The Prerequisite to Fullness # 3

The Measure of Cleansing

Perhaps  you have been praying fervently for the fullness of the Holy Spirit while all the time there has been the continued indulgence of some known sin, the willful disobedience of some known command, or the deliberate resistance to God's clearly revealed will. If so, God is saying to you just now, "Get thee up, wherefore liest thou upon thy face. Thou hast sinned, neither will I be with you any more except ye destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify yourselves, thou canst not stand before thine enemies until ye take away the accursed thing from among you" (Josh. 7:10-13). So long as you are living with a grieved or a quenched Spirit you cannot be filled. To be filled one must be cleansed.

I looked the other day upon the snow-clad summit of the Silberhorn as it glistened in the sun. It was a marvelous symbol of purity. What was the cause of its spotlessness? There was nothing between it and the Heaven above. It lay open to receive the unstained, unsullied snow sent down from Heaven. Oh! that your heart and mine might be as pure. And they may be if thee is no known sin between God and us and our lives lay open to the moment by moment infilling of the blessed Holy Spirit.

The Believer's Part in Becoming Spirit-Filled

Yielding

In the two wondrous gifts of His Son and His Spirit God has made perfect provision for a life of true spirituality. God's twofold gift to us was not a partial gift. When He gave Christ He gave all of Christ; when He gave the Holy Spirit He gave all of the Holy Spirit. He withheld nothing from us. Love not only gave its best but its all. When God gave Christ to us He gave Him in all the fullness of His perfect life and His perfected work. When God gave the Holy Spirit He gave Him to indwell, to infill and to empower. God is not a grudging Giver. In the glorified Christ through the fullness of the Holy Spirit He has given all that He has to give to make us spiritual. This is the perfection of grace, the acme even of divine giving.

God has made the provision but you must make the decision whether you will be Spirit-filled or not. There is a place in God's dealings with men beyond which He cannot go. He Himself set this boundary line in man's right to will. He sets this boundary line in man's right to will. He sets the feast before you but He will not compel you to eat. He opens the door into the abundant life but He will not coerce you to enter. He places in the bank of God a deposit that makes you a spiritual multimillionaire but He cannot write your checks. God has done His part, now you must do yours.

The responsibility for fullness or lack of fullness is now in your hands. He will be limited in the giving of the fullness of His Spirit by one thing only - the room given to Him to fill. "You may have all the fullness you will make room for." To be Spirit-filled requires your active, hearty cooperation with God. You have a very clearly defined part in becoming spiritual.

Yielding - The Believer's Part in Becoming Spirit-filled.

The basic principle in a spiritual life lies in its control. The life of the natural man is wholly in the control of "the old man"; the life of the carnal Christian is partially in the control of "self". If one determines to become a Spirit-filled Christian the right to reign must be taken altogether from "the old man" and given into the hands of the Lord Jesus. What the Holy Spirit wishes the believer to do and what He works to bring him to do, is to cooperate with Him in this matter by refusing deliberately the further reign of "self" and by choosing voluntarily the sovereignty of Christ over his life, yielding to Him as Lord and Master.

Romans 6:16, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness."

Romans 6:19, "I speak after manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness."

To yield the life unto God is the first step in a continuous walk in the Spirit. This step takes us by our own choice out of the realm of self-will into the realm of God's will. It takes us back to our God-intended, God-provided center. It gives us a base for all future growth in spiritual things. It furnishes us with new headquarters from which all our future life will be directed. In yielding to Christ we definitely align ourselves with the perfect will of God and choose it to be the rule of our lives in all things forever afterward. We adopt the language of Christ which, whether in the great crises of life such as those in the wilderness, in Gethsemane or on Calvary, or in the ordinary walk and work of daily life in the carpenter shop and the home, was invariably "Thy will be done." In yielding to the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ we deliberately choose from that time on to do His will instead of our own in all things and for all time.

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 4 - "The Life Yielded - Why?")