The Full Blessing of Pentecost: How it is to be taught - continued 3

The Full Blessing of Pentecost

- The One Thing Needful
By Andrew Murray 

How it is to be taught

(Excerpts - continued 3)

"And it came to pass that Paul came to Ephesus and finding certain disciples,
He said unto them,
Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?"
ACTS xix. 1-2.

Believers must receive help to appropriate this blessing in faith.

In the Acts of the Apostles we read often about laying on of hands and prayer.
Even a man like Paul whose conversion was due to the direct interposition of the Lord, and was therefore so effectual had to receive the Spirit through laying on of hands and prayer on the part of Ananias.

This implies that there must be amongst ministers of the gospel and believers generally a power of the Spirit which makes them the channel of faith and courage to others.

Those who are weak must be helped to appropriate the blessing for themselves.
But those who have and bring this blessing, as well as those who desire to have it, must realise and acknowledge their absolute dependence on the Lord and expect all from Him.

The gift of the Spirit is imparted only by God Himself.
Every fresh bestowment of the Spirit comes from above.

There must be frequent personal dealing with God.
The minister of the Spirit whom God is to use for communicating the blessing, as well as the believer who is to receive it, must meet with God in immediate and closest intercourse.

Every good gift comes from above:
it is faith in this truth that will give us courage to expect with confidence and gladness that the full Pentecostal blessing may confidently be looked for, and that a life under the continual leading of the Holy Spirit is within our reach.

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The proclamation and appropriation of this blessing will restore the Christian community to the primary Pentecostal power.

On the day of Pentecost the speaking "with other tongues" and the prophesying was the result of being filled with the Spirit.

Here at Ephesus, twenty years later, the very same miracle is again witnessed, as the visible token and pledge of the other glorious gifts of the Spirit. We may reckon upon it that where the reception of the Holy Spirit and the possibility of being filled with Him are proclaimed and appropriated, the blessed life of the Pentecostal community will be restored in all its pristine power.

In our days there is an increasing acknowledgment of the lack of power in the Church of the Lord.
In spite of all the multiplication of the means of grace, there is neither the power of the divine salvation in believers, nor the power for conversion in preaching, nor the power in the conflict of the Church with worldliness and unbelief and unrighteousness that, according to God's Word, we are bound to look for.

The complaint is made with justice.

Would that the expression of it became so strong that the children of God, driven by a keen sense of need,
might be led to cast themselves upon the great truth which the Word of God teaches namely,
that it is only when faith in the full Pentecostal blessing and the full enjoyment of it are found in the Christian Church that the members of it shall again find their strength and be able to do their first works.