Nothing Else Avails

"Confusion and impotence are inevitable when the wisdom and resources of the world are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit of God.

The presence of the Spirit is vital and central to the work of the church. Nothing else avails. Apart from Him wisdom becomes folly, and strength weakness...Human resources of learning and organi­zation, wealth and enthusiasm, reform and philanthropy, are worse than useless if there be no Holy Ghost in them. The church always fails at the point of self-confidence. When the church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no Shekinah.

That is why prayer is the test of faith and the secret of power. The Spirit of God travails in the prayer life of the soul. Miracles are the direct work of His power, and without miracles the church cannot live. The carnal can argue, but it is the Spirit that convicts. Education can civilize, but it is being born of the Spirit that saves. The energy of the flesh can run bazaars, organize amusements, and raise millions; but it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes a temple of the Living God.

The root trouble of the pre­sent distress is that the church has more faith in the world and the flesh than in the Holy Ghost, and things will get no better till we get back to His realized presence and power. The breath of the four winds would turn death into life and dry bones into mighty armies, but it only comes by prayer."

- Samuel Chadwick

Amen

In spite of the unparalleled genius of our fallen natures to snatch defeat out of the very jaws of victory and turn divine revelation into intellectual attainment (or hedonistic mysticism), we are surrounded with a great cloud of witnesses like Samuel Chadwick, and countless others, who prove we have no need to.

from Dave Hunt's version of Andrew Murray's rendering of William Law's "The Power of the Spirit".....

.... "There is but one that is good, and that is God."
This was true when God had as yet created nothing; and this truth has not changed after He has created innumerable hosts of blessed and holy heavenly beings. Therefore, any goodness in the creature can be nothing but the one goodness of God manifesting a birth and discovery of itself as the created nature is fitted to receive it. No creature could any more produce of itself that which is good and blessed any more than it could create itself.
"The heavens," said David, "declare the glory of God"; and no creature, any more than the heavens, can declare any other glory, As well might it be said that the firmament shows forth its own handiwork, as that man shows forth his own goodness.
The Spirit of God, breathed into Adam at his creation, was that alone which made him a holy creature in the image and likeness of God. A new birth of this Spirit of God in man is a necessary to make fallen man alive again unto God as it was to make Adam at first in the image and likeness of God. And a constant flow of this divine life by the Spirit is as necessary to mans continuance in his redeemed state as light and moisture are to the continued life of a plant. A religion that is not wholly built on this supernatural ground, but which stands to any degree upon human powers, reasonings, and conclusions, has not so much as the shadow of truth in it. such religion leaves man with mere empty forms and images that can no more restore divine life to his soul than an idol of clay or wood could create another Adam.