Sermon 6
Increasing Faith
These are the days when we need to have our faith strengthened, when we need to know God. God has designed that the just shall live by faith. Any man can be changed by faith, no matter how he may be fettered.
I know that God's Word is sufficient. One Word from Him can change a nation. His Word is from everlasting to everlasting. It is through the entrance of this everlasting Word, this Incorruptable Seed, that we are born again, and come into this wonderful Salvation. Man cannot live by bread alone, but must live by every Word that proceedeth out of the Mouth of God. This (the Bible) is the food of faith. "Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God."
There is nothing impossibile with God. All the impossibility is with us when we measure God by the limitations of our unbelief.
If we will meet the conditions, God will always meet us. If we believe, all things are possible.
"What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." Desire towards God and your will have desires from God; and He will meet you on the line of those desires when you reach out in simple faith.
God's plan is always this: If you will believe, you shall see the glory of God. I believe God wants to bring us all to a definite place of unswerving faith and confidence in Himself.
I say that in the measure that a man has faith in Jesus, he is pure. He that believes that Jesus is the Christ oversomes the world. It is a faith that works by love.
Just as we have heart fellowship with our Lord, our faith cannot be daunted. We cannot doubt in our hearts. There comes, as we go on with God, a wonderful association, an impartation of His very Life and Nature within.
As we read His Word and believe the Promises that He has so graciously given to us, we are made partakers of His very Essence and Life. The Lord becomes to us a Bridegroom, and we are His Bride. His Words to us are Spirit and Life, transforming us and changing us, expelling that which is natural and bringing in that which is Divine.
We have a Jesus that heals the broken hearted, Who lets the captives go free, Who saves the very worst.
Be Filled With The Spirit
Jesus is greater than all the power of darkness. No man can meet the devil in his own strength, but any man filled with the knowledge of Jesus, filled with His presence, filled with His power, is more than a match for the powers of darkness. God has called us to be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
Christ must be risen in us by the power of the Spirit. The power that raised Him from the dead must animate us, and as this glorious resurrection power surges through your being, you will be freed from all your weaknesses and you will become strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
We must know that God means us to have Life.
I believe in the Holy Spirit. And if you are filled with the Spirit, you will be superabounding in Life-- Living Waters will flow from you.
It is nothing less than the Life of the Lord Himself imparted and flowing into our whole beings, so that our very body is quickened, so that every tissue and every drop of blood and our bones and joints and marrow receive this Divine Life.I believe that the Lord wants this Divine Life to flow right into our natural bodies, this law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus that makes us free from the law of sin and death.
The impartation of this power produces everything you need; but it comes only as our faith moves out for it's impartation. You become extraordinary, filled with the extraordinary power of our extraordinary God.
I see everything a failure except that which is done in the Spirit. But as you live in the Spirit, you move, act, eat, drink, and do everything to the glory of God.
Our message is always this, "Be filled with the Spirit." This is God's place for you, and it is as far above the natural life as the heavens are above the earth. Yield yourselves for God to fill.
There is a great difference between a pump and a spring. The law is the punp, the Baptism is a spring. The old pump gets out of order, the parts perish, and the well runs dry. The letter killeth. But the spring is ever bubbling up and there is a ceaseless flow direct from the throne of God. There is Life.
Jesus was able to say, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me," and the moment we are filled with the Spirit of God we are brought into like wonderful condition, and, as we continue to be filled with the Spirit, the enemy cannot have one inch of territory in us.
It is this ministration of the Spirit that Paul speaks of, this filling of the Spirit that will make your life effective so that even the people in the stores where you trade will want to leave your presence because they are brought under conviction. We must move from everything of the letter. All that we do must be under the anointing of the Spirit.
The Life of Jesus Christ, God's Son, can so purify men's hearts and minds that they become entirely transformed, spirit, soul, and body.
A man who is not hungry to receive more of God is out of order in any convention.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of being filled with the Spirit. It is impossible for us to meet the conditions of the day, to walk in the Light as he is in the Light, to subdue kingdoms and work righteousness and bind the power of Satan unless we are filled with the Spirit.
We must be willing to deny ourselves everything to receive the revelation God's Truth, and to receive the fulness of the Spirit. Only that will satisfy God, and nothing less with satisfy us.
While it is right to covet earnestly the best gifts, you must recognize that the all important thing is to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
The most important thing, the one thing that counts, is to see that we are filled with the Holy Spirit, filled to overflowing. Anything less is displeasing to God. We are commanded by God to be filled with the Spirit, and in the measure that you fail in this you are that far short of the plan of God. The Lord would have us moving on from faith to faith, from glory to glory, from fulness to overflowing.
What will make men believe the Divine Promises of God? Beloved, let me say to you today, God wants you to be ministering spirits, and it means to be clothed with another Power. And this Divine Power, you know when it is there, and you know when it goeth forth. The Baptism of Jesus must bring us to have a single eye to the glory of God. Everything else is wasted time and wasted energy. Beloved, we can reach it. It is a high mark but we can get to it. You ask how? What wilt thou have me to do? That is the plan. It means a perfect surrender to the call of God, and perfect obedience. Oct. 1914, Triumphs of Faith.
It seems to that God wants to get every one of us separated to Himself in this Holy war, and we are not going to have faith if we do not give ourselves wholly up to Him. Beloved, it is in these last days that I cannot have the Power I want to have unless I am willing to shear myself; It is a Narrow Way. Thou Art The Christ, Nov,1914.
Testimonies of His Character And Anointing
Wigglesworth tells the story of confronting a demon possessed woman. He said, " I received a telegram once urging me to visit a young woman about 200 miles from my home. As I went to this place, I met the father and mother and found them brokenhearted. They led me up a staircase to a room where I saw a young woman on the floor and five people holding her down. She was a frail young woman, but the power in her was great than all those young men. As I went to the room the evil powers looked out her eyes and they used her lips saying, "We are many, you can't cast us out." I said, " Jesus can." He is equal to every occasion. He is waiting for an opportunity to bless. He is ready for every opportunity to deliver souls. When we receive Jesus it is true of us, "Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." He is greater than all the powers of darkness.
" That home (of Wigglesworth) had the atmosphere of God's throne room. The very presence of God could be felt within. I always found it a delight to visit him. It was like going into the sanctuary, into the Cloud of Glory." - Albert Hibbert
" I personally never saw Brother Wigglesworth wear a frown. He was always smiling - never laughing it seemed, but always smiling - and sometimes he had a humorous twinkle in his eyes." - William Hacking
"I can personally confess that I was never in the company of Smith Wigglesworth for five minutes without feeling within me a great surge of inspiration, particularly a new surge of inspiration to believe God." - William Hacking
" I will never forget the sense of awe I felt at the authority that man had. It was an absolutely glorious, positive authority in God." - Judson Cornwall
" Wigglesworth was the purest man I have ever known, a man who lived in the immediate presence of God." - George Stormont
" His seriousness and sobriety was always awe-inspiring, but he did know what value there was in praise and what Power in the Name of Jesus."
-William Hacking
"When he prayed, it was often with strong crying-- weeping over people he had never met. " - George Stormont.
"Wigglesworth never went more than fifteen minutes without reading the Word of God, regardless of where he was or in whose company he found himself."
- Albert Hibbert
Sermon 6
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