The Believer's Part In Becoming Spirit-filled # 18

Life On The Highest Plane

Cleansing

Faith

Or do you say, "Just receiving the gifts of God's grace is too easy and lazy a way to live the Christian life. I think I ought to work a bit myself and strive to attain to a holy life. I do not like the idea of sitting passive and having spiritual blessings bestowed upon me." This sounds commendable but it runs counter to one of the greatest truths revealed in God's Word concerning faith. "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." There is not a ray of encouragement held out in God's Word to the man who strives to attain spirituality through his own self-effort. There are those who know that salvation cannot be secured by works but who think that spirituality may be so obtained. They know they can't be saved by works but they strive to grow by works. We do grow in spirituality by faith but we can never grow into spirituality by self-effort. Growth is "not of works lest any man should boast." "Ye can not by taking thought add one cubit to your stature." Making good resolutions, signing pledges, practicing self-denial during certain seasons, and all such self-manufactured methods of obtaining spirituality, will prove futile. If we could grow into holiness through any effort of our own how proud we should become and how independent of God.

Or you say, "Such a standard of spiritual life is too high for the ordinary  everyday Christian. It may be possible for the minister or the missionary but it is beyond my reach." Yes, it is beyond the reach of everything in you except your faith. But so long as God says, "All things are possible to him that believeth," the fullness of the Holy Spirit is possible to faith. God has no favorites and, what He offers to one believer, He offers to every believer irrespective of his calling or vocation.

Or you say, "I have been a Christian for years and I have never felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in me. Then how can I believe He will fill me? If I just felt He was dwelling within me, I would have faith to believe in His infilling." Your order then is feeling, faith, fact, which is the exact reverse of God's order. God says, "Fact, faith, feeling." We are ever prone to trust our feelings rather than God's facts and it is like having the roots of faith going down into quicksand. The state of the weather, the state of our health, the state of our pocketbook, these and  countless other variable conditions may affect our feelings. To place any confidence whatever in them is exceedingly disastrous. God would have you say, "It is a fact that the Holy Spirit dwells within me for God's Word says so. it is a fact that God wants me filled with the Spirit because He commands me to be filled and He has provided for that fullness. Therefore by faith I claim the fullness of the Holy Spirit." Whatever feeling God wishes to accompany or follow this act of faith will come in His own time and way.

So, my friend, if you are coming to God telling Him that you long to be filled with the Holy Spirit and yet saying any of these foolish things, either you are not honest and really do not want to be filled with the Holy Spirit or else you do not believe He is honest when He offers you the gift of the Spirit's fullness.

Are you honest? Do you truly want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Then acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit within you; thank God that He is there; and claim His fullness as your birthright. Take the gift, thank the Giver, and use the gift immediately in winning souls to Christ.

By an act of faith I receive the Spirit's fullness. By a constant succession of acts of faith, the Spirit's fullness becomes habitual. "Let me ask you to remember that there is no such thing as a once-for-all fullness; it is a continuous appropriation of a continuous supply from Jesus Christ Himself: - a moment-by-moment faith in a moment-by-moment filling. As I trust Him, He fills me; so long as I trust Him He fills me, the moment I begin to believe, that moment I begin to receive; and so long as I keep believing, praise the Lord! so long I keep receiving!

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 1 - "The Believer's Part in Remaining Spirit-filled = Obedience")