Kindle Notes & Highlights
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August 25 - November 25, 2019
Scripture teaches us, but the Holy Spirit can personally reveal to us the truths contained therein.
Oh, how different our lives would be, how free from anxiety, depression, jealousy, and discontent, how full of joy and praise, how easy to pray, how quick to praise, if only we could grasp what God has done for us, given us, made us in Christ. But we need the Spirit to take the Word of God and break through those years of lies and sin to help us truly know what He has laid up for us in our heavenly chests.
Christians who are filled with the Holy Spirit will be explosive; they will make a noise and have an impact. Their words, lives, and presence will change things.
This Holy Spirit power was always the mark of the men and women of God in Scripture—power to challenge crooked kings, power to open up seas, power to stop the rain, power to raise the dead, power to overcome one’s enemies, power to establish God’s kingdom, power to witness to Christ, power to renounce the world, the flesh, and the Devil,
John Stott has written, “What we need is not more learning, not more eloquence, not more persuasion, not more organization, but more power from the Holy Spirit.”
God is a promise-maker and a promise-keeper, but are we promise-seekers and promise-takers? When
Testament, God appears to Solomon at night (2 Chron. 1:7) and asks him to ask: “Ask. What shall I give you?” Solomon asks for wisdom and knowledge, and because he does not ask for riches or power over his enemies, God is pleased to grant him this, and
With God we get not only more than we deserve, but more than we expect. If God were to appear to you tonight, what would you ask Him for?
Many Christians seem blind to the promises and prayers in Scripture that indicate an ever-increasing deepening in our experience of God, knowledge of God, and power from God.
Prayer, silence, and meditation are the means for practicing the presence of God.
Richard Foster believes that we live in a day when the Spirit of God is seeking to take all that is divinely authentic in each tradition and to join these various streams into one mighty river of blessing:
But some of us do not want that. We want to be in control, we want to be lord, we want to indulge the flesh, we do not want to witness and work for Christ, we want God on our terms and our conditions. We do not want Him interfering, going where He is not welcome. We want Him to serve us, not us to serve Him. We want to ask Him for things, not Him to ask us. We want a certain autonomy, a day off, some off-limits
The church is full of saved but stunted spiritual pygmies.
“Things not surrendered, indulgences retained against light, possessions held or selfish ends—these must all be surrendered to the supreme authority of Christ. For until he is exalted, crowned, glorified, there can be no Pentecost.”5
“Have you surrendered your will, emotions, intellect?”
will find the Spirit putting His finger on attitudes, passions, conversations, and motivations. The Spirit shines the spotlight on our sins of commission (what we do) and our sins of omission (what we fail to do).
Scripture and tradition consistently tell us that those who gained most of God and were used most by God went most for God.
think God is unimpressed as well. I do not want to be another name in a list with nothing to add to it. I want a testimony, I want to be an illustration, I want my life to be a story to the glory of God’s grace.
Curiosity killed the cat, and mediocrity kills the church.
But Joshua put first things first. Time with God was paramount.
As Joshua abided in His presence, God was speaking, showing him things, honing his character, preparing him to lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land. It was those times in the trysting tent that trained and tempered Joshua to be the leader he later became.
“Longing is the umbilical cord of the higher life.”
Sunday from the age of two weeks until my midteens. During those childhood days, church was a duty rather than a delight, an “ought” rather than a “want.”
At the age of eleven I was immersed in the baptistery at the front of Saltash Baptist Church on public profession of my faith. But like many others, I began to drift
But key to my return was finding an expression of Christianity that was biblically authentic, vigorous, and vital, not sterile as I had previously known—a church where God was immanent.
The Christian life is one in which we can know intimately the Comforter with us, often through periods of great pain, filling our faltering faith with His fullness, equipping us for service.
ignite to the extent that we delight in God.
“I found that believers are ready to get involved in almost any activity which looks spiritual but allows them to escape their responsibility to the gospel.”21
desires an experience of the Holy Spirit for its own sake, a self-indulgence with no intention to engage in mission.
“No one may expect to be filled with the Spirit if he is not willing to be used in missions.”30 We must be careful not to pray “Come Holy Spirit” unless we are prepared to “Go with the Holy Spirit.”
Let us press beyond these trimmings for God Himself—any encounter with God must be judged on its fruit and faithfulness, never on mere feelings or phenomena.
divine economy: The Father sent the Son, the Father and the Son sent the Spirit, and the Spirit sends the church.
Those who claim to have been filled with the Spirit but do not overflow in witness are deceiving themselves. They know nothing of “Calvary love” or “Pentecost fire.”
The church does not need more academic degrees; she needs heating up by degree—more fire that she might be ablaze by the Spirit
longer we spend in prayer, drawing near to God, the more we are
We need to ask ourselves what obstacles in our own personal lives, church life, and denominational life are militating against unity. Then we must repent of our sin, pride, and divisions, and seek in practical ways to restore broken bridges,
Prayer is the key to personal renewal and public revival.
It strikes me that the charismatic and Pentecostal tradition has the right experience but a flawed doctrine, while the conservative evangelicals have the right doctrine but often a flawed experience.
The glory of the Spirit-filled life flows from the agony of the cross-shaped life.
The Spirit-filled Christian will constantly be drawn to the cross. The person who lives and loves the cross will constantly be drawn to a deeper understanding and experience of the Spirit. There is a mutual, reciprocal, and indivisible relationship between the cross and Spirit.
soon realized how much my identity and security derived from what I did for Christ rather than from who I am in Christ.
Kierkegaard, that “God creates everything out of nothing (ex nihilo)—and everything which God is to use he first reduces to nothing.”
Brokenness is the key concept to personal revival spilling over to impact society.
Spirit comes through being broken at the cross and come into that place of purity and power.
Spiritual barrenness must lead us to brokenness at the cross, from which flows forgiveness and fruitfulness.
fresh outpourings of the Spirit often come to a person or a group of people who come to a new place of surrender to God.
“There was a day when I died: died to George Müller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends, and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.”
As we come to the cross, as we submit to His will, as we repent and renounce sin, as we die another day, as we receive the Holy Spirit, as we choose to walk in the Spirit, so we become who we are, and the life and glory of God are manifested through us.
If we desire more of the Spirit, more of the Father’s glory, more of the power of the resurrection, then we must identify more with Christ in His death at Calvary—we must own our own death.
This comes only as we walk to, kneel before, work in, and walk out our Calvary.
