November 25

“What? know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20

AS a temple of the Holy Spirit, yield yourself to His divine and gracious power. Bend your ear to His softest whisper—your will to His gentlest sway—your heart to His holy and benign influence. In not hearkening to His voice, and in not yielding to His promptings, we have been great losers. Often has He incited to communion with God, and because the time was not seasonable, or the place not convenient, you stifled His persuasive voice, resisted His proffered aid, and, thus slighted and grieved, He has retired. And lo! when you have risen to pray, God has covered Himself as with a cloud that your prayer could not pass through. Oh, seek to have an ear attuned to His softest accents, and a heart constrained to an instant compliance with His mildest dictates. The greatest blessing we possess is the possession of the Spirit.

And oh, to be Christ’s—to be His gift, His purchase, His called saint, His lowly disciple—what an inestimable privilege! But how may we be quite sure that this privilege is ours? If we have the Spirit of Christ, we are in very deed Christians. It is the superscription of the King, the mark of the Shepherd, the Lord’s impress of Himself upon the heart. And how sanctifying this privilege! “Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts.” “Let every one that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” And if we are Christ’s now, we shall be Christ’s to all eternity. It is a union that cannot be dissolved. Every believer in Jesus is “sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance.” And as we have the earnest of the inheritance, we shall as assuredly possess the inheritance itself. The Spirit of Christ is an active, benevolent Spirit. It bore the Savior, when He was in the flesh, from country to country, from city to city, from house to house, preaching His own gospel to lost man. “He went about doing good.”

If we have the Spirit of Christ, we shall be prompted to a like Christian love and activity on behalf of those who possess not the gospel, or who, possessing it, slight and reject the mercy. The Spirit of Christ is essentially a missionary Spirit. It commenced its labor of love at Jerusalem, and from that its center, worked its way with augmenting sympathy and widening sphere until it embraced the world as the field of its labor. Ah! that we manifest so little of this Spirit, ought to lead us to deep searchings of heart, and stir us up to earnest prayer: “Lord, make me more earnest for the salvation of souls, for the advancement of Your kingdom. Grant me this evidence of being Your—the possession of Your Spirit, constraining me to a more simple and unreserved consecration of my talents, my substance, my rank, my influence, my time, myself, to the establishment of Your truth, the advancement of Your cause, and thus to the wider diffusion of Your glory in the earth.”