Drinking and Yielding

Yesterday we talked about the first four of six steps to receive the fulness of the Holy Ghost: repentance, baptism, thirsting and asking. We will now proceed with the last two.

Drinking

After asking, the next step is receiving. Jesus calls this drinking, for He says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37).

“Drinking” represents an active process of receiving. The infilling of the Holy Spirit cannot be received by a negative or passive attitude. No one can drink except of his own active volition, and no one can drink with a closed mouth. As it is in the natural, so it is in the spiritual. The Lord says, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Ps. 81:10).

God cannot fill a closed mouth. Simple though it may seem, there are those who fail to receive the fullness of the Spirit simply because they fail to open their mouths.

Yielding

After drinking, the sixth and last step to receiving the Holy Spirit is yielding. Paul speaks to Christians of a twofold surrender to God.

“But present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” (Rom. 6:13)

Two successive stages are here set before us as Christians. The first surrender is of yourselves – the surrender of the will and the personality. However, this is not all. There is a further degree of surrender of our physical members.

To surrender our physical members requires a much greater measure of confidence in God. In yielding ourselves – our wills – we yield obedience to the revealed will of God, but we still retain the exercise of our own understanding. We are willing to do what God asks of us, provided that we first understand what is asked.

However, in yielding our physical members we go beyond this. We no longer seek even to understand intellectually what God asks of us. We merely hand over unreserved control of our physical members and allow God to use them according to His own will and purpose without demanding to understand what God is doing or why He is doing it.

It is only as we make this second surrender that we come to the place of total, unconditional yieldedness. And it is just at this very point that the Holy Spirit comes in His fullness and takes control of our members.

The particular member He takes full control of is that unruly member which no man can tame – the tongue. Thus the yielding of our tongue to the Spirit marks the climax of yieldedness, of surrender, of complete obedience. It is by this that we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.