Gift of the Spirit
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word of truth, consecrated their lives to the work of giving to others
the hope that filled their hearts with peace and joy. They could not
be restrained or intimidated by threatenings. The Lord spoke through
them, and as they went from place to place, the poor had the gospel
preached to them, and miracles of divine grace were wrought.
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So mightily can God work when men give themselves up to the
control of His Spirit.
The promise of the Holy Spirit is not limited to any age or to any
race. Christ declared that the divine influence of His Spirit was to
be with His followers unto the end. From the Day of Pentecost to
the present time, the Comforter has been sent to all who have yielded
themselves fully to the Lord and to His service. To all who have
accepted Christ as a personal Saviour, the Holy Spirit has come as a
counselor, sanctifier, guide, and witness. The more closely believers
have walked with God, the more clearly and powerfully have they
testified of their Redeemer’s love and of His saving grace. The men
and women who through the long centuries of persecution and trial
enjoyed a large measure of the presence of the Spirit in their lives,
have stood as signs and wonders in the world. Before angels and men
they have revealed the transforming power of redeeming love.
Those who at Pentecost were endued with power from on high,
were not thereby freed from further temptation and trial. As they
witnessed for truth and righteousness they were repeatedly assailed
by the enemy of all truth, who sought to rob them of their Christian
experience. They were compelled to strive with all their God-given
powers to reach the measure of the stature of men and women in
Christ Jesus. Daily they prayed for fresh supplies of grace, that they
might reach higher and still higher toward perfection. Under the Holy
Spirit’s working even the weakest, by exercising faith in God, learned
[50]
to improve their entrusted powers and to become sanctified, refined,
and ennobled. As in humility they submitted to the molding influence
of the Holy Spirit, they received of the fullness of the Godhead and
were fashioned in the likeness of the divine.
The lapse of time has wrought no change in Christ’s parting
promise to send the Holy Spirit as His representative. It is not because
of any restriction on the part of God that the riches of His grace do not
flow earthward to men. If the fulfillment of the promise is not seen as
it might be, it is because the promise is not appreciated as it should