Enthusiasm-the Unquenchable Fire
The Holy Spirit baptizes believers with an unquenchable enthusiasm empowering bold witness.
John Henry Jowett has beautifully expressed what characterizes the life of power. "Another element in a forceful character is heat, the fire of an unquenchable enthusiasm.... The Acts of the Apostles is a burning book. There is no cold or lukewarm patch from end to end. The disciples had been baptized with fire, with the holy, glowing enthusiasm caught from the altar of God. They had this central fire from which every other purpose and faculty in the life gets its strength. This fire in the apostles' souls was like a furnace-fire in a great liner, which drives her through the tempests and through the envious and engulfing deep. Nothing could stop these men. Nothing could hinder their going. 'We cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard. We must obey God rather than men.' This strong imperative rings throughout all their doings and all their speech. They have heat, and they have light, because they were baptized by the power of the Holy Ghost." The Spirit as the Receiver There must be a correspondence between the receiver and the transmitter. When we listen to a radio broadcast, there are many sound waves all around us, but the only way for us to become aware of them is to have an appropriate receiver able to catch them and make them audible. We would never know that anyone was talking to us from a distance if we expected our watch to pick up the sound waves. There is only one way in which man can know God, and that is through man's own spirit. God is a Spirit and can be known only by a spirit. We must not expect to feel Him with our fingers, or see Him with our physical eyes. It cannot be done. Yet that which can be perceived only by the spirit of man is just as real as that which can be perceived by his physical senses.