The Second Body 11/1 Thursday Thoughts

All that Jesus was to the world He purposed that the Church of Christ should be. First, He blessed the world through His own physical personality. Second, He established a physical body, composed of many members, joined in one by the Spirit of God.


When He established the second body, the Church, He never intended that it should be of lesser authority or of lesser power than the first. It was His real purpose that the second body, the Church, should exercise and fully accomplish all that the first had done.

-- John G. Lake (This all falls under the doctrine of Kingdom Authority.)

No Groaning 10/31 Wednesday Wisdom

I have always wondered how a Christian could be anything less than an optimist. It is a sad thing when you hear Christians with a groan in them. When I meet the groaner I say in my heart, "God, move the man on into that place where he comprehends what Christianity is." The Christian with a groan in him never moved the world except to groans.


-- John G. Lake

Holiness and Power 10/30 Tuesday Truth

Not long ago I stood before great audiences of the churchmen of the world. They said, "Through all your ministry there is one note. It is the call for power." They said, "Do you not think it would be better if the Church was calling for holiness instead of power?"


And I replied, "She will never obtain the one without the other. There is something larger than holiness. It is the nature of God."



-- John G. Lake

Hunger 10/29 Monday Meditation

"Blessed are they that hunger." Bless God! What are we hungering for, a LITTLE BIT of God? Enough to take us through this old world where we will have the dry rot and be stunted and then squeeze into heaven? "Blessed are they that HUNGER," for the NATURE and POWER and LOVE and UNDERSTANDING of God. Why? "They shall be FILLED."


-- John G. Lake (emphasis mine)

Purging Power 10/26 Friday Faith

Think not to come within the court of God with stain upon thy garments. Think not that heaven can smile upon a nature fouled through evil contact. Think not that Christ can dwell in temples seared by flames of hate. No! The heart of man must first be purged by holy fire and washed from every stain by cleansing blood. Know ye not that he whose nature is akin to God's must ever feel the purging power of Christ within?

-- John G. Lake

A Heavenly Longing 10/25 Thursday Thoughts

Think not that thou shalt attain the highest in God until within thine own soul a heavenly longing to be like Him who gave His life for us possesses thine heart.


-- John G. Lake

Separate Yourself 10/24 Wednesday Wisdom

"Prepare ye that way of the Lord, Make His paths straight." You want God to come and bless your own life? Then separate yourself from the superficialities and formalities that have possessed your mind and taken your attention, and come back with directness and simplicity to God and He will bless your soul.


-- John G. Lake

Let Your Soul Awake 10/23 Tuesday Truth

An old brother who was recently healed was a Methodist local preacher. He was 73 years old. He said to me with tears, "I have spent almost my little all on the doctors, medicine, etc., during the last four years of my sickness. My wife and I are old. We have gone past the time when I can earn any more money." And he was troubled. He said, "I would give the little all I have left if I could be well."


I said, "Brother, how long have you been preaching the Gospel?"

He said, "Fifty years." Think of that -- a half century.

I said, "Brother, haven't you been in the habit of calling on God and getting answers to your prayers?"

He said, "Yes, I have."

I said, "Well Brother, why have you not called on God to take away this evil thing, this sickness that is on your life?"

His old eyes opened with wonder and he said, "I never thought of it."

He went home amazed. He and his old wife came back every few days, and they said it was such an awakening that he could look up to God to take away his sickness the same as he could pray about anything else. Yet he had been preaching the Gospel fifty years.

Men are looked upon as strange when they turn their faith to Christ and come back to the Gospel. To him, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight," was to let his soul awake to Christ's purpose to save and to bless in every department of his life.



-- John G. Lake

Possessor of the Spirit 10/22 Monday Meditation

While Jesus was discussing this subject with the disciples, He said, "He is with you," that is, the Comforter. "He is with you, and shall be in you."


There is a definite possession of the Spirit of God by which the individual becomes the conscious possessor of the Spirit of God. Indeed, the Word of God puts it in this forceful manner. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" (I Cor. 6:19, paraphrased) It is God's purpose, as outlined by Jesus Christ and this Word from cover to cover, that man shall be the conscious possessor of the Spirit of the living God, the Holy Ghost.

-- John G. Lake

Consciousness of the Word 10/18 Friday Faith

I tell you, beloved, that the external evidences of God and the power of His Spirit, no matter how wonderful, are a small matter compared with the consciousness of the Word of God in the human heart; in your heart and mine.


-- John G. Lake

Baptism of the Holy Spirit 10/18 Thursday Thoughts

The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the common experience of New Testament times. The New Testament was written by men who had the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was written to churches that possessed the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, in my study of the New Testament the disciples seemed to consider it essential that each individual should himself possess the baptism of the Spirit. When Paul came down to Ephesus the first question he asked them was, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" (Acts 19:2)


-- John G. Lake

The World Has Never . . . 10/17 Wednesday Wisdom

Indeed, beloved, I have felt, and I feel today, that the world has never had a proper comprehension of the Lord Jesus Christ. We all realize the common conception of the Christ as it has been presented to us by the Church at large. And I want to say with all frankness that while in a large measure that conception of the Church largely is true, yet it is ten thousand miles below the real standard or God's conception of presentation of the Christ as I see it in the Word of God, as the Spirit of God had has made my own consciousness aware of.


-- John G. Lake

A Good Foundation 10/16 Tuesday Truth

For the Church of God and Christian faith to become strong and to be built up in God, it is necessary to get a good foundation. It is a greater problem with most builders to get the old rubbish out of the way than to do the building. If we will look at our own lives, we will observe this: that the things that have been rooted and grounded in our hearts -- some tradition of the Fathers, some of it misconception of the meaning of the Word of God; much of our teaching is fragmented -- these form the greatest obstacles to the engrafting of the living Word of God. Every one of us who have progressed in God have found that the difficulty was not in believing the Word of God, but the difficulty was to get away from things that were settled in our own being as facts, though untrue. How hardly have we struggled over the matter of, "If it be Thy will," concerning sickness. From our babyhood and all down through the generations, we have been taught that if you are sick, the proper thing to do is to pray, "If it be Thy will," forgetting all the time that the Lord has forever demonstrated and declared His eternal will concerning the subject of sickness by healing all that come to Him.




-- John G. Lake

The Latter Day Church 10/15 Monday Meditation

It was that consciousness of God's presence and God's power in the disciples and the Church of the first centuries that wrote across the pages of history the wonderful, wonderful record of Christianity of the first four hundred years. There were thirty million Christian martyrs, those who were slaughtered in the Christian wars, etc. Thirty million gave up their lives for the Christ. There was a spirit that made it so intense, so powerful, that had such a power of induction that the world got out. Bless God.




But there came a day when the Church traded the communion of the Holy Ghost for the smile of the world, and then the long, long night of the middle centuries followed.



But bless God, I tell you we are living in a day and hour when the Spirit of God has come into the world afresh, when the consciousness of mankind is opening up to God in a manner that they have never opened before. There is an awakening in the world from ocean to ocean, from pole to pole, as there never was before. And I believe, bless God, that God Almighty's outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh is at hand. And though we are receiving the droppings and our hearts are being warmed under the impulse of the Spirit, the day is not far distant when the flame of God will catch the soul of mankind. And the Church of the latter day will close this era with a place of divine glory excelling that of the early Church.



This is according to the prophecy of the Word. "If the former rain was abundant, shall not the latter rain be more abundant." (Deuteronomy 11:14, paraphrased)



-- John G. Lake

Receive Power 10/12 Friday Faith

"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." (Acts 1:8) We are entitled to it, bless God. We are glad to see some of it and wish, bless God, that we might see a great deal more. And beloved, I have a splendid conviction in my heart that we will.


--John G. Lake

Exalted Place 10/11 Thursday Thoughts

Indeed, I have this in my heart, that the low state of Christian experience that is common among men is mostly accounted for by this one fact: that Christians have failed to grasp the exalted place into which Jesus Christ puts us when we have been made sons of God.


-- John G. Lake

"Nothing Out of the Ordinary" 10/10 Wednesday Wisdom

This is one of my favorite John G. Lake quotes. Healing was so common that it was "nothing out of the ordinary". God, give us this kind of faith today!


At the tabernacle service Thursday night, it was a very sweet service with nothing out of the ordinary. Mrs. Arlow of Wurther, instantly healed of violent internal inflammation.

Exercise 10/9 Tuesday Truth

Beloved, we have seen that the Holy Ghost came into the Church at Pentecost and that those gifts are there also, but through lack of faith we do not see them exercised.


-- John G. Lake

John G. Lake 10/8 Monday Meditation

John G. Lake (1870-1935) had one of the greatest evangelistic / healing ministries of all time, along with Smith Wigglesworth and Maria Woodworth-Etter. He got serious about the Word of God after seeing nearly every relative in his enormous family die of horrible diseases. After Lake got ahold of the Word, four family members were instantly healed of longstanding conditions. His ministry centered in South Africa and later in Spokane, Washington. His ministry recorded over 100,000 healings in Spokane alone in five years.


And now, beloved, is the Holy Ghost in the Church today? Verily, yes. But you say, "We don't see Him work in this way in our church!" Why? Because you say, "All these things were for apostolic days." Can you find anywhere in the Scriptures that the gifts of the Holy Ghost were withdrawn from the Church of Christ? There is no biblical authority for such an assertion, but rather we read, "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Romans 11:29).

Floods of Blessing 10/5 Friday Faith

It is not His will that we should be limited to occasional dews of His grace, but His unbounded mercy reveals itself in the promise of “floods” of blessing “upon the dry ground".

-- Carrie Judd Montgomery, legendary early missionary of The Christian and Missionary Alliance and The Assemblies of God

How Precious We Are 10/4 Thursday Thoughts

Read with me Deuteronomy 32:9-14. That the Lord’s people are the Lord’s portion is a precious thought, for He left everything in order that He might have this portion. So, I believe the Lord means for us to realize how very, very precious we are to Him. We remember how in our own experience He found us in a “desert land” and in the “waste howling wilderness,” and led us about and instructed us and kept us as the apple of His eye.


-- Carrie Judd Montgomery, legendary early missionary of the C&MA and Assemblies of God

Unspeakable Hunger 10/3 Wednesday Wisdom

As I went on with the Lord I felt an unspeakable hunger springing up within me for more of God. I hardly knew how to pray, but would sometimes turn to my Heavenly Father and say to Him, ‘What dost Thou want?” ; because it seemed to me it was more His desire to obtain full possession of me than my desire for Himself.


-- Carrie Judd Montgomery, legendary early missionary of The Christian and Missionary Alliance and The Assemblies of God

Open Thy Mouth Wide 10/2 Tuesday Truth

Jesus bids us “ask and receive” that our “joy may be full.” We obey His command in asking, but we do not throw open our souls that we may receive. God’s word to us is, “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psa. 81:10), yet we do not pause in our cries of hunger to accept what is so freely offered.


-- Carrie Judd Montgomery, legendary early missionary and evangelist of The Christian and Missionary Alliance and The Assemblies of God