R.A. Torrey’s book The Baptism With The Holy Spirit is a great study on this often overlooked member of the Trinity. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are some quotes that especially caught my eye…
“The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not for the purpose of cleansing from sin, but for the purpose of empowering for service.”
“I fell into another error, namely, that anyone who received the baptism with the Holy Spirit would receive power as an evangelist or as a preacher of the Word. … There are three evils arising from the mistake just mentioned. First, disappointment. Many will seek the baptism with the Holy Spirit, expecting power as an evangelist, but God has not called them to that work and the power that comes from the baptism with the Holy Spirit manifests itself in another way in them. … The second evil is graver than the first, presumption. A man whom God has not called to the work of an evangelist or minister rushes into it because he has received, or thinks he has received, the baptism with the Holy Spirit. … The third evil is still greater, indifference.”
“While the baptism with the Spirit imparts power, the way in which that power will be manifested depends upon the work to which God has called us, and that no efficient work can be done without it. … It is not for us to select some field of service and then look to the Holy Spirit to impart to us power in that field which have chosen. It is rather for us to recognize the divinity and sovereignty of the Spirit, and to put ourselves unreservedly at His disposal.”
“There are certainly few greater mistakes that we are making today, than that of setting men to teach Sunday school classes, and do personal work, and even to preach the Gospel, simply because they have been converted and received a certain amount of education—perhaps including a college and seminary course—but have not as yet been baptized with the Holy Spirit. Any man who is in Christian work, who has not received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, ought to stop his work right where he is, and not go on with it until he has been ‘clothed with power from on high.’”
“There are many who hold back from this total surrender because they fear God’s will. They are afraid God’s will may be something dreadful. Remember who God is. He is our Father. Never an earthly father had so loving and tender a will regarding his children as He has toward us. ‘No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly’ (Ps. 84:11). ‘He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?’ There is nothing to be feared in God’s will. God’s will will always prove in the final outcome the best and sweetest thing in all God’s universe.”
“One of the subtlest and most dangerous snares into which satan leads us is seeking the Holy Spirit, this most solemn of all gifts, for our own ends.”
“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.”
Craig T. Owens 