cleanse my heart from the love of sin; I will to be obedient to God right up to the hilt of what I know to be right; I will to be fully surrendered to do Your will; I will to take the Holy Spirit now, by deliberate faith, into my spirit, to fill me and to teach me.” And this can stand as a transaction with God from which you must never swerve. This is the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a Person. One often hears those who have received the Holy Spirit as a Person and have even walked in communion with God for some time may yet say, “I have no power for service, and I see that I need a real fullness of the Spirit for definite service.” What are the simple steps you take for this? Practically the same as the steps I have already named, but in a fuller degree of appropriation. The incoming of the Holy Spirit as a Person to dwell in you quickens your conscience, and you must take heed not to quench the voice of conscience. The more you do what you know to be right, the more clear and acute the knowledge will grow of what is right and wrong. There is nothing that dulls the working of the Holy Spirit in your conscience so much as to go against what you know to be right. As your conscience continually becomes more enlightened by doing what you know is right, the better you will be at discerning between right and wrong. Therefore, I press the point to all who desire to be filled with the Spirit: “Are you true to the light you have, and obedient to the voice of God in your conscience?” Set aside, for the moment, the question as to what the specific will of God for you is. If you are finding it difficult to discern His voice then stick to the simpler point. God’s will is that you should do right and that you be righteous. If you think you are to be told by the Holy Spirit every little thing all day long, then you become a mere machine and do not require any divine perception at all. There are occasions when the Holy Spirit through your spirit makes you know the special guidance of God, but for your daily life God guides through your God-enlightened perceptions of right and wrong. As you tread this same path, your senses will, by reason of use, be exercised to discern between good and evil. “These are important pre-conditions for receiving an enduement of the Spirit. Those who have received the Holy Spirit as a Person and have even walked in communion with God for some time may yet say, “I have no power for service, and I see that I need a real fullness of the Spirit for definite service.” What are the simple steps you take for this? Practically the same as the steps I have already named, but in a fuller degree of appropriation, and with the addition of a full surrender to God for any possible kind of services He wishes you to do, without any personal bias. The first was full surrender to God to do His will in your daily life. Now it is full surrender to God for God to choose the service for you. So that if He wishes you to go to the kitchen to serve Him there, you will be as contented with it as if He had said, “Go up to that platform to give My messages.” There are many believers who want a baptism of the Holy Spirit to make them successful; some want it to save them the trouble of reading their Bibles and preparing for a meeting. They say, “It would be delightful to be able to stand up and speak as Peter did,” but they forget the preliminary training he had had for three years by the Lord and, after the resurrection, the opening of his understanding to understand the Scriptures. There are many believers who want a baptism of the Holy Spirit to make them popular and successful. If the motive is not pure, you will not achieve any fullness.

To make it clear to you, I will just go over some points which show the steps that God led me along—I have put them together in their places.

(1) Surrender to God, and victory over sin as the result of that commitment. This lasted some years; then came (2) the definite reception of the Holy Spirit as a Person, with the resulting peace, joy, etc. But still no power to witness in aggressive power. Some years later came (3) the conviction of the need for an enduement of power. For three years before this I tossed over the question, “Is it possible?” Then I sank under the thought, “It is not for believers now.” But I could not rest. Back came the cry, “Is there not a fullness of the Spirit that will release me for service?” until I caught sight of it in another, and then I said with assurance, “Now I know. What that soul has is what I want.” Let me say, before we go one step further, that to deal effectually with God on this matter, you must come to a deep conviction that there is an enduement of power for you personally. You cannot make headway until that is settled. I lost, as I have said, three years over it. I read books on the subject until I was worn out with disappointment, for no one seemed to say clearly how this enduement could be obtained. Again, I was confused, because some people said there was an “empowerment” and others said there was not; and I was torn with questions until there came absolute conviction by just a glimpse in another of what I was after. Then I said, “I will go straight to God and ask Him to prove to me whether there is for me an enduement for service that will liberate me in utterance as it did Peter at Pentecost. I will put it to the proof for myself.” Away went the books and away went the various views and theories. In desperation I said, “I will go to God.” From this time, I never admitted another question but set myself with steady determination to prove for myself if there was anything in it. Then slowly, as I held on to God, there grew within me a deepening purpose, that at all costs I would obtain this enduement for service—until at last there came such a cry to God for it as the supreme thing I wanted that I could say He might take away all things from me if only He would answer this cry! It was a long time before it got to that, but it brought about such an absolute surrender of my will to God that I have never had to fight a battle of “surrender of will” from that time. I was able to say He could do absolutely what He liked with my life, if He would only give to me that liberation of the Holy Spirit that Peter knew at Pentecost. Peter was the pattern I put before the Lord. I saw that Peter was not “nervous” that day, and I intensely felt my great need was to be delivered from an overpowering nervousness and a kind of paralysis in speech that fairly mastered me. I cried, “I want the deliverance that Peter got at Pentecost.

I do not care what Christians call it. If ‘the baptism of the Spirit’ is not the right term, give me the right words to use. I do not care about the words, but I want the thing.” In this way I held on to God with an intensity which caused “people” to fall away from my mind—and all they said about this great liberation for service which I was seeking. Then a deep rest came into me that God would do what I had asked, and I could wait His way and time, I had no more “agonies” after that. Thus, I learned the true meaning of “waiting” for the “promise of the Father.” I had reached a quiet attitude of dependence upon God, that He would answer my cry in His own time. Then I went on with my usual work, not indifferent, but with a steady hold of faith that at some time “empowerment” would come. But I was sorely tested. My experience after that was a deeper and deeper sense of failure. Everything seemed to be worse and worse instead of better and better, as I thought it would be after such a tremendous and deliberate commitment to God. I appeared to have lost all I already had. I grew worse and worse in nervousness and “horror” in speaking to my Bible Class, and everything seemed a failure.

Then one day there came a most awful revelation of the way in which my committed “self” permeated my Christian work, in the sense of self-energy. The unveiling was truly a horror to me and brought me in deep abasement to the blood of Christ for cleansing. It was the precious blood of Christ which did the deep work of cleansing my heart from the love of sin when I received the Holy Spirit as a Person, but now Romans 6:6-11 became a power to me, and I knew the meaning of “our old man was crucified with Him . . .” After this there was a pause, and for weeks and weeks I left the matter with God. It was settled with Him, and He was just to answer my cry in His own way. Then there came two or three questions to me distinctly put to me by the Spirit of God. The first was: “If I answer your cry, are you willing to be unpopular? Be rejected?

I had never thought of that. Unpopular? Be rejected? Well, yes, I am willing. I never faced it before, but I am willing. The next question that came was this: “Would you seek this baptism of the Holy Spirit if it meant failure instead of success?” That was a new light again. I had never thought of such a thing. I had always thought it meant success. But I agreed. I said, “Yes. I choose to be a failure if it be God’s will.” Last came the third query: “Are you willing to have no experience?” “But,” I said, “I always thought people who had the baptism of the Spirit had an experience? How am I to know if I have had it if I do not get an experience?” “Are you willing to walk in bare faith on My word and never have any wonderful experience?” “Yes.” The words struck me: “Thou shalt not see wind nor rain, but the valley shall be filled.” (2 Kings 3:17) “Shall not see!” Yes, I agree to that. I shall see nothing, but the “valley”—my Bible Class—others—shall be filled. Then there came the morning when I knew that God had answered my prayer. It was sudden, and when I was not especially thinking about the matter. I knew in my spirit that He had come. My Bible became like a living thing and was flooded with light. Christ suddenly became to me a real Person. I could not explain how I knew, but He became real to me. When I went to my Bible Class I found myself able to speak of the Spirit at the back of it, until souls were convicted of sin on every side. Power in prayer, so it seemed I only needed to ask and have. My spirit took its way to God freed from every fetter that held it to anything on earth. From that time the whole of my work and service was lifted to a different plane. Instead of a dead prayer meeting we had prayer meetings so filled with life and freedom of utterance that we outdid one another glorifying God. We could spend three hours in prayer with ease, and with effective results. Before long the praying men and women were out in the streets seeking to win souls for Christ! Any genuine outpouring of the Spirit draws people to Christ!

Are you willing to let God remove all the obstacles in you that hinder Him from fulfilling His plans with you?