The next two days, I'm going to share excerpts straight from our upcoming book: Daring to Ask for More: Divine Keys to Answered Prayer and Successful Ministry. I think these stories will inspire you!
So what happens when one has that Holy Spirit outpouring in their lives?
While warm feelings and sensations may or may not be present
at conversion, when one receives the Holy Spirit (the “former rain”) and
continues to ask for the daily filling of the Holy Spirit, the desire to spread
the gospel cannot be suppressed. It becomes the driving force in one’s life. As
a result, God will cooperate with the weakest of human vessels in the grand
task of giving the gospel to the world.
“Through the Spirit God works in
His people ‘to will and to do of His good pleasure.’ Philippians 2:13. But many
will not submit to this. They want to manage themselves. This is why they do
not receive the heavenly gift. Only to those who wait humbly upon God, who
watch for His guidance and grace, is the Spirit given. The power of God awaits
their demand and reception. This promised
blessing, claimed by faith, brings all other blessings in its train. It is
given according to the riches of the grace of Christ, and He is ready to supply
every soul according to the capacity to receive.”[i]
Let’s look at a couple stories about how God worked mightily
thru the lives of those that were willing to surrender all to Him.
From Shoe
Salesman to Mighty Evangelist
During the wave
of revival’s sweeping America in the mid 1800’s, we read about one young shoe
salesman in Chicago who became converted. This young man had little education,
but with great eagerness immediately went to work sharing the good news with
anyone that would listen.
So eager was he
to share and help others come to knowledge of the truth that he went to the
superintendent of the local Plymouth Congregational Church and asked if he
might teach Sunday School. However, many also had the same eagerness to teach,
and as a result, the superintendent told him, “I am sorry, young fellow. I have
sixteen teachers too many, but I will put you on the waiting list.” So the
young man went and got boys off the street and he took them to a beach on Lake
Michigan where he taught them his own Sunday school class.
Eventually he was
led to become an evangelist and began speaking to large audiences across
America and the British Isles. Described by others as a “dynamo of feverish
actively,” he appeared to be making an impact. Yet inside his heart, he felt
that something was lacking. However, looking at his apparent success, he pushed
the thoughts away.
Later on, while
preaching some evangelistic meetings in Chicago, two godly older women began
attending his services. As a result, they began to feel a deep burden for this
young evangelist. Taking it upon themselves to pray, they began pleading with
the Lord to baptize the young preacher with Holy Spirit power. Not long after, they
approached him. “We are praying for you!” they told him. He smiled and replied,
“Why don’t you pray for the people?” Their answer startled him. “Because you need power!”
“I need power?” he thought to himself? “I though I had power.” At the time he
was teaching at one of the largest congregations in Chicago. There were some
conversions, and he felt satisfied. However, their statement deeply troubled
him.
The two older
women continued praying and not long after, the young evangelist invited them
to his study. Right then and there, they all got down on their knees and the
two women began pleading that God would send the Holy Spirit in fullness. As
they prayed, the young evangelist began to cry as greater hunger for the Holy
Spirit filled his heart. “I really felt [at that moment] that I did not want to
live any longer if I could not have this power for service,” he later related.
While nothing
significant happened that day, recognizing at last his deeper need, the young
man continued to plead for the Holy Spirit’s outpouring. Time went on, and then
one day he had an experience, which was so sacred that he could not speak of it
for some time. “I can only say,” he later shared looking back, “that God
revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to
ask Him to stay His hand.”
The next time he
went to preach, while the sermons were not different, the preacher was. “I did
not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted,” he reported. As
God’s Holy Spirit outpouring continued to flood his life and ministry,
thousands flocked to hear his messages. Soon he was one of the most famous and
sought after evangelists of his time.
Looking back,
Dwight L. Moody often remembered with fondness the day the two older women first
came to pray for him. While there was no sound of a mighty rushing wind in his
study that day, he believed that this day
was the turning point in his ministry—the day that he recognized his great
need! His ministry went on to last for forty years and effectively reached tens
of thousands for Christ.
Later when reflecting
on the Holy Spirit’s outpouring in his life, he wrote, “God has got a good many
children who have just barely got life, but not power for service. You might
say safely, I think, without exaggeration, that nineteen out of every twenty of
professed Christians are of no earthly account so far as building up Christ’s
kingdom; but on the contrary they are standing right in the way, and the reason
is because they have just got life and settled down, and have not sought for power.”[ii]
As Ellen White
stated earlier, God sends the Holy Spirit, but only according to our capacity
to receive. While the Holy Spirit has come in some measure into the life of all
sincerely professing Christians, too many have grown content with their “first
love” experience and have not continued asking for more! That’s why we are
writing this book, challenging people not to be content with where they are,
but to dare—and keep daring—to ask for
more!
When describing
the difference between Christians, Moody wrote:
“It seems to
me we have got about three classes of Christians: the first class, in the 3rd
chapter of John, were those who had got to Calvary and there got life. They
believed on the Son and were saved, and there they rested satisfied. They did
not seek anything higher. Then in the 4th chapter of John we come to
a better class of Christians. There it was a well of living water bubbling up.
There are a few of these, but they are not a hundredth part of the first class.
But the best class is in the 7th chapter of John: ‘ Out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water.’ That is the kind of Christian we ought to be.”[iii]
Although highly
influential and sought after as a speaker, Dwight L. Moody remained humble
throughout his life, continuing to pray daily for the Holy Spirit’s filling.
“Why do you keep
praying to be full of the Holy Spirit when it’s obvious you already have it?” a
young student reportedly asked him one day. “It’s because I leak.” Moody
replied. “We are leaky vessels and we have to stay under the fountain all the
time in order to keep full. If we are going to be used by God, we have to stay
humble.”
There can be no genuine revival without a renewed passion
for soul winning. When God does something in us, He will do something through
us. When God does something for us, it is because God wants to do something
with us. You see, like Peter, we too declare, “For we cannot but speak the
things which we have seen and heard,” as is related in Acts 4:20. With the
apostle Paul we proclaim in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation.” And with the apostle John
we cry out, “That which we have seen and heard we declare to you” (I John 1:3).
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