God’s Promise to the Believer
“For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” (Acts 2:39)
What promise is that?
“This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” (Acts 2:16-17)
“Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49)
The Lord said, “Son, there is a promise for you. You have done all you can do, and you’ve got to the end of yourself. Why don’t you take hold of a promise and swing clear, and trust Me to sanctify you wholly?”
“Oh,” I said, “God, I’m afraid to. What if it doesn’t happen? What if I go on with these doubts?”
He said, “Son, there’s only one step you’ve got to take, now that you are at the end of yourself. Get your eyes off your consecration, look to Me in faith believing, take My Word in faith believing and I will sanctify you, and let you know that the work is done.”
“Oh,” I said, “Lord, I’m afraid to do it.”
He said, “You’d better do it, son; it’s the only way.”
And then, Reuben Bridgwater got down to the chorus. And he began to sing, “He makes me clean, He makes me clean. Mine eyes His holiness have seen.” I said, “Lord, I’m going to grab your promise and swing clear.” And do you know what I did? I took hold of a promise of God. I let go of everything in the world, and said, “Lord, I believe You now to cleanse my heart.”
Oh! Glory to God! Something happened to me. I’ll tell you what happened: I got to the end of Lyle Potter. You say, “Did you feel an electric shock?” I didn’t feel a thing. “Oh,” you say, “I thought there was a lot of feeling about this thing.” Listen, friends, I didn’t feel a thing. But I’ll tell you one thing, I knew I had prayed to the end. If there was another prayer to pray, I wouldn’t know how to form the words…. I got to the end of Lyle Potter, and God had been trying to get me there for sixteen years. I held on to my reputation, and I held on to my position, and I just didn’t dare to let go. God wanted to get me to the end. And there in that little junior chapel, on the third afternoon, I got to the end….
I was just as calm that day as ever in my life. I had the assurance in my heart that what I had put off doing for sixteen years, I had finally done—prayed through, and touched the hem of His garment.
There came a Spirit into my life that day that I had never had before. And let me tell you, it is an assurance that has never left me. From that day to this, I’ve gone through deep valleys. I’ve walked through the darkness when it was so black that I couldn’t see where I was going. I’ve been down when it seemed that I didn’t have a bit of religion at all. But I knew that I had made a consecration. I knew I had committed something into His hands that He was faithfully keeping for me. I have never doubted from that moment to this that God accepted my consecration and my heart was clean.
[Lyle Potter—quoted in L. S. Boardman; Scriptural Death-Route Holiness]
Oh, the reality of this PROMISE! Oh, glory! “Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you!” Has that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel come to pass in your life? Has the Spirit been poured out upon you?
The promise must be claimed. It must be pursued. The believer is commanded to wait for the promise to be fulfilled. “Wait for the promise of the Father.” (Acts 1:4) The disciples had already been given their commission. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:19) Jesus told them to tarry at Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high (Luke 24:49). There was great need for this tarrying, this fixation on the promise of God. They were full of their own ideas of how the work of God should be done.
“When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) This question of these believers reveals a great lack of comprehension of the nature of the kingdom of God. Compare their vision before they were entirely sanctified with their vision afterwards. “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.” (Hebrews 12:28) “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” (Romans 14:17) “For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.” (1 Corinthians 4:20)
Notice that their conception before was in terms of visible-to-the-natural-eye, in terms of things physically seen and sensed; but after they had received the promise of the Father and were baptized with the Holy Ghost, they were as described in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” This was exactly as Jesus had foretold. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:26) “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” (John 14:16-17) It was absolutely necessary for them to be filled with, immersed in, and have poured out upon them the wonderful presence of the Comforter, for them to do the work of God as God would have it done. Else would their natural prejudices and human reasoning be mixed in with the work, diluting it and changing its very focus. But under the guidance and watchfulness of the Holy Ghost, the work of God could be done as God desired for it to be.
Before one can tarry until they are endued with such a presence and power as this, they must be convinced of the need of it. Most genuine believers (to say nothing of the non-genuine believers), do not have a God-inspired vision of His work, and most of them are perfectly described as “He dwells with you,” instead of, “He is in you.” It is the Holy Ghost that drew them to God in the first place. It is the Holy Ghost that has baptized them (in the blood of Jesus) into the body of Christ. It is the Holy Ghost who keeps them from returning to sin. But all of these wonderful works of the Holy Ghost in the lives of an unsanctified believer are done by the Holy Ghost with them, and the promise of the Father is, “He shall be in you.” There is a very great difference in with you and in you. It is the difference between the apostles before Pentecost and after. It is the difference between Paul on the road to Damascus, broken-hearted and repentant, saying, “What shall I do, Lord?” and Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost several days later after Ananias had laid hands upon him.
“Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples, He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” (Acts 19:1-2) It is the most relevant and pertinent question possible to a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Things cannot possibly go right, as God sees it, unless you are all the Lord’s and working the works of God with the Holy Ghost filling you through and through.
The promise is in place. It is ready to be fulfilled. The Holy Ghost is waiting for you to wait (and to focus on doing nothing else but waiting for His coming in you). God has something beyond the comprehension of man for each of His trusting children—something vitally necessary to work the works of God. First, do you see the necessity of being filled with the Holy Ghost? Second, are you single-minded pursuing the promise to you?
“Purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.” (James 4:8-10)
To promote this deep repentance, consider how many spiritual evils still haunt your breast; look into the inward “chamber of imagery,” where assuming self-love, surrounded by a multitude of vain thoughts, keeps her court. Grieve that your heart, which should be all flesh, is yet partly stone; that your soul, which should be only a temple for the Holy Ghost, is yet so frequently turned into a den of thieves, a hole for the cockatrice, a nest for a brood of spiritual vipers, for the remains of envy, jealousy, fretfulness, anger, pride, impatience, peevishness, formality, sloth, prejudice, bigotry, carnal confidence, evil shame, self-righteousness, tormenting fears, uncharitable suspicions, idolatrous love, and I know not how many of the evils which form the retinue of hypocrisy and unbelief.
Through grace detect these evils, by a close attention to what passes in your heart at all times, but especially in an hour of temptation. By frequent and deep confession drag out all these abominations. These sins which would not have Christ to reign alone over you, bring before Him; place them in the light of His countenance and if you do it in faith that light and warmth of His love will kill them, as the light of the sun kills the worms which the plow turns up to the open air in a dry summer day.
[John Fletcher; The Last Check to Antinomianism, “Section XIX”]
This is a picture of what was happening in the upper room in Jerusalem, prior to the day of Pentecost, when those one hundred twenty believers were filled with the Holy Ghost. The hunger for a pure heart and the Person of the Holy Ghost must be so strong that it refuses to be denied, whatever the cost. As one said, “No man ever got this blessing who felt he could get along without it.” “I cannot take another step in Christian service until I know I am baptized with the Holy Ghost!”
“I hated pride, ambition, evil tempers, and vain thoughts, but I had them, for all that, and they were a part of me. Not as acts to be repented of and forgiven, but as dispositions lying behind the acts, and promptings thereto, natural to the ‘Old Man’ and inseparable from his presence in my being.
“I began to ask God, with a measure of faith, to ‘cast him out.’ Along with this desire, there came a great hunger and thirst to be ‘filled with all the fullness of God.’ (Ephesians 3:19) I longed for a clean heart and constant spirit.”1
[1]:
[David B. Updegraff]
“Break off the yoke of inbred sin,
And fully set my spirit free!
I cannot rest till pure within,
Till I am wholly lost in thee.”2[2]:
[Charles Wesley]
“When the conditions are met, God begins to release to the individual the inner heart ability to believe. He does not release to him that ability until the conditions are met.” This vital truth is confirmed in Romans 12:3, “…according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”
When we have completely placed ourselves on God’s altar for Him to crucify, faith will come responsively and naturally. Sanctification is His will (1 Thessalonians 4:3), and without delay, He will begin to aid our faith, and will give the answer as we believe.
When all conditions are met, faith comes as naturally as the dawn follows the night, but not as automatically. Even with God’s aid and encouragement, sometimes the human and carnal may be slow to let go and fully trust. Satan will be right there, trying to stop the seeker from taking the last step of faith.
Now, God’s gifts are given under God’s conditions. No more than He would grant saving faith to an unrepentant sinner, would He give sanctifying faith to a seeker who is unwilling to fully consecrate his all and fully die out to his carnal nature. When one is unwilling to let go of self, God is not going to sanctify his heart by faith. God will never do anything contrary to His nature, His will, or His wisdom. Certainly, He is not going to give the gift of faith to receive His blessing, unless we meet His conditions….
Many find themselves in a position of struggling to believe, but they cannot, because carnal self has not died, and God will not enable their faith to operate. Others, also without proper groundwork, may try to “take it by faith,” and go away fooled into thinking they have received the blessing of heart holiness. This leads to deep disappointment and chaotic confusion. What they though was faith, was presumption, because it was out of harmony with the Word of God. It is utterly impossible to become sanctified by presumption.”
[L. S. Boardman; Scriptural Death-Route Holiness]
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)
All seekers of holiness who fail to “die out” to the carnality in their hearts, if they think they receive the blessing of holiness, they are fooled, and come through with a false experience and with their hearts as carnal as before….
A carnally defeated life is an indignity to Christ and an insult to His precious Blood…. We are not supposed to sustain a polluted and corrupt heart while we name the Name of Christ, lest we misrepresent Him. [As Brother James tells us, “Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.” (James 3:10)] Christ came to this world and shed His blood to fit us for life and heaven by cleansing us from all such carnal elements as malice, envy, jealousy, and temper….
Jesus said of such persons: “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” (Matthew 7:23) These deceived people supposed they were about the best Christians on earth because they worked miracles and cast out devils in Christ’s Name, until Christ pronounced their doom. The purging of their own hearts of carnality is far more important than casting demons out of someone else….
The Holy Ghost doesn’t need to be begged or coerced into entering the heart which is utterly yielded and ready. The seeker will break through as naturally as drawing the next breath, when his faith takes hold and the fire falls. As he becomes conscious of the presence of the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, his faith grows stronger and operates freely, without drawing attention to itself.
[L. S. Boardman; Scriptural Death-Route Holiness, “Chapter 11”]