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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 31. The Jordan Baptism of Power
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The Jordan Baptism of Power
Then there was a Jordan Baptism of Power in our Lord's life. This stood at the beginning of His leadership, His life-work, His service among men. As He came up out of the Jordan waters He stood waiting in prayer. He was expecting something. His whole being was absorbed in the expectancy of what had been promised. (Isa_11:2; Isa_61:1, with Luk_4:18-21.) And that expectancy was not disappointed. None that wait on God shall be put to confusion by any disappointment. (Psa_25:3 f.)c.) The blue above was rift through, the Holy Spirit as a gentle dove came, and remained upon Him, and the Father's voice of pleased approval spoke to His grateful, obedient heart. From that time the whole control of His life was absolutely in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
This does not mean an inert passivity on Jesus' part; it meant a strong, intelligent yielding to the Holy Spirit. It does not mean that His natural faculties of mind and will and heart were held down, not to be used. It means that they were actively, studiously used in discerning the Holy Spirit's leading, and in doing as He directed. And it means that so there came a fulness of life, an increasing life, into His faculties, mind and will and heart. Our Lord Jesus used all His powers in yielding to the inspiration and direction and control of the Holy Spirit, keeping ever open to His suggestion, and making that suggestion the law of His own action.
And the Spirit of Omnipotence, working with the gentleness of a dove, breathed upon those yielded powers, and breathed through them, even as had been planned with the first breathing of this sort, in Eden. So from the Wilderness clear up to the last Olivet command to the disciples, everything was done at the bidding, the direction of this Spirit. And so the almighty power was breathed into every word and action and bit of suffering. The one key-note of the Master's action was obedience; the result was the flooding of the Spirit's omnipotence through His obedient faculties and life.
Now, as we follow, this same sort of experience will be ours. What a tremendous thing to say! Yet the road was being beaten down for our feet. The Son of Man was simply showing to His brother-men the road we were all meant to go, showing it by going in it. All the power that came into Jesus' life will come into ours, if He is given His way. For the Holy Spirit is not measured out, either to Him or to us, (Joh_3:34 f.c.) but poured out without stint. (Isa_44:3; Joh_7:37-39.) As we follow we shall be led along behind the Man going before.
There will need to be instruction, for we're so new to this road. And human teachers are sent by the Holy Spirit to help us understand, teachers in print, and teachers in shoes. There will need to be the initial act of full surrender to the Lord Jesus as Lord indeed, for most of us have been going another way than this. There will need to be a house-cleaning time, for we have let in so much of another sort.
A soft, but very honest, searching light will come flooding in through the sky-light windows. And as we instinctively go to our knees and faces because of what that light brings to light, there will be a wondrous cleansing, both by blood and by fire. Then will come a filling of our very being by this wondrous Spirit of God.
How shall we know this filling, do you ask? There will be a quiet, deep peace, at times a great joy that sings, but ever the deep peace that holds you, a new hunger for the old Book, and a new soft light on its pages. There will be an inner drawing to talk with God, and an intense desire to please Him, to find out what He wants you to do, and then to do it.
There will come other things too, of a less pleasant sort, temptation will come anew, and a sense—sometimes very acute—of sin, a feeling that there's a something within you fighting you, the new you. There will be an increased sensitiveness to sin, and an intense hatred of it. This is what the filling means. These things will tell you that He, the Spirit, has taken possession of what you surrendered, and that He is now at work within. These are His finger-prints.
Then there will be the outflowing side of this filling. A passion that all men may know this compassionate God, will come as a fire burning in your bones. Its flames will envelop and go through everything you are and have and can do. But under all will be the passion for pleasing the Lord Jesus. Obedience will become the chief thing, holding everything else in check, obedience to Him, pleasing Him, doing His will.
The Bethlehem Birth is the beginning of a new, a supernatural life within; this will be the actual life itself, in full vigour and power. That is the supernatural birth, this the supernatural life. That is, there is at work within you, very quietly and simply, a power more than the natural, working through the natural order, and sometimes upsetting what we may have grown to think of as the natural order. This is the Jordan Baptism of Power, the Holy Spirit taking charge, and you living a Spirit-controlled life. There's a new sign hung out over your life, "this life is being conducted under new management." You won't say it; it won't be shouted out. It'll be louder yet. Your life will be telling it continually.