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Weak Souls Strengthened, February 7
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the
flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the
Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
Romans 8:12, 13
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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
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 Acts of the Apostles, 49, 50
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