John G. Lake was a missionary to South Africa and an instrument of divine healing there and in the United States. The following thought-provoking message is taken from John G. Lake: The Complete Collection of His Life Teachings compiled by Roberts Liardon:
"Sometimes I have tried to get it clear before my soul that God lives in me. I have tried to note the incoming influence and power of that pure, sweet, living Spirit of the Eternal God. I have tried to realize His presence in my spirit, in my soul, in my hands, in my feet, in my person and being--a habitation of God, a habitation of God! God equipping the soul to minister Himself, God, to the world. God equipping the soul of man that he may live forever in harmony of mind with God. God furnishing to the soul of man the power of His personality, by which man is made as God. For all the God-like qualities of your heart is due to the fact that God by the Spirit dwells in you. What is it that you look for in another? It is God. You look into the eyes of another to see God. If you fail to see God in the other life, your heart is troubled. You were looking for God.
"I am not interested in the form or the figure or the name of an individual. I am interested in seeing God. Is God there? Is God in that man? Is God in that woman? Is it God that speaks? Is it God that moves? Are you seeing God?
"The baptism of the Holy Ghost was the incoming of God in personality, in order that the man, through this force, might be moved by God. God lives in him, God speaks through him, God is the impulse of his soul, God has his dwelling place in him.
"You may have God! That is the wonder of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. It is not a work of grace, it is God possessing you. Oh, your heart may have been as sinful as the heart of man ever was sinful. But Christ comes to your soul. That spirit of darkness that possessed you goes, and in its stead, a new Spirit comes in, the Spirit of Christ. You have become a new creature, a saved man, a God-filled man.
"Sin manifests itself in three ways, in thought, in acts, in nature. Salvation is a complete transformation. God takes possession of man, changes his thoughts, and in consequence his acts change, his nature is new. A Christian is not a reformed man. A Christian is a man renewed, remade by the Spirit of God. A Christian is a man indwelt by God--the house of God, the tabernacle of the Most High! Man, indwelt by God, becomes the hands, and the heart, and the feet, and the mind of Jesus Christ. God descends into man, man ascends into God! That is the purpose and power of the Baptism in the Holy Ghost. A soul is saved. How does Jesus reach them? Through your hands, through your heart, through your faith. When God baptizes you in the Holy Ghost, He gives you the biggest gift that heaven or earth ever possessed. He gives you Himself! He joins you by the one Spirit to Himself forever.
"The requirement is a surrendered heart, a surrendered mind, a surrendered life. From the day that a man becomes a child of God, baptized in the Holy Ghost, it was God's intention through Jesus Christ that that man should be a revelation of Jesus, not of himself any more. From that time on the Christian should be a revelation of Jesus.
"If you were looking to know whether a man was baptized in the Holy Ghost or not, what would you look for? You would look for God in him. You would look for a revelation of the personality of God. God moving in him, God speaking in him, God speaking through him, God using his hands, God using his feet, a mind in harmony with God, a soul in touch with heaven, a spirit united and unified with and in Jesus Christ.
"It is not in my heart to discourage any man, or to make you disbelieve for one minute in the trueness of your own baptism in the Holy Ghost. I believe that God by the Spirit has baptized many in the Holy Ghost. Hundreds and hundreds of people have been baptized in the Holy Ghost during the life of this Church in the last six years. But beloved, we have not comprehended the greatness of God's intent. Not that we have not received the Spirit, but our lives have not been sufficiently surrendered to God. We must keep on ascending right to the throne, right into the heart of God, right into the soul of the Glorified.
"The common teaching that my heart these days is endeavoring to combat is that God comes to present the individual with a gift of power, and the individual is then supposed to go out and manifest some certain characteristic of power. No! God comes to present you with Himself. 'Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you' [Acts 1:8, emphasis Lake's].
"Jesus went to heaven in order that the very treasury of the heart of the eternal God might be unlocked for your benefit, and that out of the very soul of the eternal God, the streams of His life and nature would possess you from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet, and that there would be just as much of the eternal God in your toe nails and in your brain as each are capable of containing. In other words, from the very soles of your feet to the last hair on the top of your head, every cell of your being, would be a residence of the Spirit of the living God. Man is made alive by God and with God, by the Spirit. And in the truest sense man is the dwelling place of God, the house of God, the tabernacle of the Most High.
"Listen! 'The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself but the Father that dwelleth in me' [John 14:10]. '. . . but the Father that dwelleth in me.' Where did the Eternal Father dwell in Jesus Christ? Why in every part of His being, within and without--in the spirit of Him, in the soul of Him, in the brain of Him, in the body of Him, in the blood of Him, in the bones of Him! Every single, solitary cell of His structure was the dwelling place of God, of God, of God!
"When you look for God you do not look on the surface. You look within. When you discern a man to see whether God is in him, you look into the spirit of him, into the soul of him, into the depth of him, and there you see God."
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2 comments:
This is a very nice summation. The only thing I disagree with is when you said it is not by gods grace, but gods possession. Everything we are allowed to experience is through gods grace. We are saved through Jesus by that grace, and made clean with the blood of the lamb. Even with the blood of the lamb we are still human, we still sin even in ways we do not know are sin, simply because noone can come close to the perfection of Christ in mind body and spirit. God give and god bless
Thank you for your comment.
I think John G. Lake--the author of the article--explains his statement ("You may have God! That is the wonder of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. It is not a work of grace, it is God possessing you) later in the article. He states his reason for writing the article: "The common teaching that my heart these days is endeavoring to combat is that God comes to present the individual with a gift of power, and the individual is then supposed to go out and manifest some certain characteristic of power. No! God comes to present you with Himself."
In other words, it is not that God gives us something independent of Himself (i.e., some "work of grace", "gift of power", or "some certain characteristic of power") that we then operate with His help. He is stressing the fact that God Himself operates through us, that it is really God living out (or expressing Himself) through our human lives.
We are in living union with Him through Christ as a branch is in living union with the vine: the branch is expressing the life of the vine or, another way of putting it, the vine is expressing itself through the branch and the fruit is an attribute of the vine, not of the branch itself.
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