Offer up yourself as a living sacrifice to be wholly God's. This may well involve a dying to your own self-will in one or several areas. You must die to your carnal selfness, to all that is of "the world."
You can now say with Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). (Google image, All I have is Yours)
"Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body . . . offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness" (Rom. 6:11-13).
Provisionally we were crucified with Christ at His cross. We now affirm it by an act of the will in self-surrender. This is the emptying of self which must precede the infilling of the Spirit. Make a total surrender of your will in advance for whatever God reveals to you in your tomorrows.
Be willing to abandon your own plans, ambitions, and will if God ever reveals anything to you as contrary to His will. Henceforth you are not your own.
Think of your life as a checkbook. Absolute surrender is to fill all the blank checks by signing in advance your own name, making them out to the Holy Spirit, and permitting Him to fill the blanks as He sees best throughout your tomorrows. You have already said your eternal yes to His will as He makes it known to you. You are His. He is Lord and you lovingly and gladly obey day by day.
5. Ask in prayer. Christ's promise could not be more clear: "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13). When our hearts are prepared by taking the previous four steps, we are ready to call out to God from the depths of our being for the fulfillment of His promise.
Asking and appropriating need not require a prolonged period of prayer, for God is always ready to fulfill His promise. Yet the biographies of many Christians describe how they hungered and thirsted and prayed for some hours or even days before their hearts seemed ready to take the last step of appropriating faith.
Perhaps God uses such a period of asking and reaching out to Him to enable us to deepen our thirst for Him, or to enable us to realize new depths of spiritual need within our nature. From God's standpoint there need be no waiting. Yet He can greatly bless to our spiritual good a time of waiting before Him. During such a period the Spirit searches our hearts. Jesus tells us in such a case to stop our prayer and first make things right with the other person (Matt. 5:2324).
6. Appropriate by simple trust. How blessed that the infilling of the Spirit is by faith! It is by faith—so it is for whoever will. It is by faith—so it can be yours this moment. You don't have to wait to become more worthy. You don't have to prove yourself through self-discipline or through prolonged prayer and fasting. It is not by works; it is the gift of God. It is by grace through faith that we are filled with the Spirit.
When Peter described how the Spirit filled the Gentiles at the house of Cornelius and compared it to how the 120 were filled at Pentecost, he explained that God gave the Holy Spirit to Gentiles just as He had to those in the Upper Room on Pentecost. "He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9).
God always purifies and empowers when He fills with His Spirit, and the appropriating means which God has ordained is faith.
Dr. A. J. Gordon writes, "It seems clear from the Scriptures that it is still the duty and privilege of believers to receive the Holy Spirit by a conscious, definite act of appropriating faith, just as they received Jesus Christ . . . It is as sinners that we accept Christ for our justification, but it is as sons that we accept the Spirit for our sanctification."
Believe how intensely Christ longs to fill you with His Spirit. He wants you to be all He created you to be. Believe what joy it will bring to the Heart of Jesus when He sees you filled with His presence and power.
Believe in God's wonderful plan for you! How He desires to use your leadership and your life in ways beyond your own plans and thoughts! The full record you will not know until eternity, but God will encourage you at times with bits of news of how He has made you a blessing.
Believe and keep humble, giving God all the glory, and Christ will use you more and more as He leads you in His triumphal processing (2 Cor. 2:14). "The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day" (Prov. 4:18).
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Used by permission of the author and Duewel Literature Trust, Inc., Greenwood, Indiana. Creative reading style by Jean.
Ablaze for God
#110 Surrender Totally to Christ's Lordship
by Dr. Wesley L. Duewel
(pp. 311-313) ZondervanPublishingHouse
Let's pray-
Father, we offer up ourselves as living sacrifices to be wholly yours, dying to our own self-willed emotions and ways.
Help us make a total consecration of all we are, have and future. We present ourselves totally to You—bodies, souls and spirits.
Provisionally we know we were crucified with Christ at His cross, and we are now surrendered to Him as our Savior. We can see now, that the emptying of ourselves must precede the infilling of Your Spirit.
The time it takes for the infilling may be for Your Spirit to enable our faith to be strengthened, and our thirst for You to be deepened. Please search our hearts to see if there's anything that needs taking care of; unbelief, unforgiveness, anger, and resentment towards You or others.
Thank You for purifying and empowering us through the infilling of Your Spirit, and appropriating the means of ordained faith.
Help us cooperate in allowing Christ to become our Lord, as well as our Savior. We submit to His lordship over our lives and our future at this very moment.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
{I have added a link to Healing Prayers by Charles and Frances Hunter's book, "How to Heal the Sick" on my PAGE about them.}
Today's Bible verses-
worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
Luke 11:9, 10 (NKJV) "And I say to you, ask, and it
will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock,
and it will be opened to you. (v. 10) For everyone
who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him
who knocks it will be opened."
1 John 2:4-6 (NKJV) "He who says, 'I know Him,'
and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and
the truth is not in him. (v. 5) But whoever keeps His
word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By
this we know that we are in Him. (v. 6) He who says
he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as
He walked."
Today's quotes-
~ Poh Fang Chia- "As we yield to the work of the Holy Spirit, we can fill our minds with things that are 'true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable' (Phil. 4:8 NLT). By God's wisdom we can make good choices that honor Him."
(Taken from Our Daily Bread®, ©12/12/2018 by Our Daily Bread Ministries, Grand Rapids, MI. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. www.odb.org).
~ Oswald Chambers- Paul said, “I beseech you . . . that you present your bodies a living sacrifice . . . ” (Romans 12:1). What I must decide is whether or not I will agree with my Lord and Master that my body will indeed be His temple. Once I agree, all the rules, regulations, and requirements of the law concerning the body are summed up for me in this revealed truth—my body is “the temple of the Holy Spirit.” (From My Utmost for His Highest Updated Edition)
Today's guest post-
Prince of Peace
Jo Huddleston- "Among other beautiful names the prophets gave Jesus was Prince of Peace.
Throughout the Bible, the words perfect and perfection are used to refer to God and Jesus Christ: God is perfect, His work is perfect, His way is perfect, and God’s law is perfect. Living in a world of imperfection, why wouldn’t we trust in a God of perfection?"
Today's Popular post-
A New Unction of the Holy Spirit
Lois J. Stucky- "E. E. Shelhamer was deeply spiritual brother used greatly by God in a preaching and writing ministry. Some of you have read his articles in Herald of His Coming.
He once shared that he was powerfully converted as a teenager. So compelling was the Holy Spirit's call on his life that the lad sometimes jumped up on a box and preached to the logs and the corn stalks."
A New Unction of the Holy Spirit
He once shared that he was powerfully converted as a teenager. So compelling was the Holy Spirit's call on his life that the lad sometimes jumped up on a box and preached to the logs and the corn stalks."
Upcoming posts-
The Word and Wisdom
22nd- Tuesday's post by Charles Spurgeon
#111 Remember These Spiritual Realities [Last one]
25th- Tuesday's post by Dr. Wesley L. Duewel
#1 My Testimony of the Infilling
27th- Thursday's post by Jean Oathout
God's Work
29th- Saturday's post by Lee Forbes
Jean's blog (Click to see snippets of the 7 recent posts)
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