JM Rowland
5, Tichborne Street,
Leicester.
Unlimited Power – to all at C.U at School.
1/5/41
I hope those of you who have not been to Buxton are not having that place thrust down your throat, but it is good to share our blessing.
The great message that we Christians received at Buxton was that we can obtain unlimited power for our Christian life.
We all know that when we come to Christ in penitence we receive two gifts:
- Forgiveness for our sins (by His death)
- The Holy Spirit (by His resurrection).
Nearly all of us have received that first gift, or we shouldn’t be here this afternoon. But what about the second gift. What does that do for us?
Well, the Holy Spirit – I prefer ‘Spirit’ to ‘Ghost’ – is just the Lord Jesus Christ’s other self. It is the form in which He comes and lives in us. It is the way in which he gives us the power which we need so badly to live a Christian life and which we cannot find within ourselves.
But a tremendously important point is that, just as we cannot obtain covering for our sin without coming to Christ and ASKING for it, so we cannot obtain the gift of the Holy Spirit without ASKING for it.
I think we often tend to think of it as automatic, and then when we fall, we wonder what’s happened to the power that should be within us.
No we must come to Christ, ask for and receive the gift of UNLIMITED POWER which he holds out to us.
I said UNLIMITED power, but I think that it’s very easy for us, by our unbelief, to knock off that UN and LIMIT Christ’s power.
I had two postal orders sent me for my birthday. There they were, promises, with all the authority of the Postmaster General behind them, that if I went to a Post Office I could collect the amount printed on them. BUT I’D GOT TO GO AND CLAIM THOSE PROMISES.
Then again, I needn’t have cashed them both. I would have been silly not to, but a lot of Christian fellows are doing an equally silly thing – they are not claiming the FULLNESS of the Holy Spirit. They pray ‘O Lord, send thy Holy Spirit to conquer this sin and that sin… and perhaps they add in the depths of their hearts ‘…and I can manage the rest myself.’
No, that wouldn’t do. We must claim the Holy Spirit in all his FULLNESS.
Look at Acts 1 verse 8 –That promise is waiting to be claimed in all its fullness. Will you, as we pray now, join with me in coming to God and claiming that promise to its full extent, taking it all as he hands it to us?
This was obviously a subject which was relevant in my Uncle’s day and in some circles is still relevant.
Are we prepared to claim the fullness of the Holy Spirit in all His promises, or are we refusing Him and allowing certain gifts to run dry?
My encouragement today is that we might not refuse His offer of fresh oil, but receive His gifts with gladness and not to limit God’s power in our lives.
Totally.