The anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit – just as it has taught you, remain in Him. (1 John 2:27 NIV)

I often sit at my keyboard waiting for the unction to write something from the Lord on our blog. Each time He makes me wait and as time drags on I wonder if He is through with me. This morning I read two quotes back to back, one on the blog of a dear sister in Germany (http://enteringthepromisedland.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/on-receiving-more-of-the-holy-spirit/) and the other a quote from T. Austin-Sparks from a sister in New Zealand in my daily devotional, “Open Windows.” http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/openwindows/003437.html. I hope you don’t mind me quoting from them here.

Seeing the unction to write in terms of a beggar waiting at the door of the rich man’s house for a scrap of bread helped me a lot…

“That our watching and waiting may be of a proper kind, and be successful, we must turn entirely away from all created things, and appear in the presence of God, with a heart entirely empty, and hungering and thirsting after grace, so that we may boldly say, ‘Lord, here is my vessel, here I wait, here I continue lying on the brink of the waters; here, O my God! I expect the promised power from on high, with perfect resignation and in child-like confidence, that thou wilt, in due time, fulfill thy promise! Thou hast promised thy Holy Spirit to me; and thou wilt also perform. Do not look at my poverty and wretchedness, my nakedness and destitution; for it is for this very reason I need thy grace the most; on this very account I am worthy of compassion.’

It is thus that a soul, which is entirely turned away from the world, and directed to God, and which hungers and thirsts after God, waits in a right and proper manner, and therefore shall be filled with the blessings of salvation, and most assuredly made partaker of the Holy Spirit.
When the beggar, at the door, has said, ‘Give me a morsel of bread!’ he does not immediately go away, but waits; and if he is left to stand long, he repeats his request, again and again, until he has really received what he desires. And although he be refused, yet he continues to beg, and does not move until he be attended to. So ought we also to act. We must stand at the door of God’s grace, and wait, until we have received what we ask for. (Gerhard Tersteegen, Spiritual Crumbs from the Master’s Table, pp. 250, 251)

And this timely word from T. Austin-Sparks…

“Do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Why do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Is the anointing something that you crave? To what end? That you may be used, may have power, may have influence, may be able to do a lot of wonderful things? The first and preeminent thing the anointing means is that we can do nothing but what the anointing teaches and leads to do. The anointing takes everything out of our hands. The anointing takes charge of the reputation. The anointing takes charge of the very purpose of God. The anointing takes complete control of everything and all is from that moment in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and we must remember that if we are going to learn Christ, that learning Christ is by the Holy Spirit’s dealing with us, and that means that we have to go exactly the same way as Christ went in principle and in law… ‘The Son can do nothing out from Himself.’”

(How much is our own reputation worth? Are we willing to give it over to God for Him to deal with? For most Christians I have met, that is a bit too much. Most want to at least salvage that much from their own lives and they fight to save it “so they can be more useful for the Lord.” But even that has to go if we are to be yielded totally to God. Remember, even Jesus made Himself of no reputation when He came down to earth in the form of a lowly servant).

As we yield to God are we then “controlled” by the Holy Spirit? Demons possess people and take control, but the Spirit of the Lord leads. Paul wrote, “I Paul, the prisoner of the Jesus Christ…” To be yielded to the Holy Spirit is being controlled like prisoners are controlled, the guards open and close doors in their cell block from remote that either allows or denies them access to other areas (See Acts 16:6-9). They still have a modicum of freedom, but it is orchestrated freedom. Jesus said to Peter, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, When you were young, you dressed yourself, and walked where you would: but when you shall be old, you shall stretch forth your hands, and another shall dress you, and carry you where you would not.”(John 21:18 KJ2000). The more we pursue the Lord and the anointing of His Spirit, the less freedom we have to do things the way we used to, yet the more unction we experience as we yield to the will of our Father and part of that is the continuous working of the cross of Christ in our lives. It takes us from being “when you were young” and self-willed into “when you shall be old,” becoming yielded vessels of the Spirit.

So our sister in Germany I mentioned above has remarked often how she felt “empty headed.” She is an intelligent and educated woman, but as she has yielded to the working of God in her life He has taken control of that intelligence more and more and has been governing it with the mind of Christ. So, she has to wait on Him to give her what she is to write. This can be very unnerving at first for those of us who are used to depending on our own minds and abilities to get things done (I was the “go to guy” for my bosses in the world), but that is what the cross of the Lord in our lives does as we yield to the Spirit of God. Using our prison analogy above, sometimes He even puts us in a time of solitary confinement to break that self-seeking will in us! But the fruit of all His wonderful work in us is good. We have a promise…

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt [the world and its ways]: open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” (Psalms 81:10 KJ2000)

God bless each of you as you seek His will to be done in your lives and my fellow bloggers as you write.