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Plead for Wisdom and Power, January 14
As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My
soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
Psalm 42:1, 2
, NKJV.
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 righteous-
ness 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 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 humanity. If the
fulfillment of the promise is not seen as it might be, it is because the promise is
not appreciated as it should be. If all were willing, all would be filled with the
Spirit. Wherever the need of the Holy Spirit is a matter little thought of, there is
seen spiritual drought, spiritual darkness, spiritual declension and death. Whenever
minor matters occupy the attention, the divine power which is necessary for the
growth and prosperity of the church, and which would bring all other blessings in
its train, is lacking, though offered in infinite plenitude....
Companies of Christian workers should gather to ask for special help, for
heavenly wisdom, that they may know how to plan and execute wisely. Especially
should they pray that God will baptize His chosen ambassadors in mission fields
with a rich measure of His Spirit. The presence of the Spirit with God’s workers
will give the proclamation of truth a power that not all the honor or glory of the
world could give.—
The Acts of the Apostles, 49-51
.
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