Smith Wigglesworth: ‘How I Sustain a Spirit-Filled Life’

Let me say a word to your heart.

Most of us are diligently seeking God’s best. We feel that we would pay any price for His best. God knows my heart. I have not an atom of desire outside the perfect will of God, and God knows that. But Wigglesworth, like everybody else, occasionally has to come to this: “What is up with me? I do not feel the unction.” If there is anything to repent of, I get right down before God and get it out.

You cannot cover sins over or cover faults over; they must be gotten to the bottom of. You cannot have the unction, and the Holy Ghost power, and the life of Christ, and the mani-fest glory—it cannot come excepting through self-abasement, complete renunciation of self with God only enthroned and Wigglesworth dead. It must be of God, and if ye will only examine the conditions and act upon them, I tell you things would come off wonderfully.

I repeat, people sometimes say, “Do these things last; is this thing permanent?” The baptism of the Holy Ghost in my life is as a river flowing on.

Holiness, purity of heart, divine thoughts and revelations of God are far in advance of what they were even a short time ago. We are living in a divine place where the Lord is blessedly having His way. I want you to hear what I have got to say about one or two things. Some people can have things rubbed out, but I want God Almighty to do something now that can-not be rubbed out.

We are definitely told in the Word of God that if we ask of the Holy Spirit, He will give. We hear people give that out quite easily, but I find that many people who dwell upon that do not get it. I know when a man is baptized of the Holy Ghost. There is a kindred spirit with a person who is bap-tized of the Holy Ghost that there is not in any other person. The Holy Ghost is given to those who obey. Who obey what? What Jesus said. What did Jesus say? “Tarry, till ye receive.” Is not that clear? That is Scripture. You need not have any-thing more scriptural than that.

Now the reason why God the Holy Ghost brings me into this place is because I love the Church of God. When I hear men and women who are saved as much as I am—when I hear them on a line that I know is not according to the Spirit of God—I know exactly what spirit they are of. God save us from building up on our own imagination.

Let us build up on what the Word of God says. We shall never be strong except as we believe what God says. If God tells me that Paul was the chiefest of sinners, I say I will believe it, I will believe it forever. Whatever the Holy Ghost says through His Word, I believe it and keep to it, and I will not move from it. The Holy Ghost says I will have power after He comes upon me through Jesus.

Manifestations of the Gifts

It is marvelous how all the gifts of the Spirit may be manifested in some people. Everybody acquainted with me knows that I was short of speech and slow at everything and all out of order. My wife used to preach, and I carried the babies and the boots and everything. Then there came a time when my wife could not be there and I was forced to roll in somehow, and I rolled in and was very glad to roll out many a time. But it is marvelous now.

As a vocation God has allowed every one of the nine gifts to be ministered through me. There is not a single gift but what has been ministered through me. What I mean is this. You won’t hear me say that I have got these gifts, but living in the Holy Ghost you are in a place in which God can manifest anything at any needed moment.

You may live in that glorious attitude, and then it is heaven to live, it is heaven to eat, it is heaven to sleep, it is heaven all the time; and when heaven comes, it will never be a breaking of the casket, but only more fullness, for already the kingdom of heaven is within.

God has helped me to go into different places and bring about revivals. Over and over again, revivals begin with people who are baptized, and God does great things. Last night there was in one of these rooms a preacher. There he was. He knelt down. He was as stiff as a board. You want to have discernment to see whether there is reality. He was frightened to let go. I said, “Come, brother, receive the Holy Ghost.”

“I cannot.”

“You are not in earnest, you are not real; there is no business about you; you must begin to move. Receive the Holy Ghost.” Then with a knowledge that he was being really stirred up, according to God’s divine order, I put my hands on him and said, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” and God the Holy Ghost shook him from top to bottom, inside out, and what a wonderful baptism he had!

Living in the Holy Ghost, you are in a place in which God can manifest anything at any needed moment.

Receive and Release the Spirit

Brothers and sisters, do you want the Holy Ghost? Some hymns are sung about the breath of the Holy Ghost. We read that “Jesus breathed upon them,” and they received the unction in the breathing. As people breathe in the Holy Ghost, they become so possessed with the power of God that they have no possessions in themselves; they simply fall into God, and God takes possession of everything—hands and feet and body and tongue for the glory of God.

My heart yearns for you to be so filled with the divine power of the Holy Ghost that you will go back from those meetings into your own meetings and assemblies in the order of God—not taking notice of your fullness, but having the fact remaining in you that you have power and letting the Word of God so act upon the power that God will let it flow through you to others.

By what? His way. You cannot baptize people, but His way can do it.

How? Receive ye the Holy Ghost; let Him have His way.

After You Have Received the Power

I want to share of the power given by God. Oh the power of the Holy Ghost! The power that quickens, the revealing power, the travailing power! The power that lives and moves! The power that brings about exactly what Jesus said, “when you receive…ye shall have power.”

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you… (Acts 1:8).

I love to think that Jesus wanted all His people to have power, that He wanted all to be overcomers. It is the joy God brings within a human life that transforms it by His Word and brings it into the place where it knows it is above all and brings to naught the things that are, because God is in the Word. Nothing but this power will do it. Power over sin, power over sickness, power over the devil, power over all the powers of the devil!

I know that Jesus revealed by His Word these truths—“after that ye shall have power.” I think there is nothing more beautiful to look at than to look at the Jordan in our experiences. The moment that Jesus was baptized in the Holy Ghost there was a manifestation that never appeared in the world before or since. Right there by the Jordan was the Son of God; directly on the Son was the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove; and in the heavens above was the voice of God. It is beautiful to think of how the Trinity is interested in humanity.

Then What?

What do you do after you receive Holy Spirit Power?

…And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8).

I believe a great mistake is made in these days by people tarrying and tarrying after they have received. After you have received it is, “Go ye.” Not “sit still,” but “go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel.” We shall make serious havoc of the whole thing if we turn back again and crawl into a corner seeking something we already have.

I want you to see that God depends upon us in these last days. There is no room for anyone to boast, and the man who goes about saying, “Look at me for I am somebody,” is of no value whatever. God is done with that man altogether. He will have a people to glorify Him. He is doing what He can with that which He has, but we are so unwilling to move in the plan of God that He has to grind us many times to get us where He can use us.

Jesus was so filled with the Holy Ghost that He stood in the place where He was always ready. He was always in the attitude where He brought victory out of every opportunity. The power of the Holy Spirit is within us, but it can be manifested only as we go in obedience to that opportunity which we have before us.

Awaken to the Greatness of the Power Within

We have a wonderful salvation that fits everybody. I believe that a baptized person has no conception of the power God has given him until he uses that which he has. I maintain that Peter and John had no idea of the greatness of the power they had, but they began to speculate. They said, “Well, as far as money goes, we have none of that, but we do have something; we don’t exactly know what it is, but we will try it on you—in the Name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk,” and it worked.

In order to make yourself realize what you have in your possession, you will have to try it, and I can assure you it will work all right. I said one time to a man that the Acts of the Apostles would never have been written if the apostles had not acted, and the Holy Spirit is still continuing His acts through us. May God help us to have some acts. There is nothing like Pentecost, and if you have never been baptized you are making a big mistake by waiting. Don’t you know that the only purpose for which God saved you was that you might be a savior of others? For you to think that you have to remain stationary and just get to heaven is a great mistake. The baptism is to make you a witness for Jesus.

Thank God the hardest way is the best way; you never hear anything about the person who is always having an easy time. The preachers always tell of how Moses crossed the Red Sea when he was at wits’ end. I cannot find the record of anyone in the Scriptures whom God used who was not first tried. So if you never have any trials, it is because you are not worth them. God wants us to have power. When I was traveling in Sweden, at a certain station early in the morning a little lady and her daughter got into the train.

I saw at once that the lady was in dreadful agony and asked my interpreter to inquire as to the trouble. With tears running down her face she told how her daughter was taking her to the hospital to have her legs amputated.

Everything that was possible had been done for her. I told her Jesus could heal. Just then the train stopped and a crowd of people entered until there was hardly standing room, but friends, we never get into a place that is too awkward for God, though it seemed to me that the devil had sent these people in at that time to hinder. However, when the train began to move along I got down, although it was terribly crowded, and putting my hands upon the woman’s leg I prayed for her in the name of Jesus. At once she said to her daughter, “I am healed. It is all different now; I felt the power go down my leg,” and she began to walk about. Then the train stopped at the next station and this woman got out and walked up and down the platform, saying, “I am healed. I am healed.”

Jesus was the first fruits, and God has chosen us in Christ and has revealed His Son in us that we might manifest Him in power. God gives us power over the devil, and when we say the devil we mean everything that is wicked and not of God. Some people say we can afford to do without the baptism of the Spirit but I say we cannot. I believe any person who thinks there is a stop between Calvary and the glory has made a big mistake.