Ra Torrey Quotes

We sometimes fear to bring our troubles to God, because they must seem small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the earth. But if they are large enough to vex and endanger our welfare, they are large enough to touch His heart of love.

Many who read their Bibles make the great mistake of confining all their reading to certain portions of the Bible which they enjoy. In this way they get no knowledge of the Bible as a whole. They miss altogether many of the most important phases of Bible truth.

The one who expects God to do as he asks Him must on his part do whatever God bids him.

Faith gets the most; love works the most; but humility keeps the most.

The best book in the world to put into the hands of one who desires to know about Jesus and to be saved is the Gospel of John.

If we are to have real faith, we must study the Word of God and discover what is promised. Then, we must simply believe the promises of God. Trying to believe something that you want to believe is not faith. Believing what God says in His Word is faith.

If I am to have faith when I pray, I must find some promise in the Word of God to rest my faith on

If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,” but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?

For without faith no one can explain the Holy Scriptures, and without scholarship no one can investigate historic origins.

If we would spend more nights before God on our faces in prayer, there would be more days of power when we faced our people!

There must be, in any complete revelation of God's mind and will and character and being, things hard for the beginner to understand; and the wisest and best of us are but beginners.

We feel the breath of the wind upon our cheeks, we see the dust and the leaves blowing before the wind, we see the vessels at sea driven swiftly towards their ports; but the wind itself remains invisible. Just so with the Spirit; we feel His breath upon our souls, we see the mighty things He does, but Himself we do not see. He is invisible, but He is real and perceptible.

The heart of obedience is in the will, the essence of obedience is the surrender of the will to God. It is going to God our heavenly Father and saying, “Heavenly Father, here I am. I am Thy property. Thou hast bought me with a price. I acknowledge Thine ownership, and surrender myself and all that I am absolutely to Thee. Send me where Thou wilt; do with me what Thou wilt; use me as Thou wilt.

When the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and, above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end. – R.A. Torrey

If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. – 1 Peter 4:14

The secret of all true and effective praying is knowing the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of grace and of supplication.

the baptism with the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God coming upon a believer, taking possession of their faculties, and imparting to them gifts not naturally their own,

The great cry of our day is work, new organizations, new methods, and new machinery. The great need of our day is prayer.

It is the Holy Spirit who creates in us this new nature, or imparts this new nature to us. No amount of preaching,  no matter how orthodox it may be, no amount of mere study of the Word will regenerate unless the Holy Spirit works. It is He and He alone who makes a man a new creature.

Prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ears. Topics: Prayer, Meditation I am ready to meet God face to face tonight and look into those eyes of infinite holiness, for all my sins are covered by the atoning blood. Topics: Salvation, Atonement When the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and, above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end. Topics: Satan, Prayer God's Word is pure and sure, in spite of the devil, in spite of your fear, in spite of everything. Topics: Scripture Do not study commentaries, lesson helps or other books about the Bible: study the Bible itself. Do not study about the Bible, study the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God, and only the Bible is the Word of God. Topics: The Bible All that God is, and all that God has, is at the disposal of prayer. Prayer can do anything that God can do, and as God can do everything, prayer is omnipotent.

If we would continuously know the power of God we should go often alone with Him, at the close of each day at least, and ask Him to show us if any sin, anything displeasing in His sight, has crept in that day, and if He shows us that there has, we should confess it and put it away then and there.

It is at this point that we often make a mistake. We tell people, "Believe, believe, believe," but do not show them how, do not give them anything definite to believe. The biblical way and the intelligent way is, when you tell a man to believe, to give him something to believe. Give him, for example, Isaiah 53:6, and thus hold up Christ crucified; or, give him 1 Peter 2:24. Here he has something for his faith to rest upon. Faith must have a foundation. Faith cannot float in thin air. It is pitiable to see men told to believe, to believe, to believe- and then give nothing for their faith to rest upon.

Herein lies the whole secret of a real Christian life, a life of liberty and joy and power and fullness. To have as one's ever-present Friend, and to be conscious that one has as his ever-present Friend, the Holy Spirit and to surrender one's life in all its departments entirely to His control, this is true Christian living. The

God is deeply grieved by the thanklessness and ingratitude of which so many of us are guilty. When Jesus healed the ten lepers and only one came back to give Him thanks, in wonderment and pain He exclaimed, "Were not the ten cleansed? but where are the nine?" (Luke 17:17, R.V.) How often must He look down upon us in sadness at our forgetfulness of His repeated blessings, and His frequent answer to our prayers.

How solemn, how almost overwhelming, is the thought that the Holy Spirit has no way of getting at the unsaved with His saving power except through the instrumentality of us who are already Christians. If we realized that, would we not be more careful to offer to the Holy Spirit a more free and unobstructed channel for His all-important work? The Holy Spirit needs human lips to speak through. He needs yours, and He needs lives so clean and so utterly surrendered to Him that He can work through them.

Many a church is praying for a revival that does not really desire a revival. They think they do, for to their minds a revival means an increase of membership, an increase of income, an increase of reputation among the churches, but if they knew what a real revival meant, what a searching of hearts on the part of professed Christians would be involved, what a radical transformation of individual, domestic and social life would be brought about, and many other things that would come to pass if the Spirit of God was poured out in reality and power; if all this were known, the real cry of the church would be: “O God, keep us from having a revival.” Many

For example, many a woman is praying for the conversion of her husband. That certainly is a most proper thing to ask; but many a woman's motive in asking for the conversion of her husband is entirely improper, it is selfish. She desires that her husband may be converted because it would be so much more pleasant for her to have a husband who sympathized with her; or it is so painful to think that her husband might die and be lost forever. For some such selfish reason as this she desires to have her husband converted. The prayer is purely selfish. Why should a woman desire the conversion of her husband? First of all and above all, that God may be glorified; because she cannot bear the thought that God the Father should be dishonored by her husband trampling underfoot the Son of God.

There are many things that men and women ought to think about, and must think about, in private, that they would not for a moment discuss in public. There are books on the proper conduct of women in certain most sacred relations of life, relations of life which are as holy as any, and which can be entered into in the presence of a holy God with no question of His approval, but which do not permit of public mention. . . . That the Bible is a pure book is evidenced by the fact that it is not a favourite book in dens of infamy. But on the other hand, books that try to make out that the Bible is an obscene book, and that endeavour to keep people from reading it, are favourite books in dens of infamy. The unclean classes, both men and women, were devoted admirers of the most brilliant man this country ever produced who attacked what he called the "obscenity of the Bible." These unclean classes do not frequent Bible classes. They do frequent infidel lectures. These infidel objectors to the book as an "obscene book" constantly betray their insincerity and hypocrisy. Colonel Ingersoll . . . objected to the Bible for telling these vile deeds "without a touch of humour." In other words, he did not object to telling stories of vice, if only a joke was made of the sin. Thank God, that is exactly what the Bible does not do--make a joke of sin. It makes sin hideous, so men who are obscene in their own hearts object to the Bible as being an obscene book. . . . To sum up, there are in the Bible descriptions of sins that cannot wisely be read in every public assembly, but these descriptions of sin are morally most wholesome in the places where God, the Author of the Book, manifestly intends them to be read. The child who is brought up to read the Bible as a whole, from Genesis to Revelation, will come to know in the very best way possible what a child ought to know very early in life if he is to be safeguarded against the perils that surround our modern life on every hand. A child who is brought up upon a constant, thorough, continuous reading of the whole Bible is more likely than any other child to be free from the vices that are undermining the mental, moral, and physical strength of our boys and girls, and young men and young women. But the child who is brought up on infidel literature and conversation is the easiest prey there is for the seducer and procuress. The next easiest is the one who, through neglect of the Bible, is left in ignorance of the awful pitfalls of life.

Some skeptics assert that there is no other vital energy in the world but physical force, while contrary to their assertions, thousands and tens of thousands who can not possibly be deceived have been quickened into spiritual life by a power neither physical or mental. Men who were dead in sins - drunkards who lost their will, blasphemers who lost their purity, libertines sunk in beastliness, infidels who published their shame to the world, have in numberless instances become the subjects of the Spirit's power and are now walking in the true nobility of Christian manhood, separated by an infinite distance from their former life. Let others reject, if they will, at their own peril, this imperishable truth. I believe, and am growing more into this belief, that divine, miraculous creative power resides in the Holy Ghost. Above and beyond all natural law, yet in harmony with it, creation, providence, the Divine government, and the upbuilding of the Church of God are presided over by the Spirit of God.

But if we are walking in the light, submitting to the truth of God, believing in the light, in Christ, our record today is white as Christ's garments were when the disciples saw Him on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17: 2, Mark 9: 3, Luke 9: 29).

There are many Christians today who have not permitted the blood of Christ to cleanse their consciences from dead works. They are constantly feeling they must do something to atone for sin. Oh, my brother, my sister, look at what God looks at, the blood, and see that it is all done, already done! God is satisfied, sin is atoned for, you are justified. Now don't do dead works to commend yourself to God; but, realizing that you are already commended by the blood, serve Him in the freedom of gratitude and love, and not in the bondage of fear.

There are some today who are trying to devise a theology that leaves out the blood of Christ. Poor fools! Christianity without atoning blood is a Christianity without mercy for the sinner, without settled peace for the conscience, without genuine forgiveness, without justification, without cleansing, without boldness in approaching God, without power.

If, therefore, we wish the Holy Spirit to do His work in our hearts, we must study the Word. If we wish Him to do His work in the hearts of others, we must give them the Word.

There are some who seek to magnify the Spirit but neglect the Word. This will not do at all. Fanaticism, baseless enthusiasm, wildfire are the result. Others seek to magnify the Word, but largely ignore the Spirit. Neither will this do. It leads to dead orthodoxy, truth without life and power.

In I John 2: 2, R.V., we read, "And He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." By the shed blood of Christ a basis is provided upon which God can deal in mercy with the whole world.

All of God's dealings in mercy with any man since the fall of Adam are on the ground of that shed blood. If it had not been for the shed blood, God could never have dealt in mercy with a sinner, but must have at once cut him off in his sin.

You have heard of the old woman who lay dying. Her rector heard of it and called upon her. "They tell me," he said, "that you are dying." "Yes," she replied. "And have you made your peace with God?" "No," came the answer. "And are you not afraid to meet God without making your peace with Him?" "Not at all," was the answer and startled the minister. The minister grew earnest. "Woman, do you realize that you have but a short time to live and that you must soon meet a holy God?" "Yes, I realize it perfectly." "And you are not afraid?" "Not at all." "And you have not made your peace with God?" "No." "What do you mean?" cried the astonished rector. A smile passed over the features of the dying woman. "I have not made my peace with God because I do not need to. Christ made peace more than eighteen hundred years ago by the blood of His cross (Col. 1: 20), and I am simply resting in the peace he made.

It is a good thing to be stripped of vile and filthy rags, but it is far better to be clothed with garments of glory and beauty. In forgiveness we are stripped of the vile and stinking rags of our sins; in justification we are clothed upon with the glory and beauty of Christ. It is the power of the blood which secures this.

If anyone asks, "What is the one thing for me to do if I wish to know all that God has for me?" the answer is very simple. Surrender absolutely to God. Say to Him, "Heavenly Father, henceforth I have no will of my own. Thy will be done in me, through me, by me, and regarding me, in all things. I put myself unreservedly in Thy hands – now do with me just what Thou wilt." When one does that, God, Who is infinite love, and infinite wisdom, and infinite power, does the very best thing with that one.  We may not see at once that it is the best thing, but it is, and sooner or later it will be seen.  Sooner or later God floods the heart of him who surrenders absolutely to Him with light, and joy, and fills his life with power.  Absolute surrender to God is the secret of blessedness and power. 

When we give up the hopeless struggle of trying to overcome the law of sin and death, of trying to live right in our own strength, in the power of the flesh; and in utter helplessness surrender to the Holy Spirit to do all for us; when we live after Him and walk in His blessed power; then He sets us free from the law of sin and death.

But the victory is not in ourselves, not in any strength of our own. Left to ourselves, deserted of the Spirit of God, we would be as helpless as ever. It is all in the Spirit's power. If we try to take one step in our own strength, we shall fail.

I have seen men and women without culture, who have had almost no advantages in school, but who knew their Bibles; and I would rather sit at their feet and learn the wisdom that falls from their lips, than listen to the man who knows much about philosophy and science and theology even, and does not know anything about the Word of God.

To Nehemiah, the need was so great that he agonized. He wept and mourned before the Lord. R.A. Torrey observed, “We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity but accomplish little. Many services but few results.” When Nehemiah saw the spiritual state of his home, he was moved to fervent prayer. He was motivated to respond spiritually and biblically—and God honored that response. James 5:16 says, “…The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. – Ephesians 1:13

a theological confession is one thing, a practical realization of the truth we confess is quite another.

There are many who believe in God, and who are perfectly orthodox in their conception of God, but after all God is to them only an intellectual theological proposition. It is the work of the [pg 051] Holy Spirit to make God something vastly more than a theological notion, no matter how orthodox; He is the Spirit of the living God , and it is His work to make God a living God to us, a Being whom we know, with whom we have personal acquaintance, a Being more real to us than the most intimate human friend we have.

true sermon exists for the purpose of leading

If I did not believe in regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit, I would quit preaching. What would be the use in facing great audiences in which there were multitudes of men and women hardened and seared, caring for nothing but the things of the world and the flesh, with no high and holy aspirations, with no outlook beyond money and fame and power and pleasure, if it were not for the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit?

the Christian doctrine of prayer is that it is the believer's privilege to be taught by the Spirit of God Himself to know what the will of God is and not to ask for the things that our foolishness would prompt us to ask for but to ask for things that the never-erring Spirit of God prompts us to ask for. True prayer is prayer “in the Spirit,” that is, the prayer which the Spirit inspires and directs.

If the Holy Spirit is a person, and a Divine Person, and we do not know Him as such, then we are robbing a Divine Being of the worship and the faith and the love and the surrender to Himself which are His due.

As for you, 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

We hear a great deal in these days about doing as Jesus would do.

Oh, you may talk about power; but, if you neglect the one Book that God has given you as the one instrument through which He imparts and exercises His power, you will not have it. You may read many books and go to many conventions and you may have your all-night prayer meetings to pray for the power of the Holy Ghost; but unless you keep in constant and close association with the one Book, the Bible, you will not have power. And if you ever had power, you will not maintain it except by the daily, earnest, intense study of that Book.

We read in 1 Pet. i. 23, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and  abideth forever.” We read in James i. 18, “Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.” These passages make it plain that the Word is the instrument used in regeneration, but it is only as the Holy Spirit uses the instrument that the new birth results.

It is the Spirit that giveth life” (John vi. 63, A. R. V.). In 2 Cor. iii. 6, we are told that “the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”[i] 

In the new birth a new intellectual, affectional and volitional nature is imparted to us. We receive the mind that sees as God sees, thinks God's thoughts after Him (1 Cor. ii. 12-14); affections in harmony with the affections of God.

Prayer brings blessings to the church. The history of the church has always been a history of grave difficulties to overcome. The devil hates the church and seeks in every way to block its progress; now by false doctrine, again by division, again by inward corruption of life. But by prayer, a clear way can be made through everything. Prayer will root out heresy, allay misunderstanding, sweep away jealousies and animosities, obliterate immoralities, and bring in the full tide of God's reviving grace. History abundantly proves this. In the hour of darkest portent, when the case of the church, local or universal, has seemed beyond hope, believing men and believing women have met together and cried to God and the answer has come.

His ministration is the ministration of life more glorious than the ministration of law, (2 Corinthians 3:16-10). And like the Eternal Son, the Eternal Spirit having life in Himself, is working out all things after the counsel of His own will, and for the everlasting glory of the Triune Godhead. The Holy Spirit has all the qualities belonging to a person; the power to understand, to will, to do, to call, to feel, to love. This can not be said of a mere influence. He possesses attributes and qualities which can only be ascribed to a person, as acts and deeds are performed by Him which can not be performed by a machine, an influence, or a result.

THE GREAT RESERVOIR OF THE POWER that belongs to God is His own Word- the Bible. If we wish to make it ours, we must go to that Book. Yet people abound in the church who are praying for power and neglecting the Bible. Men are longing to have power for fruit-bearing in their own lives and yet forget that Jesus has said:     "The seed is the Word of God." (Luke 8:11)

I can think of no thought more humbling or more overwhelming than the thought that a person of Divine [pg 009] majesty and glory dwells in my heart and is ready to use even me.

is the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the living God , to give us to know a God who lives and acts and speaks to-day, a God who is ready to come as near to us as He came to Abraham, to Moses or to Isaiah, or to the Apostles or to Jesus Himself.

We read in Ps. xxxiii. 6, “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” We have already seen in our study of the names of the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit is the breath of JEHOVAH, so this passage teaches us that all the hosts of heaven, all the stellar worlds, were made by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit can convince men of sin. We need not despair of any one, no matter how indifferent they may appear, no matter how worldly,  no matter how self-satisfied, no matter how irreligious, the Holy Spirit can convince men of sin.

As far as the Holy Scriptures definitely tell us, the Holy Spirit has no Way of getting at the unsaved world except through the agency of those who are already saved. Every conversion recorded in the Acts of the Apostles was through the agency of men or women already saved.

In regard to the comparatively minor moralities of life, there is a wide difference among men, but the thief who rejects Christ and the honest man who rejects Christ are alike condemned at the great point of what they do with God's Son, and this is the point that the Holy Spirit presses home.

The sin of unbelief is the most difficult of all sins of which to convince men. The average unbeliever does not look upon unbelief as a sin. Many an unbeliever looks upon his unbelief as a mark of intellectual superiority. Not infrequently, he is all the more proud of it because it is the only mark of intellectual superiority that he possesses. He tosses his head and says, “I am an agnostic;” “I am a skeptic;” or, “I am an infidel,” and assumes an air of superiority on that account.

The subordination of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son comes out also in the fact that He derives some of His names from the Father and from the Son. We read in Rom. viii. 9, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” Here we have two names of the Spirit, one derived from His relation to the Father, “the Spirit of God,” and the other derived from His relation to the Son, “the Spirit of Christ.

From all these passages, it is evident that the Holy Spirit in His present work, while possessed of all the attributes of Deity, is subordinated to the Father and to the Son. On the other hand, we shall see later that in His earthly life, Jesus lived and taught and worked in the power of the Holy Spirit.

When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive the inmost life of God Himself to dwell in a personal way in us. When we really grasp this thought, it is overwhelming in its solemnity. Just stop and think what it means to have the inmost life of that infinite and eternal Being whom we call God, dwelling in a personal way in you. How solemn and how awful and yet unspeakably glorious life becomes when we realize this.

In all these passages it is perfectly clear that the Holy Spirit is not a mere illumination that enables us to apprehend the truth, but a Person who comes to us to teach us day by day the truth of God. It is the privilege of the humblest believer in Jesus Christ not merely to have his mind illumined to comprehend the truth of God, but to have a Divine Teacher to daily teach him the truth he  needs to know (cf. 1 John ii. 20, 27). The Holy Spirit is also represented as the Leader and Guide of the children of God. We read in Rom. viii. 14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God.” He is not merely an influence that enables us to see the way that God would have us go, nor merely a power that gives us strength to go that way, but a Person who takes us by the hand and gently leads us on in the paths in which God would have us walk.

The Holy Spirit is also represented as a Person who has authority to command men in their service of Jesus Christ. We read of the Apostle Paul and his companions in Acts xvi. 6, 7, “Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.” Here it is a Person who takes the direction of the conduct of Paul and his companions and a Person whose authority they recognized and to whom they instantly submit.

Further still than this the Holy Spirit is represented as the One who is the supreme authority in the church, who calls men to work and appoints them to office. We read in Acts xiii. 2, “As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work where unto I have called them.” And in Acts xx. 28, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to  feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood.” There can be no doubt to a candid seeker after truth that it is a Person, and a person of Divine majesty and sovereignty, who is here set before us.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit to bear witness of Christ and reveal Jesus Christ to men. And as the revealer of Christ, He is called “the Spirit of Christ.

What would we think if vile women from the lowest den of iniquity in a great city should go to the purest woman in the city and invite her to come and live with them in their disgusting vileness with no intention of changing their evil ways. But that would not be as shocking as for you and me to ask the Holy Spirit to come and dwell in our hearts when we have no thought of giving up our impurity, or our selfishness, or our worldliness, or our sin.

To sum it all up, again and again the Bible draws  the clearest possible distinction between the three Persons, the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son. They are three separate personalities, having mutual relations to one another, acting upon one another, speaking of or to one another, applying the pronouns of the second and third persons to one another.

The Wind of God took possession of Charles G. Finney, an obscure country lawyer, and sent him through New York State, then through New England, then through England, mowing down strong men by his resistless, Spirit-given logic. One night in Rochester, scores of lawyers, led by the justice of the Court of Appeals, filed out of the pews and bowed in the aisles and yielded their lives to God.

The Wind of God took possession of D. L. Moody, an uneducated young business man in Chicago, and in the power of this resistless Wind, men and women and young people were mowed down before his words and brought in humble confession and renunciation of sin to the feet of Jesus Christ, and filled with the life of God they have been the pillars in the churches of Great Britain and throughout the world ever since.

The great need to-day in individuals, in churches and in preachers is that the Wind of God blow upon us.

Much of the difficulty that many find with John iii. 5, “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” would disappear if we would only bear in mind that “Spirit” means “Wind” and translate the verse literally all through, “Except a man be born of water and Wind (there is no ‘the’ in the original), he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The thought would then seem to be, “Except  a man be born of the cleansing and quickening power of the Spirit (or else of the cleansing Word—cf. John xv. 3; Eph. v. 26; Jas. i. 18; 1 Pet. i. 23—and the quickening power of the Holy Spirit).

There are many who believe in God, and who are perfectly orthodox in their conception of God, but after all God is to them only an intellectual theological proposition. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make God something vastly more than a theological notion, no matter how orthodox; He is the Spirit of the living God, and it is His work to make God a living God to us, a Being whom we know, with whom we have personal acquaintance, a Being more real to us than the most intimate human friend we have. Have you a real God?

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the living God, and He is able and ready to give to you a living God, to make God real in your personal experience.

If you wish to be born again, the way is very simple. Take the Word of God concerning Christ crucified and risen, and drop it into your heart by meditation upon it. Look to God by His Holy Spirit to quicken it, believe it with the heart, and the work is done. If you wish to see someone else born again, give him the Word of God. The process of regeneration on our side is the simplest thing in the world. On God’s side it is mysterious, but with that we have nothing to do. The process is simply this: the human heart is the soil; you and I are sowers; the word of God is the seed which we drop into that soil. God quickens it by His Holy Spirit and gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:6). The heart closes around the Word by faith, and the new life is the product. The new birth is simply the impartation of a new nature, the impartation of God’s nature.

3. Again, the word of God has power to produce faith. In Romans 10:17 we read,     "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." You can never get faith by merely praying; you can never get it by any effort of the will; you can never get it by trying to pump it up in any way. Faith is the product of a certain cause, and that cause is the Word of God. It is so, for example, with saving faith. Suppose you want a man to have saving faith. Simply give him something definite from God’s Word upon which he can rest. The Philippian jailer asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30), and Paul answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" (Acts 16:31). But Paul did not stop there. Read verse 32, "And they spake unto him the Word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house." They did not merely tell the Philippian jailer to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and then leave him there floundering in the dark without giving him something to believe, or something for his faith to rest upon. They gave that which God has ordained to produce faith.

It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of experience that we know the Holy Spirit as a person. Thousands and tens of thousands of men and women can testify to the blessing that has come into their own lives as they have come to know the Holy Spirit, not merely as a gracious influence (emanating, it is true, from God) but as a real Person, just as real as Jesus Christ Himself, an ever-present, loving Friend and mighty Helper, who is not only always by their side but dwells in their heart every day and every hour and who is ready to undertake for them in every emergency of life.

Thousands of ministers, Christian workers and Christians in the humblest spheres of life have spoken to me, or written to me, of the complete transformation of their Christian experience that came to them when they grasped the thought (not merely in a theological, but in an experimental way) that the Holy Spirit was a Person and consequently came to know Him.

There are at least four distinct lines of proof in the Bible that the Holy Spirit is a person. I. All the distinctive characteristics of personality are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible. What are the distinctive characteristics, or marks, of personality? Knowledge, feeling or emotion, and will. Any entity that thinks and feels and wills is a person. When we say that the Holy Spirit is a person, there are those who understand us to mean that the Holy  Spirit has hands and feet and eyes and ears and mouth, and so on, but these are not the characteristics of personality but of corporeity.

We read in 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11, “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Here knowledge is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. We are clearly taught that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence that illuminates our minds to comprehend the truth but a Being who Himself knows the truth.

In 1 Cor. xii. 11, we read, “But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.” Here will is ascribed to the Spirit and we are taught that the Holy Spirit is not a power that we get hold of and use according to our will but a Person of sovereign majesty, who uses us according to His will.

It is also of the highest importance from the practical standpoint that we decide whether the Holy Spirit is  merely some mysterious and wonderful power that we in our weakness and ignorance are somehow to get hold of and use, or whether the Holy Spirit is a real Person, infinitely holy, infinitely wise, infinitely mighty and infinitely tender who is to get hold of and use us.

The conception of the Holy Spirit as a Divine influence or power that we are somehow to get hold of and use, leads to self-exaltation and self-sufficiency. One who so thinks of the Holy Spirit and who at the same time imagines that he has received the Holy Spirit will almost inevitably be full of spiritual pride and strut about as if he belonged to some superior order of Christians. One frequently hears such persons say, “I am a Holy Ghost man,” or “I am a Holy Ghost woman.

But if we once grasp the thought that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person of infinite majesty, glory and holiness and power, who in marvelous condescension has come into our hearts to make His abode there and take possession of our lives and make use of them, it will put us in the dust and keep us in the dust. I can think of no thought more humbling or more overwhelming than the thought that a person of Divine  majesty and glory dwells in my heart and is ready to use even me.

There is perhaps no passage in the entire Bible in which the personality of the Holy Spirit comes out more tenderly and touchingly than in Eph. iv. 30, “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” Here grief is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a blind, impersonal influence or power that comes into our lives to illuminate, sanctify and empower them. No, He is immeasurably more than that, He is a holy Person who comes to dwell in our hearts, One who sees clearly every act we perform, every word we speak, every thought we entertain, even the most fleeting fancy that is allowed to pass through our minds; and if there is anything in act, or word or deed that is impure, unholy, unkind, selfish, mean, petty or untrue, this infinitely holy One is deeply grieved by it.

But if it had not been for the love of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in answer to the prayer of the Son (John xiv. 16) leading Him to seek me out in my utter blindness and ruin and to follow me day after day, week after week, and year after year, when I persistently turned a deaf ear to His pleadings, following me through paths of sin where it must have been agony for that holy One to go, until at last I listened and He opened my eyes to see my utter ruin and then revealed Jesus to me as just the Saviour that would meet my every need and then enabled me to receive this Jesus as my own Saviour; if it had not been for this patient, long-suffering, never-tiring, infinitely-tender love of the Holy Spirit, I would have been in hell to-day. Oh, the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence or a power or an illumination but is a Person just as real as God the Father or Jesus Christ His Son.

Those who read Christian biographies know that many men and women of God have reveled in a deep experience of the love of God. It is said that R. A. Torrey earnestly sought God’s face, and one day while he was reading the Scriptures and praying, he was so overwhelmed with a profound consciousness of God’s love for him that he began to weep and weep. Eventually he asked God to show him no more: he could not bear it.

Listen, infinitely the best translation of the Bible is the translation into daily living.

The Holy Spirit brings forth in the believer Christlike graces of character (Compare Romans 5:5; 14:17; 15:13).

Each believer is independent of human teachers. "Ye need not that any man teach you." This does not mean, of course, that we may not learn much from others, who are taught by the Holy Spirit. If John had thought that, he would never have written this epistle to teach others.

But, while we may learn much from men, we are not dependent upon them. We have a divine teacher, the Holy Spirit.

We will never understand Christ, nor see His glory, until the Holy Spirit interprets Him to us. The mere listening to sermons and lectures, the mere study of the word even, will never give you to see the things of Christ. The Holy Spirit must show you, and He is willing to do it. He is longing to do it.

but which qualify them for the service to which God has called them.