Testimony of Oswald Chambers regarding the baptism of the Holy Spirit

[Follow The Lamb]

“It is no wonder that I talk so much about an altered disposition: God altered mine; I was there when He did it, and I have been there ever since.” - Oswald Chambers

The testimony of Oswald Chambers (in 1906) regarding the baptism of the Holy Spirit...

 

“After I was born again as a lad I enjoyed the presence of Jesus Christ wonderfully, but years passed before I gave myself up thoroughly to His work. I was in Dunoon College as tutor of Philosophy when Dr. F.B. Meyer came and spoke about the Holy Spirit. I was determined to have all that was going, and went to my room and asked God simply and definitely for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whatever that meant. 

 

From that day on for four years nothing but the overruling grace of God and the kindness of friends kept me out of an asylum. God used me during those years for the conversion of souls, but I had no conscious communion with Him. The Bible was the dullest, most uninteresting book in existence, and the sense of depravity, the vileness and bad-motiveness of my nature, was terrific. I see now that God was taking me by the light of the Holy Spirit and His Word through every ramification of my being. 

 

The last three months of those years, things reached a climax, I was getting very desperate. I knew no one who had what I wanted; in fact I did not know what I did want. But I knew that if what I had was all the Christianity there was, the thing was a fraud. Then Luke 11:13 got hold of me—‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?’ But how could I, bad motived as I was, possibly ask for the Holy Spirit? Then it was borne in upon me that I had to claim the gift from God on the authority of Jesus Christ and testify to having done so. 

 

But the thought came—if you claim the gift of the Holy Spirit on the word of Jesus Christ and testify to it, God will make it known to those who know you best how bad you are in heart. And I was not willing to be a fool for Christ’s sake. But those of you who know the experience, know very well how God brings one to the point of utter despair, and I got to the place where I did not care whether everyone knew how bad I was, I cared for nothing on earth, saving to get out of my present condition.

 

At a little meeting held during a mission in Dunoon, a well-known lady was asked to take the after meeting. She did not speak, but set us to prayer, and then sang ‘Touch me again, Lord’. I felt nothing, but I knew emphatically my time had come, and I rose to my feet. I had no vision of God, only a sheer dogged determination to take God at His word and to prove this thing for myself, and I stood up and said so. That was bad enough, but what followed was ten times worse. 

 

After I had sat down the lady worker, who knew me well, said: ‘That is very good of our brother, he has spoken like that as an example to the rest of you.’ Up I got again and said: ‘I got up for no one’s sake, I got up for my own sake; either Christianity is a downright fraud, or I have not got hold of the right end of the stick.’ And then and there I claimed the gift of the Holy Spirit in dogged committal on Luke 11:13. I had no vision of heaven or of angels, I had nothing, I was as dry and empty as ever, no witness of the Holy Spirit. Then I was asked to speak at a meeting, and forty souls came out to the front. 

 

Did I praise God? No, I was terrified and left them to the workers, and went to Mr. MacGregor and told him what had happened, and he said: ‘Don’t you remember claiming the Holy Spirit as a gift on the word of Jesus, and that He said: “Ye shall receive power…”? This is the power from on high.’ And like a flash something happened inside me, and I saw that I had been wanting power in my own hand, so to speak, that I might say—Look what I have by putting my all on the altar.

 

If the four previous years had been hell on earth, these five years have truly been heaven on earth. Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God. Love is the beginning, love is the middle and love is the end. After He comes in, all you see is ‘Jesus only, Jesus ever.’ When you know what God has done for you, the power and the tyranny of sin is gone and the radiant, unspeakable emancipation of the indwelling Christ has come, and when you see men and women who should be princes and princesses with God bound up by the shows of things—oh, you begin to understand what the apostle meant when he said he wished himself accursed from Christ that men might be saved!” 

- Oswald Chambers