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"O wretched man that I am!" There you have the words of a man who has come to the end of himself. He has in the previous verses described how he had struggled and wrestled in his own power to obey the holy law of God, and had failed.
We are continually warned that this is the great danger of the Christian life, to go again into bondage;
And every time you lose your temper, kneel down and understand that it never was meant by God that this was to be the state in which His child should remain.
The power to do is not a permanent gift, but must be each moment received from the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit who does this―the third Person of the Godhead. He it is who, when the heart is opened wide to receive Him, comes in and reigns there, and mortifies the deeds of the body, day by day, hour by hour, and moment by moment.
This is my message to every individual believer: "Nothing will help you unless you come to understand that you must live every day under the power of the Holy Spirit."
God wants you to be a living vessel in whom the power of the Spirit is to be manifested every hour and every moment of your life, and God will enable you to be that.
"How did you receive the Holy Spirit? Was it by the preaching of the law, or by the preaching of faith?"
All the feebleness in the Church is owing to the refusal of the Church to obey its God.
Oh, are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye perfecting in the flesh that which was begun in the Spirit? Let us bow in shame, and confess before God how our fleshly religion, our self-effort, and self-confidence, have been the cause of every failure.
God not only cares for the spiritual, but for the temporal also.
Have you ever thought that in every action of grace in your heart you have the whole omnipotence of God engaged to bless you?
Do you want to enter what people call "the higher life"? Then go a step lower down.
Do not try to stir and arouse faith from within. How often I have tried to do that, and made a fool of myself! You cannot stir up faith from the depths of your heart. Leave your heart, and look into the face of Christ, and listen to what He tells you about how He will keep you.
Sad thought, that the bearing of fruit should separate the branch from the vine! That must be because we have looked upon our work as something other than the branch bearing fruit.
