Good morning.
Amen.
By the way, I would like a few
more questions for tonight, questions that are relevant
to the ministry of the week, and put
them in the question box on the first
floor in Fitzwater Hall.
I hope you'll come this evening prepared to
give a brief word of testimony concerning what
God has done for you.
We'll have a time of question and answer,
and a time of testimony to His goodness
and His blessing in our hearts in these
days.
Now let us bow before Him in prayer.
Dear Lord, our hearts are hungry for Thee
today.
I hunger and I thirst.
Jesus, my man, I need Thee.
Your living waters burst out of the rock
for me.
Each one of us urgently, desperately needs thyself.
In all life-saving fullness in our eyes,
O Spirit of the living God, fall afresh
on me.
Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on
me.
Grant that none of us may be quite
the same as the outcome of having a
fresh encounter with thyself in these days.
In our lives be transformed, changed from glory
into glory, till in heaven we see thy
face.
Speak, Lord, for thy servant here is.
Speak just now, with some message to meet
my need, which thou only dost know.
Speak now through thy Holy Word and make
me see some wonderful truth thou hast to
show to me.
For Jesus' sake.
Amen.
We've been thinking, of course, this week, as
you know, about the communication of our faith.
And we've considered this subject under four different
headings so far.
We've talked about the relationship which must be
restored, the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ
in our lives.
We've talked about the responsibility which must be
realized.
I have said we need to be a
light, a reflector of light in the world,
an area in which if we move in
it, we are beyond competition.
And then we talked about the revival which
must be recovered, that there should be upon
us all the marks of the cross.
It's not another Pentecost we need, it's another
Calvary.
The revival isn't going through Chicago beating a
big drum, it's getting back to the cross
with a big song.
Unless God brings us there, we haven't got
much to offer.
And the Lord has been wanting to do
that with us all in these days, bring
us right back to the cross.
And then we talked about the requirements which
must be recognized, that the terms of this
task, if we're to fulfill it, are tougher
than we think.
This is not a picnic, not fun and
games, it's total warfare.
I don't want to tread on thin ice
or get into deep water unnecessarily, though I'll
be departing tomorrow if that is all right.
But I do want to say that I
get very concerned about the way in which
some young people are presented with the gospel
in these days, as if it's all fun
and games.
Anything's all right as long as you end
up with devotion.
You can do anything.
Flip it up, and have chicks, and have
a great time, and fun and games, and
fill in the gaps, and present to young
people that the gospel is a great life,
a wonderful thrill, and a happy life, and
everything's fine.
It's the only apology.
And it's not presented as total warfare.
And I believe that young people need to
be presented with, from the very start, that
they're engaging in total warfare.
They come to Christ, and it's going to
be a battle.
It's a trial and a victory, and it's
a fight all the way through.
A Christian is not someone, of course, who
goes through life with a long face and
a big Bible, and looks miserable.
He knows, admires the Lord, and he's strict.
But he's not, on the other hand, a
sloppy individual who just superficially touches every situation
that I touch.
There's something about him that speaks of the
obligation, and the solemnity, and the seriousness of
the task in which he's engaged.
The terms are cross-generating.
Heaven has dawned upon his soul, and he's
in the grip of a living God, and
his life has been transformed.
But then when you've said all that, where
are we right now?
Well, I want to speak to you from
the final message this morning, and the final
angle upon our scene, upon the resources which
must be received.
The resources which must be received.
I have much upon my heart.
I don't know just how I'm going to
get through what I want to say to
you this morning, and I'm trusting that the
Lord may put it through clearly, and with
authority, and yet with love and grace, and
it may mean something to you.
Because when all is said and done, we
are shut up to a miracle.
And the Lord spoke of it when he
said, You shall receive power.
After that, the Holy Spirit has come upon
you, and you shall be witnesses unto me,
in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and unto the uttermost
parts of the earth.
There is no substitute in the life of
a Christian for the Holy Spirit.
There's no substitute in the life of a
church for the Holy Spirit.
God's method is always miracle.
Not new methods he wants, not new strategy,
not new ideas, but new men.
Men who are prepared to be sworn up
for baptism.
Men who God has reduced to a minimum,
that he might be to them his maximum.
He moves in the realm of miracle.
From beginning to end, the Christian life is
a miracle.
The Christian church is a miracle.
And it's engaged in the operation of miracles,
of carrying out miracles in the power of
the Holy Spirit.
And there is no substitute for the Christian
or for the church for the Holy Ghost.
Now Satan knows that.
The greatest enemy of the devil is not
the Christian.
That's only incidental.
The greatest enemy of Satan on earth is
the Holy Spirit.
Because he is resident in the Christian life,
your life and mine become the focal point
of battle.
Battle which never ends until our dying day
when we reach glory.
I used to pray when I was younger,
Lord don't let me ever get involved in
a situation in which the devil is not
interested.
I've stopped praying like that now because it's
been answered for me.
More abundantly than I expected.
But if you're really in business for God,
Satan is in business with your life.
And every movement of advance and every movement
of the Spirit of God in you is
accompanied by a counterattack from the enemy.
When you are in the Christian church you're
in a moving concern which is facing battle
all the time.
Therefore it is typical of Satan that he
has the whole of us, many of us,
most of us, confused about our adoption of
the Holy Spirit.
There are some strange manifestations of the Holy
Spirit abroad today.
Panic theology I call it.
But Christian people when they're facing a situation
have found themselves with inadequate resources.
They haven't got what it takes to get
to a country on the mission field which
has been for centuries in the grip of
Satan.
And they either withdraw for another higher education
or they press in for an experience of
the Holy Spirit which has no foundation in
Scripture.
One of the greatest and most vivid things
that the church has known for a long
time is what is known as the charismatic
movement.
Where people have entered into an experience of
speaking in tongues.
Well, I haven't spoken in tongues.
It takes all the grace of God to
make me speak right with the one tongue
I have got.
But if this was really the answer to
the church's need today, then it would be
the major theme in every one of Paul's
letters.
Now I don't dispute the fact that there
may be such a thing as the gift
of tongues.
I think it is very hard for us
to prove as evangelicals that this gift was
withdrawn after Pentecost.
But I would press upon you the fact
that it is the last in order of
the gifts.
It is a minor and not a major
gift.
It is only referred to in one letter
of the Bible, the Epistles of the Corinthians,
only in two chapters, and then always with
a view to dampening it down.
I repeat that if this was really the
answer to the church's need, the thing that
we need most of all, then it would
be the major theme in the New Testament.
But I find it is only a very
minor theme.
I spoke to a missionary in Africa recently,
a missionary leader, who professed to have received
this gift.
And I spoke to him for hours with
my open Bible, and we talked about it
together and prayed about it, and he finished
the conversation this way.
Well, he said, I don't care what the
Bible says.
I've got an experience, and you can't argue
me out of it.
Now when a man talks like that, he's
highly dangerous.
You can't have all the gifts of the
Spirit, but you can have all the graces
of the Spirit.
And the major theme of the New Testament
in relation to God's Holy Spirit is not
gifts of grace, character.
Galatians 5.22 gives us the fruit of
the Spirit in a Christian life.
And this is the major theme.
You shall receive power after that the Holy
Spirit has come upon you, and you shall
be witnesses unto me.
Now of course, in our fear of becoming
extreme or fanatical, we've exchanged the false fire
of fanaticism for the no fire of orthodoxy.
And we find ourselves absolutely helpless to meet
the challenge of these days.
John Wesley used to know that which our
hearts hunger for.
When his brother Charles Wesley wrote, Jesus, thine
all victorious love, shed in my soul abroad,
then shall my heart go on the road
rooted and fixed in God.
All that in me the sacred fire might
now begin to glow.
Burn up the dross of base desire, and
let the mountains flow.
O thou who at Pentecost did fall, do
thou my sins consume.
Come Holy Ghost of thee I call, Spirit
of burning, come.
That kind of thing we don't pray about
because we're afraid of it.
But that's what we need.
I was in Ethiopia just recently at a
mission station, SIN station, so I stayed there
for about a week.
And I stayed with a couple who came
from this country, who were the missionary builders
for the SIN.
And they just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.
And the husband had bought his wife the
most extraordinary and unusual 25th wedding anniversary I've
ever heard of.
And what it was?
Motor present.
And what it was?
Bathroom.
I don't think, I hope there wasn't a
sting in the tail of that, of that
gift.
But he bought her a bathroom.
And when I went to the house and
saw it, my word you'll never, it was
lovely.
It was all the green tiling and beautiful
bath, beautiful equipment, lovely chromium-plated taps.
And I thought, well, bless their hearts, they
deserve it.
And I was very thankful for this because
I had been for 10 days in a
very remote area, and this bathroom would meet
my needs, which was urgent at the time.
And so I looked at it with a
great joy, not only for his wife's sake,
but for mine.
And so I repaired to my room and
prepared for my bath, and went in with
great excitement and great anticipation.
And I got ready for it, and I
turned on the taps, and nothing happened.
No water.
So I had a drift again, and went
to see him and said, say, what's the
idea here?
You've got all this lovely bathroom, but I
can't get any water.
Oh, he said, I forgot to tell you
that the local council haven't turned it on
yet.
It'll be six months before we have any
water.
So, my, I thought, that's done it.
My need is not met in that way.
You see, what a wonderful bathroom, but no
water.
Every bit of equipment, but no water.
Everything except the water, the one thing that
really matters.
Now, I believe today that that's our trouble
in the church, but everything except the water
of life.
The water that I shall give you shall
be in you a fountain springing up into
everlasting life.
The Lord Jesus just wants to breathe out
of each one of us today the fountain
of life, the source of life, the strength
of life, the victory in all our hearts.
And we have everything except the life.
Oh, we've got the doctrine right, we've got
the orthodoxy right, we can talk about the
Holy Spirit, we know the theory, but oh,
how urgently we need the life.
And God, the promise is, ye shall receive
power after that Holy Spirit has come upon
you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me.
Well now, let me just look with you
in the word what this really means, what
it's all about.
Turn with me, will you, to the epistle,
to the Ephesians for a moment, and the
fifth chapter, and there we read Paul speaking
to the Ephesian church in verse 17, Wherefore
be ye not unwise, but understanding what the
will of the Lord is.
And be not drunk with wine wherein is
excess, but be ye being filled with the
Spirit, as present continuous tents, be ye being
filled with the Spirit.
Speaking to yourselves in songs and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your
heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for
all things unto God and the Father in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting
yourselves one to another in the team of
God.
What a happy verse that is, isn't it?
Speaking to yourselves in songs and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your
heart to the Lord.
So obviously the Christian life is expected to
be a life that's joyful and a rejoicing
life.
And Paul says if you want this kind
of life, the secret of it is you
must know what it means to be continually
being filled up with the Holy Spirit, and
then you'll learn to give thanks always to
God for all things.
No, that's tough.
Can you give thanks to God for everything?
Aye, very difficult.
Thanks to God for all things?
I remember Dr. Paul Rees, was at the
English Catholic Convention a few years ago, and
he told a story about a man who
was in Birmingham, Alabama, and that's a good
effort, and he was sitting in a Greyhound
bus at the bus station, temperature over a
hundred, humidity very high, heat terrific, and he
was waiting in the bus, Christian man, suddenly
into that bus there entered a very large
lady who sat beside him and oozed over
his section of the seat, and in a
moment or two five children came and joined
her and sat on her lap, and this
little fellow was squeezed right over in the
one corner.
And oh, he got so frustrated, the heat
was terrific, I'll leave the rest to your
imagination, and the man was thoroughly frustrated, and
suddenly he remembered that in his quiet time
that morning, he had this very verse, giving
thanks always for all things unto God.
And he said, Oh Lord, what on earth
can I be thankful for in this?
And then suddenly he said, I know, thank
the Lord this woman is not my wife.
Now that's not me, that's Paul Rees, plain
and flat.
But seriously, seriously, oh you know, when a
life is really filled up with all the
Spirit of God, you begin to know that
there are no mistakes in the love of
God.
He never makes a mistake, for there's nothing
that happens to a man filled with the
Spirit by accident.
It's all permitted by our Heavenly Father.
All things work together for good for them
that love him.
Nothing happens by accident, so it's very tough
to take, yet we can praise him for
it.
Ah, but then the answer, the secret of
it all, is that we must know what
it means to be filled, be being filled
with the Spirit.
That's a command.
You see, it's possible to be indwelt by
the Spirit, but not to be filled with
the Spirit.
Every Christian has the Holy Spirit.
You can't be born again except you have
the Holy Spirit.
There are many verses of Scripture which make
that perfectly clear.
For instance, Romans 8, 9, If any man
have not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of his.
It was the Holy Spirit who convinced you
of sin, because you believe not on Jesus.
Your conscience tells you it's wrong to tell
a lie, but it's only the Holy Spirit
who convinces you that it's sin not to
believe on Christ.
John 16, 8.
He convinced us of sin because we believe
not on Jesus.
It was he who led us to accept
Christ.
The Spirit said, quicken us.
The flesh profiteth nothing.
John 6, 63.
And at that moment we were filled with
the Spirit.
Ephesians 1, 13.
And indwelt by the Spirit.
Your body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost.
And you were baptized by the Spirit into
the family of God.
1 Corinthians 12, 13.
All these things took place at the moment
of your conversion.
It is impossible to be a Christian without
having the Holy Spirit, and therefore without potentially
entering into a realm of miracles.
But listen, it's possible to be a believer
and not have the Holy Spirit.
May I repeat that?
It's possible to be a believer and not
have the Holy Spirit.
My friend Major Ian Thomas, whom many of
you know, preached at Moody Church one Sunday
night and really rocked the congregation.
His text was unsaved believers.
That's quite a subject.
People who have everything in their heads and
nothing in their hearts.
People who can be correct in doctrine and
scientific, possible correct fundamentalist doctrine, and yet it's
all in their head and not in their
heart.
Oh yes.
I can believe my Bible from cover to
cover, and yet have no indwelling Christ.
It's all up there instead of down here.
But if you're a Christian, if you've been
born again, if Christ has really come into
your heart and you've given your life to
him, you have the Holy Spirit.
But it's possible to be a Christian and
not to be filled with the Spirit.
So you have verses such as these.
Walk in the Spirit.
Galatians 5.16. Quench not the Spirit.
1 Thessalonians 5.19. Leave not the Spirit.
Be filled with the Spirit.
Ephesians 5.18. You see, may I put
it this way?
You may have the Holy Spirit, but he
may not have you.
Salvation is like getting a book with two
volumes.
You go to the bookstore and you ask
for Dr. Lloyd-Jones' book on the Sermon
on the Mount, a book which ought to
be in every student's library too.
Dr. Lloyd-Jones on the Sermon on the
Mount is a tremendous book.
And you go there and get the book,
and you take one volume and come away
with it, and you leave the other volume
behind, and suddenly when you're coming back out
of the bookstore you realize you've forgotten it,
and you go back and you ask for
it, and the person in the bookstore gladly
gives it to you, you've paid for it,
it's all yours, and you go back with
two volumes.
Well, salvation is like that.
You have one volume.
The death of Christ for forgiveness of your
sins.
You have another volume.
The life of Christ, the risen life of
our Lord, indwelling you by his Spirit for
victory day by day of itself, so that
you haven't to struggle and fight for it.
But you take both volumes.
You take by faith Jesus to forgive you.
You take by faith the Holy Spirit to
deliver you.
And you have two volumes of full salvation.
Is this a second blessing?
Do I believe in a second blessing?
Yes, I do, because I believe in a
third, and a fourth, and a fifth.
And any day without a blessing would be
a miserable day.
Oh, yes, there are millions of blessings in
the Church tonight, but the fullness of the
Spirit is an experience beyond the new birth.
There is no such thing as a continuous
fullness of the Spirit.
It's a continuous appropriation of a continuous supply
from Jesus Christ himself.
When I trust him, he fills me.
The moment I begin to believe, at that
moment I begin to receive.
And as long as I keep on believing,
praise the Lord, I keep on receiving.
So as I believe, I receive.
As I go on day by day believing
in him, I receive more of him.
It's a crisis, a crisis into which I
hope hundreds of you have entered this week,
when your lives have been totally abandoned to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
The trouble is that so many of us
go through that again and again.
We come forward to every altar call, every
invitation.
We give our lives always to Jesus, and
our sincerity is beyond dispute.
With all our hearts we mean business and
we surrender to the Lord, but we only
take that one step.
We don't take the other, of appropriating faith.
There's a great friend of mine who is
familiar to many of you.
And he has two children, two girls.
One of them is much older than the
other.
The other is a post-grip.
And one Monday morning he was sitting in
his study, thinking about his sermon the previous
day, and sometimes preaches of Monday morning feelings,
and feeling it had been all so hopeless,
his ministry had been ineffective.
And downstairs he suddenly heard his wife say
to the two children, run upstairs and tell
Daddy breakfast's ready.
So they did so, and the big one,
having longer legs, got up first and dashed
into the room and sat down on her
Daddy's knee and put her arms round his
neck and said, Daddy, breakfast's ready.
And a minute or two later a post
-grip came along and stood at the door,
coughing and panting, and looked inside and surveyed
the situation.
And then suddenly Big Sister said something rather
catty to Little Sister.
You don't need to come any further, she
said.
I've got all the rest of Daddy.
And Daddy saw that Little Sister with her
lips beginning to quiver and a tear going
down her face.
So he said, now darling, come on, right
here.
And he stuck out his spare knee and
held out his spare arm, and Little Post
-Grip came running in and jumped on the
knee and he put his arm right round
her.
And she looked across at Big Sister, who
was only eighteen inches away, and said to
her in not a very Christian spirit, she
said to her, you may have all there
is of Daddy, but Daddy's got all there
is of me.
Now that's what it means to be filled
with a spirit.
The moment when you have all there is
of Jesus, and you have all there is
of him at the moment you're born again,
you don't receive him on the installment plan,
you have a full salvation within you, resident
in you at the moment of your new
birth.
But the question is, has he all there
is of you?
And the moment he has all there is
of you, that's the crisis of identification of
Christ, when the spirit fills what you have
emptied.
For God can only fill what you're empty.
Now let's just pause a minute in the
midst of our message this morning and ask
ourselves, quietly in God's presence, have I entered
into that crisis?
Have I really, really been willing for God
this week to empty me of everything that
is contrary to his will, or am I
still fighting a battle about something?
He wants to fill you so that you
might use it.
He wants to fill you so that you
might understand what the will of the Lord
is.
He wants to fill you so that in
everything you can give thanks.
He wants to fill you so that you
will have grace adequate for every situation.
He wants to fill you so that your
life may more and more increase in the
likeness of Christ.
Everything depends upon this transaction.
Have you yielded to it?
Have you not?
Maybe it means that you should go to
your room on your own, and you should
get out a little bit of paper and
write down on it what the Bible says
the Holy Spirit is.
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is
the Spirit of truth.
He's the Spirit, the Spirit of love, the
Spirit of grace, the Spirit of faith, and
so on.
Am I acting a lie?
Am I committing in my life something contrary
to that?
Am I lacking in love and critical and
unkind?
I need to go away alone with God
and examine my life about these things and
write what's wrong and tell the Lord I'm
willing to be empty.
I know a place in Northern Ireland, it's
called Balimino.
And some years ago there, a Protestant lady
was having a series of cottage meetings in
her house every Wednesday night.
And next door there lived a Roman Catholic,
one of the few in that city.
And she invited her to come in, and
this lady said, I'm sorry, I can't, not
allowed to.
The next morning she asked her, did you
have a good meeting?
Oh, she said, great meeting.
How many did you have?
Twenty-seven, and my little cottage was full.
Will you come next week?
No, can't, not allowed to.
Next week and by next weekend.
And she asked her friend, how many did
you have last night?
Oh dear, twenty-one, my house was full.
And they thought, well that's funny.
Will you come next week?
No, can't, not allowed to.
The next week meeting was held, and it
was always the same conversation that occurred.
How many did you have last night?
Sixty-two, and my house was full.
Well that was too much for an Irish
Roman Catholic, so she said to her friend,
listen, you told me your house was full
when you were thirty-seven.
And the next week you got fifty-one.
And then you're sixty-two, how do you
do it?
The thing's impossible.
Oh no, she said, didn't you hear?
Well, he said, what do you mean, didn't
I hear?
Well, she said, they just emptied all the
furniture out in the lawn, and made room
for more people.
Say, God isn't going to fill you with
the Holy Spirit unless he knows that you
mean business.
Are you prepared to empty out of your
life the books that take the place of
the Bible?
Spend more time reading the novel with the
shade of the doubtful in it.
Do you prefer that or the Word of
God?
God has to empty you of that.
Has to empty you of your lack of
control of the television knob.
He wants the life to show to him
that they mean absolute business.
Then he says, the first condition of fullness
is emptiness.
And that means complete, absolute dissolution in myself,
and ready for God to enter my life
to fill it.
And you notice here in this chapter in
Ephesians, that the fullness of the Spirit is
not for missionaries, not for preachers only.
Oh no, it's for everything.
It's for husband and wife, parent and child,
employer and employee.
The Christian life, as it's rightly understood, touches
every social relationship and has immense implications.
And the greatest factor in evangelism is the
Christian family and the Christian home, and the
outputs from that home.
And all of us need to be filled
with the Spirit.
There's a right and wrong way of doing
everything.
Every kind of Christian work.
And above all, you need the fullness of
the Spirit to make your life floaty.
This is not, this is not some emotional
experience for a few people.
It's absolute necessity to meet the demands of
the day in which you're left.
It's a necessity for your life, right now.
Be being filled with the Spirit.
And I think perhaps the greatest necessity of
all is that by being filled with the
Spirit, you learn to be able to stand
against every storm.
Some time ago, my wife and myself and
family were traveling over from Southampton to New
York.
We were going by boat, which was more
popular than by air those days.
And we were traveling in, if you don't
mind me saying so, and excuse me mentioning
it, what is the world's largest liner, the
Queen Elizabeth.
And we were two days out at sea
when we noticed that the captain of the
Queen was looking through his jacket at a
cloud of smoke coming along behind.
And it was getting larger, this cloud of
smoke.
And word went round the passengers of the
Queen Elizabeth that for the first time in
her history, the world's largest liner was being
overtaken at sea by the world's fastest liner,
the United States.
As I usually enjoy that bit of the
story better.
And about four hours later, the United States
passed us, unnecessarily near, I thought, but as
she went by, as she went by, we
were told afterwards that the commander of the
United States sent a message to the commander
of the Queen, which said, you look very
beautiful, but you're very slow.
The reply wasn't published.
About eight weeks later, when I was returning
to Britain, I was sitting in the chief
engineer's cabin on the Queen Elizabeth, and he
was a Christian man, and he said, you
know, just two weeks ago, coming out from
New York, exactly the same thing happened on
our return voyage as happened on your outward
trip.
And he said, the United States overtook us.
And he sent us a telegram which read,
sorry to pass you, but he said, the
old man, referring to the commander, was ready
for him.
And he sent a reply which read, that's
perfectly okay, but it is not neat for
the royal lady to travel in fast company.
I thought that was quite a good answer.
He said to me, look, would you like
to come and see the engines of this
boat?
Oh, I said, I'd love to.
He took me downstairs to the boiler room,
there were four steam-compressed boilers, one of
them wasn't operating, it hadn't been used since
the days of the war.
If they used it, they would use fifteen
hundred tons of oil a day.
And Cunard, he said, believed in economy these
days, and he was operating on three boilers,
had been for years at nine hundred tons
of oil a day.
But he said, there's something else I want
you to see.
He took me right down to the very
skin of the ship, way, way below surface,
and we walked out into a narrow gangway.
On either side of us there were two
enormous propeller shafts, huge shafts, four hundred and
fifty feet long, one hundred and fifty feet
yards of solid steel.
And we were going round at what seemed
to me a tremendous pace.
And we went right to the skin of
the boat, right to the back of it,
and we saw the place where those four
shafts went out into the ocean.
And I heard the crash of four giant
propellers driving that floating hotel across the Atlantic,
eighty-two thousand tons of it.
It was tremendous.
And I went back to his cabin, and
just for the sake of conversation, I said
to him, my, that was wonderful, I wouldn't
have missed it for anything, but I said,
you know, those propellers must be going at
a tremendous speed.
And he laughed at me, he said, you're
no engineer, are you?
I said, no, what do you mean?
He said, if you were, you would know
that I could get those propellers going so
fast that they would make a hole in
the water, and the ship would slow down
and ultimately stop.
He said, I have forty-eight engineers on
board this ship, and they're constantly calculating the
ratio between revolutions per minute in the engine
room and steadiness at the point of drive.
I've never forgotten that.
Because something has been built into my heart
that tells me that God wants from me
not speed, but steadiness.
Not a flash of enthusiasm, but steadiness in
the storm.
And he said to me, you know, we've
been going across this pond for about twenty
-five years.
And he said we'll do it for many
more.
We've been through it when we've been threatened
with torpedoes and we've been bombed in wartime.
And he said we've been through it in
hurricanes and gales, in rough seas, in tempests,
in fog, sometimes in smooth weather, in clear
skies.
And he said we've been doing it for
twenty-five years, and we've never been late.
Mind you, he said we're behind schedule sometimes,
but he said we catch it up, because
we've discovered the secret of steadiness at the
point of drive.
And I need God's fullness in my heart
to keep steady in the storm.
Oh, not an emotional experience.
Not something that makes me go around shouting
hallelujah.
Not something that's merely emotional, but something that
when everything's hitting, and the storm is on,
and the pressures are on, when normally I
would press the panic button and try and
get out of it, and I can pan
out of grace and God.
Now that's what God wants for you.
He wants to send out to this school
a thousand students who have learned the secret
of steadiness.
Because if you haven't learned it in six
months on the mission team, you'll be a
casualty.
Well, I just want to talk for the
remainder of my time about how this may
happen in my life.
I hope I've shown you the need.
Do you ever read from Oswald Chambers, an
author who needs to be taken in small
doses frequently?
He says this.
Some people think that Christians are expected to
do exceptional things in unusual circumstances, whereas the
truth is that a Christian is expected to
be an exceptional person in ordinary circumstances.
No halo for that.
Right down to earth.
Nothing, nothing just thrilling about it.
But someone whose reaction and whose behavior in
ordinary circumstances is exceptional and marks him out
as a man in whose life God has
worked a miracle.
There's an authentic stamp of reality about him,
something about him that can't be explained on
the basis of education, on the basis of
understanding.
He's a miracle.
Because when the heat is on, the pressure's
on, and the tragedy has happened, and the
things that have happened in his life that
have simply taken the rug from under him
and everything absolutely has collapsed all around him,
he's standing.
One of the greatest authors of our day
is C.S. Lewis.
Do you remember his book, Screwtape Letter?
That allegory of the description of satanic warfare
upon the saints?
One paragraph reads like this, Don't be deluded,
Wormwood, writes Screwtape to his nephew who is
responsible for carrying out the tactics of hell
against the Church on earth.
Don't be deluded, Wormwood.
Our cause, listen to every word of this,
our cause is never in greater danger when
a human being, no longer desiring to do
the enemy's will, that is the will of
God, no longer desiring to do the enemy's
will, looks around him upon a universe from
which every sign of the enemy's existence has
disappeared, and asks, Oh God, why have I
been forsaken?
And yet, keeps on obeying, dead in it,
in the stone.
And before long in your life, my dear
friends, God will give you an experience of
darkness when all kind of truth has gone
from your ministry.
He'll put you through an experience often in
which there's no longer any sense of God's
presence, no sense of truth from service, and
you're left absolutely in the dark.
What do you do then?
Unless you know God's Spirit filling you moment
by moment, you collapse.
Because you see, God's purpose for all of
us in life is enlargement through pressure.
What do I mean by that?
Put three men in a burning fiery furnace,
that's pressure.
They meet in the furnace one like unto
the Son of God, that's enlargement.
And God's purpose is enlargement until our character
is conformed to the likeness of Christ, to
make us like him, and he puts us
through any pressure in order to fulfil that
end.
The heat is on.
The pressure is there.
And I find myself in a burning fiery
furnace with three others, two others, and that's
a bit close fellowship.
And I panic and withdraw, but if I
stand in it and meet one like unto
the Son of God, I believe there are
hundreds of you going through new pressures here
at school, pressures in your life.
I say there's almost too much to carry.
You feel it's about snapping point.
Listen, he will not suffer you to be
tested beyond what you're able to bear, but
he will with the temptation provide a way
of escape so that you can run away.
No, so that you are able to bear
it.
He knows when to take the pressure off.
If you just follow me, here in imagination
you see an engineer, and he's testing a
machine under pressure, a new machine, a valuable
machine.
And he's applying all sorts of tests, and
it has upon it a safety gauge.
He finds the pressure going up and up,
and suddenly it goes beyond the safety point,
and immediately he releases a safety valve and
allows the pressure to escape.
You see, the safety valve, the release, is
not for the man, but for the machine,
in case it's jammed.
And when the pressure is on, it's not
that he will allow you to get on
it, but he knows the moment when the
gate will heat off.
If he's trained a Christian to stand in
any test, he knows when to remove the
pressure.
But a Christian can only stand when he's
filled with all the fullness of God.
Let me then ask you again, how's this
going to happen?
Well, I'm quoting now from Hudson Taylor, the
great founder of the OMF.
I prayed.
I fasted.
I agonized.
I strove.
I made resolutions.
I read my Bible more diligently.
I sought more and more for retirement and
meditation, all without effect.
The blessing didn't come that way.
I sought his fullness for long and earnestly.
I cried to God for it.
At last I found it was because there
was no room in my heart for him.
That was spoken by a man who'd been
a missionary in China for years and would
return to the home base and reckon he
was a complete failure, and found that after
years on the mission, people, there's no room
for God.
I look back upon my ministry.
I'm so glad I'm in a position now
where I'm never candidating for a pastorate, and
everything is in retrospect.
And I look back upon times when my
ministry has been absolutely a complete failure.
I've tried method after method, idea after idea.
I've seen prayer meetings which have been as
dead as a doornail.
I've turned the chairs around, put them the
other way around, asked people to get into
groups.
And the thing, the thing, there's nothing, nothing
happened.
It's been dead.
Method after method I've tried to be able
to see the power of God work.
But this one method has never failed.
And I'm sure ashamed that I haven't tried
it more.
It's when I've been absolutely on my face
before God, shot up to a miracle.
And then God has worked.
God brought you there flat on your face
before him, where you've made room for him
to work a miracle.
And then I noticed the second condition of
fullness in my life is faith to accept.
You remember the wonderful language of John chapter
7 and verse 37?
If any man thirsts, let him come unto
me and drink.
He that believeth on me, out of his
inner man shall flow not a trickle, not
a drop, not a river, but rivers of
living water.
He that believeth on me, what shall I
drink?
Let him drink.
Are any of you thirsty for God?
Well, that desire, if any man thirsts, let
him come, let him surrender, let him drink
that faith that lays hold of what God
has promised.
He that believeth, out of his inner man
shall flow, rivers of living water.
That's God's promise to your thirsty heart today,
how he can fill you with his gifts.
And let me say this, that's just the
beginning.
Because, you see, a maintained fullness depends upon
a maintained obedience.
Faith is the way in.
Obedience is the way to maintain.
Every step of faith and obedience enlarges my
capacity for Christ.
Every step of disobedience shrivels it up.
And I can lose the fullness of this
faith.
I can end my life in Romans 7,
in all the carnality of spiritual failure.
I can enter into life and victory and
power and joy and all the primacy of
my own experience.
And then, because I've yielded to a tremendous
counter-attack from hell, I can end my
day on the shelf, unusually, out of God's
self, because Satan has set me up.
And friend, it's not how you begin life
that matters, it's how you end it.
Have you asked the Lord to fill you?
Have you believed that he does do what
you ask him?
If your earthly parents give you good gifts,
how much more shall your heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to them that ask?
Let us pray.
Just a moment of quiet prayer.
Jesus, fill now with thy Spirit.
Heart that fills, surrender now, that the streams
of living water from our inner man may
flow.
O dear Lord, today, just now, may we
know the joy of thy incoming life in
all the fullness, in all the sufficiency, so
that all through the future we know that
it is no longer our effort, our struggle,
but his power, his fullness in us, adequate
for every need.
Ye shall receive power after that the Holy
Spirit has come upon you.
Come now, dear Lord, and fill our empty,
needy, poor, sinful hearts, and may we stand
in all the joy of an indwelling Christ
to serve thee in his power, the grace
of the Lord Jesus, the love of God,
the fullness of the Spirit, the hour, now
and until he comes, and then forevermore.
Amen.
Lord, we submit.