"Yes." "Ask Him to do it." She bowed her head in
prayer and asked God to empty her of her will, to lay it down for her, to
bring it into conformity to His will, in absolute surrender to His own.
When the prayer was finished, I said, "Is it laid down?" She said, "It
must be. I have asked something according to His will. Yes, it is done." I
said, "Ask Him for the baptism with the Holy Spirit." She bowed her head
again in brief prayer and asked God to baptize her with the Holy Spirit
and in a few moments looked up with peace in her heart and in her face.
Why? Because she had surrendered her will. She had met the conditions and
God had given the blessing.

5. The fifth step is _an intense desire for the baptism with the Holy
Spirit_. Jesus says in John vii. 37-39, "If any man _thirst_, let him come
unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said,
out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of
the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive." Here again we
have _belief on Jesus_ as the condition of receiving the Holy Spirit but
we have also this, "If any man thirst." Doubtless when Jesus spake these
words He had in mind the Old Testament promise in Isa. xliv. 3, "For I
will pour water upon him that is _thirsty_, and floods upon the dry
ground: I will pour _My Spirit_ upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine
offspring." In both these passages thirst is the condition of receiving
the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to thirst? When a man really thirsts,
it seems as if every pore in his body had just one cry, "Water! Water!
Water!" Apply this to the matter in question; when a man thirsts
spiritually, his whole being has but one cry, "The Holy Spirit! The Holy
Spirit! The Holy Spirit!" As long as one fancies he can get along somehow
without the baptism with the Holy Spirit, he is not going to receive that
baptism. As long as one is casting about for some new kind of church,
machinery, or new style of preaching, or anything else, by which he hopes
to accomplish what the Holy Spirit only can accomplish, he will not
receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As long as one tries to find
some subtle system of exegesis to read out of the New Testament what God
has put into it, namely, the absolute necessity that each believer receive
the baptism with the Holy Spirit as a definite experience, he is not going
to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As long as a man tries to
p