Your Quest

What is Your Quest?

The Quest For Success

Male and female, it seems that we are endlessly striving to make a name for ourselves—whether that would be in reaching the top of the corporate ladder, or parenting the next Albert Einstein.

Take a look at the shelves of your local bookstore: You’ll find countless resources on how to become a more effective, successful person in the world of work.

A quick search on the internet can yield a wealth of information on how to best meet the physical and emotional needs of your child, even before birth.

The creators of these resources appeal to our deepest insecurities and deceive us into believing that if we can somehow find the secret formula, our success will be guaranteed.

People typically aspire to be the absolute best at what we do, which in and of itself is a noble pursuit.

Our problems begin to arise when we seek to measure our intrinsic value by our successes and failures.

We have been created by a loving God to bring glory to his name in all the circumstances of our lives.

And often the very circumstances that bring him the most glory are the times of our greatest failure, times when we give up trying to work in our own power and instead allow his power to be made perfect in our weakness.

The Word of God says in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

While our daily struggles may not appear in the same form as our first parents’, their essence is quite similar.

We often find ourselves dissatisfied with the path that God has ordained for us, which leads us to pursue our own agenda.

Instead of taking our confusion and dissatisfaction to the one who knows us best, we are tempted to look outside of our relationship with God to find answers to our failures and disappointments.

We toil, not against actual thorns and thistles, but against “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things [that] come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful” (Mark 4:19).

We seek the forbidden fruit of this world that will never satisfy, while God waits for us to come and walk with him in the cool of the day. He can meet our every need, if only we would let him.

Joshua 1:8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but nthou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt ||have good success.

The Needful Quest

It is to the effect that the one thing needful for the Church, and the thing which, above all others, men ought everywhere to seek for with one accord and with their whole heart, is to be filled with the Spirit of God.

1. It is the will of God that every one of His children should live entirely and unceasingly under the control of the Holy Spirit.

2. Without being filled with the Spirit, it is utterly impossible that an individual Christian or a church can ever live or work as God desires.

3. Everywhere and in everything we see the proofs, in the life and experience of Christians, that this blessing is but little enjoyed in the Church, and, alas! is but little sought for.

4. This blessing is prepared for us and God waits to bestow it. Our faith may expect it with the greatest confidence.

5. The great hindrance in the way is that the self-life, and the world, which it uses for its own service and pleasure, usurp the place that Christ ought to occupy.

6. We cannot be filled with the Spirit until we are prepared to yield ourselves to be led by the Lord Jesus to forsake and sacrifice everything for this pearl of great price.

When we read the Book of the Acts, we see that the filling with the Spirit and His mighty operation was always obtained by prayer

Acts 19:1–6 (KJV 1900)

And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples, He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.

Hearing this glad tidings and consenting to it, they were baptized into the name of this Saviour, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

Thereupon Paul prayed for them and laid his hands upon them, and they received the Holy Spirit; and then, in token of the fact that this whole transaction was a heavenly reality, they obtained a share in the Pentecostal miracle, and spake “with other tongues.”

The Needfulness of The Holy Spirit In Us

Paul too had seen the Lord in His heavenly glory and was by that vision led to conversion; yet even in his case the spiritual work he required to have done in him was not thereby completed.

Ananias had to go to him and lay his hands upon him that he might receive the Holy Spirit.

Only then could he become a witness for Christ.

Let it Be Your Quest

There is nothing so fitted to search and to cleanse the heart as true prayer.

It teaches one to put to himself such questions as these:

Do I really desire what above everything I pray for?

Am I willing to cast out everything to make room for what God is prepared to give me?

Is the prayer of my lips really the prayer of my life?

Do I really continue in intercourse with God, waiting upon Him, in quiet trust, until He gives me this great, heavenly, supernatural gift, His own Spirit, to be my spirit, the spirit of my life every hour?

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. Jn 16:13.

There are two ways in which the Holy Spirit works in us.

The first is the preparatory operation in which He simply acts on us but does not yet take up His abode within us, though leading us in faith and ever urging us to all that is good and holy.

The second is the higher and more advanced phase of His working when we receive Him as an abiding gift, as an indwelling

Consider what took place at Samaria.

Philip the evangelist had preached there; many had been led to believe in Jesus and were baptized into His name; and there was great joy in that city.

When the apostles heard this news, they sent down Peter and John, who, when they came to Samaria, prayed that these new converts might receive the Holy Spirit.

This gift was thus something quite different from the working of the Spirit that led them to just believe and have faith and joy in Jesus as a Saviour.

It was something higher: for now from heaven, and by the glorified Lord Himself, the Holy Spirit was imparted in power with His abiding indwelling, to consecrate and fill their hearts.

A Holy Purpose

Was it not the great aim of the Lord Jesus, after He had educated and trained His disciples for three years by His intercourse with them, to lead them up to the point of waiting for the promise of the Father and receiving the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven?

Was not this the chief object of Peter on the day of Pentecost, when, after summoning those who were pricked in their hearts to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, he assured them that they should then receive the Holy Spirit?

Was it not this also that Paul aimed at when in his Epistles he asked his fellow-Christians if they did not know that they were each one “a temple of the Holy Spirit,” or reminded them that they had to be “filled with the Holy Spirit”?

Yes: the supreme need of the Christian life is to receive the Holy Spirit, and when we have it, to be conscious of the fact and live in harmony with it

Let Your Quest Be To Go Past Your Initial Spiritual Experience

The gift of the Spirit is imparted only by God Himself. Every fresh bestowment of the Spirit comes from above.

There must be frequent personal dealing with God

We must meet with God, be one with God

A life under the continual leading of the Holy Spirit is within our reach

Lack of power means lack of connection!

We must frequent the Throne Room.

Daily Relationship was the Original Plan for Mankind In Genesis, sin broke that communion with God.

Sin steals, breaks and separates one from God.

When Was The Last Time You Genuinely Spoke In Other Tongues?

On the day of Pentecost the speaking “with other tongues” and the prophesying was the result of being filled with the Spirit.

Here at Ephesus, twenty years later, the very same miracle is again witnessed, as the visible token and pledge of the other glorious gifts of the Spirit.

In our days there is an increasing lack of power in the Church of the Lord.

In spite of all the multiplication of the means of grace, there is neither the power of the divine salvation in believers, nor the power for conversion in preaching, nor the power in the conflict of the Church with worldliness and unbelief and unrighteousness that, according to God’s Word.

Let Your Soul Be Driven By A Keen Need…A Quest for the Holy Ghost Power

Don’t discount the Power of the Holy Ghost or try to live without it!

Look at the Benefits!

Full Blessings of Joy, Peace, Enjoyment and Power

Why Keep Back Your Soul from the Fountain of Living Waters?

Let but your heart be filled with a deep conviction of what you lack, a desire for what God offers, a willingness to sacrifice everything for it, and you may rest assured that the marvel of Jerusalem and of Samaria, of Cæsarea and Ephesus, will once again be repeated.

The Fact of Great Change and Transformation

There is one fact which makes the great event of the Day of Pentecost doubly instructive

We have learned that those who intimately filled with the Spirit received a definite impacting power on their lives that resulted in them being transformed.

Note: These men had been walking with Jesus for the past three years.

Yet, when when they were filled with the Spirit…the Blessings of Pentecost wrought a complete transformation.

They as a result became entirely new men!

So much that one might say “Old things have passed away: behold all is become new!”

It was more than just a “blessing” it was the operation of God in them.

It shows us what weak and sinful men can find through the outcome of the Holy Ghost working in them!

It teaches us—and this is the principle thing— how mighty and complete the revolution that is brought to pass when the Holy Ghost is received in His fullness!

Yet The Key Was These All Prepared For It By Seeking For It! It Was Their Quest!

It lets us see how glorious the grace that awaits us if we press on to the full blessing of Pentecost!

They obeyed Jesus’ command to wait until they were endued with power from on high.

Luke 24:49

And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.

The Blessing of The Holy Ghost Experience

The ever-abiding presence and indwelling of the Lord Jesus

When Jesus walked with them and taught them about He coming to dwell within them.

At that point they remained what they were…just mere men.

The reason was at that point Jesus was ever still an external Christ who stood outside of them and from without sought to work upon them by His word and personal influence.

With the advent of Pentecost this condition was entirely changed.

In the Holy Spirit He came down as the inward, indwelling Christ, to become in the innermost recesses of their being the life of their life.

This is what He Himself had promised in the words: “I will not leave you orphans: I come unto you. In that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.”

This was the source of all the other blessings that came with Pentecost. Jesus Christ, the Crucified, the Glorified, the Lord from heaven, came in spiritual power, by the Spirit, to impart to them that ever-abiding presence of their Lord that had been promised to them; and that indeed in a way that was at once most intimate, all-powerful, and wholly divine: by the indwelling which makes Him in truth their life.

Him whom they had had in the flesh, living with them on earth, they now received by the Spirit in His heavenly glory within them. Instead of an outward Jesus near them, they now obtained the inward Jesus within them.

2. The Spirit of Jesus came into them as the life and the power of sanctification

Here I shall allude at the outset to only one feature in this change. We know how often the Lord had to rebuke them for their pride and exhort them to humility. It was all of no avail. Even on the last night of His earthly life, at the table of the Holy Supper, there was a strife amongst them as to which of them should be the greatest.

The outward teaching of the outward Christ, whatever other influences it may have exercised, was not sufficient to redeem them from the power of indwelling sin; this could be achieved only by the indwelling Christ.

Only when Jesus descended into them by the Holy Spirit did they undergo a complete change.

They received Him in His heavenly humility and subjection to the Father, and in His self-sacrifice for others, as their life. Henceforth all was changed.

From that moment onwards they were animated by the spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus.

This, in very truth, is still the only way to a real sanctification, to a life that actually overcomes sin.

3. An overflowing of the heart with the love of God is also a part of the blessing of Pentecost.

Next to pride, lack of love—or, as we may put it in one word, lovelessness—was the sin for which the Lord had so often to rebuke His disciples.

These two sins have in truth one and the same root: the self-seeking I, the desire for self-pleasing.

The new commandment that He gave them, the token whereby all men should know that they were His disciples, was love to one another.

How gloriously was it manifested on the day of Pentecost that the Spirit of the Lord shed abroad His love in the hearts of His own.

The multitude of them that believe were as one heart, one soul: all things they possessed were held in common; no one said that anything of that which he had was his own.

The kingdom of heaven with its life of love had come down to them.

The spirit, the disposition, the wonderful love of Jesus, filled them, because He Himself had come into them.

How closely the mighty working of the Spirit and the indwelling of the Lord Jesus are bound up with a life in love appears from the prayer of Paul in behalf of the Ephesians, in which he asks that they might be strengthened with power by the Spirit, in order that Christ might dwell in their hearts. Then he forthwith makes this addition: “that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend the love which passeth knowledge.”

The filling with the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ bring of themselves a life that has its root, its joy, its power, its evidence in love, because the indwelling Christ Himself is Love

4. The coming of the Spirit changed weakness and fear into courage and power.

We all know how, from fear rising in his heart at the word of a woman, Peter denied his Lord; and how that same night all the disciples fled and forsook Him.

Their hearts were really attached to Him, and they were sincerely willing to do what they had promised and go to die with Him; but when it came to the crisis, they had neither courage nor power. They had to say: “To will is present with me, but how to perform I find not.”

After the blessing of the Spirit of Pentecost, there was no more question of merely willing apart from performing. By Christ dwelling in us God works both the willing and the doing.

With what confidence of spirit did Peter on the day of Pentecost dare to preach the Crucified One to thousands of hostile Jews.

With what boldness was he able, in opposition to the leaders of the people, to say: “We must obey God rather than men.”

With what courage and joy were Stephen and Paul and so many others enabled to encounter threatening and suffering and death: they did this even triumphantly.

It was because the Spirit of Christ, the Victor,—yea, the Christ Himself, who had been glorified,—dwelt within them. I

t is the joy of the blessing of Pentecost that gives courage and power to speak for Jesus, because by it the whole heart is filled with Him.

5. The blessing of Pentecost makes the whole Word of God new.

How distinctly do we see this fact in the case of the disciples. As with all the Jews of that age, their ideas of the Messiah and the kingdom of God were utterly external and carnal.

All the instruction of the Lord Jesus throughout three long years could not detach their minds from them. They were utterly unable to comprehend the doctrine of a suffering and dying Messiah or the hope of His invisible spiritual dominion.

Even after His resurrection He had to rebuke them for their unbelieving spirit and their backwardness in understanding the Scriptures.

With the coming of the day of Pentecost an entire change took place. The whole of their ancient Scriptures opened up before them.

The light of the Holy Spirit in them illumined the Word.

In the preaching of Peter and Stephen, in the addresses of Paul and James, we see how a divine light had shone upon the word of the Old Testament.

They saw everything through the Spirit of this Jesus who had made His abode within them.

So will it be also with ourselves. It is as necessary as it is helpful that we should study the Scriptures and meditate upon them, and keep the word of God alike in head and heart and daily walk.

Let us, however, constantly remember that it is only when we are filled with the Spirit that we can rightly and fully experience the spiritual power and truth of the Word. He is “the Spirit of truth.” He alone guides into all truth when He dwells in us.

6. It is the blessing of Pentecost that gives power to bless others.

The divine power of the exalted Jesus to grant repentance and the forgiveness of sins is exercised by Him through His servants whom He sends forth to proclaim these blessings.

The minister of the gospel who desires to preach repentance and forgiveness through Jesus with success in winning souls, must do the work in the power of the Spirit of this Jesus.

The chief reason why so much preaching of conversion and pardon is fruitless lies in the fact that these elements of truth are presented only as a doctrine, and that preachers endeavour to secure a way to the hearts of their audience in the power of merely human earnestness, and reasoning, and eloquence.

But little blessing is won by these means. It is the man that makes it his chief desire to be filled with the Spirit of God, and then by faith in the indwelling of Christ comes to be assured that the glorified Lord will speak and work in him, who will obtain blessing.

It is true, indeed, that this blessing will not always be given in the very same measure or in the very same manner, but it will always certainly come: just because the preacher permits the Lord to work in and through him.

Alike in preaching and in the daily life of a servant of Christ, the full blessing of Pentecost is the sure way of becoming a blessing to others. “He that believeth on Me,” said Jesus, “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” This he said of the Holy Spirit.

A heart filled with the Spirit will overflow with the Spirit.

7. It is the blessing of Pentecost that will make the Church of Christ what God would have her be.

We have spoken of what the Spirit will do in individual believers. We have also to think of what the blessing will be when the Church as a whole shall apprehend her calling to be filled with the Spirit, and then to exhibit the life and the power—yea, and the very presence—of her Lord to the world.

If many members of the Church of Christ are content to remain without this blessing, the whole Church will suffer.

Hence it is of the utmost importance that we should not only think of what the being “filled with the Spirit” means for ourselves, but also consider what it will do for the Church, especially in our own neighbourhood, and by her for all the world.

To this end, let us simply recall the morning of the day of Pentecost. At that juncture the Christian Church in Jerusalem consisted only of one hundred and twenty disciples, most of them poor unlearned fishermen, publicans, and humble women, an insignificant and despised gathering.

Yet it was just by these believers that the kingdom of God had to be proclaimed and extended: and they did it.

By them, and those who were added to them, the power of Jewish prejudice and of pagan hardness of heart was overcome, and the Church of Christ won glorious triumphs.

This grand result was achieved simply and only because the first Christian church was filled with the Spirit.

From this initial group of 120…the Gospel was Spread across the world!

LET IT BE YOUR QUEST…To Be Filled, Stay Full and To See Others Filled!