The Promise of the Father. The One Thing Needful

The Holy Spirit is the promise of the Father. That includes everything. If we are to know God aright, if we are to enjoy and experience all that Christ is and has for us, if we are to enter into possession of the heritage of the true and full life which a child of God may expect even here on earth, — everything depends on our being possessed and rilled with the Holy Spirit of God. Above all, if we are not only individually, but as a corporate body, to exercise the rule and dominion over our fellow-men in the power of the eternal redemption, we are absolutely dependent on that abundant measure of the Spirit which God is so willing to give. The Spirit is the promise of the Father. Everything that reminds us of the fallen state of the Church, of her unfaithfulness and lack of loyalty to Christ, of the terrible power that the world has over her, of her impotence to carry out her mission here on earth, is just another call: “Return ye at My reproof; I will pour out My Spirit abundantly.”

Let us once again listen to the great promise that Christ gave His disciples when He was teaching them to pray. Let us see whether, in view of the ignorance that prevails as to the power of Christ’s Cross, and the holiness it offers, and the contentment of Christian ministers and workers to struggle on in their human efforts to save men, without giving the Holy Spirit that first place which He must have — let us see whether our hearts will not yield to this wonderful promise, and turn to God for what He will so surely give.

Listen now to the promise of the Father. “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” In these words we find four deep and unfathomable mysteries. The first, the mystery of the Holy Spirit whom God offers to give us. Next, the mystery of the Father’s infinite willingness to bestow that gift. Third, the mystery of the Son of God who came from heaven to bring the promise, to open the way for its fulfilment, and then from heaven to be the channel through Whom the Father bestows it. And fourth, the mystery of prayer by which that great gift can be drawn down upon ourselves and others. If it were to please God to open our eyes fully to see the glory of these mysteries, we could not for a moment hesitate to give up everything to have the promise fulfilled in us.

I The inconceivable mystery of the gift of the

Holy Spirit — Who is He? The Spirit of God, in Whom, just as a man has his life in the spirit that animates his body, the whole life and glory of Deity is comprehended. The Spirit is the bond of union between the Father and the Son. He is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son too. And this very same Spirit is to be the Spirit of our life, dwelling in us as the hidden God, doing His work to reveal the Son and the Father within us, — the Spirit of God dwelling in us. The thought is so overwhelming that it constrains us to worship and adore.

And of this blessed Spirit God has said that He will be the life of our life. He is given with the express purpose of working out in us all that God wants us to be and to do. He is given with the understanding that we never need, in our own strength, to do what God commands: the Spirit will work it in us. He comes as the whole God to take possession of the whole man; He will be responsible for our whole being, if we will yield ourselves to Him in faith. He will glorify Christ in us, and as we look up to Christ, and through Him to the Father, the blessed Spirit will work in the depth of our hearts the likeness of God and His Christ.

2. And now the second mystery — the mystery of the Father’s inconceivable willingness to bestow this infinite gift. “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” Christ takes an illustration from the deepest experience of our daily life. Have we not as children learnt to know and trust and rejoice in the willingness of a father to give us the bread we need? How natural, how easy, what joy it was, to live in that confiding assurance of what a father would do! And now just think of what that word means, “How much more will your Father.” Think of His greatness. Think of His holiness. Think of His love and His tender compassion, and say: Have we not reason for the most unbounded confidence; the Father is just longing to fill us with His Holy Spirit. Oh the mystery of this inconceivable longing of God to give us His Holy Spirit! Take time to take it in.

But why then, if He is so willing, do we so often pray and have to wait long for the answer? It is simply that we are not willing. We hinder Him, we do not yield our whole heart and soul, our whole being. We are not like the hungry child, of whom the father says he must have bread. We are not ready to sacrifice everything and only seek what the Father longs to give. Do let us believe in the mystery of this Divine willingness to give the Spirit. It will draw us to come closer to Him and under the power of His love to lay ourselves at- His feet.

3. The third mystery. Who is this who brings this wonderful message? None less than the Son of God. As if to make unbelief impossible, God sends His only begotten Son as the bearer of the good tidings. He came to prepare the way to deliver us from the power of sin, to yield His own body to the Holy Spirit as a living sacrifice on the Cross, that He might then receive the Spirit from the Father to impart to us. Sin had so separated us and our whole being from God, that it was only by death to the old nature, death to sin, that a new body could be formed in which the Holy Spirit could dwell.

And here we have the reason why, with the infinite willingness of God to bestow the Spirit, we find it so difficult to receive Him. As Christ could not receive the Spirit in His fulness of power to impart to us until He had died the death of the Cross, so it is alone in the full fellowship of that death like Him that we are made partakers of the fulness of the Spirit. It is when we are with Him crucified to the world, and in Him live as those who are dead to sin, that He can do His blessed work in us.

4. The fourth mystery — the inconceivable power of my feeble prayer to draw down the Holy Spirit from heaven, to work where and what I ask in the name of Jesus. It is not only that the Father will give me the Spirit, but He will send at my request the Spirit on other souls around me, sometimes in far-distant lands. Yes, this is what prayer has done and is doing to-day, and will do far more abundantly when God’s children learn to believe the promise and to take hold of His strength.

It is high time for the Church not to look only at prayer in the light of our feebleness or our limited desires. We must begin to believe that tGod, in the mystery of prayer, has entrusted us nth a force that can move the heavenly world id bring its power down to this earth. The •ayer of one hundred and twenty at Pentecost prought down the power of the promised Spirit. rhen the Church continues with one accord in prayer and supplication, it will again be seen, to in extent of which we have no conception at the jresent time, that the Kingdom of heaven will pme down in power into the hearts and lives of len.

Oh, take time, ye children of God, and fall down in adoration in view of these four great mysteries — the gift of the Holy Spirit, the infinite willingness of the Father to bestow Him, the blessed Son who is the channel, and the inconceivable power of the prayer of faith!

Let each of us for himself ask and receive. Let us believe with our whole heart, God gives, God gives every day afresh, God gives in increasing power, His blessed Spirit to every child that asks aright.

Let each of us believe in the power of prayer to bring the blessing to others, and without ceasing cry to God that His children may learn to believe in His blessed promise, and to live in the power of it.

Let us very specially, as we think of what has been called “this Spiritless age,” and the low state of spiritual life in the Church, and the terrible need of the world, yield ourselves to the work of intercession, and allow the Holy Spirit to make us of those who cry to God day and night until He pour out His blessed Spirit that there be not room to receive it. And let every prayer breathe the confident assurance, “How much more will your Father give the Spirit to them that ask Him.”

NOTE

In The Decisive Hour of Missions, Dr. Mott writes: The Rev. J. Goforth bears testimony that the results of the different Evangelistic Missions were just in proportion to the extent the missionaries and Chinese Christian readers yielded themselves to God, and sought the power of the Holy Spirit. He expresses the conviction that “if the Church of Christ will humble itself under the hand of God, the Holy Spirit will confirm the preaching of the Word with unmistakable signs of His presence and power. I have the strongest of convictions that it would pay many, manifold, for the Church at home and abroad to cease for a season its busy round of activities and seek for the Holy Spirit’s power as for hid treasure. If we would evangelise the world in our day we must get back to the Pentecostal factor.”

Is it not incomprehensible that the Church professes to believe that the Holy Spirit is the mighty power of God, and that He will be given in answer to believing, persevering prayer, and will clothe His ministers with power from on high, and that yet the Church does not avail itself of this great promise and does not consider much prayer for the Holy Spirit as the first and all-important thing in the work of saving men? Our faith in the Holy Spirit is to a great extent simply intellectual. Were it otherwise it would be impossible that we should not count it our greatest privilege to ask and to receive the Holy Spirit in doing God’s work.