The Full Blessing of Pentecost: How it was bestowed from Heaven - continued 1

The Full Blessing of Pentecost

- The One Thing Needful
By Andrew Murray

How it was bestowed from Heaven

(Excerpts - continued 1)

"If ye love me, keep my commandments.
And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter,
that He may abide with you for ever;
Even the Spirit of truth;"
JOHN xiv. 15, 16.

"Nothing for nothing": the maxim holds good also in the life of the kingdom of heaven.

The parables of the Pearl of great price and the Treasure hid in a field teach us that, in order to obtain possession of the kingdom within us,
we must sell all that we have.
This is the very renunciation that Jesus literally demanded of the disciples who had to follow Him.
This is the requirement He so often repeated in His preaching:

"He that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be My disciple."

~

The two worlds betwixt which we stand are in such direct conflict with one another,
and the world in which we by nature live exercises such a mighty influence over us,
that it is often necessary for us, even by external and visible sacrifice,
to withdraw from it.

It was thus that Jesus trained His disciples to long for that which is heavenly.
Only thus could He prepare them to desire and receive the heavenly gift with an undivided heart.

The Lord has left us no outward directions as to how much of the world we are to abandon or in what manner.
But by His whole Word He teaches us that without sacrifice,
without a deliberate separation from the world and forsaking of it,
we shall never make much progress in grace.

The spirit of this world has penetrated so deeply into us that we do not observe it.
We share in its desire for comfort and enjoyment,
for self-pleasing and self-exaltation,
without our knowing how impossible these things make it for us to be filled with the Spirit.

Let us learn from the early disciples that to be filled from the heavenly world with the Spirit that dwells there,
we must be entirely separate from the children of this world or from worldly Christians.

We must be ready and eager to live as entirely different men,
who literally represent heaven upon earth,
because we have received the Spirit of the King of heaven.