God’s Best Gift

Oswald Chambers, author of the Christian classic My Utmost for His Highest, knew he was born again but longed to be filled with the Spirit. He prayed for the cleansing fullness of the Spirit. Then the Spirit used circumstances to show him how sinful his own heart was. He continued to preach, people were saved and blessed, but in his own soul, there was darkness and misery.

During a series of meetings on the deeper life, God spoke to his heart through Luke 11:13, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

One night Chambers rose to his feet and said, “Either Christianity is a downright fraud, or I have not got hold of the right end of the stick.” He then claimed the gift of the Holy Spirit, trusting the promise of Luke 11:13. He had no special emotional blessing, but knew he had taken God at His Word.

A few days later Chambers spoke at a meeting and forty people came forward to seek salvation. When he asked the principal of the Bible college why there was this response, the principal said, “Don’t you remember you asked God to give you the gift of His Spirit, and you claimed it by faith? Didn’t Jesus say, ‘Ye shall receive power?’ This is God’s power from on high.”

Chambers said of his experience, “Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God....After He comes in, all you see is ‘Jesus only.’”

Thank You, Jesus, that You provide not only forgiveness of sins but You answer the deepest needs of our heart.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).