The Holy Spirit Anoints Us for Witnessing

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

How many have you led to Christ during the past year? How many have you led to Christ during the
past year? Well, during the past two years? Well dear ones, how many have you witnessed due about
Jesus during this past week? Now not to Christians, and not witnessed about the church, but how
many have you witnessed to about Jesus during this past week? Well, during the past three weeks?

Now Acts 1:8 says, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be
my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” You see,
that’s a promise. You’ll receive power and you’ll be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in your own home;
in Judea, in your place of work; in Samaria, among the people with whom you have personality
conflicts; and then until the utter most parts of the earth.

Now how is your witnessing life? Now dear ones, I think the Devil is engaged in deceiving us about
our spiritual state. I think he has persuaded us to treat created life as if it were begotten life.
He has persuaded us to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then is now trying to
persuade us that we have eaten of the tree of life. And he is constantly trying to deceive us about
our true relationship to God. Now the Bible leaves no room for any deception.

Dear ones, knowing your state of grace is not a matter of, “I feel a feeling I felt I felt before.”
And it just is not, dear ones. And you can say what you like about these old hard preachers that
preach otherwise, but the Bible gives clear marks of our different states of grace. Now the mark of
one who is born of God is that one who is born of God does not commit sin. And that’s the glorious
grace into which God can lift us that we can be free from known act or word that disobeys him. So
if a dear one is talking to some others and someone says, “Well, you know she bakes very nice
cakes.” And you reply, “Yes, but I wish she’d help with the dishes,” that’s sin. Yeah, yeah,
that’s not what Jesus would say. Jesus would not say that about the dear one. And that is a
non-loving word.

Now loved ones, do you see I’m saying to you that God can lift you into this kind of victory. I’m
not beating it over your head and saying, “You must rise to that yourself,” but I’m saying that is
sin and anyone who is born of God need not do that. You need not speaking an unloving word like
that. The Holy Spirit can give you the insight to see that that is an unloving word. The one who
is born of God does not go to the higher $10 when he’s filing in his expenses in the income tax. He
doesn’t go to the next $10 up. He puts it exactly right. He does not steal. He is given the power
not to commit sin. And one who is born of God does not commit sin. And if he commits sin he isn’t
born of God.

See, it’s like a group of Irish doctors gathering around a corpse in some Irish town. And there
someone has left you know, part of what is to go on the coffin or the casket. And they have, “Born
15th of September 1903,” and the dear one is dead. And the doctors look and say, “Well, he was born
15th of September 1903. Now there’s no death and he doesn’t speak like someone who is alive. And he
doesn’t look like someone who is alive. And he doesn’t think like someone who is alive, but it says
he was born 15th of September 1903.” Now I think a lot of us are engaged in that kind of deception
with the Devil, “I was born again in this year; I must be alive; I must be regenerate. I do not
talk like a live person. I do not breath the Holy Spirit in like a live person. I do not breathe
the Holy Spirit out to my dear ones in love like a live person, but I must be a regenerate person.”

Dear ones, if you’re a regenerate person you do not commit sin. You have the marks of life. And the
Holy Spirit is able to give you that life. Some dear ones would say you know, “Well that’s hard
words. You’re not ministering grace you’re ministering the law.” Dear ones, it’s vital to know if
you have cancer so you can get better. You know the power is available in God, but it is vital to
know when you have not that power.

And so, one who is born of God doesn’t commit sin. One who has had their heart cleansed by the Holy
Spirit has no experience of these feelings within: “unbelief; a spirit of discouragement in times of
pressure and opposition; a lack of quietness and confidence in God; a lack of faith and trust in
God; a disposition to worry and complain in the midst of pain; an over anxious feeling whether
everything will come out all right; formality and deadness; lack of concern for lost souls; dryness
and indifference; lack of power with God.”

One who has allowed the Holy Spirit to come in and cleanse their heart has no lack of love for lost
souls. But dear ones, many of us are sanctified and petrified. And we are stamped and addressed and
are ready to go to heaven. And you know that because ever since we have come into Bethany, and ever
since we have come into this experience, we’ve just walked around concerned with our own family, and
our own little children, and with all that concerns ourselves. And we’re here and we’re ready to
help with the work, but we don’t overflow with the Love of Jesus. We have not a great burden of
souls in our spirits.

Now one who is cleansed from inward sin by the Holy Spirit is free from inward signs of self and
self centeredness and self love. And so it is that the Bible here gives us another clear mark of one
who has been anointed with the Holy Spirit, or baptized with the Holy Spirit. You may say, “Oh, you
speak in tongues.” No, no because the Bible says, “Do you all speak in tongues?” No, obviously you
don’t. Well you may say, “Oh, you have the gift of healing?” The Bible says, “Do all have the
gifts of healing?” No, because of course those are gifts. The Holy Spirit may be pleased to give
you himself without those gifts. He may just make those gifts available when you need them.

But this other sign is a plain sign and it’s found there in Acts 1:8 if you’d like to look at it.
And it refers to that realm in many of our lives where we are utter failures. It refers to our
witnessing lives. This is a clear sign that you have been anointed with the Holy Spirit. “But you
shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in
Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”

Now let me make another sentence up as near as I can to that, “When you get into this plane you will
end up in San Francisco, and then in Los Angeles, and then in Mexico City.” Now if you get into the
plane and you end up in New York, and Miami, and Cuba then you know you’re not on the right plane or
something has gone wrong. Now dear ones, if you are not witnesses in Jerusalem, your home, and in
Judea, your place of work, and in Samaria, to those with whom you have personality conflicts, then
you have not received the anointing of the Holy Spirit. That’s just what it means you see.

If you have not a victorious witnessing life tonight then you are not anointed with the Holy Spirit.
And if I have not a victorious witnessing life tonight it doesn’t matter what state I have been in
in the past, the anointing of the Holy Spirit is not upon me. And I am not pouring fourth the life
of Jesus because a witness is a “marturae” and “Martureo” in Greek is obviously near to our “martyr”
and it means just that: One who dies. And a real witness is one who dies to himself so that Jesus

stands up and lives within him and everyone sees Jesus instead of the person. Now if you are not a
witness in that sense to Jesus then you have not been anointed with the Holy Spirit. And I’m saying
tonight that the Holy Spirit is available for you.

Now some of us of course say, “Oh well, I haven’t time to wait around for the anointing of the Holy
Spirit, and I don’t know whether I have the anointing of the Holy Spirit or not, but I’ll go out and
witness anyway.” And many of us get out there and you know what we do, we end up in a conversation
with some dear one and we say, “You know, we believe you can be free from sin.” And the other dear
one says, “Well, I have just finished reading Calvin and I don’t believe you can be free from sin in
this life. I believe, in a sense, one has to sin in act and word and thought every day.” And then
we say, “Well, 1 John 3:9 says, ‘Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin.’” And they say,
“Well, even so-and-so sinned.” And you have a long argument over whether you can commit sin or not.
And you leave and they leave. And they think, “Well that’s a strange theology.” And the only
impression you make on them is that of a clever theologian or a theologian of a different color to
themselves. You know that.

Or, we meet some dear one and we decide to witness without the anointing of the Holy Spirit and we
go up to them and say, “You know, I think you drink too much.” And they say, “Well, it’s my own
life. I can do what I like.” And we say, “Well, look it says in the Bible that drunkenness is a
sin.” And they say, “But it says take a little wine for your stomach’s sake.” And then you balance
up a few more verses and they balance up the two or three other verses that they have and you leave
each other. And they get the impression, “Well, he’s a very moral person. He doesn’t drink and I
must say I’d like to be him.”

But these dear ones do not see Jesus. They see you as a theologian or they see you as a moralist.
Or we go to them you know, and we tell them about Bethany Church, or we tell them about our
Presbyterian church or our Nazarene Church or Methodist Church and they say, “That’s very
interesting. I go the Lutheran Church.” And they share some things about the Lutheran Church. And
you share some things about your minister. And then you talk about the terrible state of the world,
and you talk about ecumenicity, and how many some things are getting better or worse. And you
depart from each other and all they think is, “That’s a certain kind of churchman and I’m this kind
of churchman.” And you make an impression on them as a certain kind of churchman but you don’t
witness about Jesus.

Now dear ones, that’s the disappointing, defeatist witnessing life without the anointing of the Holy
Spirit. Now the Bible says, “Listen, there’s a promise. You can receive power when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you and then you will be witnesses, when the power of the Holy Spirit is upon you.”
In other words the Bible says, “God has done a miraculous work in your heart. You need a miraculous
power and ability to tell of it to others.” If you haven’t that miraculous power all you’ll get
over to them is the non-supernatural part of the experience. But if you have the supernatural part
of the Holy Spirit then Jesus will shine through you to them.

Now dear ones, Jesus himself required this anointing. Maybe you’d like to check that for
yourselves. It’s in Luke 4:18-19, and Jesus, you remember, is speaking and reading in the temple
and he applies these words to himself from the Old Testament. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to
the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

In other words, Jesus could not have preached good news to the poor; he could not have proclaimed
release to the captives; he could not have proclaimed recovering of sight to the blind if he had not
been anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. Even our Lord Jesus who was the son of God
himself had to be anointed with the Holy Spirit for the work he was sent to do.

And so it is with us, dear ones. We cannot go and witness unless we have the baptism and the
anointing of the Holy Spirit upon us. So Fletcher of Madeley, the old saintly Methodist used to
gather his preachers around them and he used to talk to them for 30 minutes and then he used to get
them to pray for 30 minutes for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And the older Methodist bishops
used to gather their preachers around them before they ordained them and they’d say, “Have you the
anointing of the Spirit?” Dear ones, there can be no witnessing without the anointing of the Holy
Spirit.

Now of course the truth is that you and I are members of the body of Jesus. And so if you are a
hand, then as the Holy Spirit anoints Jesus, the Holy Spirit pours down over the whole body and down
over this right hand. And so he anoints you also if you stay in Jesus. But many of us get into the
position where we find witnessing so difficult that we disobey Jesus’ command to witness. We
disobey his injunction that we are to be witnesses. And so we step aside from Jesus and the Holy
Spirit is not able to anoint us.

Now we can only receive the anointing if we remain in Christ in obedience and in love. You may say,
“Well, what is the significance of this anointing?” Well you remember it occurred in the Old
Testament. You could be born into the tribe of Levi but you did not become a priest, you did not
enter into your Levite priesthood until you were anointed with oil. That was the seal that the
Israelites put upon you that you were ready to enter your office.

Now you can be a born again Christian, but you cannot enter your office as a priest before God until
you have the anointing of the Holy Spirit. That’s why so many of us are unable to be a “pontifex”,
a “bridge maker” between ourselves or between our friends and God. We’re unable to intercede before
the Father for dear ones. And we have little experience of successful and victorious intercessory
prayer because we have no anointing to enter into that priesthood.

See dear ones, there’s a sense in which a priest must bear the sorrows and the pains of others as
his very own and that requires the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We need priests in our churches
today. We don’t need so much, better preachers, but we greatly need priests who will intercede
mightily before God. And so you remember, that story that I’m sure you’ve heard again and again of
Moody (Dwight L. Moody 1837-1899, American evangelist) traveling to that church, preaching in the
morning: cold service, no atmosphere, no movement. And he was reluctant to go back that night. But
a dear one went home to her invalid sister and told her that a Mr. Moody was at the church. And the
sister said, “Take my lunch away. I’ve been praying for him to come to this church for years.” And
she prayed all day and Moody preached that night and 500 came forward. And he sent them back and
said, “No, this is emotion. If you want really to give your lives to Jesus, to deny yourself, to
become nothing for him, then come to the vestry tomorrow night.” So those 500 and 200 others came
forward.

Now dear ones, that’s the power of an intercessor in prayer. We need the anointing of the Holy
Spirit to become priests before God. Now you could be born a king in Israel. But until you had the
anointing of the oil you could not enter into your office as a king. Now we have available
authority in Jesus over evil spirits and over demons. You remember, it says in Ephesians that Jesus

was placed above every authority and above every power in heaven and on earth. And of course, we
who are in Jesus are there also. And so if every enemy is under his feet and if we are in him we are
at least above the soles of his feet. So we’re above every enemy.

So the Holy Spirit is able to anoint us to be kings, rulers over demons and evil spirits. But many
of us go to homes where the Devil rules, where the Satan spirit has a hold on a member of that home
so that that member is not free to decide for Jesus. And we go and we give them the gospel again,
and again, and again. And we wonder why they aren’t reacting. And we have not the anointing of the
Holy Spirit to stand against that evil force within them. We need the anointing then to be kings.

You remember, there were prophets. You could be born a prophet because one of them said, you
remember, “I wasn’t born in a prophet’s family. I was a shepherd.” You could be born as a prophet.
But you couldn’t enter into the office until the Holy Spirit anointed you. Now we need prophets
today. We need people who will stop going to the person next door who has a funeral and say, “Well
now, I want to give you some verses that will help you.” And then they read over “Let not your
heart be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in me.” And they read over some other verses.
Then they close the Bible and they think of some good things that ministers have said in the past at
funerals and they give them then. And then they give them a little bit of commonsense that they’ve
got out of the Reader’s Digest. And they feel that they have acted the part of a prophet and
comforted the dear ones.

Do you see that God has a right word for that person at that time? And you need the anointing of the
Holy Spirit so that you can speak that prophetic word to them, so that you can speak the right word
out of the right place of the Bible to the right person at the right time. And that requires the
anointing of the Holy Spirit. And God has promised us this. Now you can have this anointing
tonight.

What affect does this anointing have on your own life? Well, some of the effect of the anointing
can be found if you look at John 12:3. You can see if you take the “an” off as an indefinite
article from “anointing” you’re left with “o-i-n-t” And therefore you can see the connection easily
in the English language between it and “ointment”. And they’re very close together. The effect of
the anointing on a life is the effect of this ointment. “Mary took a pound of costly ointment of
pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled
with the fragrance of the ointment.”

And when the Holy Spirit anoints you with himself he fills your life with the fragrance of Jesus.
And Jesus breaks through what was that old self. And your thoughts and your feelings become sweet as
his are. Not with the sweetie sweetness that people try to imitate, but with the real sweetness of
Jesus himself. When the Holy Spirit anoints you with himself, your own soul becomes a garden of
spices and you become a delight in the church, and a delight at work. There’s something fragrant
about your presence. You don’t need to speak but something shines through from you and people sense
the very presence of Jesus. And you don’t need to preach the gospel to them. But the Holy Spirit
has anointed you with the very fragrance of Christ himself.

Now that can be yours dear ones. The Holy Spirit is anxious to give you that kind of fragrance
instead of the sourness that so many people connect with so many of us Christians. When the Holy
Spirit anoints you with himself he anoints you with the very fragrance of the Christ life
miraculously. Too many of us have tried to imitate Jesus. We aren’t called to imitate Jesus.
Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father and he is able through the Holy Spirit to give us the

things that are his own. So he is able supernaturally to impart to you his own fragrance of his own
life. But you need to get down on your knees and begin to admit that you need it and that you have
not sufficient in your own self.

When the Holy Spirit comes he gives you strength. When the Holy Spirit came to Paul he was able to
endure shipwrecks and persecutions. He was able to endure stonings. He was able to endure arrest,
and criticism, and conflict with joy–with complete joy. Now some of us come into a hard place and
somebody says, “You’re having a hard time these days.” And we say, “Yes, but God is sufficient,”
with teeth clenched. Now we don’t need to have the teeth clenched. You can meet those trials, and
those defeats, and those difficulties with joy. The Holy Spirit is able to strengthen you so that
you can face all those things and not be weary.

So this is the whole promise of the Bible: that you’ll rise up with wings as of eagles. You shall
run and not faint. And the Holy Spirit is able to strengthen you in this way so that you can go
through unbearable trials, things that you would have thought you could not meet. And you can meet
them, not just meet them but meet them with joy and with peace because nothing is draining from you
yourself. The Holy Spirit has anointed you with his own strength.

Another effect I think of the Holy Spirit is the same effect as oil. You know that oil in the Old
Testament is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. And the young men especially, will know that athletes
use oil on their limbs to make them supple and flexible, to make the joints nimble so that they’ll
move easily and quickly without any friction, without any strain. Now many Christians enter into
some experience of conversion and often enter into the place of full consecration for sanctification
but never stay long enough to be anointed with the Holy Spirit. And so they have to be dragged to
the prayer meeting. They have to be dragged to testify. They have to be persuaded and begged to do
this or that piece of Christian work. They move slowly and lumpishly and awkward about God’s
business. They are enthusiastic and alive and active in their own business but they’re slow and
awkward in God’s business.

Now when you have the anointing of the Holy Spirit he makes you flexible. He makes you nimble about
God’s business. You have gospel shoes on and you’re ready to go about God’s business. And you’re
not always preoccupied with how little time I have left for myself, but you’re anxious how much time
can I give to the Lord Jesus because the Holy Spirit has anointed you with that. No longer do you
come up to people and say, “I can’t witness to them because they are better educated and better read
than I am.” But the Holy Spirit anoints you with himself so that your personality becomes as fluid
as the psychologists think it can become. It becomes fluid and flexible so that you can meet all
different kinds of people and you can deal with them in the way God wants you to deal with them.
And you can tell that you have this flexibility about you.

You know it. You know yourself. You know whether you’re lumpish and awkward at the moment in God’s
business. You know it dear ones, don’t you? You know how you feel tonight. You know whether
you’re free for Jesus just to break out of you if he wants. You know it. Or, whether you’re wrapped
up in half a dozen contortions of thinking that you have. The Holy Spirit anoints us with that kind
of flexibility in our lives.

Just, dear ones, to finish could we look at the anointing oil of the Old Testament? And I think it
teaches us some things about the way the Holy Spirit can affect your own witnessing life. The oil
in the Old Testament that they use to anoint prophets, and priests, and kings with contains several
ingredients. The first ingredient was myrrh. And myrrh was used to take the soreness out of a

bruise. Now when the Holy Spirit anoints you with himself people can kick you, and tear you apart,
and criticize you, and complain about you, and oppose you, and offend you, and there is no soreness
in the bruise. Now there is no soreness.

You may sit there and say, “I don’t believe it. You feel hurt surely and the Holy Spirit comes in
and he gives you a band for the hurt. And it heals up after a while.” No, when you’re anointed with
the Holy Spirit you feel no bruise. You feel no soreness. You feel no pain. You never feel, “How
badly I’ve been treated. How unfair they’ve been to me. What a thing to say to me. I’ll never see
that person again if they’re going to treat me like that.” You don’t feel it. The Holy Spirit takes
the soreness out of the bruises. And that’s why one who is anointed with the Holy Spirit can keep
going forward. So he’s a Steven; he’s a Paul; he’s a Peter. He feels nothing. The Holy Spirit bears
it all. It is possible, dear ones, and it is for you.

Another ingredient of the anointing oil was cinnamon. And it was a fiery spice as we know and
stimulates. This is why Paul said, “Don’t be drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit.”
Because wine does stimulate you at one point but the Holy Spirit does a far better job and has none
of the other effects. That’s why the Holy Spirit acts as cinnamon in us. It stimulates us and
makes us active, makes us able to do 10 times the amount of work that we did before. That’s why one
old preacher said, “I enjoy the rest of faith which keeps me in perpetual motion.”

When you’re in that place anointed with the Holy Spirit you have no weariness, you have no tiredness
because the Holy Spirit has given you a new stimulation. And I think it’s important to say that
there is a stimulation in our faces and our hearts. You know, some of us take each other for
granted, don’t we–in Bethany, and in our churches, and in our families? We say, “Well, we’ve to
witness to everyone else but these people know. And they won’t mind me walking around just my good
old self.” And we expect them to take our good old selves which are usually glum, complacent, and
wrapped up in ourselves saying nothing but what refers to our desires and our wishes.

Now when the Holy Spirit comes he stimulates you so that you are interesting each way in a new way
and a new way to your wife. Each morning is new. She meets you as a new person with more of Jesus
in you. And you meet her with more of the loved one in you, more of the Savior in you. And the Holy
Spirit is able to do that. It’s new every morning, the grace that he gives. But it’s a continual
moving forward because of the stimulating power of the Holy Spirit.

So one who is anointed with the Holy Spirit is an interesting person to be with. He or she is just
an exciting person to be with because they’re dynamic and they’re moving forward. And they’re saved
out of self and delivered out of self, and out of those sinking sands–out of those quick sands
where we’re lifting one foot after another with grave difficulty, grave difficulty.

The Holy Spirit gives you stimulation in your life. The Holy Spirit acts as calamus. Calamus was
another ingredient and it was used to counteract the acid in people’s stomachs. I suppose it was
alka-seltzer. And it took the sourness out of people’s stomachs. And when one is anointed with the
Holy Spirit they’re like the people in that bank that used to advertise on the TV, they’ve never met
a sourpuss. They not only are not sourpusses but they themselves have never met a sourpuss. They
really haven’t.

And someone comes along to them and says, “Isn’t he very irritable? Isn’t he? Isn’t he an
irritable person? Don’t you find that?” And the one who is anointed with the Holy Spirit says,
“No, no. But I tell you I see this of Jesus in him. I see this beauty of Jesus in him.” And the

Holy Spirit anoints you so that it takes the sourness out of the stomach. You do not feel sourness
coming to you.

Now don’t you say, “Oh, you have to be honest you know.” I think we should leave that to the Holy
Spirit of truth. He’ll do a better job of convicting than we will. If we can trust him he’ll
enable us only to see the sweetness in other’s lives. And that’s the way we should be, to be looking
for the Jesus in each of us so that one anointed with the Holy Spirit is always being ministered to
by the life of Jesus.

Well just looking at one other thing, one other ingredient of the anointing oil was olive oil. And
olive oil was used to take the kinks and the creases out of the skin and to put a shin on the skin
and make it smooth. And when the Holy Spirit anoints a person with himself he takes all those
stupid idiosyncrasies out of that person’s life. You know how many of us want to witness but we
want to witness so they know that it is us that are witnessing. I mean, we want our witness to have
a special kind of flavor to it. We want them to know it’s our particular self that’s being used by
Jesus to witness. We don’t want to be rolled over in the crowd. We don’t want to be conformed to
the mass of Christians, we want them to see Jesus but we want them to see Jesus through the beauty
that is in us.

And we have these idiosyncrasies and these elbows, and they’re always getting in the way. We try to
deal with it dear one and the elbows are getting in the way because we want them to see just how
vitally different we are to all other Christians they’ve met. When the Holy Spirit anoints us with
himself he takes all those kinks out of our characters–all those creases that shouldn’t be there,
all those strange characteristics that God doesn’t really want there, because he wants to replace
some of his own. When the Holy Spirit anoints you with himself he anoints you with the very beauty
of Jesus.

So that you know, you can read 1 Corinthians 13 and you don’t need to say “love”, but you can say,
“I am patient and kind. I am not arrogant or rude. I do not insist on my own way. I am not glad
when others go wrong. I rejoice at the truth. I bear all things. I believe all things. I endure
all things.” And it is God’s will for you tonight to be able to say that. And the Holy Spirit is
available to you tonight to anoint you with that beauty of Jesus.

Now have you that beauty? Have you the beauty of Jesus in your life? You may say, “Well, will he
anoint anyone?” No, he will only anoint a lamb. You remember, the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus
at the baptism in the shape of a dove. A dove is a very gentle bird and very easily repelled, and
very easily frightened. And a dove will only come to rest on a lamb–on one who is like the lamb of
God, one who is gentile and who “as a lamb to the slaughter, opened not his mouth.” One who is
ready to die to all self seeking. One who is ready to die to that desire to appear a more
enthusiastic Christian than everyone else. One who is ready to die to that desire of self to seek to
pray better than everyone else, to seek to preach better than everyone else. One who is dead to
self seeking, who does not steal any glory from God. One who is dead to self confidence, a lamb
without self confidence. One who, like Peter, has fallen and lost their self confidence–lost
confidence in their own ability to witness in this way. One who, like Paul, became blind before he
could see at all. One who has lost trust in their own ability to see what is needed in any
witnessing situation. One who has died, not only to self seeking, but one who has died to this
desire to have your own way, this desire to have your own self confidence.

One who has died to that desire to help yourself. One who is no longer anxious to say, “Lord, these

are difficult circumstances if I could only get out of these I could witness better.” One who is
not eager to rescue himself from the circumstances in which God has put him. One who is not eager
to say, “If that person were only removed I could witness.” One who is not eager to withdraw from a
certain situation so that they’ll be able to witness. One who has stopped trying to plane away
their own cross to make it easier to carry.

If you are ready to be a lamb, if you are ready to die to self defense, and self assertion, and
ready to be looked upon as nothing by others for Jesus’ sake, then the Holy Spirit, the blessed dove
that God sends will come and anoint you with the beauty of Jesus.

Now if you have entered into sanctification, if you have died to self and been filled with the Holy
Spirit this week and yet God has spoken to your heart and you need the anointing, I would ask you
dear ones, unless God presses you, to remain in your seat and receive the anointing of the Holy
Spirit, you see. Or, to kneel down in your place afterwards and receive that anointing, because if
you are a place of real readiness to die to self then the Holy Spirit will anoint you without
refusing. So I’d ask you just to stay in your seat.

But if God has spoken to some of you dear ones, tonight and you do not know the victory of death to
self–and I know there’s one dear brother here certainly that does not and wants to seek tonight–so
in other words if you have not entered into sanctification, if you have not freedom from anger, and
envy, and jealousy, if you’ve not freedom from bitterness, a desire to save yourself, a desire to
assert yourself and get yourself out of difficult situations, if you’ve a desire still to protect
yourself and are not a lamb, then will you seek God tonight and simply allow the Holy Spirit show
you where you’re not ready to be a lamb yet. And then come to the place where you’re ready to be
one, and simply receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit tonight for a witnessing life that God has
planned for you–that God has available for you tonight. No more defeat and no more disappointment,
but the victory of the beauty of Jesus shining through. That can be yours. I pray it will.

Let us just turn to the last hymn dear ones. And will you just come to the altar and seek God as he
speaks to you. “Hover o’er me, Holy Spirit, bathe my trembling heart and brow, fill me with thy
hallowed presence. Come oh come and fill me now.” And the Holy Spirit will fill those who are
willing. So let us stand as we sing.
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