wondrous Spirit of God.

How shall we know this filling, do you ask? There will be a quiet, deep
peace, at times a great joy that sings, but ever the deep peace that
_holds_ you, a new hunger for the old Book, and a new soft light on its
pages. There will be an inner drawing to talk with God, and an intense
desire to please Him, to find out what He wants you to do, and then to do
it.

There will come other things too, of a less pleasant sort, temptation
will come anew, and a sense--sometimes very acute--of sin, a feeling that
there's a something within you fighting you, the new you. There will be an
increased sensitiveness to sin, and an intense hatred of it. This is what
the filling means. These things will tell you that He, the Spirit, has
taken possession of what you surrendered, and that He is now at work
within. These are His finger-prints.

Then there will be the outflowing side of this filling. A passion that all
men may know this compassionate God, will come as a fire burning in your
bones. Its flames will envelop and go through everything you are and have
and can do. But under all will be the passion for pleasing the Lord Jesus.
Obedience will become the chief thing, holding everything else in check,
obedience to Him, pleasing Him, doing His will.

The Bethlehem Birth is the _beginning_ of a new, a supernatural life
within; _this_ will be the actual life itself, in full vigour and power.
That is the supernatural birth, this the supernatural life. That is, there
is at work within you, very quietly and simply, a power more than the
natural, working through the natural order, and sometimes upsetting what
we may have grown to think of as the natural order. This is the Jordan
Baptism of Power, the Holy Spirit taking charge, and you living a
Spirit-controlled life. There's a new sign hung out over your life, "this
life is being conducted under new management." You won't say it; it won't
be shouted out. It'll be louder yet. Your _life_ will be telling it
continually.

Power Is in the Current.

The word to emphasize here is _control_. You will find new meanings, that
you had not thought of, gradually working out of it. If the Holy Spirit
had control of us as He had of--Philip, for instance. He picked Philip up
out of the midst of the Samaritan crowd, where he was the human centre of
things, and put him down away off here in the desert,--_strange
contrast!_--and with one lone traveller, greater contrast yet!