August 28 Daily Devotional

You have a Helper within!

... as I confront this mighty, glorious task of denying myself and taking up the cross and following the Lord Jesus Christ I realize that I am to walk through this world as He walked. As I realize that I have been born again and fashioned by God according to the image of His dear Son, and as I begin to ask, ‘Who am I ever to live so? How can I ever hope to do that?’— here is the answer, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the truth that the Holy Spirit dwells within us. What does it teach? It first of all reminds me of the power of the Holy Spirit that is within me. The Apostle has already said that in verse 13 [of Romans 8].... ‘If ye live after the flesh ye shah die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shah live’. Here he comes back to that same teaching. ‘For God hath not given us the spirit of fear.’ ‘You must realize that you are not living by yourselves,’ he says in effect to these Romans. ‘You have been thinking of this task of yours as if you alone, by yourself, had to live the great Christian life. You realize that you are forgiven, and you can thank God that your sins are blotted out and washed away, but you seem to think that that is ah and that you are left to live the Christian life on your own. If you think like that’, says Paul, ‘it is not surprising that you are in a spirit of fear and bondage, for the whole thing is entirely hopeless. It means that you just have a new law which is infinitely more difficult than the old law. But that is not the position, for the Holy Spirit dwells within you.’

Spiritual Depression, pp. 169–70