There are many true believers who are not enjoying the fulness of the Spirit as they should. They need a crisis, a step of surrender and faith, yielding to the control of the Holy Spirit who dwells within.
There is one great crisis taught in Scripture – the crisis at regeneration, passing from death to life, from darkness to light. The normal life for a Christian is to go on in the power of the Spirit, abiding in Christ, and growing in grace. But what of the Christian who is not doing this? The Christian who is defeated and dissatisfied? The Christian who perhaps has not had a clear-cut experience of conversion? He needs a crisis. Not a second work of grace, but getting back to what he had, or entering into the realization of what salvation means.
Let us not limit God in his working, and let us not fail to be ready for new and great outpourings of the Holy Spirit in the closing days of this age. For the days are upon us when nothing will avail to break through the overwhelming power of the enemy except supernatural power beyond what most Christians have known anything about.
There is a great and mighty power awaiting any Christian who will truly believe any word of God. For no word of God is void of mighty power.
Here is a missionary who has had miracles of answered prayer and marvels of God’s grace at home and abroad. The great flood-tide of new power came into this missionary’s life through accepting our Lord’s prayer promise in John 14:12-13, ” … He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do … And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do … ”
Here is another missionary whose testimony for Christ is beginning to shake a whole continent; his transformation came, and his whole being was shaken with joy and power when he realized the meaning of the words that ” … Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates” (2 Corinthians 13:5). This young missionary’s hunger for God was stirred by Hudson Taylor’s testimony of the transformation of his own life through learning the meaning of faith; then it was that Hudson Taylor entered into the meaning of John 4:14, ” … whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. .. ”
And so we might go on and tell of the miracles that followed when some word of God was believed, ” … Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22); ” … My grace is sufficient for thee … ” (2 Corinthians 12:9); ” … yield yourselves unto God … ” (Romans 6: 13 ); “For to me to live is Christ … ” (Philippians 1 :21 ); ” … God is faithful … ” ( 1 Corinthians 10: 13). I am thinking of miracles wrought through Christians who believed one or another of these mighty “words.”
All the most mighty promises of supernatural power are conditional upon that which is simplest in the Christian life, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to those who believe that the rivers of living water are promised (John 7:37-38). It is those who believe on Him who shall do greater works than those Christ did in the days of His flesh (John 14: 12). Faith is the key that unlocks the reservoirs of power laid up for us in Christ, which the blessed Holy Spirit is eager to make available in our lives (Mark 11:22; John 16:14-15). Whatever the mystery of His working, ours is to yield and to believe. This is all we can do (Romans 6: 13).