More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
December 18, 2022 - January 7, 2023
To prevent wrong impressions of what it means to be filled with the Spirit, let me just say that it does not mean a state of high excitement, a state of absolute perfection, or a state in which there will be no growth. No. Being filled with the Spirit is simply this: having my whole nature yielded to His power. When the whole soul is yielded to the Holy Spirit, God Himself will fill it.
We do not usually see our hearts as God sees them, so we need God to search us.
In 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.
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.
Her answer was simple and ready and cheerful. “It is just this,” she said. “It is the personal fellowship with Jesus.”
Time after time contention arose among them as to who should be the greatest. At the table at the Last Supper, they were still talking about who would be first among them. They had not given up self. As was made plain more than once, they struggled to live in the Spirit of Jesus!
Then he learned to despair of himself. At the Last Supper, how self-confident he had been! Though all men shall be offended in thee, yet I will never be offended (Matthew 26:33). 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.
If you want to be filled with the Spirit and the risen life of glory, you must first die to self.
Let me say for your encouragement that a promise from God is worth just as much as a fulfilment. A promise brings you into direct contact with God, so honor Him by trusting the promise and obeying Him. 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. Trust the promise and say, “This fullness of the Holy Spirit is for me.”
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. Take that in, beloved believer, and say, “If that is possible, God helping me, I must have this filling of the Holy Spirit, so I may always have Jesus dwelling in my heart.”
You might get stuck on some theological definition as to how it is all done, how much sin remains, and how much there is cast out; but what we want you to believe is that even though you cannot explain and expound it all, believe that the Spirit of holiness which will be given is the holiness of Jesus in your heart and be content with that. Filled with the Spirit, you have within you the power of the holiness of God to do the blessed work of sanctification.
It is shameful how many divisions there are in Christ’s church on earth! Even among those who profess to love God and profess holiness and entire consecration, what divisions unceasingly come! It is such a sad thing.
Then you need to be filled with the Spirit. Cry for it, claim it, accept it, and do not rest until you have it.
Let me ask if you are prepared to receive this from our Jesus. He loves to give it. God delights in nothing so much as to honor His Son, and we honor Jesus when souls are filled with the Holy Spirit, because then He proves what He can do for them. Will we not claim it?
“I must be filled.”
“I may be filled.”
“I must be filled.” To get the pearl of great price, you must sell
“I will be filled.”
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.
Now, what are the characteristics of a baby? There are two specific characteristics: a baby cannot help itself, and a baby cannot help others.
Take care that the reason you go to church is not to get your nurses to give you spiritual meat, because you cannot or will not feed yourself. Praise God for the preaching of the gospel and for the fellowship of Christians; but you know that a baby always keeps the house busy, and very often the mother cannot go out because of the baby, or a babysitter must be there. Someone must always care for the baby. You cannot leave the baby alone.
You cannot force it. Let the ax come to the root of the tree; cut down the carnal mind. How can you cut it down? You cannot, but 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. Then you will learn to love prayer and love God and love your neighbor, and you will be possessed with humility and spiritual mindedness and heavenly mindedness.” The carnal state is the root of every sin.
The carnal state makes it impossible for a person to receive spiritual truth.
Now come the very important and solemn questions: Is it possible for a person to get out of the carnal and into the spiritual state? How is it possible?
Believe that if you are ready and willing, God is able to make a spiritual man or woman out of you. Try to get a vision of the spiritual life.
Though you should feel ever so wretched, hold fast to Jesus. He can fill you with the Spirit, for He has commanded you to be filled with the Spirit.
That is the place we must come to under conviction of our carnality. 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.
Once the disease was cured, then growth could come. Now, the carnal state is a state of terrible disease. The carnal Christian is a baby in Christ. He is a child of God, but he has this terrible disease, and consequently he cannot grow. How is the healing to come?
The spiritual man has not reached final perfection. There is abundant room for growth, but if you look at him, the main quality of his nature and conduct is that he is a man given up to the Spirit of God. He is not perfect, but he is a man who has taken the right position and has said, “Lord God, I have given myself to be led by Your Spirit. You have accepted me and blessed me, and the Holy Spirit now leads me.”
That brings me to my last thought. The first was that a person must see the spiritual life; the second, a person must be convicted of and confess his carnal state; the third, a person must see that it is but one step from the one to the other; and lastly, he must take the decisive step in the faith that Christ is able to keep him.
Ten men said in effect, “We can never conquer those people.” Two men said, “We are able, for God has promised.” Step out now upon the promises of God. Listen to God’s Word: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ, Jesus, has made me free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). Take a word like that, and claim that God will do for you through His Holy Spirit what He has offered you.
Open your hearts and be filled with the Spirit. Come and trust the blood of Christ for cleansing, confess the carnality of every sin, and cast them into the fountain of the blood; then believe in the living Christ to bless you with the blessing of His Spirit.
We know that our great Commander is in charge, and even His generals and officers do not always know the plans. They often receive sealed orders, and they have to wait on Him for what He gives them as orders.
We ask God to bless our feeble efforts, instead of absolutely refusing to go unless God goes before us.
We have not learned to wait upon Him. We need to make our solemn declaration before God, “O God, we want to wait more for You to show us Your will.”
Here we come to the very root, the very life of our need as workers. The question we must now answer is, “What is needed so the power of God can rest upon us more mightily and the blessing of God can be poured out more abundantly among those poor wretched people and perishing sinners among whom we labor?”
it is the wonderful power that prayer is meant to have in the kingdom. We have so little availed ourselves of it.
The Holy Spirit comes in answer to believing prayer.
“God, forgive me that I have not honored the Holy Spirit as I should have done, that I have grieved Him, that I have allowed self and the flesh and my own will to work where the Holy Spirit should have been honored. May You forgive me that I have allowed self and the flesh and the will to have the place that You intended for the Holy Spirit.”
Peter was not in a proper state to follow Christ, because he had not been brought to the end of himself; he did not know himself, and he therefore could not follow Christ. But when he went out and wept bitterly, then came the great change.
Peter trusted in himself and his own thoughts about divine things.
Notice how Christ used that word deny twice. He told Peter the first time to deny self. He said to Peter the second time, Thou shalt deny Me. It is either one or the other.
Christ told Peter to deny himself, and in spite of that, he denied his Lord.
What a great pity it would be if we lived our entire Christian life in the flesh, too proud to realize it and too busy to honestly and fervently seek God.
My lord, O king, according to Your word, I am thine and all that I have, as the words of absolute surrender with which every child of God ought to yield himself to his Father.
