The Holy Spirit
THE HOLY SPIRIT
A Personal Word [about the Holy Spirit]
Acts 4:20; Luke 1:2; Acts 1:8
I was a Christian for a year or more when one day I looked at the library shelf and was struck with the title of a book, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life (Hannah Whitall Smith, 1885).
As I read it, my heart was set on fire to find this life of freedom and fullness. I reached page 42 when the Inner Voice said very distinctly, “Now is the time to find.” I pleaded that I did not know what I wanted, that when I finished it [the book], I would seek. But the Inner Voice was imperious, “Now is the time to seek.”
I tried to read on, but the words seemed blurred. I was up against a divine insistence, so closed the book, dropped on my knees, and asked, “What shall I do?” The Voice replied, “Will you give me your all—your very all?”
After a moment’s hesitation I replied, “I will.”
“Then take my all, you are cleansed,” the Voice said with a strange, inviting firmness.
“I believe it,” I said and arose from my knees. I walked around the room affirming it over and over, and pushing my hands away from me as if to push away my doubt. This I did for ten minutes, when suddenly I was filled with a strange refining fire that seemed to course through every portion of my being in cleansing waves. It was all very quiet and I had hold of myself, and yet the divine waves could be felt from the inmost center of my being to my fingertips. My whole being was being fused into one, and through the whole there was a sense of sacredness and awe and the most exquisite joy.
Very emotional? So be it! But I knew then, and know now, that I was not being merely emotionally stirred, but the very sources of my life were being cleansed and were taken possession of by Life itself. My will was just as much involved as my emotion. The fact is the whole of life was on a permanently higher level.
Victorious Living
(Week 16, Saturday)
The Power That Gives Release
John 4:14; Acts 1:8; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17), freedom from cramping bandages and inhibitions and paralyzing sins.
But this age has lost grip upon the Holy Spirit. We have taught this age to follow Jesus as an example, and it has produced a pale, colorless Christianity. For the gospel does not ask you to follow Jesus as an example; it offers you the resources of the Holy Spirit in the inner life and then you follow Jesus because of an impulsion. This kind of Christianity becomes colorful and red-blooded. It has resources, therefore power.
A modern translation of the Gospels spells the “holy spirit” thus, without capitals. That is symbolic of what has happened to this age. It has turned the Holy Spirit into a “holy spirit,” a vague, impersonal influence, to our impoverishment. That is not the Holy Spirit of the Acts of the Apostles. There the Holy Spirit was no mere vague, impersonal influence; There the Holy Spirit was God meeting them inwardly, reinforcing, cleansing, fusing the soul forces into a loving unity, and setting them ablaze with God.
When the disciples got hold of that secret [the Holy Spirit] at Pentecost, they were immediately and decisively freed from cramping inhibitions and spiritual bondages and became flaming evangels of the Good News. We need to rediscover the actual resources of the Holy Spirit; or else, we remain in bondage.
Victorious Living
(Week 38, Friday)
The Holy Spirit Works in the Subconscious
John 14:25; 15:25; 16:7-14
Here is where the Christian Church is weakest. It believes in and teaches the Holy Spirit—partly. The disciples were at this stage when Jesus said to them: “He [the Holy Spirit] remains with you and will be within you” (John 14:17 Moffatt). The Holy Spirit was with them, but not within them. The same is true today. Most Christians know the Holy Spirit is with them, disturbing them by momentary touches, flashes of nearness, illuminations and insights, saving here and saving there. But all this is “with,” and not “within.” The Spirit goads us rather than guides us, illuminates rather than invigorates, prods us into activity rather than penetrates all activities—it is from without in, instead of from within out. This sense of outsideness will persist in religion until we enter into what the disciples entered into at Pentecost. There they passed over from the “with” stage to the “within” stage. Their religion was no longer a prodding, but a penetration; no longer a restriction, but a release.
Abundant Living
(Week 22, Thursday)
Steps in Receiving the Holy Spirit
John 14:16-17, 26; 16:7, 13; Acts 1:8
Believe it is in the divine intention for you to receive the Holy Spirit. Fix it in your mind that the gift of the Spirit is not an exceptional gift for exceptional people who are in exceptional work, but a gift that is the birthright of every Christian. “Jesus said this concerning the Spirit. Those who believed in him would soon receive the Spirit” (John 7:39 CEB). Note: “would soon receive”—receiving was in the divine intention and program for them. For whom? “Those who believed in him.” Here then is no exception. You, the ordinary Christian, are to receive the Holy Spirit, for you are counted among those who believe in him. “You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you, your children, and for all who are far away” (Acts 2:38-39 CEB). You belong to those “far away.” You are in the stream of the divine intention.
Abundant Living
(Week 23, Monday)
John 14:15-17; 15:26-27
The Holy Spirit means the human-divine togetherness. In the Incarnation, God came part way; in the Indwelling God comes the full way, comes into the citadel of our spirits. And God comes, not as a transient visitor, but “to abide with your forever” (John 14:16 KJV).
The Way
(Week 39, Monday)
“It Is All Empty Inside”
Acts 1:8; 2:17-18, 33
In our faith, in our unity, and in our virtues the Holy Spirit is central. But the Holy Spirit is not central in our present-day Christianity. The emphasis upon the Holy Spirit has been pushed from the mainstream of Christianity into the cults. There the teaching has been thrown out of balance, often identified with rampant emotionalism. And yet the almost entire absence of emphasis on the Spirit has impoverished the mainstream of Christianity. It often degenerates into a humanistic striving to be good.
The Way
(Week 39, Wednesday)
A Holy Spirit-Less Christianity
Acts 19:1-7
A Holy Spirit-less Christianity lacks contagion. It hasn’t that plus that carries over from a contained faith to a contagious faith. Our Christianity can be contained—contained with us as a comfort, a refuge, a belief, a hope, an inspiration. Good, but not good enough. Nothing is ours that is not shared; nothing is ours that cannot be carried over and duplicated in other lives. Nothing really lives that isn’t life giving.
The Way
(Week 39, Saturday)
On Possessing the Spirit
Luke 24:49; Acts 2:37-39
The church has in large measure tried to bypass Pentecost and go after its problems without the “tarrying.” Consequently, it is exhausting itself against the problems of the day. Had the disciples tried to bypass Pentecost, we would have never heard of them again. They would have exhausted themselves against the problems of that day. . . .
But the question is asked: Doesn’t every Christian possess the Holy Spirit? And the answer is yes. But the difference is probably this: In the new birth, you have the Holy Spirit; in the fullness, the Holy Spirit has you.
The Way
(Week 40, Sunday)
To Be Spirit-Possessed Is to Be Self-Possessed
Philippians 2:1-5
When surrendered to the Spirit we become inwardly harmonized and hence outwardly effective.
The Way
(Week 40, Wednesday)
Steps to Receive the Holy Spirit
John 7:37-39; Galatians 3:2
Say to yourself: God has come a long way in approaching me. God has come through an incarnation, an atoning death, a resurrection, down to the door of my heart. Having come so far, I know God will come the full way; God will come within me. The Holy Spirit is God coming within me. . . .
As I search the Scriptures, I note that the Holy Spirit is given on four conditions: (1) I must ask—“How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:13)? (2) I must accept the Holy Spirit by an act of appropriating faith—“By faith we might receive the promised Spirit” (Gal 3:14 Moffatt). (3) But I cannot accept the gift of the Holy Spirit without paying the price of that gift, the gift of myself. If God gives Godself, then I must give myself. (4) I must obey God—“The holy Spirit which God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32 Moffatt). I must therefore ask, accept, give, and obey. I am now committing myself with all my being to do those four things.
The Way
(Thursday, Week 40)
The Last Steps—Self-Giving and Obedience
Acts 4:29-33; 5:32
We come now to the two remaining steps in the receiving [and retaining] of the Holy Spirit: self-giving and obedience. [The first two steps are asking and receiving by faith.]
Perhaps we should have put the step of self-giving before the act of receiving by faith. It belongs before. You cannot accept the gift of the Holy Spirit without involving the prior gift of yourself. And yet it belongs after acceptance too. For it is a once-for-all giving, and yet it is a continous giving. It is like being married; there is a completed act when each gives the self to the other in marriage, and yet marriage is a continous process of mutual self-giving. It is crisis and continuity.
But, you ask, how shall I know I have given myself? Silenece the heart before God and see if anything arises to the surface unsurrendered. If nothing arises, then you must take it for granted that there is nothing left behind. To be sure that everything is covered, tell God you surrender all you know and all you don’t know. If anything unsurrendered is shown to you in the future, then that belongs to God too.
And now the continous obedience. God is in control. God uses you as the instrument of God’s purposes, provided you cooperate. We retain the Holy Spirit as long as God retains control. When we take over, God quietly steps out—not completely out—but God shuts off the sense of divine presence and power until we decide to give over the reins again. “To these facts we bear witness, with the Holy Spirit which God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32 Moffatt, emphasis added). The “obey” is present and continous.
The Way
(Saturday, Week 40)
The Holy Spirit Is God Where It Counts: Within
Luke 3:16, 17
The Holy Spirit has been lost in large measure from modern Christianity. We are presenting a Holy-Spiritless Christianity, a demand without a dynamic. A prominent Christian leader said that he did not hear a sermon on the Holy Spirit until he was forty-five, and he had attended church all his life. A note has dropped out. . . . Pentecost [had] been skirted.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 5, Sunday)
For They Were Afraid
John 20:19-23
The Holy Spirit is the missing note in much of present-day Christianity. This was not true in early Christianity. The Holy Spirit was the dynamic by which is was propelled. You couldn’t tell where the early apostles ended and the Holy Spirit began. The translators have been puzzled as to whether to use a small s or a capital S in place after place, for it could be either or both. The human spirit and the divine Spirit had joined forces and seem to be coterminous. And yet the human was not swamped in the divine. It was heightened and released by the divine indwelling. . . .
Suppose there had been no Holy Spirit? Just what kind of Christianity would have faced the world? It would have been the four Gospels without the Upper Room and the coming of the Spirit. Let us glance at the way the Gospels end: Mark ends at chapter 16, verse 8: “For they were afraid.” The rest has been added by later writers, so the scholars tell us. Suppose the gospel had ended on that note: “for they were afraid.” And that isn’t a supposition, for this is what we find in John’s Gospel: “The doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews” (20:19). Although the resurrection had taken place, yet they were bound by inward fears, and the closed doors were the outer expression of their tied-up condition. Their emotions were stirred by the news of the resurrection of Jesus, but those emotions were not changed from fear to all-conquering faith. No mere event outside of us, however great, can take the place of an indwelling of God, the Holy Spirit within us. Only an Indwelling can rid us of indwelling fears. The church today is largely at the same place, behind closed doors for fear.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 5, Monday)
The Content of Divine Power: Important
Philippians 2:1-5
The nature of the Spirit is determined by what we see in Jesus. The fact is that the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus are used interchangeably: “Having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit . . . ; the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” (Acts 16:6, 7). The Holy Spirit seemed to the disciples to be the Spirit of Jesus within them; they were one.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 5, Friday)
The Word Become Dynamic
Ephesians 3:14-20
When the Holy Spirit comes within us, then anything becomes possible. For the same power that worked in Jesus works in us. The Holy Spirit takes over our natural powers, cleanses and heightens them, and makes them go beyond themselves. There is a “plus” added to life. Ordinary people do extraordinary things, all out of proportion to their powers. They are a surprise to themselves and to others.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 9, Saturday)
The Promise of the Father
Luke 24:44-49
But what did [Jesus] pick out as of the greatest importance, the last thing of which he would speak? Both Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles are agreed on this: he urged them to stay in the city until they were “clothed with power” (Luke 24:49), and “you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). In both cases, it was described as the last thing he said: “Then . . . he parted from them” (Luke 24:50-51); “and when he had said this, . . . he was lifted up” (Acts 1:9).
Jesus knew if they missed this, they had missed the whole point of redemption. For the Holy Spirit is redemption, continuing redemption within us. Apart from the Holy Spirit, the redemption is outside of us—in history in the historical Jesus—but the historical becomes the experiential in the Holy Spirit. The redemption would not be complete unless it became experience. So the last words of Jesus were: “You believe it, now experience it! Lo, I am with you always, in you always in the Holy Spirit. Tarry till the Spirit comes within.”
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 10, Sunday)
Tired of Working on the City of God
2 Corinthians 1:20-22
The bane of the spiritual life is its impermanence. So many are sighing over lost ecstacies, lost touch with God, lost victory. It is largely because they are living, not “the life of the Spirit,” but the life of following an ideal with their own resources, stirred by emotion through a sermon or plagued by a demand laid upon them. So they grow tired and give up. A Chinese scholar was working on a translation of Augustine’s City of God and sent the following message to the mission board: “I’d like another assignment. I’m tired of working on the City of God.” A lot of people are tired because they are working on the City of God, instead of the City of God working in them. The Holy Spirit is the City of God working in us. We don’t work at the City of God; we let the City of God work in us, take possession of us. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of the City of God. Not that we cannot fall, but the chances minimized, for by the sealing the guarantee can be applied. Spiritual permanence sets in. The wobble is taken out of us. I have watched it across the years: Where people come to India through romance, or through duty, or through wanting to serve, they often fall by the wayside, get tired, and give up. Only where there is a surrender to, and a possession of, the Holy Spirit do people have that “stickability” that makes them, not only endure to the end, but enjoy to the end. The Holy Spirit guarantees to keep us in repair, guarantees enough gas for the journey, guarantees the course we take, and guarantees arrival.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 21, Saturday)
The Holy Spirit Is Power, Where It Counts
Ephesians 3:14-21
Religion without the Holy Spirit is also inadequate. It imposes a set of rules and regulations but doesn’t give power to perform. The Holy Spirit, however, when consented and surrendered to, moves in to be the spring of action and motive. This divine reinforcement within makes the ideal real, the impossible possible. The Holy Spirit is power, where it counts.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 17, Thursday)
The Best Gift for the Asking!
Jude 24-25
The Holy Spirit supplies that lack so often found in psychiatry, the lack of an intimate divine aid. . . . With the Holy Spirit within and in control, we can relax—relax at the center—for we know we are now being held by power not our own, and held from within. The Holy Spirit is the center and secret of our relaxation. We are not sitting on a lid; there is no need to, for the subconscious and the conscious are both under a common control, the control of the Holy Spirit. Released at the center, then we are released at the margins. Life is all of a piece, and it is happy and contagious.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 47, Monday)
Romans 8:3-4
“The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:2) is the equivalent of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit “fathoms everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10 Moffatt). And we may add: and the depths of humanity.
For the Holy Spirit, when we surrender to the Spirit’s control all we know—the conscious—and all we don’t know—the subconscious—then the Holy Spirit does nothing less than move in to take over, cleanse, control, and coordinate the whole of the inner life, conscious and subconscious. And more: the Holy Spirit fills our inner life with the unutterable sense of divine presence, so that the exquisite joy of that presence makes irrelevant and absurd and conflicting lesser joys. It is the expulsive power of a divine affection. Everything is caught up in the love of God; and the power of the lesser loves is not broken but fulfilled in a higher love. . . .
This is more than sublimation; it is total self-expression. You are expressing yourself in the way and in the sphere for which you are made—God—and now you are truly natural. You are truly natural because possessed by the Supernatural. Everything then becomes a a dancing joy, a play spell.
No wonder, when the early Christians received the Holy Spirit, onlookers thought them to be drunk. They were, intoxicated with God and with their own consequent freedom. Such a sweeping answer to all their fears, inner conflicts, inhibitions, and guilt was enough to make them appear intoxicated, with joy.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 21, Friday)
He Knows the Shepherd
Ephesians 3:14-16
We come now to see what is at the basis of the dullness in Christian lives. It is the absence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Creation, and where the Spirit abides within, there creation continues.
Up to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the disciples were copyists; they were copying Jesus with more or less spotty performance. But when the Holy Spirit moved into them, they were not copyists but creators. They were no longer cold, dead moons lighted by reflected light; they were suns burning with fire and light within them.
They were no longer merely disciples—learners; they were apostles—ones sent. Timid believers had become irresistible apostles. . . . These disciples were no longer lawyers arguing the case for Jesus, they were witnesses who witnessed to the mighty power of Jesus in their lives to save, and to save now. It was all living and fresh and firsthand and vital. Their spiritual lives were no longer in quotes; they were no longer in quotation marks, but in “creation” marks. . . .
When the Holy Spirit moves within us in response to surrender and accepting faith, then you know Jesus, not by hearsay, but by heartsay. You know him intimately, vitally, and savingly. An inner dullness gives place to an inner dancing. Everything within you is under the law of creation. You are no longer tense and tired, but relaxed and refreshed. You have learned the secret of drawing upon your inner resources, the Holy Spirit.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 35, Saturday)
The Holy Spirit, Birthright of Believers
John 7:35-38
[Another conviction is that] the Holy Spirit is the birthright of believers. I am persuaded that the Holy Spirit is the applied point of redemption. The Spirit brings redemption where it counts, namely, down among the basic springs of life. Psychologists tell us that the subconscious mind really determines the conscious. If this is true, then it is of the first importance to human living that something very redemptive control the subconscious. This need is supplied by the Holy Spirit. If we turn over to the Spirit all we know—the conscious mind, and all we don’t know—the subconscious mind, then the Holy Spirit takes over the control of the driving urges, and cleanses and redirects them and dedicates them to the purposes of the kingdom of God.
This takes the precariousness out of the spiritual life, for the depths—the deepest depths—are held by the divine. Therefore fears and anxieties drop away.
The Holy Spirit is possessed by all who truly believe in and follow Christ, but when there is complete surrender to him, we not only possess the Spirit; the Spirit possesses us. That change is important, very important. You do not work so much as you let the Spirit work through you.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Friday)
The Applied Edge of Redemption
2 Corinthians 1:21-22
For the Holy Spirit is the applied edge of redemption. The Spirit is redemption where it counts, namely, down amid the driving urges on the inside of us. If the Holy Spirit can move in and cleanse and control and consecrate these driving urges, then salvation has come and has come where it counts, namely, within.
Mastery
(Week 2, Saturday)
Nothing Is Ours Until It Gets Within
Ephesians 3:14-19
As a Christian movement we have stopped short of the one thing that would make all God’s preparation and promises into performances in and through us. That one thing is the Holy Spirit. We have stopped short of receiving the Holy Spirit and therefore everything. For it is in and through the Holy Spirit that God gives us everything now. Luke tells us that Jesus “had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles” (Acts 1:2). He was from that time on commanding and working through the Holy Spirit. If we don’t receive the Spirit, we are cutting ourselves off from Christ and God. . . . [We now have] a religion of the Spirit. If you do not receive the Spirit, you automatically shut yourself off from all God promised and Jesus procured for us. He said all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is the “finger of God” casting out the evil spirits within us, then filling us with his presence and power. But if we reject God’s outstretched hand by refusal to cooperate or by positive blasphemies as God offers us grace, then God can give us nothing. We have tied the process of redemption in knots, just where it would be operative.
Mastery
(Week 3, Monday)
The Great Simplification
Romans 10:6-13
There was one mediator—and only one mediator—between God and humanity, and that was Jesus. It was he who gave the Holy Spirit: “This Jesus, God raised up. We are all witnesses to that fact. He was exalted to God’s right side and received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit. He poured out this Spirit, and you are seeing and hearing the results of his having done so” (Acts 2:32-33 CEB). That forever fixed the source from which we receive the Spirit; we receive the Spirit from Jesus and him alone, or we do not receive the Spirit. This gift comes from a nail-pierced hand or not at all. . . .
Jesus was the Way. Humanity couldn’t get to God, so God came to humanity—came in Jesus. This coming of the Holy Spirit was like a cleansing wind from heaven, cleansing the fetid atmosphere of religion from a thousand controversies and claims. Everything was simplified. The vast complications of law and ritual and rite and creed were all swept away before the vast simplification.
Mastery
(Week 5, Tuesday)
Not Vague Power, but a Vital Person
John 14:25-26
The Holy Spirit is not an it. “He will guide you in all truth” (John 16:13 CEB); the Holy Spirit is a he. And not a vague depersonalized person; he is a person with a very definite personalized content. And the content is the content of Jesus.
Mastery
(Week 5, Thursday)
The Creative Spirit
Ephesians 3:7-9
Wherever the Holy Spirit is, there is creation; for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Creation. Wherever the Holy Spirit is not, there are stagnation and death. It is a simple test, but a decisive one.
Mastery
(Week 21, Sunday)
Steps in Finding the Holy Spirit
Ephesians 1:11-14
The Holy Spirit is primarily a believer’s gift. When the disciples received the Holy Spirit, they were believers. The account says, “Jesus said this concerning the Sprit. Those who believed in him were to soon receive” (John 7:39 CEB). Note “those who believed in him would soon receive,” a believer’s gift. When we came to the Christ, in the first coming we wanted forgiveness, reconciliation. We knew little or nothing about asking for the Holy Spirit. But now that we are children of God and are sure of our standing in God, we want to enter our birthright, which is nothing less than the Holy Spirit. In the new birth we received a measure of the Spirit; now we want more, we want to receive the fullness of the Spirit. We want to possess the Spirit; or better, we want to be possessed by the Spirit. We want more of what we have.
Mastery
(Week 51, Sunday)
The Gifts of the Spirit
Romans 12:3-8
There are many gifts but one Spirit, and Paul urges that we seek the highest gifts: love and prophesying (which is not foretelling but forthtelling the good news). The Holy Spirit is the gift for all, but divides the gifts according to the Spirit’s will, for the collective good. To pick out one of these gifts and say, if we do not have this gift, we do not have the Holy Spirit, is to cut across this passage. Paul urges that we “earnestly desire” (v. 31) the two highest gifts: love and prophesying, the power to witness effectively. They are the safest and most needed gifts.
Mastery
(Week 51, Thursday)
Spring of the Emotions in the Subconscious
John 7:38-39
We were meditating yesterday on the impossibility of becoming mature through the daily repeating of verses of Scripture, through slogans and outward observances. Such methods may help, but we remain immature unless and until we get into vital contact with the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit within. . . .
If we surrender to the Holy Spirit all we know—the conscious, and all we don’t know—the subconscious, the Spirit will enter into the subconscious and cleanse and control and coordinate the driving urges and consecrate them to kingdom ends. Then the conscious mind and the subconscious mind will not be at cross-purposes, but under a single control. . . . Mind and emotion and will are no longer pulling in different directions; held by the charioteer, the Holy Spirit, they are driven toward the goal of maturity.
Christian Maturity
(Week 42, Friday)
Psychotherapy Does Not Create Saints
1 Corinthians 1:22-24
Prior to the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the disciples were very immature disciples of a very mature Master. But when the Holy Spirit entered into them, took them over and made them over, they suddenly became mature in their reactions and their relationships. They loved enemies, walked out of councils with joy when beaten, went into prisons with no more jolt than when one passes from one room to another. They embraced death singing and praying for their tormentors. How could such advanced maturity come out of such immaturity, and how could it come out suddenly? The only answer: the Holy Spirit was within them!
Christian Maturity
(Week 42, Saturday)
The School of the Spirit
Titus 2:11-14
We emphasized the fact that Jesus had said that the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, would set up within a private school of the Spirit where he would “teach” us “all things” (John 14:26) and “guide” us “into all the truth” (John 16:13). And [1 John 2:27] adds: “the anointing whichyou received from him abides in you, and . . . teaches you about everything.”
There are three things here: (1) the Spirit of Truth will teach us all things—the intellectual conception; (2) the Spirit will guide us into all truth—the emotional acceptance; (3) the anointing of the Holy Spirit teaches us about everything—the volitional dedication. The stages are important: first, the concept must be grasped by the mind—“teach you all things”; second, the concept must be emotionally accepted and made our own—“will guide you into all the truth.” . . . The Holy Spirit teaches and guides you into possession of truth, or better, the truth takes possession of you. Third, the anointing teaches you about everything—the anointing, which involves dedication to, means that we learn the truth by being dedicated to the truth. In other words, we learn the truth by doing the truth. This is the modern emphasis of “learning by doing.” So here is a school of the Spirit in which the mind grasps, the emotion accepts, the will acts upon. The total person is informed of, transformed by, and dedicated to—truth. . . .
This school of the Spirit set up within the depths of our personality trains the mind to grasp truth, the emotion to accept truth, and the will to act upon truth, thus making the total person truth, hence mature. This means that we are under the intimate, twenty-four-hour-a-day tutelage of the most mature fact of the universe, the Holy Spirit. If we respond, our maturity is guaranteed.
Christian Maturity
(Week 43, Tuesday)
Attached to Exhaustible Emphases
When your faith and loyalty and love are fastened on Jesus Christ centrally and fundamentally, they are fastened upon the inexhaustible. He never grows stale, trite, or empty of growing meaning. In him you find an eternal unfolding. The more you see the more you see there is to be seen. In him there is a surprise around every corner. The Holy Spirit unfolds the unfolding revelation, taking of the things of Christ and showing them to us. The absolute in Christ is always beckoning to our relativisms. We are under the law of an eternal change, a change “into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18).
In Christ
(Week 22, Monday)
How Do We Receive the Spirit
Many are puzzled as to how the Holy Spirit is received. Someone has said, “The biggest question in theology is this: How do we receive the Holy Spirit?” Paul is clear. “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? . . . Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (Gal 3:2, 5).
Salvation and the gift of the Spirit are both by the hearing of faith, by receptivity, or faith-filled receptivity. There are some still among us who believe that you can get the Holy Spirit by stepping into a long line of apostolic succession and having a bishop’s hand laid on you. If you have faith that, only because you are in this line of succession you will thereby receive the Holy Spirit, the certainty is that you won’t receive the Spirit. You are trying to receive the Holy Spirit by a mechanical contrivance—by a so-called unbroken line of laid-on hands—and that is trying to receive the Spirit by the works of the law. That Jesus should commit his most precious gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit, to that mechanical contrivance is unthinkable. The open heart, surrender, receptivity upward, and not an [unsecured] line backward, is the way to receive the Holy Spirit.
In Christ
(Week 28, Wednesday)
The Word Continues to Be Flesh
Acts 2:32-33
I am persuaded that the Word become flesh is not only an event in the time of Jesus; it is a continuing principle, a fact that is inherent in the Christian faith. And this is seen and realized in the coming of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit was the Word become flesh in receptive and obedient believers. The Word became flesh, not only in “the body of Christ”—the church—but in the bodies of believers as individuals and persons.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 26, Sunday)
The Holy Spirit Is the Successor of Jesus
Acts 2:38-39
Jesus provided for no successor except the Holy Spirit. By the very nature of things, the successor of Jesus had to be a divine successor. . . .
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. . . . When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:7, 13-14). The Holy Spirit was to continue the work of Jesus, to be his successor. . . . The Spirit’s revelation will not be different, but simply more of the same. . . .
The Holy Spirit is the applied edge of redemption.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 26, Monday)
The “This-ness” of the Gospel
1 John 4:13, 17
[At Pentecost,] the Holy Spirit did exactly what Jesus said the Spirit would do, guided them into all truth. For ten days—the ten days that shook and shaped the world—the apostles were guided to surrender this, that, and the other until they came to themselves and they surrendered that last barrier. And the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, flooded them as if the Spirit had been pent up for ages. This was the moment. God was to rule persons from within, by their consent, according to a pattern fixed in Jesus and according to a power supplied by the Holy Spirit.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 29, Monday)
I Am Never Tired in My Work
2 Timothy 4:1-5
The Holy Spirit within makes actual what Jesus made possible. The Spirit is the applied edge of redemption—redemption to body, mind, and spirit—to the total person. Without the Holy Spirit you are the victim of your circumstances; with the Holy Spirit within you are on top of your circumstances.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 31, Monday)