An Excerpt from Smith Wigglesworth

An Excerpt from

“Ever-Increasing Faith”

—Smith Wigglesworth

 

 

Smith Wigglesworth was an evangelist in England who greatly influenced early Pentecostalism.  He was born into a Methodist family in 1859 and died in 1947. The Holy Spirit gifted him spiritually with the gift of healing. This is a short excerpt from his sermon “Concerning Spiritual Gifts.”

 

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When a man is filled with the Spirit he has no conception of what he has. We are so limited in our conception of what we have received. The only way we can know the power He has given us is through the ministration and manifestation of the Spirit of God. 

 

Do you think that Peter and John knew what they had when they went up to the temple to pray? They were limited in thought, and limited in their expression. The nearer we get to God the more conscious we are of the poverty of the human and cry with Isaiah, “I am undone, I am unclean.” But the Lord will bring the precious blood and the flaming coals for cleansing and refining and send us out to labor for Him empowered by His Spirit.

 

God has sent forth this outpouring that we may all be brought into a revelation of our sonship—that we are sons of God, men of power, that we are to be like the Lord Jesus Christ, that we are to have the powers of sonship, the power to lay hold of that which is weak and to quicken it. The Baptism of the Spirit is to make us sons of God with power. We shall be conscious of our human limits, but we shall not limit the Holy Spirit who has come to dwell within. We must believe that since the Holy Ghost has come upon us we are indeed sons of God with power. Never say that you can’t. All things are possible to them that believe. Launch out into the deep and believe that God has His all for you, and that you can do all things through Him who strengthens you.

 

Peter and John knew they had been in the upper room, they had felt the glory, they had been given divine utterances. They had seen conviction on the people. They knew they had come into a wonderful thing. They knew what they had would be ever increasing and that it would be ever needful to cry, “Enlarge the vessel that the Holy Ghost may have more room within.” They knew that all the old things were moved away and they had entered into an ever-increasing knowledge of God, and that it was their Master’s wish that they should be filled with the Spirit of God and with power every day and every hour. 

 

The secret of power is the unveiling of Christ, the all-powerful One within, the revelation of God who comes to abide within us. As they looked upon the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate they were filled with compassion. They were prompted by the Spirit to stop and speak with him. 

 

They said to the lame man, “Look on us.” It was God’s plan that the man should open his eyes with expectation. 

 

“Of silver and gold we have none. But we have something and we will give it to you. We don’t know what it is, but we give it to you. It is all in the name of Jesus.” And then began the ministry of God.

 

You begin in faith and you see what will happen. It is bidden from us at the beginning, but as we have faith in God He will come forth. The coming forth of power is not of us but of God. There is no limit to what He will do. It is all as you believe in God. 

 

So Peter said, “Such as I have I give to thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And the man who had been in that way for forty years stood up, and began to leap, and entered into the temple walking and leaping and praising God.

 

 

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