Fullness Of The Spirit Preaching Institute

Well, we're in for a real treat today, friends, as we come to our final message of the MAN series in our International Preaching Institute. I put together these institutes so that you personally don't have to come down to Florida where I live. You can be in England.

You can be in Wales. You can be in India. You can be in Singapore.

You can be anywhere in Australia and listen to these institutes and be trained for the glory of God. And we'd look at this message. The previous message was on angshan and our need of it.

This message is on angshan and how to get it. John Song, the Chinese evangelist whom God used to shake China for God in mighty revivals during the time period between the two world wars, where it was estimated that over 200,000 souls were savingly brought to Christ under John Song's powerful ministry. Song knew the need for power from on high as he displayed the desire of his heart through prayer in 1930 from his diary.

May God confer unto me the same spirit that he had given to Finney, Moody, and John Wesley, so that wherever I set foot on, the fires of revival will be set ablaze forevermore. His diary entry for the same year exemplifies his sacrificial life for Christ and the gospel. As he wrote, I have made up my mind.

Even if I have to die, I will preach the gospel in China. I will die a willing death if only my fellow man be saved. Well, Song's desire was realized for he burned himself out for God and the gospel dying at the age of 42.

The following true account, friends, is Stephen Olford's personal testimony on how he obtained the anointing for ministry, which gave him power from on high. I'm assuming that many of you are somewhat unfamiliar with Stephen Olford. Well, let me clear that up for you.

Let me introduce you to him. Dr. Stephen F. Olford, born March 29, 1918, died August 29, 2004. He was an evangelical leader and pastor who trained thousands of pastors in expository preaching from all over the world at his pastor training center in Memphis, Tennessee.

He was born in Africa of missionary parents and was a leading figure in Christianity. He began his pastoral ministry in 1953 by serving the Duke Street Baptist Church in Richmond, Surrey, England. He then came to America and pastored the historic Calvary Baptist Church in New York City from 1959 to 1973.

He is the author of several books and a renowned international evangelist, and he was most influential in the life of Billy Graham, as we will learn from his testimony today, friends. God used Stephen Olford in my own life to redirect the course of my entire life for Christ Jesus. Now, bear in mind, everyone is different, and God deals with each of his children in different ways.

There is no magic formula for unction that can be applied to all. You can't take Stephen Olford's story and apply it to you and expect the same results. He is merely relating his own experience in how he had a memorable encounter with God to obtain the anointing.

You must have your own memorable encounter with God, but hopefully this Preaching Institute will challenge you with that. Every man's personal encounter with God is unique, and one that you pursue personally. Today, I will give you one man's testimony who sought and received this unction, and how it not only impacted his own life, but that of Billy Graham as well.

It's a story of how my homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen F. Olford, shut himself up in a bed and breakfast in Wales to get along with God as he prayed and sought an anointing from God from on high, not only for preaching, but for living. Like I said, there's no secret sauce or magical formula that can be applied to all persons. Today, I'll merely share with you one man's real and vital testimony on the fullness of the Holy Spirit and how he obtained it.

But I know, friends, once you hear his story, you will be hungry for more of the Spirit yourself. This Institute is centered around the personal testimony and teaching of my homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen Olford, who trained me to preach, and where I was in his first graduating class of his School for Preachers. Here now is his remarkable story taken from the book.

And friends, if you'll take notice of one aspect of Stephen Olford's testimony, it's the degree of seriousness and time set aside in dedication to seeking God for this blessing. Please don't miss that. His story was published in My Most Memorable Encounter with God, edited by David Anlow and published by Tindo House in 1977.

It's now been out of print, but you're in for real treat, friends, for this story is pure gold. Here are Stephen Olford's words on how he obtained, through a crisis in his life, an anointing in the fullness of the Spirit, when the Spirit became Lord by Stephen F. Olford. A biblical truth and personal experience have taught me that normal growth in the Christian life not only implies but involves spiritual crises.

Indeed, there is a sense in which every act of obedience constitutes a crisis, and it is also true that, for a variety of reasons, some crises are more memorable than others. My conversion, on the occasion of my seventh birthday in Angola, West Africa, was a memorable crisis. Several days before this, I was on trek with my missionary parents.

On the last lap of the journey, I had a frightening experience. One of the men carrying my hammock stumbled while crossing a narrow bridge over a fast-flowing stream. The hammock turned over, ejecting me into the air and on my way to a watery grave.

In God's providence, however, I was caught by my clothes in an overhanging tree. When eventually I was extricated, I knelt trembling on the nearby bank to thank God for my deliverance. I knew, even as I prayed, that I was not prepared to meet my Maker.

Shortly after this, I did encounter Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Something my mother said at family prayers sent me to bed troubled. At midnight, I called her to my bedside and said, I am not ready to meet Jesus.

Can you tell me how? Well, thank God she did, and peace flooded my soul. My baptism in a dammed-up pool before hundreds of national believers was a memorable crisis. My restoration from a period of backsliding was a memorable crisis.

In fact, this return to the Lord consummated in my call to ministry. At this time, I was back in England studying to be an engineer, but God made it abundantly clear that His plan for my life was to serve Him as a preacher anywhere, at any time, and at any cost. Following theological and missionary training, I was commissioned to the work of an evangelist to Timothy 4-5.

Then came the seven years of World War II, when, as an Army scripture reader, I witnessed the thousands of men and women in the forces stationed or passing through Newport, Wales. Those were days of darkness, danger, and discipline, but I blessed the Lord for them, for not only were souls saved and lives changed, my own faith was tested and strengthened. Strangely, at this point in my spiritual history, I became increasingly aware of deep inner dissatisfaction.

Something was missing. My soul hungered and thirsted for the presence of God and the power of His Spirit. This awareness of need was intensified by something I saw, something I read, and something I felt.

What I saw was a local movement of the Spirit in South Wales, which greatly challenged me. A relatively unknown pastor evangelist was being mightily used to God under his preaching. Supernatural things were happening, which I could not dispute nor deny, but the Spirit of Revival was abroad.

All this created a yearning in my heart to see miracles take place under my own ministry of the Word. Concurrently with this, I was encouraged to read the lives of two men who had always captivated my interest. One was an evangelist, the other a pastor.

The evangelist was D.O. Moody. I discovered that there was a period in his life when he longed to be fully consecrated to God. Already, he was an internationally known evangelist, and judging by others, he was riding high on a tide of blessing.

Inwardly, however, he was hungry for more. Two women in his church in recognized his need and started to pray for him. They told him, you need the power of the Spirit.

But then one day, in the city of New York, it happened. Recalling this crisis, Moody says, I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it.

It is almost too sacred, inexperienced to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen years. I can only say that God revealed himself to me, and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand.

I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different. I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted.

I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience. If you should give me all the world, then there was the biography of F.B. Meyer. I had read most of his books and had been enriched by the instructional and devotional depths of his expositions.

Once again, a specific paragraph from his story by A. Chester Mann, his biographer, arrested me. It was at the Keswick Convention where F.B. Meyer got his first glimpse of fully surrendered service and where he yielded himself obediently to the heavenly vision. Meyer had to acknowledge that during the earlier years of his ministry, his service was without power with God or special favor with man.

Then came that moment when he saw the emptiness of mere service and cried to God to take supreme control of his life, guiding and directing his every plan. From that time on, God accepted his servants. In my study of these men, I was particularly impressed with the fact that their endowment with power came after years of fruitful service for God.

I remembered how Jesus talked about fruit, more fruit, and much fruit that glorified the Father from John chapter 15. Up until now, I had been content with fruit, but what I had seen and read deepened what I now felt. I wanted much fruit, to be sure, but more than this, I wanted freedom to be and to do all that would glorify the Father.

I was fettered and frustrated in my Christian service and I longed for the liberating power of the Spirit. This led to action. Clearing my calendar for a period of two weeks, I decided to retreat to some quiet place to read and wait upon the Lord.

I made arrangements to stay at a little cottage in Porthcall on the south coast of Wales. I took with me two suitcases of books, including the works of Calvin and Owen on the Holy Spirit. Titles of more modern readers were Venny Creator by Hanley Mole, The Spirit of God by G. Campbell Morgan, The Ministry of the Spirit by A.J. Gordon, The Holy Spirit of God by Griffith Thomas, and others.

I also scheduled a study of such portions of scripture as John 14 through 16, the Acts of the Apostles, Romans chapter 8, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians and Ephesians. Well, morning, noon, and night, I read, meditated, and prayed. Gradually, confusions were clarified and convictions were crystallized, but theology was not enough.

There was still an unspeakable desire in my soul to be set free. Then one afternoon, while reading the epistle to the Ephesians, I observed in a new way that all the blessings of the Spirit are already given to us in Christ. In Ephesians 1.3, Paul says, Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.

This includes the incoming of the Spirit in chapter 1 verses 13 and 14, the indwelling of the Spirit in Ephesians 2.18, the enabling of the Spirit in Ephesians 3.26, and the uniting of the Spirit in 4.3. I pondered these verses. I was overwhelmed with the revelation of the divine fullness, which was mine in Christ. Jesus died for my sins, rose again for my justification, and then ascended to heaven to bestow on me the blessings of the Spirit.

This I now appreciated more clearly. However, it was one thing to appreciate the blessings of the Spirit, but quite another matter to appropriate them. There was still another chapter in this precious letter and a liberating fullness awaiting me.

So I came to Ephesians 5.18, and God opened my eyes. In that familiar verse, Paul exhorts the saints at Ephesus who already knew the incoming, the indwelling, the enabling, and the uniting of the Spirit not to be drunk with wine wherein is excess, but to be filled with the Spirit. It was quite obvious that here was a conscious, continuous, and conspicuous experience in the Spirit.

The question was how to know the fullness initially and then to know this fullness continually. As I examined the text within its context and compared Scripture I was struck with the sheer simplicity of it all. First, there was the initial acceptance of the Spirit's control, be filled in the Spirit and with the Spirit, to quote Hanley Mole.

The Apostle, in effect, calls upon the believer to yield himself unto God, the Holy Spirit as to a power and presence already dwelling and living in reality within him, but waiting, as it were, for the welcome of the soul to come forth from within and take possession of the whole circle and range of life. Well, after reading this, the secret to me was the word control. While the Holy Spirit is both contrasted and compared to wine, He is essentially a person and to be filled with Him is to come under His control.

This led me to 2 Corinthians 3.17 where Paul tells us, The Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, or where the Spirit is Lord, there is liberty. I had always accepted the deity of the Spirit, but I had never acknowledged His Lordship. I knew Jesus was Lord and had owned that Lordship in an objective sense, but now I saw that the Lordship of Christ could only be real to me as the Holy Spirit was made Lord in me.

This was the crisis point in my search for freedom and fullness in my Christian life. Without reading further, I dropped my knees and yielded everything to the reign and rule of the indwelling Spirit. No glory filled the room.

No vision filled my eyes and no tongues were uttered, but I knew there and then that I was set free. The fetters and frustrations were gone. I hadn't a way to preach to know I was liberated.

There were tears in my eyes, but peace in my soul. I turned to the Scripture again, only to confirm that the initial acceptance of the Spirit's control must be matched by the continual dependence on the Spirit's control. The verb indicated a continuous experience, being filled with the Spirit.

To maintain this fullness of the Spirit, there must be a daily repentance of sin. Grieve not the Holy Spirit, as seen in Ephesians 4.30, and there must be a daily obedience to for God gives the Holy Spirit to them that obey Him, Acts 5.32. And the net result is that where the Spirit is Lord, there is liberty. I was so caught up in the wonder of this encounter with God that I cut short my stay at Porthcall by three days and returned to Newport to share the news.

Later that week, I spoke at a rally of young people in Cardiff. The large church was packed and God moved in such power. I was there until midnight, dealing with seeking souls.

There was an authority in my preaching I had never known before. The next appointment was a week of meetings at Hildenborough Hall Conference Center near London, under the directorship of the British Evangelist, Tom Rees. Each day, I spoke on prayer in the morning and on the Holy Spirit in the evening, and the Lord was pleased to send us times refreshing from His presence.

A Friday night, we gathered for a period of sharing to be followed by a concluding message. American visitors were with us on that occasion. Among them, a young man by the name of Billy Graham as he heard the testimonies of these young people who had entered into the fullness of the Holy Spirit and then listened to my exposition of Ephesians 5 18.

He walked up to me at the close of the service and with that resolute look in his eyes and that thrust of his jaw asked to know more. We were unable to talk freely at the time, but made arrangements to meet in Wales. There, I found that Billy was seeking more of God with all his heart, and he felt that I could help him.

For most of two days, we were closeted at Pontypridd's Hotel with our Bibles open, turning the pages as we studied passages and verses. The first day, Billy learned more secrets of the quiet time. The next, I expounded the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer who is willing to bow daily and hourly to the sovereignty of Christ and to the authority of the Word.

This lesson was so new to me that it just cascaded out, revealing bright glimpses of the inexhaustible power of the love of God. Billy drank it in so avidly that I scarcely realized the heights and depths that his spiritual life had reached already. At the close of the second day, we prayed like Jacob of old, laying whole to God and crying, Lord, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me, until we came to a place of rest and rejoicing.

And Billy Graham said, this is a turning point in my life. This will revolutionize my ministry. As I drove home that night, I thanked God for the day in a little room in Porthcall, South Wales, where the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death.

I realized, of course, I had not attained, nor was I already perfect, but also realized I had enjoyed a foretaste for what will one day be the glorious liberty of the children of God. For me, that experience was my most memorable encounter with God. Well, friends, that's the end of Dr. Oford's story.

I hope it has stirred the embers on the altar of your heart to pursue more of God's Spirit. I can personally testify that Stephen Oford possessed this remarkable anointing when he preached. He preached with a power and an authority that transformed lives.

It transformed my own. For God used Stephen Oford to transform my life, calling me to ministry and rerouting the direction of the rest of my entire life unto Christ and the gospel. He was my mentor, my friend, my colleague in ministry.

We wrote a on his homiletical mentor, W. Graham Scroggie, entitled Oford on Scroggie. Oh, what I do know about blessing is this, friends. I believe that to get this anointing, it involves a crisis, an encounter, and a blessing, but there's no magic formula that can be applied one for all.

Stephen Oford's testimony is just that. It's his testimony on how he encountered God to receive this blessing and impact the life of his own and Billy Graham. Remember, friends, the emphasis isn't on how you obtain this blessing.

For each man is unique. God deals differently with each of his children for their good and his glory, but the emphasis, I believe, should be placed on perseverance and obtaining it in the very reality and that once you do obtain it, how it will transform your own life in ministry. Moody sought it, obtained it, and it changed the entire ministry of his life as souls were saved and lives were transformed for all eternity.

D.L. Moody's colleague and good friend R.A. Torrey used to say, if you want more of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit must have more of you. What cost counts, friends, and what counts costs? Are you ready to get serious with God, friend? Are you ready to receive power from on high? Are you ready, brother pastor, to have an authority in the pulpit and power from above? God looks at the sincerity of your heart. God can read your heart like a book.

Turn to him now in a fresh seeking of him. Let us pray.