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Building up believers and the New Testament church

The Basis of All Things

We Can Do Nothing of Ourselves

It was God in His fullness who came to dwell in the lives of the believers on the day of Pentecost. Man may know what God wants to do, but it takes God indwelling to bring it into expression in the believer and in a many-membered body, the church. This working of God is not "once in a while," but a life of continuous abiding and union with His working within. Otherwise we are moving separate from His working. Saying we are Christians without living His life on a continuing basis is a contradiction of the gospel. The Spirit is our ability to live His life. The Spirit has not been given that we might live our lives for our desires and then once in a while do the will of God.

Some think that we may live a Spirit-led life on an occasional basis. Many want something that is not God's salvation. They want a salvation separate from Christ and the Spirit's indwelling and working. We must come back to the statement of Jesus, "I can do nothing of myself." This is now true of every Christian; he can do nothing of himself. It must be as the Spirit works within him that he can work. We can see how much of the labor of many people stems from self and not from the Spirit. In their thinking they can mix their lives, with the Spirit leading them sometimes and then doing what they call good works the rest of the time. This is no more than a religious form, denying the power of the Spirit. We are only deceiving ourselves if we are trying to live a double life--natural and spiritual.