Experiencing the Holy Spirit # 22

Deny Yourself Daily


You of course say at once: "Who is sufficient for these things? Who can sacrifice everything and die and lay down his life utterly as Jesus did? Is such a surrender impossible?" My reply is that it is indeed so. But "with God all things are possible." You cannot literally follow Jesus down into death and the grave. That will always remain beyond your power. Never will our individual self yield itself up to death or rest quietly in the grave.


But hear the glad tidings. In Christ you have died and have been buried. The power of His dying, of His willing surrender of His spirit into the hands of the Father, and of His silent resting in the grave works in you. By faith in this working of the spirit and the power of the death and the life of the Lord Jesus, give yourself willingly to lose your life to Him.


For this end, begin to regard the denying of yourself as the first and most necessary work of every day. Accept the message I bring you. The great hindrance in the way of the life of Pentecost is the self-life. Believe in the sinfulness of that life, not because of its gross external sins, but because it sets itself in the place of God. It seeks, pleases and honors itself more than God.


Recognize your own life as your own worst enemy and as the enemy of God. Begin to see what the full blessing is that Jesus has prepared for you and which He bestowed at Pentecost - namely, His own indwelling. Count nothing too precious or too costly to give as an exchange for this pearl of great price.


Believer, are you really sincere about being filled with the Spirit of God? Is it your great desire to know what hinders you from obtaining it? Take the word of our Lord and keep it in your heart. Go with it to Him. He is able to make you understand and experience it. It is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.


Let everything in you that belongs to self be sacrificed to Him. He, who by His death obtained the Spirit, who prepared Peter for Pentecost in the fellowship of His suffering, has your guidance in His hands. Trust your own Jesus. He baptizes with the Spirit beyond doubt or question.


Deny yourself and follow Him. Lose your own life and find His. Let Him impart Himself in the place you have up to this time retained for yourself. From Him there will flow rivers of living water.


~Andrew Murray~


(continued with # 23 - "How It Is Obtained By Us")