The Full Blessing of Pentecost: How the blessing is hindered

The Full Blessing of Pentecost

- The One Thing Needful
By Andrew Murray

How the blessing is hindered

(Excerpts)

"Then said Jesus unto His disciples,
If any man will come after Me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
MATT. xvi. 24, 25.

There are many who seek the full blessing of Pentecost long and earnestly and yet do not find it.

Often the question is put as to what may be the cause of this failure.
To this inquiry more than one answer may be given.

Sometimes the solution of the problem points in the direction of one or another sin which is still permitted.
Worldliness, lovelessness, lack of humility, ignorance of the secret of walking in the way of faith these, and indeed many more causes, may also be often mentioned with justice.
There are, however, many people who think that they have come to the Lord with what of these sources of failure still remains in them, and have sincerely confessed them and put them away, and yet complain that the blessing does not come.

For all such it is particularly necessary to point out that there remains still one great hindrance namely, the root from which all other hindrances have their beginning.
This root is nothing else than our individual self, the hidden life of Self with its varied forms of self-seeking, self-pleasing, self-confidence, and self-satisfaction.

The more earnestly anyone strives to obtain the blessing and would fain know what prevents him, the more certainly will he be led to the discovery that it is here the great evil lies.
He himself is his worst foe:
he must be liberated from himself; the self-life to which he clings must be utterly lost.
Only then can the life of God entirely fill him.

This requirement is hard and difficult.
And why is this so?
Why should a Christian be called upon always to deny himself, his own feeling, and will, and pleasure?
Why must he part with his life that life to maintain which a man is prepared to make any sacrifice?
Why should a man hate and lose his life?

The answer is very simple.
It is because that life is so completely under the power of sin and death that it has to be utterly denied and sacrificed.

The self-life must be wholly taken away to make room for the life of God.
He that would have the full, the overflowing life of God, must utterly deny and lose his own life.

You see it now, do you not?
There is only one great stumbling-block in the way of the full blessing of Pentecost.
It lies in the fact that two diverse things cannot at one and the same time occupy the very same place.
Your own life and the life of God cannot fill the heart at the same time.

Your life hinders the entrance of the life of God.
When your own life is cast out, the life of God will fill you.
So long as I myself am still something, Jesus Himself cannot be everything.
My life must be expelled; then the Spirit of Jesus will flow in.

Let every seeker of the full blessing of Pentecost accept this principle and hold it fast.