In that wonderful prayer for those Christians, Paul laid himself out to pray to God, and by prayer he sought to fathom the fathomless depths and to measure the illimitable purposes and benefits of God’s plan of salvation for immortal souls by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. Only importunate and invincible prayer can bring the Holy Spirit to us, and secure for us these ineffably gracious results. “Epaphras always labouring fervently in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.”
The Word of God provides for a mighty, consciously realised religion in His saints, into whose happy, shining spirits God has been brought as a Dweller, and whose Heaven-toned lives have been attuned to melody by God’s own hand.
Then will it prove true: “He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Here is a promise concerning the indwelling and outflowing of the Holy Spirit in us, life-giving, fructifying, irresistible, a ceaseless outflow of the river of God in us.
How God needs, how the world needs, how the Church needs the flow of this mighty river, more blessed than the Nile, deeper, broader, more overflowing than the Amazon’s broad and mighty current! And yet what mere rills we are and have!
O that the Church, by the infilling and outflowing of the Holy Spirit, might be able to raise up everywhere memorials of the Holy Spirit’s power, which might fix the eye as well as engage the heart! We need, the age needs, the Church needs, memorials of God’s mighty power, which will silence the enemy and the avenger, dumbfound God’s foes, strengthen weak saints, and fill strong ones with triumphant raptures.
A glance at some more of the Divine promises concerning this vital question would show us how they need to be projected into the experimental and the actual. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself.” How we do need a conscious religion, personal and vital, unspeakable in its joy, and full of glory! The need is for a conscious religion, made so by the Spirit bearing witness that we are the children of God. A religion of “I know” is the only powerful, vital and aggressive religion. “One thing I know, whereas I once was blind, but now I see.” We need men and women in these loose days who can verify the above mentioned promise of Christ in their inner consciousness. And yet how many untold thousands of people in all of our churches, who have only a dim, impalpable, hope so, maybe so, I trust so, kind of religion, all dubious, intangible and unstable.
There is certainly a great need in these days in the modern Church, first, for Christians to see and seek and obtain the high privilege in the Gospel of a Heaven-born, clear cut, and happy religious experience, born of the presence of the Holy Spirit, giving an undoubted assurance of sins forgiven, and of adoption into the family of God.
And secondly, there is a need, subsequent to this conscious realization of Divine favour in the forgiveness of sins, and added to it, of the reception of the Holy Spirit in His fullness, purifying their hearts by faith, perfecting them in love, overcoming the world, and bestowing a Divine, inward power over all sin, both inward and outward, and giving boldness to bear witness and qualifying for real religious service in the Church and in the world.
There is a fearfully prevailing agnosticism along here in the Church just at this time. We greatly fear that a vast majority of our Church members are now in this school of spiritual agnosticism, and really deem it to be a virtue to be there. God’s word gives no encouragement whatever to a shadowy religion and a vague religious experience. It calls us definitely into the realm of knowledge. It crowns religion with the crown of “I know.” It passes us from the darkness of sin, doubt and inward misgiving into the marvelous light, where we see clearly and know fully our personal relations to God.