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POWER! r is power? “God hath spoken once, yea, ce have I heard this, that power belongeth unto 1.” And it can’t be divorced from God. And man can obtain it save as God himself comes with it. It is what the Church of God needs to-day. Do not say the early disciples needed it but that we do not. They did need it. The task they were to accomplish was next to impossible— yes, it was impossible. But they knew that the touch of the Spirit of God was to make the impossible possible. And when he came it was to fill them with a power like the very might of God himself and which sent them out from their room of waiting to stand with their simple eloquence and indisputable facts before the world’s prejudice and hate and change it as if by magic into love and holy enthusiasm for the Christ of God. And if the men chosen of Christ, whose three years of seminary were three years at this marvelous Teacher’s feet, who saw his miracles and witnessed his resurrection, were not allowed to stir one step in the way of active service until they were filled with the Holy Spirit, is it not the most dangerous presumption, the most sinful self-confidence as well as the greatest folly to expect that we shall accom plish anything for God unless we too have been filled with his Spirit? From the earliest day even to the present time the men who have brought things to pass in any large or remark able way have been men who never dared to stir until they knew they were going forth anointed with the power of the Most High God. This is the secret of their glorious success. So it must be with you and me unless we are to be satis fied with a barren ministry—which may God forbid. But it need not be so. God says, “I will pour my Spirit upon him that is thirsty,” and we can have him in his fulness now if we really long for this measure of blessing with a proper longing. I say, “with a proper longing.” The desire must be un selfish. It is no part of the Spirit’s work to glorify you or me. A man will sometimes stand up and say, “Pray for me; I want to be used.” But the desire to be used may be an accursed ambition. We are not to expect this bless ing for our own sake but for his sake. It does not necessarily mean that you shall be carried into a place of great prominence. It may mean the op posite. But it does mean that your ministry shall be a ministry of power, and wherever it takes you, better be there with him than anywhere else without him. And so I say again, we may have the fulness of his Spirit if we long for it with an unselfish longing. It is only a question of our willingness to pay the price. And so I come to you with the question, Are you willing? W ill ing to pay the price? And what is that price? It is a whole-hearted, absolute, irrevocable surrender of oneself to the will of God. It means to say, “Lord, I do now, this minute, give myself to thee. Speak, for thy servant hear- eth, and when thou hast spoken, I will not pause to consider whether I shall run or tarry, but the word that thou dost speak unto me, that will I perform.” Do not say, “Make known thy will unto me, O God, and I will think about it.” But make your surrender first and then say, “Show me thy will, O God, and by thy grace I will do it.” This is the stepping-stone upon which and over which one must go— the stepping-stone of one’s own dead self;— this is the doorway through which one must pass into the larger life of illimitable blessing where God would have us come,— the way of self-surrender. —W. E. Biederwolf, D. D. *
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