“I Indeed… But He”

August 22 Daily Devotional

“I Indeed… But He” I indeed baptize you with water…but He…shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire.  Matthew 3:11 Have I ever come to a place in my experience where I can say — “I indeed…but He”? Until that moment does come, I will never know what the baptism of the Holy Ghost means. “I indeed” am at an end, I cannot do a thing: “but He” begins just there — He does the things no one else can ever do. Am I prepared for His coming? Jesus cannot come as long as there is anything in the way either of goodness or badness. When He comes am I prepared for Him to drag into the light every wrong thing I have done? It is just there that He comes. Wherever I know I am unclean, He will put His feet; wherever I think I am clean, He will withdraw them. Repentance does not bring a sense of sin, but a sense of unutterable unworthiness. When I repent, I realize that I am utterly helpless; I know all through me that I am not worthy even to bear His shoes. Have I repented like that? Or is there a lingering suggestion of standing up for myself? The reason God cannot come into my life is because I am not through into repentance. “He…shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire.” John does not speak of the baptism of the Holy Ghost as an experience, but as a work performed by Jesus Christ. “He shall baptize you.” The only conscious experience those who are baptized with the Holy Ghost ever have is a sense of absolute unworthiness. “I indeed” was this and that; “but He” came, and a marvellous thing happened. Get to the margin where He does everything. From My Utmost for His Highest Classic Edition Bible in One Year: Psalms 110-112; 1 Corinthians 5

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS The Bible is a relation of facts, the truth of which must be tested. Life may go on all right for a while, when suddenly a bereavement comes, or some crisis; unrequited love or a new love, a disaster, a business collapse, or a shocking sin, and we turn up our Bibles again and God’s word comes straight home, and we say, “Why, I never saw that there before.” from Shade of His Hand, 1223 L

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My Utmost for His Highest © 1992 by Oswald Chambers Publications Association, Ltd. Original edition © 1935 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. Copyright renewed 1963 by Oswald Chambers Publications Association, Ltd. All rights reserved. United States publication rights are held by Discovery House, which is affiliated with Our Daily Bread Ministries. Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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