"Father glorify Thy Son....John 17:1
And what was the immediate answer to that prayer?........It was the harrowing agony of the cross.
Calvary ever comes before Pentecost. The reason why the Holy Spirit of God is not being evidenced in so many of our lives and in so much of our ministry is not that there is a gift that we have unfortunately missed, it is not that there is a technique we have been unable to adopt:.....it is that there is a death we have been unwilling to die.
Jesus told his followers that the pathway to glory lies through the seed going into the ground to a death, that the fruit may abound. And this is precisely the pattern which the New Testament declares in every book, the way to Pentecost lies through Calvary.
This is the last thing, is it not, which you and I are ready to face?
You see an uncrucified self will allow a man to profess anything, to go anywhere, to gain any kind of reputation, if that be the price of survival.
The way by which God would lead men and women who are seeking ernestly for the pathway of blessing, is for self, pride, and that great ugly spectre of the 'I' in my life to be crushed and smashed and broken and cast out,.......that the Spirit of Jesus may fill the temple.
Jesus says that the water that will flow out of such a man, is living water. How does it become living water? The great man Paul the Apostle says this is the principle...."Death worketh in us, and life in you".
"Death worketh! That is what George Matheson wrote of in his hymn -
"I lay in dust life's glory dead, And from the ground there blossems red, Life that shall endless be".
And what was the immediate answer to that prayer?........It was the harrowing agony of the cross.
Calvary ever comes before Pentecost. The reason why the Holy Spirit of God is not being evidenced in so many of our lives and in so much of our ministry is not that there is a gift that we have unfortunately missed, it is not that there is a technique we have been unable to adopt:.....it is that there is a death we have been unwilling to die.
Jesus told his followers that the pathway to glory lies through the seed going into the ground to a death, that the fruit may abound. And this is precisely the pattern which the New Testament declares in every book, the way to Pentecost lies through Calvary.
This is the last thing, is it not, which you and I are ready to face?
You see an uncrucified self will allow a man to profess anything, to go anywhere, to gain any kind of reputation, if that be the price of survival.
The way by which God would lead men and women who are seeking ernestly for the pathway of blessing, is for self, pride, and that great ugly spectre of the 'I' in my life to be crushed and smashed and broken and cast out,.......that the Spirit of Jesus may fill the temple.
Jesus says that the water that will flow out of such a man, is living water. How does it become living water? The great man Paul the Apostle says this is the principle...."Death worketh in us, and life in you".
"Death worketh! That is what George Matheson wrote of in his hymn -
"I lay in dust life's glory dead, And from the ground there blossems red, Life that shall endless be".
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