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July 7 - July 10, 2019
Do you want the self-sacrificing love of Jesus to take possession of you to help you bear and forbear, so that with the patience and tenderness and gentleness and the very meekness of Christ, the Lamb of God, you are willing to be the helper and servant of everyone, however unlovable or unlovely?
Do you not feel that it would be an unutterable joy always to work in that spirit of absolute humility and dependence and nothingness, and with it all, to have a childlike trust that God will use you?
Aren’t many of you members of churches and congregations where you sit Sunday after Sunday with multitudes around you, and you know that some of them are unconverted?
Don’t we need power with a new love and boldness to pray and wait and work, to see that not only those who are in China, or Africa, or other parts of the world have the gospel, but that those with whom we associate every day also hear the gospel?
One thing is needed. The Spirit did it all on the day of Pentecost and afterwards. It was the Spirit who gave the boldness. The Spirit gave the wisdom. The Spirit gave the message. The Spirit gave the converting power.
Jesus did not send me to war at my own expense and in my own power. He did not ask me to go and preach and teach in my own strength. Jesus intended for me to have the fullness of the Holy Spirit, even when I am at home in my house teaching my children.
the one thing I need is the power of the Holy Spirit – to be filled with the Spirit.”
Let everyone who longs for this blessing now say, first of all, “I must be filled.” Say it to God in the depth of your heart. God commands it; I cannot live my life as I should live without it.
Then, say as the second step, “I may be filled.” It is possible that the promise is for me. Settle that, and let all doubt vanish.
Thirdly, say, “I must be filled.” To get the pearl of great price, you must sell all; you must give up everything. Are you willing? “Everything, Lord, if I may only have that. Lord, I am desperate to have it from You today.”
the last step. “I will be filled.” God wants to give it; I will have it. Never mind whether it comes tonight as a flood or in deep silence, or whether it does not come tonight, because God is preparing you for it tomorrow. Say, “I will be filled.”
Lord, will You not do it? My trembling heart says I will be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
The apostle Paul begins the chapter by telling these Corinthians there are two stages of Christian experience. Some Christians are carnal and some are spiritual.
They were Christians, real Christians, babes in Christ; but there was one deadly fault – they were carnal.
We must choose what style of Christian life we would like to live: the carnal life or the spiritual. Choose the spiritual, and God will be delighted to give it to you.
The first characteristic of the carnal state is a state of prolonged infancy.
There are two specific characteristics: a baby cannot help itself, and a baby cannot help others.
For you should now be teaching others, if we look at the time, yet you need to be taught again which are the first elements of the oracles of God and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong food. For any one that uses milk is not qualified in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe (Hebrews 5:12-13).
The second mark of a carnal state is that sin and failure are in control. Sin has the upper hand.
For whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men? (1 Corinthians 3:3).
You act like other people; you are not acting like heavenly, renewed followers of Jesus who live in the power and love of the Holy Spirit.
When people give way to their tempers and pride and envying and divisions; when you hear people saying hurtful things about others; when a man cannot open his whole heart to a brother who has done him wrong and forgive him; when a woman can speak about her neighbor with contempt and says things such as “That miserable lady”
if you live like the world, it is proof that the spirit of the world which is in the flesh is in you.
The flesh cannot delight in God;
let the Holy Spirit of God come with the condemnation of sin, and let the cross of Christ give the flesh over to death, and the Spirit of God will come in.
the carnal state can coexist with great spiritual gifts.
there is a great difference between spiritual gifts and spiritual graces,
I thank my God . . . that in every thing ye are enriched in him in all word and in all knowledge (1 Corinthians 1:4-5).
They delighted in the gifts but did not care for the graces.
“After all that God’s Spirit works in me as a matter of a spiritual gift, am I not possibly giving way to the flesh by lacking humility, love, purity, or holiness?” May God search us and try us for His name’s sake.
You might see hundreds of Christians hungering for the Word, and they listen and say, “What beautiful truths, what clear doctrines, what beautiful expositions of God’s Word!” and yet they do not get helped one bit; or they get helped for two or three weeks, and the blessing passes away.
Yep, I've seen many like that and it always breaks my heart and frustrates me. I feel like it's my fault, like I somehow missed something that would have made a difference.
An evil lurks at the bottom; the carnal state hinders the reception of spiritual truth.
I want to tell every honest, earnest heart that is longing to be spiritual that you can get out of the carnal state and into the spiritual state today. What is needed for that?
The first thing needed is that a person must have some sight of the spiritual life and some faith in it.
He did not think it was possible to live out the consecrated life.
Believe that if you are ready and willing, God is able to make a spiritual man or woman out of you.
The Word of God speaks about two powers of life – the flesh and the Spirit. The flesh is our life under the power of sin. The Spirit is God’s life coming to take the place of our life.
what the Bible tells us, is to give our whole life away unto death with every idea of strength or power; we must become nothing and receive the life of Christ and of the Spirit to do all for us.
you cannot reach it, but if you believe that God, in a supernatural way and according to His everlasting love, wants to give you the power of the Holy Spirit from heaven, then God will do more for you than you can ask or think.
If you will believe in the power of Christ’s blood to cleanse you and in the power of the glorified Christ to give His Spirit in your heart, you have taken the first step in the right direction.
He can fill you with the Spirit, for He has commanded you to be filled with the Spirit.
it is also necessary for a person to be convicted of his carnality.
As an unconverted person, you had to be convicted of sin and make confession of it; you all admit that.
You were convicted of the wickedness of sin and of the guilt and punishment of sin but very little conviction of inward, spiritual sins. You had no knowledge of them or your inward sinfulness. God does not usually give that until conversion.
after he has become a Christian, the Holy Spirit convicts him of the carnal, fleshly life; then the man begins to mourn over it and be ashamed of it and cry out like Paul, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
Believe that it is a blessing to be utterly broken down and to be utterly in despair; then you may learn to trust in God alone. Paul said, But we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:9).
We must cry out, “The flesh prevails and triumphs in me, and I cannot conquer it. Have mercy, my God! God help me!” And God will. Oh, become willing to bow before God in conviction and confession.
Another thing to know and believe is that we can pass from the carnal to the spiritual condition in one moment of time.
I cannot expect the same from a young Christian who has just recently known the Holy Spirit in His fullness, as I can expect from a mature Christian who has been filled with Him for twenty years.
But what I speak of is one step; you can change your place, and instead of standing in the carnal life, you can enter the spiritual life in one moment.
