hen ask the Holy Spirit to qualify us
for that service. It is not for us to select some gift and then ask the
Holy Spirit to impart to us this self-chosen gift. It is for us to simply
put ourselves entirely at the disposal of the Holy Spirit to send us where
He will, to select for us what kind of service He will and to impart to us
what gift He will. He is absolute sovereign and our position is that of
unconditional surrender to Him. I am glad that this is so. I rejoice that
He, in His infinite wisdom and love, is to select the field of service and
the gifts, and that this is not to be left to me in my short-sightedness
and folly. It is because of the failure to recognize this absolute
sovereignty of the Spirit that many fail of the blessing and meet with
disappointment. They are trying to select their own gift and so get none.
I once knew an earnest child of God in Scotland, who hearing of the
baptism with the Holy Spirit and the power that resulted from it, gave up
at a great sacrifice his work as a ship plater, for which he was receiving
large wages. He heard that there was a great need of ministers in the
northwest in America. He came to the northwest. He met the conditions of
the baptism with the Holy Spirit and I believe was really baptized with
the Holy Spirit, but God had not chosen him for the work of an evangelist,
and the power as an evangelist did not come to him. No field seemed to
open, and he was in great despondency. He even questioned his acceptance
before God. One morning he came into our church in Minneapolis and heard
me speak upon the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and as I pointed out that
the baptism with the Holy Spirit manifested itself in many different ways,
and the fact that one had not power as an evangelist was no proof that he
had not received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, light came into his
heart. He put himself unreservedly into God's hands for Him to choose the
field of labour and the gifts. An opening soon came to him as a
Sunday-school missionary, and then, when he had given up choosing for
himself and left it with the Holy Spirit to divide to him as He would, a
strange thing happened; he did receive power as an evangelist and went
through the country districts in one of our northwestern states with
mighty power as an evangelist.

4. _While the power may be of one kind in one person and of another kind
in another person, there will always be power, the very power of God, when
one i