2/1 Tuesday truth

How wonderful is this faith that overcomes the world! "He that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God overcomes the world." But how does he overcome the world? If you believe in Him you are purified as He is pure. You are strengthened because He is strong. You are made whole because He is whole. All of His fulness may come into you because of the revelation of Himself.

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/31 Monday meditation

God will do great things for us if we are prepared to receive them from Him. We are dull of comprehension because we let the cares of this world blind our eyes, but if we keep open to God, He has a greater plan for us in the future than we have seen or ever have dreamed about in the past.
-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/28 Friday faith

Don't forget that every day must be a day of advancement. If you have not made any advancement since yestereday, in a measure you are a backslider. There is only one way for you between Calvary and the glory, and it is forward. It is every day forward. It is no day back. It is advancement with God. It is cooperation with Him in the Spirit. . . But we must be like those who are catching the vision of the Master day by day.

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/27 Thursday thoughts

You will be sifted as wheat. You will be tried as though some strange thing happened unto you. You will be put in most difficult places where all hell seems round about you, but God will sustain and empower you, and bring you into an unlimited place of faith. God will not allow you to be "...tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). God will surely tell you when you have been tried sufficiently to bring you out as pure gold. Every trial is to prepare you for a greater position for God. Your tried faith will make you know that you will have the faith of God to go through the next trial. Who is going to live dormant, weak, trifling, slow, indolent, prayerless, Bible-less lives when you know you must go through these things? . . . The Holy Spirit will lead you day by day. You will know that these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, are working out for us an eternal weight of glory.

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/26 Wednesday wisdom

Do not listen to what Satan says to you, for the devil is a liar from the beginning. If people would only listen to the truth of God they would find out they were over the devil, over all satanic forces; they would realize that every evil spirit was subject to them; they would find out that they were always in a place of triumph, and they would "reign in life" by King Jesus.

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/25 Tuesday truth

I know that the dry ground can have floods, and may God save me from ever wanting anything less than a flood. I will not stoop for small things when I have such a big God. Through the blood of Christ's atonement we may have riches and riches. We need the warming atmosphere of the Spirit's power to bring us closer and closer until nothing but God can satisfy, and then we may have some idea of what God has left after we have taken all that we can. It is only like a sparrow taking a drink of the ocean and then looking around and saying, "What a vast ocean! What a lot more I could have taken if I had only had room."

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/24 Monday meditation

You will find that there is no peace, no help, no source of strength, no power, no life, nothing can satisfy the cry of the child of God but the Word of God. God has a special way of satisfying the cry of His children. He is waiting to open to us the windows of heaven until He has so moved in the depths of our hearts that everything unlike Himself has been destroyed. There need no one in this place go away dry, dry. God wants you to be filled. My brother, my sister, God wants you today to be like a watered garden, filled with the fragrance of His own heavenly joy, till you know at last you have touched immensity.

-- Smith Wigglesworth, 1922

1/21 Friday faith

Some people only come with a very small thought concerning God's fulness, and a lot of people are satisfied with a thimbleful, and you can just imagine God saying, "Oh, if they only knew how much they could take away!" Other people come with a larger vessel, and they go away satisfied, but you can feel how much God is longing for us to have such a desire for more, such a longing as only God Himself can satisfy.

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/20 Thursday thoughts

That is the way with people today. They get saved and healed and they don't tell it out for the glory of God. How is it that people don't tell what God has done for them?

The Lord told His disciples to proclaim everywhere,
The Gospel of redemption to hearts o-erwhelmed with care.
"But tarry at Jerusalem till pow'r from heaven descend,
And lo, will I be with you, even till the world doth end."
These signs shall follow them that believe upon My name --
Go preach ye the Gospel, then will I confirm the same.

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/19 Wednesday wisdom

Oh, beloved, I should be a poor man without the Word of God; but I am rich:

"My heavenly Bank, my heavenly Bank,
The House of God's treasure and store;
I have plenty up there -- I'm a real millionaire,
And I will go poor no more."

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/18 Tuesday truth

"I have ordained you; I have chosen you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He may give it you."

I believe God wants us to know that our fruit has to remain. Beloved, we should recognize that our prayers are in vain unless we really expect what we ask to be granted to us.

"The Word profited nothing, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it."

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/17 Monday meditation

The devil brings back to people's minds those things which they did so long ago, and there they are, thinking about them day and night! There are two things certain, and a third thing which is more valuable than either of the two. One is that you never forget them; and the third is that God has forgotten them. The question is whether we are going to believe God, or the devil, or ourselves. God says they are passed, cleansed, gone!

-- Smith Wigglesworth, 1922

1/14 Friday faith

So there is glory upon glory, and joy upon joy, and a measureless measure of joy and glory. Beloved, we get God's Word so wonderfully in our hearts that it absolutely changes us in everything. And as we so feast on the Word of the Lord, so eat and digest the truth, inwardly eat of Christ -- we are changed every day from one state of glory to another. You will never find anything else but the Word that takes you there, so you cannot afford to put aside that Word.

-- Smith Wigglesworth

1/13 Thursday faith

Today I am returning to quotes by Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947). Growing up in England, he never got an education. He began working 12-hour days at age 7. His wife taught him to read. He never read anything but the Bible. He had one of the greatest evangelistic and healing ministries of all time.

Jesus said to His disciples, if ye will believe in your hearts, not only the tree will wither but the mountain shall be removed. God wants us to move mountains, anything that appears to be like a mountain can be moved. The mountains of difficulty, the mountains of perplexity, the mountains of depression or depravity. Things that bound you for years. Sometimes things appear as though they could not be moved, but you believe in your heart, stand on the Word of God, and God's Word will never be defeated.

1/12 Wednesday wisdom

Power is lost through neglect of prayer. It is in prayer especially that we are charged with the energy of God. It is the man who is much in prayer into whom God's power flows mightily. . . .

Virtue or power is constantly going from us, as from Christ (Mark 5:30), in service and blessing; and if power would be maintained, it must be constantly renewed in prayer. When electricity is given off from a charged body it must be recharged. So must we be recharged with the divine energy, and this is effected by coming into contact with God in prayer. Many a man whom God has used becomes lax in his habits of prayer, and the Lord departs from him and his power is gone. Are there not some of us who have not today the power we once had, and simply because we do not spend the time on our faces before God as we once did?

-- R.A. Torrey, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

1/11 Tuesday truth

It is evident that it is not sufficient that one be once baptized with the Holy Spirit. As new emergencies of service arise, there must be new fillings with the Spirit. The failure to realize this has led to sad and serious results in many a man's service. He has been baptized with the Holy Spirit at some period in his life, and strives to get through his whole future life in the power of this past experience. It is largely for this reason that we see so many men who once unquestionably worked in the Holy Spirit's power, who give little evidence of the possession of that power today. For each new service that is to be conducted, for each new soul that is to be dealt with, for each new service for Christ that is to be performed, for each new day and each new emergency of Christian life and service, we should definitely seek a new filling with the Holy Spirit.

(See Acts 4:29-31. --Larry) -- R.A. Torrey, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

1/10 Monday meditation

concluding my quotations from R.A. Torrey's The Baptism with the Holy Spirit this week:

Men only have to wait [for the Baptism with the Holy Spirit] when they do not meet the conditions, when Christ is not fully accepted or sin is not put away or there is not total surrender, or true desire, or definite prayer, or simple faith just taking the promise of The Word. The absence of some of these things keeps many waiting. But there is no need that anyone wait ten hours. You can have the baptism with the Holy Spirit now, if you will.

1/7 Friday faith

Isaiah 44:3: "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty. . . . I will pour my spirit upon thy seed."

What does it mean to be thirsty? When one is thirsty there is but one cry: "Water! Water! Water!" Every pore in the body seems to have a voice and cries out, "Water!" So when our hearts have one cry, "The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit," then it is that God pours floods upon the dry ground, pours His Spirit upon us. This then is the fifth step -- intense desire for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. To what a pitch of longing the early disciples had been brought by the tenth day of their eager waiting, and their thirsty souls were filled that day when "Pentecost was fully come"! As long as one thinks he can get along somehow without the baptism with the Holy Spirit, as long as he casts about for something in the way of education or cunningly concocted methods of work, he is not going to receive it.

-- R.A. Torrey, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

1/6 Thursday thoughts

There are certainly few greater mistakes being made today than that of setting men to teach Sunday school classes, do personal work, and even preach the gospel, simply because they have been converted and have received a certain amount of education -- perhaps including a college and seminary course -- but without having been as yet baptized with the Holy Spirit. Any man who is in Christian work who has not received the baptism with the Holy Spirit ought to stop his work right where he is and not go on with it until he has been "clothed with power from on high." . . .

We also, after we have received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, will accomplish more in one day than we ever would in years without His power.

-- R.A. Torrey, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

1/5 Wednesday wisdom

Jesus the Christ never entered upon the ministry for which He came into this world until He was baptized with the Holy Spirit.

If Jesus Christ, who had been supernaturally conceived through the Holy Spirit's power, who was the only begotten Son of God, who was divine, very God of very God and yet truly man -- if He, "leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps," did not venture upon the ministry for which the Father had sent Him until thus baptized with the Holy Spirit, what is it for us to dare to do it? If, in the light of these recorded facts, we dare to do it, it seems like an offense going beyond presumption. Doubtless it has been done in ignorance by many, but can we plead ignorance any longer? The baptism with the Holy Spirit is an absolutely necessary preparation for effective service for Christ along every line of service.

-- R.A. Torrey, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

1/4 Tuesday truth

(continued from Monday)

. . . How could they tell when those commanded days of tarrying were at an end?

The same thing is clear from Paul's very definite question to the disciples at Ephesus. "Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" (Acts 19:2 ASV) Paul evidently expected a definite "yes" or a definite "no" for an answer. Unless the experience were definite and of such a character that one could know whether he had received it or not, how could these disciples answer Paul's question? In fact, they knew they had not received or been baptized with the Holy Spirit, and a short time afterward they knew they had received and been baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:6).
-- R.A. Torrey, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

(to be continued)

1/3/11 Monday meditation

I am going to begin a series of quotes from The Baptism with the Holy Spirit, by R.A. Torrey (1856-1928). Torrey was a highly-educated theologian. He was an associate of D.L. Moody and became the superintendent of Moody Bible Institute.

Torrey's writings were influential in the Holiness Movement of the late 19th Century, and they later influenced the Pentecostal Movement.

The baptism with the Holy Spirit is a definite experience which one may know whether he has received or not. This is evident from our Saviour's command to the apostles: "Tarry ye in the city . . . until ye be endued with power from on high" (Luke 24:49). If this enduement with power, the baptism with the Holy Spirit, were not an experience so definite that one could know whether he had received it or not, how could they tell when those commanded days of tarrying were at an end?

(To be continued. Think that question over for a day.)