The Full Blessing of Pentecost: How it was bestowed from Heaven - continued 2

The Full Blessing of Pentecost

- The One Thing Needful
By Andrew Murray

How it was bestowed from Heaven

(Excerpts - continued 2)

"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.

Man has two great enemies by whom the devil tempts him and with whom he has to contend.
The one is the world without, the other is the self-life within.

This last, the selfish Ego, is much more dangerous and stronger than the first.
It is quite possible for a man to have made much progress in forsaking the world while the self-life retains full dominion within him.

The self-life is the natural life of sinful man.
He can be liberated from it by nothing save by death that is,
by first dying to it and then living in the strength of the new life that comes from God.

The forsaking of the world began at the outset of the three years discipleship.
It was at the end of that period, at the Cross of Jesus, that dying to the self-life first took place.

When they saw Him die, they learned to despair of themselves and of everything on which they had hitherto based their hope.
Whether they thought of their Lord and the redemption which they had expected,
or whether they thought of themselves and their shameful unfaithfulness towards Him,
everything tended to fill them with despair.

Little did they know that it was just this despair which was to prove the breaking up of their hard hearts the mortification of the self-life and of confidence in themselves which would enable them to receive something entirely new namely,
a divine life through the Spirit of the glorified Jesus in the innermost depths of their souls.

~

They received and held fast the promise of the Spirit given by the Lord Jesus.

Now it is just the same disposition that we have so much need of now.
To us also, even as to them,
has the word of the Lord come concerning the Spirit who is to descend from the throne in the power of His glorified life.

"He that believeth in Me, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water."

For us also it is the one thing needful to hold fast that word;
to set our whole desire upon the fulfilment of it;
to lay aside all else,
until we inherit the promise.

The word from the mouth of Jesus concerning the reception of the Spirit in such measure that we shall be endued with power from on high must animate and fill us with strong desire, with firm and joyful assurance.