Miracles—Works of Power
Miracles—Works of Power
[Note the differences between Salvation (or Born Again), Sanctification and the Baptism with the Holy Spirit in Lake's testimony, in which many believers seem to have confused these experiences.]
What is a miracle? It is the tangible evidence of the supreme control of the Spirit of God over every character and form of materiality.
Beloved, the power of such an event, such an act and sign, shows you that through living, positive, contact with the Spirit of God, all things are possible. Blessed be His name!
Christianity is the divine power of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, filling a Christian’s soul and body, flashing through his nature like a holy flame, accomplishing the will of God.
There is a baptism that belongs to Jesus Christ. It is in His supreme control. No angel or human can bestow it. It comes from Him alone.
He it is “who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33). So, the individual who wants the Holy Spirit must come into definite, conscious, contact with Jesus Christ Himself.
Bless God!
I was away from the city of Spokane for a while, and the day I returned Mrs. Lake wasn’t at home. I was about to leave for my afternoon service when someone came in and said, “Your secretary, Mrs. Graham, is dying. Your wife is with her.”
Immediately I hurried to the place. One of my ministers’ wives met me at the door and said, “You’re too late, she’s gone.”
As I stepped inside, the minister was coming out of the room. He said, “She hasn’t breathed for a long time.”
But looking on that woman, I thought of how God Almighty had raised her out of death three years before, how He had miraculously given her back her womb, ovaries, and tubes that had been removed, and how she had married and conceived a child.
As these thoughts arose, my heart flamed!
I took that woman up off the pillow and called on God for the lightnings of heaven to blast the power of death and deliver her. I commanded her to come back and stay. She came back after having not breathed for twenty-three minutes!
Beloved, we have not yet learned to keep in living touch with the powers of God. Once in awhile our souls rise, and we see the flame of God accomplish this wonder and that. But Jesus Christ lived in the presence of God every hour of the day and night. Not a word came from the mouth of Jesus Christ that was not God’s Word. He said, “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).
When you and I are lost in the Son of God and the fires of Jesus Christ burn in our hearts, as they did in His, our words will be the words of Spirit and of life. There will be no death in them. Beloved, we are on the way.
You see, the spirit of man must contact and know the real Spirit of God—know God. We do not know God with our flesh, with our hands, or with our brains. We know God with our spirit. The knowledge of God that our spirit acquires may be conveyed to us through the medium of our mind. The effect of God in our body comes through the medium of our spirit, through our soul, and into our body.
There is a quickening by the Spirit of God so that our body, our soul, and our spirit all alike become blessed, pervaded, and filled with the presence of God Himself in us. The Word of God is wonderfully clear along these lines. For instance, the Word of God says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3). Why? “Because He trusts in You.” That is the peace a Christian knows whose mind rests in God in real perfect trust. “You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You.”
The Word of God again says that our flesh will rejoice; not our mind but our very flesh will rejoice. The presence of God is to be a living presence, not only in our spirit, nor in our mind alone, but also in our very flesh—so that God is known in all the areas of our life. We know God in our very flesh, we know God in our mind, we know God in our spirit.
Bless His precious name!
The medium by which God undertakes to bless the world is through the transmission of Himself. Now the Spirit of God is His own substance, the substance of His being—the very nature and quality of the presence of the nature and being of God. Consequently, when we speak of the Spirit of God being transmitted to us and into us, we are not talking about an influence, either spiritual or mental. We are talking about the transmission of the living substance and being of God into your being and into mine. Not a mental effect, but a living substance. The living being and actual life transmitted, imparted, coming from God into your being, into my being.
Bless God!
That is the secret of the abundant life of which Jesus spoke. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). The reason we have the more abundant life is that as we receive God into our being, all the springs of our being are quickened by His living presence. Consequently, when we receive God—via His Holy Spirit—we live life in a fuller measure. We live life with a greater energy, because we become the recipients of the energy of the living God in addition to our normal energy, through the reception of His being, His nature, His life into ours.
I knelt under a tree when about sixteen years of age, in repentance and prayer, and God came into my soul. I was saved from my sins and from that day I knew Jesus Christ as a living Savior. There never was a single moment of question about the reality of His incoming into my life as a Savior, for He saved me from my sins. My friend said, “You are baptized in the Holy Ghost.”
Sometime later, I think when I was yet under twenty or thereabouts, I met a Christian farmer, Melvin Pratt, who sat down on his plow handles and taught me the subject of sanctification, and God let me enter into that experience. My friends said, “Now surely you are baptized in the Holy Ghost.”
Later in my life, I came under the ministry of George B. Watson, of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, who taught with more clearness and better distinction between the baptism of the Holy Ghost and sanctification, and I entered into a richer life and a better experience. A beautiful anointing of the Spirit was upon my life.
Then the ministry of healing was opened to me, and I ministered for ten years in the power of God. Hundreds and hundreds of people were healed by the power of God during this ten years, and I could feel the conscious flow of the Holy Spirit through my soul and my hands.
But at the end of that year, I believe I was the hungriest man for God that ever lived. There was such a hunger for God that as I left my offices in Chicago and walked down the street, my soul would break out, and I would cry, “Oh God!” I have had people stop and look at me in wonder. It was the yearning passion of my soul, asking for God in a greater measure than I then knew. But my friends would say, “Mr. Lake, you have a beautiful baptism in the Holy Ghost.” Yes, it was nice as far as it went, but it was not answering the cry of my heart. I was growing up into a large understanding of God and my own soul’s need. My soul was demanding a greater entrance into God, His love, presence, and power.
Then one day an old man strolled into my office, sat down, and in the next half hour he revealed more of the knowledge of God to my soul than I had ever known before. When he left I said, “God bless that old gray head. That man knows more of God than any man I ever met. By the grace of God, if that is what the baptism of the Holy Ghost does, I am going to possess it.” Oh, the wonder of God that was then revealed to my heart!
I went into fasting and prayer and waiting on God for nine months. Then one day the glory of God in a new manifestation and a new incoming came to my life. And when the phenomena had passed, and the glory of it remained in my soul, I found that my life began to manifest in the varied range of the gifts of the Spirit, . . . and God flowed through me with a new force. Healings were of a more powerful order. Oh, God lived in me; God manifested in me; God spoke through me. My spirit was deified, and I had a new comprehension of God’s will, new discernment of spirit, a new revelation of God in me.
Comments
Post a Comment