Part 89

5. The fifth step is _an intense desire for the baptism with the Holy Spirit_. Jesus says in John vii. 37-39, “If any man _thirst_, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive.” Here again we have _belief on Jesus_ as the condition of receiving the Holy Spirit but we have also this, “If any man thirst.” Doubtless when Jesus spake these words He had in mind the Old Testament promise in Isa. xliv. 3, “For I will pour water upon him that is _thirsty_, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour _My Spirit_ upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring.” In both these passages thirst is the condition of receiving the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to thirst? When a man really thirsts, it seems as if every pore in his body had just one cry, “Water! Water! Water!” Apply this to the matter in question; when a man thirsts spiritually, his whole being has but one cry, “The Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit!” As long as one fancies he can get along somehow without the baptism with the Holy Spirit, he is not going to receive that baptism. As long as one is casting about for some new kind of church, machinery, or new style of preaching, or anything else, by which he hopes to accomplish what the Holy Spirit only can accomplish, he will not receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As long as one tries to find some subtle system of exegesis to read out of the New Testament what God has put into it, namely, the absolute necessity that each believer receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit as a definite experience, he is not going to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As long as a man tries to persuade himself that he has received the baptism with the Holy Spirit when he really has not, he is not going to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. But when one gets to the place where he sees the absolute necessity that he be baptized with the Holy Spirit as a definite experience and desires this blessing at any cost, he is far on the way towards receiving it. At a state Young Men’s Christian Association Convention, where I had spoken on the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, two ministers went out of the meeting side by side. One said to the other, “That kind of teaching leads either to fanaticism or despair.” He did not attempt to show that it was unscriptural. He felt condemned and was not willing to admit his lack and seek to have it supplied, and so he tried to avoid the condemnation that came from the Word by this bright remark, “that kind of teaching leads either to fanaticism or despair.” Such a man will not receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit until he is brought to himself and acknowledges honestly his need and intensely desires to have it supplied. How different another minister of the same denomination who came to me one Sunday morning at Northfield. I was to speak that morning on How to Receive the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. He said to me, “I have come to Northfield from —— for just one purpose, to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and I would rather die than go back to my church without receiving it.” I said, “My brother, you are going to receive it.” The following morning he came very early to my house. He said, “I have to go away on the early train but I came around to tell you before I went that I have received the baptism with the Holy Spirit.”