Not
Without Holiness
"Pursue peace with all men, and
the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews
12:14). Without holiness, the complete purposes of the church
cannot be fulfilled. A Holy God can only dwell in a holy vessel.
Lake said, "Think not that thou shalt attain the highest
in God until within thine own soul a heavenly longing to be
like Him who gave His life for us possesses our own heart."
A holy and sanctified condition can
only be realized when the fleshly nature is revealed. Once
the tares of the human soul are revealed, Christians then can
call upon the grace of God to separate from them all that is
ungodly, thereby purging the spirit, soul and body from every
worldly tendency. As Lake once put it, "There arises in
the heart the desire and prayer for the Spirit of God to eject,
crucify and destroy every tendency of the opposition of the
Holy Spirit."
The hearts of men and women must be
purged by the fire of the Holy Spirit and washed from every
stain by the cleansing blood of Christ. Those who desire to
be partakers of the nature of Christ must always feel the purging
power of Christ within. Once the Holy Spirit takes up residence,
there is a release of power through the indwelling Spirit to
lift the believer above the lusts and desires of this world
in order to live a holy and consecrated life.
This desire for the purity of God’s
nature reveals a vital ingredient in the life and ministry
of John G. Lake. As he stated in 1916, "Holiness is the
character of God. The very substance of His being and the essence
of His nature is purity." The purpose of God in the salvation
of mankind is to produce in man a kindred holiness, a radiant
purity like that of God Himself.
Clothed in a Spirit of Humility
Another important attribute in Lake’s
ministry was his commitment to living in a spirit of humility.
Lake often quoted I Peter 5:5: "You younger men, likewise,
be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves
with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the
proud, but gives grace to the humble." If the church is
to "return back to the future" to her true apostolic
heritage, Christians must adhere to the qualities demonstrated
by the apostolic fathers.
In Acts 20:19, the Apostle Paul acknowledges
his commitment to humility in his service to the Lord. That
commitment to humility by the first century apostle burned
equally as bright in the heart of John G. Lake, a twentieth
century apostle.
Lake desired to follow the example
set by Moses and sought to be the meekest man in the land.
By virtue of this commitment to humility, he was able to say, "the
Spirit of God ran through my person like a river of heavenly
fluid. Cancers withered under my touch, cripples of every type
were instantly restored and works of creation in the bodies
of men took place as a result of humbling myself under the
mighty hand of God."
Like Moses, he desired to not only
see the acts of an awesome God, but also to understand His
ways. As a result, he discovered that the Lord’s way
was through servanthood and a spirit of humility clothing the
believer. |
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It is
only through amazing grace that the nature and works of Christ
can be exhibited through believers. God gives His grace to
the humble. Humility is truly a key ingredient to the restoration
of true apostolic ministry and the return of the Shekinah glory
to the church.
The Empowering Presence
As with the first century apostles,
John G. Lake did not attempt full time ministry until he was
endued with power from on high. Even though the early apostles
had received an anointing from the Lord for casting out evil
spirits and healing the sick, they did not become the dwelling
place of God until the day of Pentecost. It is one thing to
receive anointings or gifts from the Lord; it is altogether
another to become the literal dwelling place of the manifest
presence of God.
Lake knew the reality of the empowering
presence of God abiding within him. He was anointed and equipped
not only for ministering healing and salvation to a lost world,
but also for expressing the radiant presence of a Holy God,
or, as he explained it for, "becoming a Christ-man having
all the potentials through the Holy Spirit that resided in
Christ Himself."
Lake spent a season of prayer and
fasting specifically seeking a special anointing for casting
out demons. The Lord graciously responded to the request of
His servant by imparting a powerful anointing and the boldness
necessary for dealing with evil spirits. As a result, people
came from all over the world to be delivered and set free from
demonic opposition. Tremendous testimonies are on record as
evidence of this ministry.
This empowering presence also carried
Lake to a new level of understanding Scripture. Powerful and
revelatory sermons emerged from this apostle of faith as he
allowed the Holy Spirit to unfold the mysteries of the kingdom.
He had the capacity to inspire faith in the hearts of those
who heard him. A man without compromise when it involved the
Spirit’s revelation of the Word, Lake utterly refused
to compromise the true revelation of the Word for a false unity
which he believed resulted in spiritual weakness. He believed
that principle is better than unity, and the ultimate end of
right principles would be true unity of the faith as described
in Ephesians 4:13.
Lake believed the secret to Christianity
was not in doing but in being. It is in possessing the
divine nature of Christ and His empowering presence that we
become the reflection of Christ’s character and our message
will then be characterized by the demonstration of the Spirit’s
power. It is by becoming one with the Father that we can know
peace in the midst of storms. It is through the Lord’s
abiding presence that we find the secret place of the most
High and abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
We should earnestly contend for the
apostolic principles found in the first church and demonstrated
in the life of John G. Lake. This generation has the opportunity
to experience the return of our faith to the apostolic pattern.
As we consider the days of old and the generations of long
ago, we can see firsthand the application of true apostolic
ministry available in the days to come.
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