Power from on High
"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you". Acts 1:8
Do Thou, the very God of peace, Us wholly sanctify,
And grant us such a rich increase of power from on high,
That spirit, soul, and body may, Preserved free from stain,
Be blameless until that great day; Lord Jesus Christ, Amen !
(pp. 49-52, Footprints for Pilgrims)
It is a mistake to suppose that we can be endowed, so to speak, with spiritual power. God never gives a fund of strength to any of His servants on which they can draw from time to time until the whole is used. The power is always in Himself, and not in them, and only supplied moment by moment to those who are walking with and in dependence upon Him.
Bear in mind that we must not expect consciousness of power. It is on this point that so many stumble. They want to feel power, and failing to do so they conclude that they are in the wrong condition of soul for its exercise. No mistake could be greater. On the other hand, the Lord has to break down His servants ... in order to reduce them to the sense of their own utter impotence, that they may learn the lesson that His strength is made perfect in weakness.
Human arrangements interfere with divine power.
At conferences people often find more pleasure in meeting one another than in waiting upon God, and then there is a lack of power. For many years I have noticed that when God is about to work He produces stillness -- a solemn hush -- and expectation. And the moment He does this Satan counterworks and seeks to divert the attention of the saints. We ought not to be ignorant of his devices.
Unbelief is a barrier that shuts out the inflow of divine power.
A lady once called to me and said, "I want you to tell me the secret of power." I replied, "It is being broken to pieces and the consciousness of that."
J.N.D. has somewhere said that when we are occupied with past manifestations of the power of the Holy Ghost we are seldom in the current of His working at the present moment.
It is only by the Lord's own power that the smallest of His precepts can be translated into practice; while it is equally true that His largest behests are as easy of performance as the smallest, inasmuch as adequate power is always at the service of faith.
Unconscious testimony is always the most powerful. I often think that at the judgment seat of Christ we shall find a word we have spoken casually, a little sentence dropped, has been more used than all our preaching and lectures.
The humblest believer walking in obedience to the Lord and dependence upon Him is displaying the greatest spiritual power. Power is displayed by the coming out of Christ in daily life.
To be full of the Holy Ghost is the normal state of the believer, and if this is not so with us we should humble ourselves before God.
There is no power except in the Spirit of God, yet how often we depend on human power -- eloquence, learning, etc. It is so easy to resort to human expediency when not in a right state of soul.
--- E.D.
