During this period the believer's faith-dealing with God must continue to be active, trusting the Spirit of God to prepare him for the enduement required for his sphere of service. The danger now is the using of excuses to cover up lack of power, or else shrinking from the examination of points in the life which the Spirit of God is dealing with, or even quenching the Spirit by refusing to yield up to God what He claims, or quailing from some sacrifice, upon which turns the liberation of the spirit of the seeker for the influx of the greater measure of power.
In the initial reception of the Spirit, the conditions necessary, dealt with a narrow sphere. It meant just the centre of the man dealt with, in will and heart, the former in surrender to God, and the latter cleansed from the love of sin. But in the enduement of power the scope of God's dealings widens. The man's SPIRIT has to be separated from the entanglements of the soul, and the lawful things belonging to the natural, or soul-man, have to be surrendered, so that he may become a spiritual man, governed only by his spirit. He must have every trace of an unbending spirit removed, that his spirit may co-operate with the Holy Spirit with pliability; he must lose every degree of an unforgiving spirit, so as to give no inlet to evil spirits, when, by the moving of the Holy Spirit, he may be charged to rebuke sin, or suffer rejection for Christ's sake; and be freed from a narrow grasping spirit, if he is to be a wide channel for the outflow of the gracious life-giving Spirit of God.
Moreover, the man who seeks an enduement of power must be willing for the Spirit of God thoroughly to deal with his life, and remove out of it every obstacle to his immediate readiness to fulfil all the will of God; he must be searched in motive, and taught the principles of righteousness, for the enduement of the Spirit which he seeks to know, means an AGGRESSIVE WARFARE AGAINST SIN, and the powers of evil, and how can the Holy Spirit convict of sin by the preaching of righteousness, if the man He equips as a messenger of God is ignorant of the law of righteousness? He must learn what GOD'S ATITUDE TO SIN IS IN HIS OWN LIFE, ere he can be God's witness against sin in others.
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