Power For The Commission

This article is from Issue 6, Called to Praise

By Smith Wigglesworth

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the broken hearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord.”
(Luke 4:18-19 )

Jesus had been baptised by John in Jordan, and the Holy Spirit had descended upon Him like a dove. Full of the Holy Spirit, He had been led by the Spirit into the wilderness, there to come off more than conqueror over the arch enemy. Then He returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee and preached in the synagogues, and at last He came to His old home town—Nazareth, where He announced His mission in Luke 4.

For a brief while He ministered on the earth, and then gave His life a ransom for all. But God raised Him from the dead, and before He went to the glory He told His disciples that they too should receive the power of the Holy Spirit upon them. Thus, through them, His gracious ministry would continue. This power of the Holy Spirit was not only for a few apostles, but for as many as our God should call (Acts 2:39) even for us today. Some ask, “But was not this power just for the privileged few in the first century?” No. Read the Master’s great commission as recorded by Mark, and you will see it is for them that believe.

After I had received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (and I know that I received; for the Lord gave me the Spirit in just the same way as He gave Him to the disciples at Jerusalem), I sought the mind of the Lord as to why I was baptised. One day I came home from work and went into the house and my wife asked me, “Which way did you come in?” I told her that I had come in at the back door. She said, “There is a woman upstairs and she has brought an old man of eighty to be prayed for. He is raving up there and a great crowd is outside the front door, ringing the door-bell and wanting to know what is going on in the house.” The Lord quietly whispered, “This is what I baptised you for.”

I carefully opened the door of the room where the man was, desiring to be obedient to what my Lord would say to me. The man was crying and shouting in distress, “I am lost! I am lost! I have committed the unpardonable sin. I am lost! I am lost!” My wife said, “Dad, what shall we do?” The Spirit of the Lord moved me to cry out, “Come out, thou lying spirit.” In a moment the evil spirit went, and the man was free. Deliverance to the captives! And the Lord said to me, “This is what I baptised you for.”

There is a place where God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, reigns supreme in our lives. The Spirit reveals, unfolds, takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us, and prepares us to be more than a match for Satanic forces.

From the book, Ever Increasing Faith by Smith Wigglesworth

Taken from Life on the Altar Publication
Issue 6 Autumn 2022