More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 7 - July 10, 2019
Are you willing to take up that command today? Will you say, “By God’s help I am going to obey. I will not give myself any rest until I have obeyed that command, until I am filled with the Spirit”?
Instead, we want to begin at once by saying that God has this message for every Christian: “My child, I want you to be filled with the Spirit.”
Let your answer be, “Father, I want it too. I am ready. I yield myself to obey You; let me be filled with Your Spirit.”
it does not mean a state of high excitement, a state of absolute perfection, or a state in which there will be no growth.
Being filled with the Spirit is simply this: having my whole nature yielded to His power.
Search me, O God, my actions try, And let my life appear As seen by Thine all-searching eye:
Search all my sense, and know my heart, Who only canst make known; And let the deep, the hidden part To me be fully shown. Throw light into the darkened cells, Where passion reigns within; Quicken my conscience till it feels The loathsomeness of sin.
Search all my thoughts, the secret springs, The motives that control; The chambers where polluted things Hold empire o’er the soul.
Search, till Your fiery glance hast cast Its holy light through all, And I by grace am brought at last Before Your face to fall.
Thus prostrate I shall learn of Thee What now I feebly prove— That God alone in Christ can be Unutterable love!
As God searches our hearts, we need to pay attention and notice the results. This will help us look into our hearts and lives and ask, “Am I ready and open so God can fill me with the Spirit?”
when a missionary preaches and leads people to Jesus, the missionary forms a class for these new Christians to teach them God’s Word, make them disciples, and prepare them for baptism. He may keep some of these young converts in the baptismal class for a year or longer to educate, train, and test them – to prepare them for the Christian life.
the early church were similar groups of new converts, called catechumens, who were instructed in the principles of the Christian faith and observed for a while to be sure their lives were consistent with those who were followers of Jesus.
I ask you to remember that the disciples were men who had forsaken all to follow Jesus.
They identified themselves with Him and gave themselves up entirely to follow Him. This is the first step to being filled with the Holy Spirit. We must forsake all to follow Christ.
Many Christians think of Jesus as someone who can save them and help them, but they practically deny Him as Master. They think they have a right to have their own will in a thousand things. They speak however they like, do whatever they want to do, and use their property and possessions however they choose.
Dear friends, maybe you have never sincerely said it because you never thought it was needed; but say it now if you mean it. “Oh Christ, let me be filled with the Holy Spirit. I will give up anything and everything. Accept my surrender of all to You!”
Some have never understood what it meant when Jesus said, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, and even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. . . . Any one of you that does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26, 33).
Not only were they men who had forsaken all to follow Jesus, but they were also intensely attached to Him. Jesus said, If ye love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter (John 14:15-16). They did love Him intensely.
true Christianity consists in an intense, close, personal attachment to Jesus and fellowship with Him every day.
We need to forsake all for the sake of Jesus. We need to let Him come into our lives and take possession of our hearts. Do we have a life of tender personal attachment to Jesus and joy in Him?
if we can honestly say, “It is what I am striving after. It is my main desire and goal. It is what I long for above everything else. Jesus Christ must have my heart and my will every moment of every day.”
At the beginning of their three years of instruction, they had to give up everything they possessed;
They had given up their nets, and their homes, and their friends, and that was right and good to do; but their self, their self-will and their self-desire remained strong all three years!
when He died upon the cross, they died a terrible death too. Think of Peter, the impulsive, hasty disciple who denied his Lord. Do you not think that in all the sorrows of those three days, from the crucifixion day to the resurrection day, Peter’s deepest and bitterest sorrow was this – the shame at the thought of how he had treated his Lord? Then he learned to despair of himself.
But Jesus took Peter’s self-will down with Him into death and the grave, and then Peter realized that there was in him, indeed, no good thing. He had learned to despair of himself.
are you willing that God, with His searchlight, should reveal to you how much self-will and self-trust is in you? Take, for instance, your judgment of people. You say whatever you like and whatever you think and even boast that you say whatever is on your mind,
If you want to be filled with the Spirit and the risen life of glory, you must first die to self.
If while He was on earth, He did such wonderful things for us, now that He is in glory, He will do things infinitely more wonderful.” And they waited for that.
“That promise of the filling of the Holy Spirit is for me. I accept it at the hand of Jesus.”
“He has promised, and He will do it.”
If there is any preparation that you still need, God knows about it. If there is anything that is to be opened up to you, He will do it, if you depend on Him to do it.
On the strength of that promise, the disciples waited in united prayer. Wait on God in prayer!
They expected God in heaven to do something.
Keswick teaching refers to the teaching and preaching at the annual Keswick Convention held in Keswick, England. Holiness, sanctification, and victorious Christian living are often emphasized at the convention. The annual conference was first held in 1875 and continues today.
Our God is willing and able to do above what we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).
Look first at the change that Pentecost wrought in the disciples’ relationship to Jesus. During His life on earth with them, He could not live within them. He was on the outside, separated from them, very near and very loving, but they did not really understand Christ’s teaching until the Holy Spirit came.
From this we learn that no outward instruction, even from Christ Himself or His words in Holy Scripture, can bring us the true and full blessing until the Holy Spirit works it in us.
At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you (John 14:20).
What does that mean? Christ in us, just the same as we are in a church building? No, we are in the building, but we can go out of it again. I live in a house, but I can leave that house and go elsewhere. The church building and the house and I are not vitally, organically connected. But, the Lord Jesus came to be part of those disciples and fill their hearts and thoughts and affections; what Peter and James and John had when they had Christ alongside of them, you and I have in a much larger measure, if we have the living Christ within us.
How did that change come? By the Holy Spirit. At that day – when the Spirit comes – ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you . . . and my Father will love him, and we wi...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Jesus said, He shall take of that which is mine and shall cause you to know it (John 16:14). What is the glory of Jesus? His love and His power. The Holy Spirit will reveal Christ in us, so that the wonderful love of Christ will be a possession and a reality in its divine nearness, and the power of Christ shall have the victory within us.
the presence of Jesus by the Holy Spirit is meant to be unbroken, continual, and forever.
No mother ever delighted in the baby in her arms as much as Jesus delights in you. He wants to be near you and to have unceasing fellowship with you.
The great work of Jesus is to take away sin. How does He take it away?
But the true taking away of sin is this: if the light comes in, the darkness is expelled. It is the presence of Jesus, dwelling in us by the Holy Spirit, that can make us holy.
“Lord, how can I be rid of this self-life?”
Have you been brought to say, “O God, my failure is all my self-confidence, self-will, and self-pleasing”? The accursed self will have its say in everything, and no power can expel it but the power of the presence of Jesus.
The third thought in regard to this wonderful blessedness of being filled with the Spirit is to look at the love that united them into one body.
He molded them into one body. They felt conscious that they were members of one Lord Jesus, and they loved each other, so they did things which were utterly unheard of at that time.
